Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Pipeline Politics Hits Multipolar Realities: Nord Stream 2 and the Ukraine Crisis
BY JOHN FOSTERFacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Photograph Source: Vuo – CC BY-SA 4.0
Amid escalating tensions between US/NATO and Russia, all eyes are on Ukraine, but Nord Stream 2, a pipeline built to bring Russian gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany, is an integral part of the story.
US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, asserted (Jan 27), “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another, … we will work with Germany to ensure it (the pipeline) does not move forward.” Delayed by US threats and sanctions, Nord Stream 2 highlights why countries are challenging US leadership.
Since the 1960s when Europe first began importing Russian gas, Washington perceived Russian energy as a threat to US leadership and Europe’s energy security. More recently, with fracking, the US has become the world’s largest gas producer and a major exporter of LNG (liquefied natural gas). It wants to muscle in on Europe’s huge market, displacing Russian gas. With Nord Stream 2 completed and filled while it awaits German regulatory approval, the stakes are high.
Soon after pipeline construction began in 2018, the US passed a law threatening sanctions on the Swiss ship laying the pipe. The Swiss pulled out and two Russian vessels completed the line despite sanctions. The US threatened German contractors too, but Germany stood firm.
In 2021, with construction almost complete, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the White House, insisting on Nord Stream 2. President Biden gave way. He wanted to mend relations with Germany – the European Union’s most powerful country.
Nord Stream 2, like its predecessor Nord Stream 1, began as a joint venture (51% Russia’s Gazprom, 49% Royal Dutch Shell as well as Austrian, French and German companies). Then Poland’s government agency responsible for monopoly regulation forced European partners to relinquish their share, creating another delay. The European companies gave up their shareholding but remained as equivalent financial investors in the pipeline.
Upon the Europeans relinquishing their shareholding, Gazprom became the sole pipeline owner. It is also the world’s largest gas supplier, with a gas pipeline monopoly in Russia. Gazprom wants to deliver its own gas via its pipeline to Europe. The EU, on the other hand, has maintained since 2009 that pipeline operators, in order to encourage market competition, cannot own the gas they carry. After construction of Nord Stream 2 began, the EU extended its rules to new marine pipelines originating abroad.
Nord Stream 2 was the only pipeline affected. While those pipelines completed prior to May 2019 were exempt, its completion was delayed by US sanctions on pipelaying. Gazprom claimed discrimination and appealed. In August 2021, a German court rejected the appeal. Gazprom then appealed to Germany’s Supreme Court.
German industrialists are desperate for Russian gas. Germany has only 17 days of gas supply in storage. Volatile short-term spot prices have compounded their woes. EU gas imports have increasingly shifted from long-term contracts with prices indexed to crude oil toward short-term deals by multiple traders in spot markets.
In 2020, spot prices were roughly half those of Gazprom’s long-term contracts. They surged as much as sevenfold in 2021, reflecting a mix of factors. On the demand side, economic revival from the pandemic boosted demand for gas in Asia as well as Europe. On the supply side, green sources of energy diminished in central Europe because of cloudy windless days. With the decommissioning of coal and nuclear power stations, utilities turned to natural gas.
European politicians blamed Russia for high gas prices, but Gazprom affirmed it was supplying the amounts stipulated in its long-term contracts. Gazprom wants long-term contracts to underpin the huge capital costs of gasfield and pipeline investments.
Russia is a petro-state. It’s the world’s single largest exporter of natural gas, and the second largest oil exporter – just behind Saudi Arabia. Pipelines and sea routes to market are vital to its economy. Russia wants to sell oil and gas in Asia and Europe, and they want to buy it. Nord Stream 2 makes commercial sense. It incurs no transit fees. The route to market is much shorter than aging pipelines via Ukraine. For its part, Ukraine depends on transit fees from gas shipped through these pipelines.
Nord Stream 2 remains controversial, bitterly opposed by Poland and Ukraine who presume it will reduce volumes and transit fees on pipelines through their countries. Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and others want it. Germany, which carries huge weight in the EU, sees gas as a transition fuel after phasing out nuclear and coal.
Numerous hurdles during and since construction have delayed Nord Stream 2’s certification. The most recent forced its Swiss operating company to form a German subsidiary for the pipeline section in German waters. Upon eventual certification, Germany will become Europe’s main entry point for Russian gas.
The current crisis between Russia and US/NATO has been brewing for many years. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO expanded membership to Eastern Europe. NATO facilitates US leadership, keeping European countries on its side against Russia. From a Russian viewpoint, NATO is provocative and threatening.
Part of the agreement underpinning the USSR’s dissolution was Western assurance that it would not expand into Russia’s sphere of influence, a pledge NATO most recently violated by stationing troops, ships and planes along Russia’s borders. The West accuses Russia of interference in Ukraine. Russia points to a 2014 Western-inspired coup in Ukraine and legitimate grievances of Russian-speakers in the breakaway Donbass republics. I document the two narratives in my book Oil and World Politics.
In December 2021, Russia presented draft treaties to the US and NATO, demanding a complete overhaul of Europe’s security architecture. Russia stressed the principle of indivisible and equal security for all countries, as agreed by all 56 members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) at Istanbul (1999) and reaffirmed at Astana (2010). Members expressly agreed not to strengthen their security at the expense of other members’ security. The US is a signatory.
President Putin warned that if the West continued its aggressive policies (NATO’s expansion and missile deployment in eastern Europe), Russia would take ‘military-technical’ reciprocal measures. He said, “they have pushed us to a line that we can’t cross.”
Russia’s initiative put the cat among the pigeons. A succession of high-level meetings occurred between Russia and the US, NATO and OSCE. Washington presented written responses (Jan 26), seeking to narrow the debate to Ukraine and alleging the Russians were poised to invade it. Russia insisted repeatedly it would not initiate an invasion but would support Donbass if the latter were attacked.
The US escalated tensions by repeating claims of an upcoming Russian invasion, even as Ukraine’s leaders expressed doubts. Washington threatened sanctions of unprecedented severity, including major Russian banks, high-tech goods, the SWIFT financial messaging system, and Nord Stream 2.
France and Germany balked because the sanctions would backfire on their economies. They appeared unconvinced Russia intended to attack unless provoked. A flurry of high-level bilateral discussions with Russia followed.
Significantly, representatives of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine (Jan 26) confirmed support for the 2015 Minsk II agreement and an unconditional ceasefire. Minsk-II requires Ukraine to negotiate with the two Donbass republics on autonomy within a federalized Ukraine but, thus far, no negotiations have been held.
The EU imports 40 percent of its gas from Russia. For Russia, the routes through Ukraine and Poland are unreliable, because of hostility in both countries. Ukraine has a long-term deal with Gazprom for gas transit until 2024. Ukraine earns big transit fees, roughly US$2 billion per year, and desperately wants to keep them. For its internal market, Ukraine buys Russian gas indirectly from Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Whatever happens with Western sanctions, Russia has a strategic new market in China. Russia’s Power of Siberia pipeline began exporting gas from east Siberia to northeast China two years ago. The two countries have agreed to build a second line, Power of Siberia 2. It will bring gas from the Yamal peninsula in the Russian Arctic to China’s northeast. That means Yamal gas will be able to flow to China as easily as to Europe.
The current situation is dangerous and could easily escalate. Nord Stream 2 is critically important but national security trumps all. Security can only be achieved if it is universal. US efforts to contain Russia and maintain leadership over Europe are not working. The world has become multi-polar and Nord Stream 2 is a fulcrum at the centre of the current crisis.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/03 ... ne-crisis/
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Ukraine Forced to Take Loans and Buy US Weapons at Massively Inflated Prices, Opposition Party Charges
February 4, 2022
By Steve Sweeney – Feb 1, 2022
UKRAINE’S Opposition Platform — For Life (OPZZh) party has accused the United States of fuelling regional tensions by forcing Kiev to take out loans and buy weapons at massively inflated prices.
“Who profits from tensions? [We are sure] the situation is beneficial for the countries that are fuelling them. And I would like to stress that no-one is making presents to us,” it said today.
“They make us buy those weapons, hastily and at a triple price. No-one ever disclosed how much we pay for that. They are forcing us [to sign] contracts, and we are taking loans to finance them,” the pro-Russian party continued.
Ukraine has been flooded with arms since the US, Britain and Nato escalated their aggressive drive to war with Russia earlier this month, making unsubstantiated claims of an imminent invasion.
But Kiev has called on the Western imperialist powers to tone down the rhetoric, insisting the threat from Russia is no greater now than it was last spring.
Britain has supplied anti-tank weapons to Kiev, while the US has sent total of 250 tons of “lethal aid” to Ukraine in four separate shipments as part of an extra $200 million (£150m) military package.
It includes US-made FGM-148 Javelin missiles, which cost $175,000 (£130,000) each: money the OPZZh says should be spent on Ukrainian workers.
Last year, Washington provided a record $650m in “military assistance” to Ukraine, on top of $2.7 billion (£2bn) it has supplied since the conflict in Ukraine’s east started in 2014.
Four MPs from the OPZZh were sanctioned by the US earlier this month over allegations it was destabilising Ukrainian sovereignty.
But critics said the Eurosceptic party was targeted because it promised to renegotiate a Ukrainian-EU deal and increase trade with the Commonwealth of Independent States, a bloc formed after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The agreement commits both parties to work towards a convergence with EU common security and defence policy and the policies of the European Defence Agency.
It will also open the door to free-trade agreements between the EU and Ukraine dependent on Ukraine implementing judicial and financial reforms.
Rejection of the deal by then-president Viktor Yanukovich in 2014 led to a US-EU and fascist-backed coup that ousted the democratically elected government.
OPZZh has also promised to overturn “decommunisation,” which has seen the banning of the Communist Party of Ukraine along with the use of communist symbols.
Featured image: Ukrainian soldiers examine their tanks at a military unit close to Kharkiv, Ukraine, Monday, January 31, 2022
(Morning Stars)
https://orinocotribune.com/ukraine-forc ... y-charges/
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"This has not happened for a long time": in Donetsk they report a massive shelling of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Residents of the capital of the Donetsk People's Republic woke up on February 5 to the sound of Ukrainian artillery. Social networks are full of messages about the strikes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
According to users of social networks, "arrivals" are felt by the Kievsky district of Donetsk from the airport, the Kalininsky district of the capital of the republic, as well as the Chervonogradeisky district of Makeevka.
"The polygraph is very loud," "Putilovka is very loud," "The guards also roar," "This hasn't happened for a long time," Donetsk residents write.
https://novorosinform.org/davno-takogo- ... 89069.html
Google Translator
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Ukraine undertook to consider the plan for the implementation of the Minsk agreements submitted by the LDNR - an insider
According to Zerkalo Nedeli, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak is preparing responses to each of the measures proposed by representatives of Donbass.
The Republic of Donbass, within the framework of the meeting of the Contact Group, presented to Ukraine their "road map" for the implementation of the Minsk agreements. At the same time, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, at a meeting with advisers to the leaders of the Normandy Four countries in Paris, undertook to consider the proposals of the LDNR.
The Zerkalo Nedeli newspaper writes about this with reference to a letter from the official representatives of the republics Natalia Nikonorova and Vladislav Deinego to the OSCE Special Representative in Ukraine and the TCG Mikko Kinnunen.
The document states that the Ukrainian side, under the guarantees of Germany and France, has undertaken to submit to the Contact Group its written reaction to the proposals of the DPR and LPR, as well as to start a direct dialogue with representatives of the republics to agree on specific points of the road map.
In the said letter, Deinego and Nikonorov proceed from the fact that by the next meeting of the Contact Group on February 9, 2022, they will already receive written answers to their proposals from the Ukrainian side.
After that, by February 16, 2022, representatives of Donbass must submit to the Working Group on Political Issues a finalized draft of their plan, taking into account the position of Kiev, or submit their objections to Ukraine's proposals.
https://novorosinform.org/ukraina-obyaz ... 89084.html
Google Translator
Looks like the Ukrainian government is having second thoughts about being NATO cannon fodder, though it could be misdirection.
Minsk II essentially would reintegrate the Donbass republics into the Ukrainian state with strict guarantees of autonomy, language, etc. It was not looked upon favorably by the people of Donbass back in 2015 but I do not know what the sentiment is now. However, Russia would have it's hands washed of this problem if it can be done without enraging it's own populace. At least that was the case until the issue of NATO expansion came to the fore, it will be harder to disengage with honor now.
BY JOHN FOSTERFacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Photograph Source: Vuo – CC BY-SA 4.0
Amid escalating tensions between US/NATO and Russia, all eyes are on Ukraine, but Nord Stream 2, a pipeline built to bring Russian gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany, is an integral part of the story.
US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, asserted (Jan 27), “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another, … we will work with Germany to ensure it (the pipeline) does not move forward.” Delayed by US threats and sanctions, Nord Stream 2 highlights why countries are challenging US leadership.
Since the 1960s when Europe first began importing Russian gas, Washington perceived Russian energy as a threat to US leadership and Europe’s energy security. More recently, with fracking, the US has become the world’s largest gas producer and a major exporter of LNG (liquefied natural gas). It wants to muscle in on Europe’s huge market, displacing Russian gas. With Nord Stream 2 completed and filled while it awaits German regulatory approval, the stakes are high.
Soon after pipeline construction began in 2018, the US passed a law threatening sanctions on the Swiss ship laying the pipe. The Swiss pulled out and two Russian vessels completed the line despite sanctions. The US threatened German contractors too, but Germany stood firm.
In 2021, with construction almost complete, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the White House, insisting on Nord Stream 2. President Biden gave way. He wanted to mend relations with Germany – the European Union’s most powerful country.
Nord Stream 2, like its predecessor Nord Stream 1, began as a joint venture (51% Russia’s Gazprom, 49% Royal Dutch Shell as well as Austrian, French and German companies). Then Poland’s government agency responsible for monopoly regulation forced European partners to relinquish their share, creating another delay. The European companies gave up their shareholding but remained as equivalent financial investors in the pipeline.
Upon the Europeans relinquishing their shareholding, Gazprom became the sole pipeline owner. It is also the world’s largest gas supplier, with a gas pipeline monopoly in Russia. Gazprom wants to deliver its own gas via its pipeline to Europe. The EU, on the other hand, has maintained since 2009 that pipeline operators, in order to encourage market competition, cannot own the gas they carry. After construction of Nord Stream 2 began, the EU extended its rules to new marine pipelines originating abroad.
Nord Stream 2 was the only pipeline affected. While those pipelines completed prior to May 2019 were exempt, its completion was delayed by US sanctions on pipelaying. Gazprom claimed discrimination and appealed. In August 2021, a German court rejected the appeal. Gazprom then appealed to Germany’s Supreme Court.
German industrialists are desperate for Russian gas. Germany has only 17 days of gas supply in storage. Volatile short-term spot prices have compounded their woes. EU gas imports have increasingly shifted from long-term contracts with prices indexed to crude oil toward short-term deals by multiple traders in spot markets.
In 2020, spot prices were roughly half those of Gazprom’s long-term contracts. They surged as much as sevenfold in 2021, reflecting a mix of factors. On the demand side, economic revival from the pandemic boosted demand for gas in Asia as well as Europe. On the supply side, green sources of energy diminished in central Europe because of cloudy windless days. With the decommissioning of coal and nuclear power stations, utilities turned to natural gas.
European politicians blamed Russia for high gas prices, but Gazprom affirmed it was supplying the amounts stipulated in its long-term contracts. Gazprom wants long-term contracts to underpin the huge capital costs of gasfield and pipeline investments.
Russia is a petro-state. It’s the world’s single largest exporter of natural gas, and the second largest oil exporter – just behind Saudi Arabia. Pipelines and sea routes to market are vital to its economy. Russia wants to sell oil and gas in Asia and Europe, and they want to buy it. Nord Stream 2 makes commercial sense. It incurs no transit fees. The route to market is much shorter than aging pipelines via Ukraine. For its part, Ukraine depends on transit fees from gas shipped through these pipelines.
Nord Stream 2 remains controversial, bitterly opposed by Poland and Ukraine who presume it will reduce volumes and transit fees on pipelines through their countries. Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and others want it. Germany, which carries huge weight in the EU, sees gas as a transition fuel after phasing out nuclear and coal.
Numerous hurdles during and since construction have delayed Nord Stream 2’s certification. The most recent forced its Swiss operating company to form a German subsidiary for the pipeline section in German waters. Upon eventual certification, Germany will become Europe’s main entry point for Russian gas.
The current crisis between Russia and US/NATO has been brewing for many years. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO expanded membership to Eastern Europe. NATO facilitates US leadership, keeping European countries on its side against Russia. From a Russian viewpoint, NATO is provocative and threatening.
Part of the agreement underpinning the USSR’s dissolution was Western assurance that it would not expand into Russia’s sphere of influence, a pledge NATO most recently violated by stationing troops, ships and planes along Russia’s borders. The West accuses Russia of interference in Ukraine. Russia points to a 2014 Western-inspired coup in Ukraine and legitimate grievances of Russian-speakers in the breakaway Donbass republics. I document the two narratives in my book Oil and World Politics.
In December 2021, Russia presented draft treaties to the US and NATO, demanding a complete overhaul of Europe’s security architecture. Russia stressed the principle of indivisible and equal security for all countries, as agreed by all 56 members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) at Istanbul (1999) and reaffirmed at Astana (2010). Members expressly agreed not to strengthen their security at the expense of other members’ security. The US is a signatory.
President Putin warned that if the West continued its aggressive policies (NATO’s expansion and missile deployment in eastern Europe), Russia would take ‘military-technical’ reciprocal measures. He said, “they have pushed us to a line that we can’t cross.”
Russia’s initiative put the cat among the pigeons. A succession of high-level meetings occurred between Russia and the US, NATO and OSCE. Washington presented written responses (Jan 26), seeking to narrow the debate to Ukraine and alleging the Russians were poised to invade it. Russia insisted repeatedly it would not initiate an invasion but would support Donbass if the latter were attacked.
The US escalated tensions by repeating claims of an upcoming Russian invasion, even as Ukraine’s leaders expressed doubts. Washington threatened sanctions of unprecedented severity, including major Russian banks, high-tech goods, the SWIFT financial messaging system, and Nord Stream 2.
France and Germany balked because the sanctions would backfire on their economies. They appeared unconvinced Russia intended to attack unless provoked. A flurry of high-level bilateral discussions with Russia followed.
Significantly, representatives of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine (Jan 26) confirmed support for the 2015 Minsk II agreement and an unconditional ceasefire. Minsk-II requires Ukraine to negotiate with the two Donbass republics on autonomy within a federalized Ukraine but, thus far, no negotiations have been held.
The EU imports 40 percent of its gas from Russia. For Russia, the routes through Ukraine and Poland are unreliable, because of hostility in both countries. Ukraine has a long-term deal with Gazprom for gas transit until 2024. Ukraine earns big transit fees, roughly US$2 billion per year, and desperately wants to keep them. For its internal market, Ukraine buys Russian gas indirectly from Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Whatever happens with Western sanctions, Russia has a strategic new market in China. Russia’s Power of Siberia pipeline began exporting gas from east Siberia to northeast China two years ago. The two countries have agreed to build a second line, Power of Siberia 2. It will bring gas from the Yamal peninsula in the Russian Arctic to China’s northeast. That means Yamal gas will be able to flow to China as easily as to Europe.
The current situation is dangerous and could easily escalate. Nord Stream 2 is critically important but national security trumps all. Security can only be achieved if it is universal. US efforts to contain Russia and maintain leadership over Europe are not working. The world has become multi-polar and Nord Stream 2 is a fulcrum at the centre of the current crisis.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/03 ... ne-crisis/
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Ukraine Forced to Take Loans and Buy US Weapons at Massively Inflated Prices, Opposition Party Charges
February 4, 2022
By Steve Sweeney – Feb 1, 2022
UKRAINE’S Opposition Platform — For Life (OPZZh) party has accused the United States of fuelling regional tensions by forcing Kiev to take out loans and buy weapons at massively inflated prices.
“Who profits from tensions? [We are sure] the situation is beneficial for the countries that are fuelling them. And I would like to stress that no-one is making presents to us,” it said today.
“They make us buy those weapons, hastily and at a triple price. No-one ever disclosed how much we pay for that. They are forcing us [to sign] contracts, and we are taking loans to finance them,” the pro-Russian party continued.
Ukraine has been flooded with arms since the US, Britain and Nato escalated their aggressive drive to war with Russia earlier this month, making unsubstantiated claims of an imminent invasion.
But Kiev has called on the Western imperialist powers to tone down the rhetoric, insisting the threat from Russia is no greater now than it was last spring.
Britain has supplied anti-tank weapons to Kiev, while the US has sent total of 250 tons of “lethal aid” to Ukraine in four separate shipments as part of an extra $200 million (£150m) military package.
It includes US-made FGM-148 Javelin missiles, which cost $175,000 (£130,000) each: money the OPZZh says should be spent on Ukrainian workers.
Last year, Washington provided a record $650m in “military assistance” to Ukraine, on top of $2.7 billion (£2bn) it has supplied since the conflict in Ukraine’s east started in 2014.
Four MPs from the OPZZh were sanctioned by the US earlier this month over allegations it was destabilising Ukrainian sovereignty.
But critics said the Eurosceptic party was targeted because it promised to renegotiate a Ukrainian-EU deal and increase trade with the Commonwealth of Independent States, a bloc formed after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The agreement commits both parties to work towards a convergence with EU common security and defence policy and the policies of the European Defence Agency.
It will also open the door to free-trade agreements between the EU and Ukraine dependent on Ukraine implementing judicial and financial reforms.
Rejection of the deal by then-president Viktor Yanukovich in 2014 led to a US-EU and fascist-backed coup that ousted the democratically elected government.
OPZZh has also promised to overturn “decommunisation,” which has seen the banning of the Communist Party of Ukraine along with the use of communist symbols.
Featured image: Ukrainian soldiers examine their tanks at a military unit close to Kharkiv, Ukraine, Monday, January 31, 2022
(Morning Stars)
https://orinocotribune.com/ukraine-forc ... y-charges/
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"This has not happened for a long time": in Donetsk they report a massive shelling of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Residents of the capital of the Donetsk People's Republic woke up on February 5 to the sound of Ukrainian artillery. Social networks are full of messages about the strikes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
According to users of social networks, "arrivals" are felt by the Kievsky district of Donetsk from the airport, the Kalininsky district of the capital of the republic, as well as the Chervonogradeisky district of Makeevka.
"The polygraph is very loud," "Putilovka is very loud," "The guards also roar," "This hasn't happened for a long time," Donetsk residents write.
https://novorosinform.org/davno-takogo- ... 89069.html
Google Translator
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Ukraine undertook to consider the plan for the implementation of the Minsk agreements submitted by the LDNR - an insider
According to Zerkalo Nedeli, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak is preparing responses to each of the measures proposed by representatives of Donbass.
The Republic of Donbass, within the framework of the meeting of the Contact Group, presented to Ukraine their "road map" for the implementation of the Minsk agreements. At the same time, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, at a meeting with advisers to the leaders of the Normandy Four countries in Paris, undertook to consider the proposals of the LDNR.
The Zerkalo Nedeli newspaper writes about this with reference to a letter from the official representatives of the republics Natalia Nikonorova and Vladislav Deinego to the OSCE Special Representative in Ukraine and the TCG Mikko Kinnunen.
The document states that the Ukrainian side, under the guarantees of Germany and France, has undertaken to submit to the Contact Group its written reaction to the proposals of the DPR and LPR, as well as to start a direct dialogue with representatives of the republics to agree on specific points of the road map.
In the said letter, Deinego and Nikonorov proceed from the fact that by the next meeting of the Contact Group on February 9, 2022, they will already receive written answers to their proposals from the Ukrainian side.
After that, by February 16, 2022, representatives of Donbass must submit to the Working Group on Political Issues a finalized draft of their plan, taking into account the position of Kiev, or submit their objections to Ukraine's proposals.
https://novorosinform.org/ukraina-obyaz ... 89084.html
Google Translator
Looks like the Ukrainian government is having second thoughts about being NATO cannon fodder, though it could be misdirection.
Minsk II essentially would reintegrate the Donbass republics into the Ukrainian state with strict guarantees of autonomy, language, etc. It was not looked upon favorably by the people of Donbass back in 2015 but I do not know what the sentiment is now. However, Russia would have it's hands washed of this problem if it can be done without enraging it's own populace. At least that was the case until the issue of NATO expansion came to the fore, it will be harder to disengage with honor now.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
'Russian Troop Build-Up' - Eight Years Of Crying Wolf
Note: Map published first on May 2, 2014 by Washington Post
Jul 30, 2014:
Russia Has 15,000 Crack Troops on the Ukrainian Border - And Putin’s itching for a fight. - Foreign Policy
Mar 19, 2015:
Russia Expands Military Exercises To 80,000 Troops - Defense News
Sep 1, 2016:
Russia is massing thousands of troops on Ukraine’s border. Here’s why we shouldn’t panic. - Vox
Sep 13, 2017:
What’s Putin up to? The Russian military buildup in Europe raises tension. - Military Times
Dec 15, 2018:
Ukraine Asserts Major Russian Military Buildup on Eastern Border - New York Times
Jun 12, 2019:
EXCLUSIVE: US Intelligence Officials and Satellite Photos Detail Russian Military Buildup on Crimea - Defense One
Jul 17, 2020:
Russia orders 'surprise' military drill in Caspian, Black seas - UPI
Apr 2, 2021:
Russian 'troop build-up' near Ukraine alarms Nato - BBC
Jan 27, 2022:
How Russia Has Increased Its Military Buildup Around Ukraine - New York Times
Posted by b at 8:26 UTC | Comments (18)
https://www.moonofalabama.org/ All links here
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‘Washington is pushing Ukraine to attack Donbass’
February 5, 2022 Struggle - La Lucha
Residents of Donbass have resisted Ukrainian military attacks since 2014.
Remarks by Struggle-La Lucha co-editor Greg Butterfield during a special online briefing on the U.S./NATO war threats against Russia and Donbass, Jan. 29. Watch the video here. https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... a-donbass/
For more than two months, there’s been a steady drumbeat from the Biden administration and the U.S. corporate media: Russia is threatening to invade Ukraine. The threat is imminent. It’s not a question of if, much less of why, only when.
It’s presented as a bare statement of fact. No dissenting voices are allowed. The only question up for debate is how strong the response should be. Should it be a direct military response? Is it enough to send weapons, money and advisers to Ukraine? What role should negotiations and sanctions play?
Right now 8,500 U.S.-based troops are on alert for deployment to Europe, in addition to the 64,000 already stationed there.
For those old enough to remember, it’s eerily similar to the buildup to the Iraq War in 2002-2003.
And like the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” story used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s a complete lie.
The real threat of invasion is not by Russia against Ukraine. It is by Ukraine against the small, independent Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk on Russia’s western border.
Let me repeat that: The threat of invasion is not coming from Russia. The threat is from U.S.-armed and -funded Ukraine. Right now, 125,000 Ukrainian troops, half of the country’s military, are concentrated along the borders of the Donbass republics. Washington is pushing, pushing, pushing for Ukraine to attack Donetsk and Lugansk.
Why? Because the U.S. political establishment, the big banks, Big Oil and the military-industrial complex hope this will force a defensive response from Russia that can be used to justify war, harsher sanctions, more military expenditures and further expansion of the NATO military alliance on Russia’s borders.
Only U.S. rulers want war
The United States is the motor force of this crisis. Russia says it will not invade or start a war. The Donbass republics, which have suffered an eight-year economic blockade and a long conflict with Ukraine that has cost 14,000 lives, don’t want more war.
Ukraine’s President Zelensky and the oligarchs of Ukraine hate Russia and want to conquer Donbass. But they are terrified of what will happen if the U.S. succeeds in pushing them into a war now. Ukraine’s 2015 invasion of Donbass was roundly defeated by the local People’s Militias and internationalist volunteers. The Ukrainian Army is better trained and armed now, thanks to NATO, but Zelensky knows they are no match for the combined forces of Donbass and Russia.
Germany, the European Union’s biggest economic power, doesn’t want war. Germany needs Russian gas and heating oil to keep flowing to fuel its economy. The German capitalists know that if there is a war, they will have no choice but to buy from U.S. oil companies at greatly inflated prices. The same is true for the rest of Western Europe.
All of these countries are pawns in a deadly game that only benefits U.S. imperialism. The U.S. rulers created this crisis and continue to pour fuel on the fire day by day.
Why now? The global capitalist system is in crisis. It was spiraling toward recession even before the pandemic struck. While some billionaires and sectors have profited handsomely from the COVID crisis, U.S. imperialism’s overall profits and strategic dominance are threatened at every turn.
In particular, the oil industry – thoroughly entwined with the biggest U.S. banks and the military-industrial complex – has been in crisis for over a decade. Oil and gas prices never rebounded to the heights reached before the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. That’s why Obama, Trump and Biden have targeted oil producers like Venezuela, Iran, Syria and Iraq, and of course Russia, with blockades, sanctions and war to stem the flow of oil and gas.
U.S. capitalists are desperate to stop the nearly completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline project slated to bring Russian gas to Europe.
NATO arms Ukraine’s fascists
There is one other group that is eager for war. It’s neo-Nazi groups like Right Sector, the Azov Battalion, Patriots of Ukraine and C14, that have run rampant since the U.S.-engineered coup overthrew the democratically elected government in 2014. These groups have been fully integrated into Ukraine’s military and security apparatus.
According to officials and activists in Donbass, neo-Nazi battalions have been deployed to towns and villages on the ceasefire line separating Ukraine from Donetsk and Lugansk. These fascists speak of the residents of the region as “cattle” and “insects” and routinely call for genocide to recapture the region. In the event of a Ukrainian invasion, they will form the spearhead.
The U.S. is truly playing with fire. Even if, despite all the buildup of weapons and mobilization of troops, calmer heads prevail in the Pentagon and Biden gives the order to pull back or slow down, there is no guarantee that the neo-Nazis, now armed with NATO weapons and training, will obey. Likely they will feel that Biden has betrayed them, as they are now saying about Zelensky.
Why is the Biden administration collaborating with neo-Nazis?
You won’t see it in any of the current media war propaganda. But over the past few years, several articles have documented how U.S. and European white supremacists have gone to Ukraine to train with these groups. Some have participated in the war on Donbass. The FBI even admitted that a group involved in the Charlottesville fascist riot where Heather Heyer was murdered had trained with Ukrainian nazis.
Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The inspiration of the modern day fascists there is a creep named Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis. Today’s Ukrainian government recognizes Bandera as a national hero.
After the war, the United States nurtured Ukrainian Nazis as a weapon against the Soviet Union, just as Nazis were recruited for NATO and the U.S. war machine. It’s a relationship that goes back decades. We should encourage people who voted for Biden as a rejection of Trump’s white supremacist program to demand answers from him.
What we must do
I want to say a little about what we must do to oppose the U.S. war drive.
At this moment, the most important thing we can do is show visible opposition to a U.S. war with Russia. We need people to go out in the streets with signs, banners and leaflets, organize car caravans, social media blasts, the more the better, while wearing masks and taking all necessary health precautions for the pandemic. Not just in Washington, D.C., or New York City, but all over the country, in cities and towns large and small.
That’s why Struggle-La Lucha and the Socialist Unity Party are joining with other anti-war groups to call for National Days of Action from February 4 through 12 to say “No War on Russia and Donbass! U.S.-NATO Out of Ukraine!” Baltimore, San Diego, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Minneapolis are among the places planning activities.
Wherever possible, we should encourage existing anti-war groups to endorse and we should join any actions they may announce. Those of us with experience in the U.S. movement are aware of the rivalries and sectarianism that exist among these groups, many of which have existed since the Iraq War era. These are long-term issues that we need to work on as a movement. But right now, the most important thing is to make opposition to war with Russia visible.
The George Floyd uprising was just one-and-a-half years ago. The capitalist rulers have certainly not forgotten it. Taking to the streets is the best way to raise the specter of that uprising in their minds and give them pause on their drive toward war.
War danger and the working class
Finally, let’s address the problem of how we can reach out to poor and working people. How do we talk to our family members, co-workers and neighbors about this issue?
One big hurdle we have to overcome is that there is very little understanding among people in the U.S. about Eastern Europe and the former Soviet countries. Through no fault of their own, many people in the U.S. cannot identify Ukraine on a map, and most have probably not even heard of Donetsk and Lugansk.
If people have any impression of Russia, it’s most often old Cold War anti-communist stereotypes. U.S. war propaganda plays off these stereotypes, despite the fact that socialism was overthrown and the Soviet Union broken up three decades ago.
Explaining what’s actually happening with Ukraine, Russia and Donbass, and educating people about the role of the U.S. and NATO in Europe, is very necessary. But it may not immediately grab people’s attention out on the street or get them to take a leaflet or consider joining a protest.
However, we can get people’s attention by connecting the war danger to the urgent concerns of their daily lives and struggles. Right now, hundreds of thousands of families are facing eviction around the country as pandemic eviction moratoriums end. But the Biden administration’s priority is a war with another nuclear armed power on the other side of the world.
Congress can’t manage to pass Build Back Better’s modest social and infrastructure measures. But there was overwhelming bipartisan support for the Pentagon’s $768 billion annual budget passed last month.
Biden and Harris have not met any of their campaign promises to curb racist police brutality – in fact, they have been promising more money for cops. But they are collaborating with white supremacist movements abroad.
On social media, many people have made the point that huge shipments of U.S. weapons arrived in Ukraine before people even received their four meager home COVID tests by mail. This example really shines a spotlight on the skewed priorities of the U.S. government at a time when everyone can see the utter collapse of public health in this country.
We’re working to develop attractive, easy-to-read flyers that talk about these issues and can be used for leafleting at actions in the coming weeks. We will make them available for download in the next few days. The articles on Struggle-La-Lucha.org also have a ton of helpful facts and information you can use.
Hold a picket line. Have a banner drop. Give out leaflets at your subway stop or school. Notify the local media. Participate in social media blasts. Take photos and videos and share them online and with us. Every action we take right now makes a difference.
https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... k-donbass/
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America’s Putin Psychosis
February 5, 2022
By Scott Ritter – Feb 2, 2022
Rather than examining the perspective of Russian national security interests, US officials wrongly think the fate of European peace is in the hands of a single man: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
The war of words between Russia and the United States over Ukraine escalated further on Tuesday, February 1, as Russian President Vladimir Putin responded for the first time to the US written reply to Russia’s demands for security guarantees that were expressed in the form of a pair of draft treaties submitted by Moscow to the US and NATO in December.
“It is already clear… that the fundamental Russian concerns were ignored. We did not see an adequate consideration of our three key requirements,” Putin said at a press conference that followed his meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Moscow.
Putin said the US had failed to give “adequate consideration of our three key demands regarding NATO expansion, the renunciation of the deployment of strike weapons systems near Russian borders, and the return of the [NATO] bloc’s military infrastructure in Europe to the state of 1997, when the Russia-NATO founding act was signed.”
He detailed what he alleged was NATO’s long history of deception, re-emphasizing the 1990 verbal commitment by former US Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would not expand “an inch” eastward. “They said one thing, they did another,” Putin said. “As people say, they screwed us over, well they simply deceived us.”
With some 130,000 Russian troops deployed in the western and southern military districts bordering Ukraine, and another 30,000 assembling in neighboring Belarus, US policy makers are scrambling to figure out what Russia’s next move might be, a choice most US policy makers believe boils down to diplomacy or war.
Rather than examine the situation from the perspective of Russian national security interests, however, these officials have placed the fate of European peace and security in the hands of a single individual: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Interests of an entire nation
In a recent article in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols opines that “no one really knows why Putin is doing this—or whether he really intends to do it at all. It is unlikely that his own inner circle even has a good read on its boss.”
Even the president of the United States, Joe Biden, professed a sense of frustration at not knowing what Putin’s objectives are vis-à-vis Ukraine. “I’ll be completely honest with you,” Biden said last month, “it is a little bit like reading tea leaves” when it came to predicting Putin’s next move.
The Kremlin. Photo: Dmitry Ivanov/Wikimedia Commons
The fact that the US president is at a loss when assessing Russia’s next move regarding Ukraine should send a shiver up the spines of all concerned Americans. One of the main reasons for this confusion lies in the emphasis Biden placed on the importance of only what Putin was thinking, as opposed what the legitimate national security interests of Russia were.
This problem is not unique to the present circumstance, but rather is part and parcel of a national obsession with Putin the man that obviates the reality that Russia is a country whose interests are greater than any single individual, no matter how long serving or powerful.
The problem with focusing on an individual as the embodiment of a nation is that one is trying to solve the wrong problem. Russia’s ongoing issues with Ukraine are larger than Vladimir Putin, and as such, far more complex in defining national goals and policy boundaries. You can’t solve a problem unless you first accurately define the problem; by tying the problem of Ukraine to one man, American policy makers are, in effect, dealing with the wrong problem.
This disconnect from reality is further exacerbated when, as is the case with the majority of so-called “Russian experts” prevalent in America today, one seeks to play amateur psychiatrist by getting into the mind of the Russian leader.
Take, for example, Michael McFaul, the architect of Barack Obama’s infamous policy “reset” with Russia (a little-disguised effort designed to squeeze Putin out of power and replace him with the ostensibly more compliant Dmitry Medvedev). The title of his policy memoir, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia says it all. If you think you have the ability to define the character of an entire nation through the persona of a single named individual, you should be able to provide some insight into the thinking of that person.
But as McFaul himself admitted recently on MSNBC, “I want to state categorically that I don’t know what Putin wants. I don’t know what he’s decided. President Biden doesn’t know. The director of the CIA [William Burns] doesn’t know. I don’t think Sergei Lavrov knows, the foreign minister.”
A moment of honest humility? No; McFaul continues: “And from my experience dealing with Putin in negotiations, I don’t think he has made his own decision yet. I think that he likes this uncertainty. He likes that we’re all talking about, you know, negotiating with ourselves, making counter proposals. He likes to watch that.”
McFaul, by his own admission, doesn’t know what Putin wants, but he freely opines about what Putin thinks and likes. I would respectfully suggest that if you know a person well enough to publicly pontificate on their thoughts and desires, then you probably know what they want.
Perception over reality
McFaul honestly stated that he doesn’t know what Putin wants; the rest is simply speculative drivel motivated not by any genuine intellectually-based curiosity about Russia and the man who serves as its president, but rather the need to feed the American mainstream media’s appetite for a narrative that doesn’t challenge that of a White House that sets the tone and content of what passes for news based upon domestic political imperatives as opposed to global geopolitical reality.
Perception is everything; facts mean nothing. This is the Biden administration’s mantra. One only need look to Biden’s July 23, 2021, telephone conversation with then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. “I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden told the beleaguered Afghan leader. “And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
The fact that US presidential administrations, as a matter of course, manufacture a fact-free narrative designed to mislead a domestic American audience should not come as a shock to anyone who has studied the sickening intersection of public and foreign policy in the United States since the end of the Second World War.
In this vein, one of the central themes that is being woven into the Ukraine narrative is the frenetic nature of decision making by Vladimir Putin.
McFaul described Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 as an impulsive move by Putin, not something long planned, but put into effect only after the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev. This line of thinking was endemic in the Obama White House where McFaul served. Journalist Susan Glasser, a long-time critic of Putin, quotes an unnamed “top Obama official” in her 2014 article for Politico, “Putin on the Couch.’
“I hear people say we were naïve about Putin and that the president didn’t understand Putin,” the official said. “No. We had a very sober, very steely-eyed realist assessment of Putin.”
But then the “top official” proved they did not. “It comes down to a debate going on in his own head,” the official noted. “He does impulsive, or dare I say irrational, things. I don’t think he’s the realist grand strategist that some people admiringly ascribe to him.”
Glasser ran with the theme, quoting David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lenin’s Tomb, who, speaking about Putin and Crimea, declared, “I think he has improvised, acted rashly and foolishly, even on his own terms.”
Stephen Sestanovich, the US ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001, continued this line of analysis, noting Putin’s “bad judgment, emotional decision-making, petty score-settling with little care for long-term consequences,” before concluding “But it’s vintage Putin.”
Fiona Hill, to the left of John Bolton, at meeting with Putin in Moscow, March 2018. Photo: Kremlin
Even when fellow travelers like Fiona Hill, who doubled as the top Kremlinologist for both George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former CIA analyst who served as a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia under Barack Obama, come together for a pragmatic assessment of Russia, they are colored by their collective Putin-centric approach to all things Russia.
Hill, the author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, recently observed that, “With Putin it’s always important to expect the unexpected. He makes sure that he has a range of options for action and different ways of leveraging a situation to exploit weakness. If all our attention is on Ukraine, then his next move might be somewhere else to throw us off balance and see how we react.”
Kendall-Taylor, whose assessments on Putin and Russia were regularly briefed to President Obama, testified before Congress in 2019 that, “Although Putin’s actions in Crimea and Syria were designed to advance a number of key Russian goals, it is also likely that Putin’s lack of domestic constraints increased the level of risk he was willing to accept in pursuit of those goals.”
These two seasoned Russian hands, both highly influential in terms of advising senior American policy makers, from the president on down, both continue the narrative of Putin as an impulsive, risk-taking gambler, who makes spur of the moment decisions based upon personal intuition.
They, like all the other so-called Russian experts, are wrong.
How policy is made in Russia
The fact is, any Russian expert worth their salt knows what Russia’s goals and objectives vis-à-vis Ukraine are because the Russians told us back in 2008. One of the few genuine Russian experts in a position to influence policy, CIA Director William Burns, put it all down in writing in a February 2008 cable entitled, simply enough, “Nyet means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines.” He wrote it while serving as the US ambassador to Russia during the administration of President George W. Bush.
Burns, reporting on the Russian reaction to the 2008 NATO summit where the idea of membership for Ukraine was floated, noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry had declared that “a radical new expansion of NATO may bring about a serious political-military shift that will inevitably affect the security interests of Russia.”
The Russians highlighted that when it came to Ukraine, Russia was bound by bilateral obligations set forth in the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership in which both parties undertook to “refrain from participation in or support of any actions capable of prejudicing the security of the other side.” Ukraine’s ‘likely integration into NATO,” the Russian Foreign Ministry declared, “would seriously complicate the many-sided Russian-Ukrainian relations,” and that Russia would “have to take appropriate measures.”
Burns gave the Bush administration the Russian playbook of consequences should NATO seek to move forward on membership for Ukraine. This information was known to McFaul, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, and all the other so-called “Russian experts,” yet they failed to address it (further reinforcing Putin’s claims that “fundamental Russian concerns were ignored”).
The concept that Putin would act “impulsively” in 2014 to a problem outlined concisely and accurately in 2008 by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs likewise shows an absolute disregard for, or ignorance of, how policy is made in Russia today.
There is no doubt that Putin is a very powerful president wielding strong executive powers. But he is not a dictator, nor is Russia set up to be ruled by a dictator.
Russian policy is made by professional bureaucrat-specialists resident in the extremely dense permanent Russian bureaucracy. These bureaucrats, part of the Russian civil servant class, are responsible for turning policy guidance into detailed implementation plans from which the resources needed for implementation are assigned, along with a timeline for completion of the task.
These implementation plans cut across ministries and are designed to consider all foreseeable variables. In short, Russian policy is the by-product of a process which represents the coordinated effort of a vast bureaucracy—the exact opposite of the individual “impulsivity” ascribed by McFaul, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, and others to Putin.
The plan implemented by Russia regarding Crimea in 2014 was born of the Russian concerns expressed in 2008, and were not the knee-jerk reactions of an impulsive, risk-taking Russian President. The same can be said for the situation unfolding in Ukraine today. The fact that Biden and his national security advisors are locked on to Putin as the personification of all things Russia is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of how Russia works or—worse—a deliberate campaign of perception management intended to deceive the American public about the complexities and realities of US policy objectives.
Putin, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to his right at the Kremlin. Photo: US State Department
Getting it wrong when it comes to defining policy-making reality in Russia today goes well beyond simply formulating bad policy, which is then incompetently implemented. The United States is ceding the initiative to Russia and its president. At the end of the day, one would be hard pressed to make a case where the executive decision-making powers of Vladimir Putin far exceed those of his American counterpart.
The Russians, however, have a two-fold advantage over the United States in terms of policy implementation. First and foremost, they are dealing with an executive who has been at the helm of the Russian ship for two decades; Putin is unmatched when it comes to knowledge of his system of government, and how to make it work. Even someone like Biden, with his four-plus decades of government experience, operates like a rookie during his first few years in office, if for no other reason than he is, in fact, a rookie.
A US presidential administration in its first term is, literally, starting from scratch. True, there is a standing American civil service (some call it part of the “deep state”) which provides a modicum of operational consistency from administration to administration, but the critical leadership for every administration is provided by the political appointees. As opposed to Russia’s twin decades of consistent policy formulation and implementation, the United States has witnessed during the same time frame four changes of administrations, each one with a radically different approach toward governance than its predecessor.
A manufactured narrative
The only consistency between administrations is the need to manufacture narratives used to placate a domestic constituency about policies linked to national defense and, by extension, the defense industry. Here, the demonization of Russia has played a large role in defining US defense needs and, by extension, the acquisition of weapons.
No administration has trusted the American public to engage in a fact-based national dialogue about the “threat” posed by Russia and, by extension, the continued need for NATO. The main reason for this is, if the facts were presented clearly, no American could possibly support the continuation of NATO and, therefore, would not support the elevation of Russia as a threat worthy of hundreds of billions of our taxpayer dollars.
In this way, the United States can produce a class of partisan “experts” on Russia whose only claim to real expertise is the ability to conform to a narrative designed to further a lie, as opposed to seeking the truth. Gone are the days when masters of Russian studies, such as the former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, held sway.
Even when the US produced a qualified Russian expert in academia, such as the late Stephen Cohen, the mainstream media negated his true expertise by either drowning out his message in a sea of Russophobic propaganda spewed by his opposite numbers, or just simply ignoring him. Instead, we get the Michael McFaul’s, Fiona Hill’s, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor’s—academics whose sole claim to relevance is their collective embrace of Putin as the personification of all that ails Russia in the world today.
America’s dependence on this inferior class of ersatz Russian expertise has created a congenital defect in American national security decision making that is best expressed as a variation of John Boyd’s OODA Loop. Boyd, a renowned fighter pilot, claimed he could shoot down any opposing fighter within forty seconds from a position of disadvantage employing a decision-making cycle he called the “OODA Loop” (for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act).
In short, by executing one’s decision-making cycle faster than an opponent, one “got inside” the decision-making cycle of the enemy, forcing them to react to you, and thereby guaranteeing their demise.
The OODA Loop has been adapted by various non-pilot organizations and entities, from the US Marines to business, as a model to improve operational efficiency. While neither the Russian Foreign Ministry nor the US State Department have embraced the theory, it can be used as a vehicle of comparative analysis when assessing the effectiveness of the respective policy formulation and implementation cycles.
Three phases
From the standpoint of observing, the fundamental tenant is to collect data using all possible resources. From the Russian perspective, when it comes to Ukraine and NATO, Russia has been focused on NATO policy, both expressed and implemented, when it comes to its eastward expansion, and the applicability of such expansion to Ukraine. The data collected by Russia is fact-based, and singularly focused on the problem at hand, which is the potential threat posed to Russia by Ukrainian membership in NATO.
The US, however, with its Putin-centric approach, focuses on the person of the Russian president, without any attempt to match observed actions with anything resembling actual policy. The data collected is of the tabloid variety, focusing on posturing, mannerisms, and photo opportunities.
While Putin does provide a plethora of data in the form of speeches and extended press question and answer sessions, the analysis conducted from these opportunities rarely goes deeper than turning the Russian president’s presentation into a cartoon-like depiction of evil.
The next phase, orientation, is guided by the data collected during the observation phase. Here, the Russians can zoom in on the US/NATO centers of gravity, so to speak—that which makes the trans-Atlantic alliance work, and that which could cause problems.
Here, Russia has predicted possible policy options that could be pursued by NATO in response to a wide variety of policy stimuli from Russia and gamed out each to find a range of actions and reaction possibilities that best suit Russian policy objectives.
The US, however, continues to focus on Putin, producing material in book, article, and television formats which attack the character of the Russian president while denigrating Russia as a nation (“Russia is nothing more than a gas station masquerading as a country” seems to be a popular jibe.)
By creating a false narrative built around the absolute nature of Putin’s quasi-dictatorial state, the Americans have lulled themselves into a false sense of complacency premised on the notion of Putin’s impulsivity which, by its very nature, cannot be predicted, and as such cannot be deterred through preventive measures.
The third phase, decision, is paramount. Here, the Russians, having gathered data, assessed its value, and formulated policy options derived from the same, pick the option that best suits their policy objectives. They are in control of the timetable, and as such, can allocate resources sufficient to the task.
The Americans, by comparison, remain engaged in the business of demeaning the Russians and their president in products designed for domestic consumption and, as such, virtually useless in the realm of reality.
The final phase, action, is where the proverbial rubber meets the road. Here the Russians have initiated a process which not only has them operating at a time and place of their choosing, but also to have positioned themselves to immediately begin the next OODA Loop cycle by having the appropriate sensors in place to collect data regarding any potential American reaction so that new decision options can be rapidly prepared and acted on.
The Americans, meanwhile, are alerted to a potential crisis only through the actions of the Russians. The Americans initiate their own observation process, but their collection mechanism, so firmly rooted in the persona of Putin, is oblivious to the complexity and layering of the Russian action.
Russia, armed with the luxury of time and initiative, can isolate American actions as they take place, beginning a process of action-reaction which Russia controls.
In short, if the current diplomatic engagement taking place between the US and Russia over Ukraine were a dog fight, the Americans would be shot down by the Russians inside of forty seconds, guaranteed.
Russia isn’t simply operating inside the American decision-making cycle—they control it.
Propagandized conformity
While the ultimate responsibility for bad policy rests with the senior policy maker—the US president—there is no doubt that successive presidential administrations have been poorly served by the current crop of American Kremlinologists, personified by McFaul, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, and others, who made Putin bashing the standard for what passed for Russian studies.
In short, so long as your world view of Russia conformed with the Putin bashers, you were welcomed into the club; if, however, one opted to take a more nuanced, fact-based approach to Russian studies that went beyond the persona of the Russian president, and explored the complexity of post-Cold War Russia, the powers that be in government, academia and media would relegate you to the trash bin of relevancy.
Every American citizen should realize that they have been poorly served by these slavish servants of propagandized conformity, and the potential consequence of their collective failure—war—stares us all in the face.
If we can emerge from these difficult times intact, it will only be because the Russians—not Biden—picked a policy path that possessed a viable diplomatic offramp.
And if we are so fortunate, then the practitioners of this Putin psychosis—the McFaul’s, Hill’s, Kendall-Taylor’s, and others of their ilk—should be singled out for their respective role in bringing America to such a place policy-wise and treated accordingly—no more sinecures, no more access, no more credibility.
https://orinocotribune.com/americas-putin-psychosis/
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LIKE THE MAN ABOVE WAS SAYIN':
Russia has 70% of the military capabilities in place for full-scale invasion
By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent
Updated 9:30 PM ET, Sat February 5, 2022
(CNN)Russian President Vladimir Putin has now assembled 70% of the military personnel and weapons on Ukraine's borders he would need for a full-scale invasion of the country, according to two US officials familiar with the latest estimates.
The figure is an estimate based on the latest intelligence assessments, but officials would not specify the intelligence they had or how they developed their assessments, citing the sensitivity of how they collect the information.
<snip>
Based on publicly available weather calculations, the optimal time for a Russian invasion would be while there is a hard ground freeze, so heavy equipment can readily move. US officials have said Putin would understand he needs to move by the end of March.
https://us.cnn.com/2022/02/05/politics/ ... index.html
Red added.
An 'invasion' that was never planned for can be declared 'victory' by the other side(accruing massive political credit...) when the unplanned fails to materialize. A cheap and foolproof stratagem that might sucker children or the average brainwashed citizen of The Land Of The Free.
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Putin Announces New Gas Supply Contract with China
February 7, 2022
This Friday, February 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, announced a new contract to supply China 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year from fields in the Far East of Russia. He described relations between the countries as intense.
“Our tankers have prepared very good new solutions for the supply of hydrocarbons to the People’s Republic of China,” the Russian head of state said. “A further step has been taken in the gas industry. I am referring to a new contract for the supply of gas to China from the Russian Far East for 10 billion cubic meters.”
Xi said that the political and strategic mutual trust between China and Russia is getting stronger despite the difficult period of the pandemic.
“We will operate like this,” said the Chinese president, “and continue to work together with you to outline a plan for the development of Sino-Russian relations in a new historical period, we will strive to transform mutual trust between our countries into practical cooperation for the benefit of the two peoples.”
Russia’s Gazprom and China’s state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed an agreement in 2015 on the basic conditions for the supply of gas by pipeline from fields in Western Siberia to China via the “western” route (the Power of Siberia-2 gas pipeline) and a memorandum of understanding on a project to supply natural gas by pipeline to China from the Russian Far East.
In December 2017, Gazprom and CNPC signed an agreement on the main conditions for the supply of natural gas from the Russian Far East to China. Gazprom’s largest field in that area is Yuzhno-Kirinskoye, which will start producing gas in 2023.
Featured image: Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Chinese President Xi Jinping during their bilateral meeting on November 13, 2019, in Brasília, Brazil. File photo by Mikhail Svetlov / Getty Images
(Misión Verdad)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
https://orinocotribune.com/putin-announ ... ith-china/
Looks like Germany gonna need Russia more than Russia gonna need Germany. We'll see what the New Kraut has to say today.....
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The Ukrainian army attacked its own positions in the Donbass. There are wounded
An unmanned aerial vehicle of the Armed Forces of Ukraine dropped a projectile on friendly positions.
According to the " Public News Service " with reference to the press service of the People's Militia of the Lugansk People's Republic, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked their own positions using UAVs. It is noted that as a result of a shell hit, two Ukrainian soldiers were hospitalized.
Also, the People's Militia reported constant movements from the Ukrainian side of the line of contact in the Donbass. It is noted that the officers confiscated phones from the soldiers in order to avoid leakage of information about the preparation of an offensive against the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.
Meanwhile, Polish instructors and mercenaries were seen in the fighting against the DPR and LPR .
https://novorosinform.org/ukrainskaya-a ... 89173.html
Google Translator
Well, they confiscate 'phones' in US prisons for phony reasons in order that the horrid conditions not be greatly broadcast and that might explain the Ukes doing so too.
Note: Map published first on May 2, 2014 by Washington Post
Jul 30, 2014:
Russia Has 15,000 Crack Troops on the Ukrainian Border - And Putin’s itching for a fight. - Foreign Policy
Mar 19, 2015:
Russia Expands Military Exercises To 80,000 Troops - Defense News
Sep 1, 2016:
Russia is massing thousands of troops on Ukraine’s border. Here’s why we shouldn’t panic. - Vox
Sep 13, 2017:
What’s Putin up to? The Russian military buildup in Europe raises tension. - Military Times
Dec 15, 2018:
Ukraine Asserts Major Russian Military Buildup on Eastern Border - New York Times
Jun 12, 2019:
EXCLUSIVE: US Intelligence Officials and Satellite Photos Detail Russian Military Buildup on Crimea - Defense One
Jul 17, 2020:
Russia orders 'surprise' military drill in Caspian, Black seas - UPI
Apr 2, 2021:
Russian 'troop build-up' near Ukraine alarms Nato - BBC
Jan 27, 2022:
How Russia Has Increased Its Military Buildup Around Ukraine - New York Times
Posted by b at 8:26 UTC | Comments (18)
https://www.moonofalabama.org/ All links here
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‘Washington is pushing Ukraine to attack Donbass’
February 5, 2022 Struggle - La Lucha
Residents of Donbass have resisted Ukrainian military attacks since 2014.
Remarks by Struggle-La Lucha co-editor Greg Butterfield during a special online briefing on the U.S./NATO war threats against Russia and Donbass, Jan. 29. Watch the video here. https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... a-donbass/
For more than two months, there’s been a steady drumbeat from the Biden administration and the U.S. corporate media: Russia is threatening to invade Ukraine. The threat is imminent. It’s not a question of if, much less of why, only when.
It’s presented as a bare statement of fact. No dissenting voices are allowed. The only question up for debate is how strong the response should be. Should it be a direct military response? Is it enough to send weapons, money and advisers to Ukraine? What role should negotiations and sanctions play?
Right now 8,500 U.S.-based troops are on alert for deployment to Europe, in addition to the 64,000 already stationed there.
For those old enough to remember, it’s eerily similar to the buildup to the Iraq War in 2002-2003.
And like the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” story used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s a complete lie.
The real threat of invasion is not by Russia against Ukraine. It is by Ukraine against the small, independent Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk on Russia’s western border.
Let me repeat that: The threat of invasion is not coming from Russia. The threat is from U.S.-armed and -funded Ukraine. Right now, 125,000 Ukrainian troops, half of the country’s military, are concentrated along the borders of the Donbass republics. Washington is pushing, pushing, pushing for Ukraine to attack Donetsk and Lugansk.
Why? Because the U.S. political establishment, the big banks, Big Oil and the military-industrial complex hope this will force a defensive response from Russia that can be used to justify war, harsher sanctions, more military expenditures and further expansion of the NATO military alliance on Russia’s borders.
Only U.S. rulers want war
The United States is the motor force of this crisis. Russia says it will not invade or start a war. The Donbass republics, which have suffered an eight-year economic blockade and a long conflict with Ukraine that has cost 14,000 lives, don’t want more war.
Ukraine’s President Zelensky and the oligarchs of Ukraine hate Russia and want to conquer Donbass. But they are terrified of what will happen if the U.S. succeeds in pushing them into a war now. Ukraine’s 2015 invasion of Donbass was roundly defeated by the local People’s Militias and internationalist volunteers. The Ukrainian Army is better trained and armed now, thanks to NATO, but Zelensky knows they are no match for the combined forces of Donbass and Russia.
Germany, the European Union’s biggest economic power, doesn’t want war. Germany needs Russian gas and heating oil to keep flowing to fuel its economy. The German capitalists know that if there is a war, they will have no choice but to buy from U.S. oil companies at greatly inflated prices. The same is true for the rest of Western Europe.
All of these countries are pawns in a deadly game that only benefits U.S. imperialism. The U.S. rulers created this crisis and continue to pour fuel on the fire day by day.
Why now? The global capitalist system is in crisis. It was spiraling toward recession even before the pandemic struck. While some billionaires and sectors have profited handsomely from the COVID crisis, U.S. imperialism’s overall profits and strategic dominance are threatened at every turn.
In particular, the oil industry – thoroughly entwined with the biggest U.S. banks and the military-industrial complex – has been in crisis for over a decade. Oil and gas prices never rebounded to the heights reached before the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009. That’s why Obama, Trump and Biden have targeted oil producers like Venezuela, Iran, Syria and Iraq, and of course Russia, with blockades, sanctions and war to stem the flow of oil and gas.
U.S. capitalists are desperate to stop the nearly completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline project slated to bring Russian gas to Europe.
NATO arms Ukraine’s fascists
There is one other group that is eager for war. It’s neo-Nazi groups like Right Sector, the Azov Battalion, Patriots of Ukraine and C14, that have run rampant since the U.S.-engineered coup overthrew the democratically elected government in 2014. These groups have been fully integrated into Ukraine’s military and security apparatus.
According to officials and activists in Donbass, neo-Nazi battalions have been deployed to towns and villages on the ceasefire line separating Ukraine from Donetsk and Lugansk. These fascists speak of the residents of the region as “cattle” and “insects” and routinely call for genocide to recapture the region. In the event of a Ukrainian invasion, they will form the spearhead.
The U.S. is truly playing with fire. Even if, despite all the buildup of weapons and mobilization of troops, calmer heads prevail in the Pentagon and Biden gives the order to pull back or slow down, there is no guarantee that the neo-Nazis, now armed with NATO weapons and training, will obey. Likely they will feel that Biden has betrayed them, as they are now saying about Zelensky.
Why is the Biden administration collaborating with neo-Nazis?
You won’t see it in any of the current media war propaganda. But over the past few years, several articles have documented how U.S. and European white supremacists have gone to Ukraine to train with these groups. Some have participated in the war on Donbass. The FBI even admitted that a group involved in the Charlottesville fascist riot where Heather Heyer was murdered had trained with Ukrainian nazis.
Ukraine was occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The inspiration of the modern day fascists there is a creep named Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis. Today’s Ukrainian government recognizes Bandera as a national hero.
After the war, the United States nurtured Ukrainian Nazis as a weapon against the Soviet Union, just as Nazis were recruited for NATO and the U.S. war machine. It’s a relationship that goes back decades. We should encourage people who voted for Biden as a rejection of Trump’s white supremacist program to demand answers from him.
What we must do
I want to say a little about what we must do to oppose the U.S. war drive.
At this moment, the most important thing we can do is show visible opposition to a U.S. war with Russia. We need people to go out in the streets with signs, banners and leaflets, organize car caravans, social media blasts, the more the better, while wearing masks and taking all necessary health precautions for the pandemic. Not just in Washington, D.C., or New York City, but all over the country, in cities and towns large and small.
That’s why Struggle-La Lucha and the Socialist Unity Party are joining with other anti-war groups to call for National Days of Action from February 4 through 12 to say “No War on Russia and Donbass! U.S.-NATO Out of Ukraine!” Baltimore, San Diego, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Minneapolis are among the places planning activities.
Wherever possible, we should encourage existing anti-war groups to endorse and we should join any actions they may announce. Those of us with experience in the U.S. movement are aware of the rivalries and sectarianism that exist among these groups, many of which have existed since the Iraq War era. These are long-term issues that we need to work on as a movement. But right now, the most important thing is to make opposition to war with Russia visible.
The George Floyd uprising was just one-and-a-half years ago. The capitalist rulers have certainly not forgotten it. Taking to the streets is the best way to raise the specter of that uprising in their minds and give them pause on their drive toward war.
War danger and the working class
Finally, let’s address the problem of how we can reach out to poor and working people. How do we talk to our family members, co-workers and neighbors about this issue?
One big hurdle we have to overcome is that there is very little understanding among people in the U.S. about Eastern Europe and the former Soviet countries. Through no fault of their own, many people in the U.S. cannot identify Ukraine on a map, and most have probably not even heard of Donetsk and Lugansk.
If people have any impression of Russia, it’s most often old Cold War anti-communist stereotypes. U.S. war propaganda plays off these stereotypes, despite the fact that socialism was overthrown and the Soviet Union broken up three decades ago.
Explaining what’s actually happening with Ukraine, Russia and Donbass, and educating people about the role of the U.S. and NATO in Europe, is very necessary. But it may not immediately grab people’s attention out on the street or get them to take a leaflet or consider joining a protest.
However, we can get people’s attention by connecting the war danger to the urgent concerns of their daily lives and struggles. Right now, hundreds of thousands of families are facing eviction around the country as pandemic eviction moratoriums end. But the Biden administration’s priority is a war with another nuclear armed power on the other side of the world.
Congress can’t manage to pass Build Back Better’s modest social and infrastructure measures. But there was overwhelming bipartisan support for the Pentagon’s $768 billion annual budget passed last month.
Biden and Harris have not met any of their campaign promises to curb racist police brutality – in fact, they have been promising more money for cops. But they are collaborating with white supremacist movements abroad.
On social media, many people have made the point that huge shipments of U.S. weapons arrived in Ukraine before people even received their four meager home COVID tests by mail. This example really shines a spotlight on the skewed priorities of the U.S. government at a time when everyone can see the utter collapse of public health in this country.
We’re working to develop attractive, easy-to-read flyers that talk about these issues and can be used for leafleting at actions in the coming weeks. We will make them available for download in the next few days. The articles on Struggle-La-Lucha.org also have a ton of helpful facts and information you can use.
Hold a picket line. Have a banner drop. Give out leaflets at your subway stop or school. Notify the local media. Participate in social media blasts. Take photos and videos and share them online and with us. Every action we take right now makes a difference.
https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... k-donbass/
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America’s Putin Psychosis
February 5, 2022
By Scott Ritter – Feb 2, 2022
Rather than examining the perspective of Russian national security interests, US officials wrongly think the fate of European peace is in the hands of a single man: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
The war of words between Russia and the United States over Ukraine escalated further on Tuesday, February 1, as Russian President Vladimir Putin responded for the first time to the US written reply to Russia’s demands for security guarantees that were expressed in the form of a pair of draft treaties submitted by Moscow to the US and NATO in December.
“It is already clear… that the fundamental Russian concerns were ignored. We did not see an adequate consideration of our three key requirements,” Putin said at a press conference that followed his meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Moscow.
Putin said the US had failed to give “adequate consideration of our three key demands regarding NATO expansion, the renunciation of the deployment of strike weapons systems near Russian borders, and the return of the [NATO] bloc’s military infrastructure in Europe to the state of 1997, when the Russia-NATO founding act was signed.”
He detailed what he alleged was NATO’s long history of deception, re-emphasizing the 1990 verbal commitment by former US Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would not expand “an inch” eastward. “They said one thing, they did another,” Putin said. “As people say, they screwed us over, well they simply deceived us.”
With some 130,000 Russian troops deployed in the western and southern military districts bordering Ukraine, and another 30,000 assembling in neighboring Belarus, US policy makers are scrambling to figure out what Russia’s next move might be, a choice most US policy makers believe boils down to diplomacy or war.
Rather than examine the situation from the perspective of Russian national security interests, however, these officials have placed the fate of European peace and security in the hands of a single individual: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Interests of an entire nation
In a recent article in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols opines that “no one really knows why Putin is doing this—or whether he really intends to do it at all. It is unlikely that his own inner circle even has a good read on its boss.”
Even the president of the United States, Joe Biden, professed a sense of frustration at not knowing what Putin’s objectives are vis-à-vis Ukraine. “I’ll be completely honest with you,” Biden said last month, “it is a little bit like reading tea leaves” when it came to predicting Putin’s next move.
The Kremlin. Photo: Dmitry Ivanov/Wikimedia Commons
The fact that the US president is at a loss when assessing Russia’s next move regarding Ukraine should send a shiver up the spines of all concerned Americans. One of the main reasons for this confusion lies in the emphasis Biden placed on the importance of only what Putin was thinking, as opposed what the legitimate national security interests of Russia were.
This problem is not unique to the present circumstance, but rather is part and parcel of a national obsession with Putin the man that obviates the reality that Russia is a country whose interests are greater than any single individual, no matter how long serving or powerful.
The problem with focusing on an individual as the embodiment of a nation is that one is trying to solve the wrong problem. Russia’s ongoing issues with Ukraine are larger than Vladimir Putin, and as such, far more complex in defining national goals and policy boundaries. You can’t solve a problem unless you first accurately define the problem; by tying the problem of Ukraine to one man, American policy makers are, in effect, dealing with the wrong problem.
This disconnect from reality is further exacerbated when, as is the case with the majority of so-called “Russian experts” prevalent in America today, one seeks to play amateur psychiatrist by getting into the mind of the Russian leader.
Take, for example, Michael McFaul, the architect of Barack Obama’s infamous policy “reset” with Russia (a little-disguised effort designed to squeeze Putin out of power and replace him with the ostensibly more compliant Dmitry Medvedev). The title of his policy memoir, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia says it all. If you think you have the ability to define the character of an entire nation through the persona of a single named individual, you should be able to provide some insight into the thinking of that person.
But as McFaul himself admitted recently on MSNBC, “I want to state categorically that I don’t know what Putin wants. I don’t know what he’s decided. President Biden doesn’t know. The director of the CIA [William Burns] doesn’t know. I don’t think Sergei Lavrov knows, the foreign minister.”
A moment of honest humility? No; McFaul continues: “And from my experience dealing with Putin in negotiations, I don’t think he has made his own decision yet. I think that he likes this uncertainty. He likes that we’re all talking about, you know, negotiating with ourselves, making counter proposals. He likes to watch that.”
McFaul, by his own admission, doesn’t know what Putin wants, but he freely opines about what Putin thinks and likes. I would respectfully suggest that if you know a person well enough to publicly pontificate on their thoughts and desires, then you probably know what they want.
Perception over reality
McFaul honestly stated that he doesn’t know what Putin wants; the rest is simply speculative drivel motivated not by any genuine intellectually-based curiosity about Russia and the man who serves as its president, but rather the need to feed the American mainstream media’s appetite for a narrative that doesn’t challenge that of a White House that sets the tone and content of what passes for news based upon domestic political imperatives as opposed to global geopolitical reality.
Perception is everything; facts mean nothing. This is the Biden administration’s mantra. One only need look to Biden’s July 23, 2021, telephone conversation with then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. “I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden told the beleaguered Afghan leader. “And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
The fact that US presidential administrations, as a matter of course, manufacture a fact-free narrative designed to mislead a domestic American audience should not come as a shock to anyone who has studied the sickening intersection of public and foreign policy in the United States since the end of the Second World War.
In this vein, one of the central themes that is being woven into the Ukraine narrative is the frenetic nature of decision making by Vladimir Putin.
McFaul described Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 as an impulsive move by Putin, not something long planned, but put into effect only after the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev. This line of thinking was endemic in the Obama White House where McFaul served. Journalist Susan Glasser, a long-time critic of Putin, quotes an unnamed “top Obama official” in her 2014 article for Politico, “Putin on the Couch.’
“I hear people say we were naïve about Putin and that the president didn’t understand Putin,” the official said. “No. We had a very sober, very steely-eyed realist assessment of Putin.”
But then the “top official” proved they did not. “It comes down to a debate going on in his own head,” the official noted. “He does impulsive, or dare I say irrational, things. I don’t think he’s the realist grand strategist that some people admiringly ascribe to him.”
Glasser ran with the theme, quoting David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lenin’s Tomb, who, speaking about Putin and Crimea, declared, “I think he has improvised, acted rashly and foolishly, even on his own terms.”
Stephen Sestanovich, the US ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001, continued this line of analysis, noting Putin’s “bad judgment, emotional decision-making, petty score-settling with little care for long-term consequences,” before concluding “But it’s vintage Putin.”
Fiona Hill, to the left of John Bolton, at meeting with Putin in Moscow, March 2018. Photo: Kremlin
Even when fellow travelers like Fiona Hill, who doubled as the top Kremlinologist for both George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former CIA analyst who served as a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia under Barack Obama, come together for a pragmatic assessment of Russia, they are colored by their collective Putin-centric approach to all things Russia.
Hill, the author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, recently observed that, “With Putin it’s always important to expect the unexpected. He makes sure that he has a range of options for action and different ways of leveraging a situation to exploit weakness. If all our attention is on Ukraine, then his next move might be somewhere else to throw us off balance and see how we react.”
Kendall-Taylor, whose assessments on Putin and Russia were regularly briefed to President Obama, testified before Congress in 2019 that, “Although Putin’s actions in Crimea and Syria were designed to advance a number of key Russian goals, it is also likely that Putin’s lack of domestic constraints increased the level of risk he was willing to accept in pursuit of those goals.”
These two seasoned Russian hands, both highly influential in terms of advising senior American policy makers, from the president on down, both continue the narrative of Putin as an impulsive, risk-taking gambler, who makes spur of the moment decisions based upon personal intuition.
They, like all the other so-called Russian experts, are wrong.
How policy is made in Russia
The fact is, any Russian expert worth their salt knows what Russia’s goals and objectives vis-à-vis Ukraine are because the Russians told us back in 2008. One of the few genuine Russian experts in a position to influence policy, CIA Director William Burns, put it all down in writing in a February 2008 cable entitled, simply enough, “Nyet means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines.” He wrote it while serving as the US ambassador to Russia during the administration of President George W. Bush.
Burns, reporting on the Russian reaction to the 2008 NATO summit where the idea of membership for Ukraine was floated, noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry had declared that “a radical new expansion of NATO may bring about a serious political-military shift that will inevitably affect the security interests of Russia.”
The Russians highlighted that when it came to Ukraine, Russia was bound by bilateral obligations set forth in the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership in which both parties undertook to “refrain from participation in or support of any actions capable of prejudicing the security of the other side.” Ukraine’s ‘likely integration into NATO,” the Russian Foreign Ministry declared, “would seriously complicate the many-sided Russian-Ukrainian relations,” and that Russia would “have to take appropriate measures.”
Burns gave the Bush administration the Russian playbook of consequences should NATO seek to move forward on membership for Ukraine. This information was known to McFaul, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, and all the other so-called “Russian experts,” yet they failed to address it (further reinforcing Putin’s claims that “fundamental Russian concerns were ignored”).
The concept that Putin would act “impulsively” in 2014 to a problem outlined concisely and accurately in 2008 by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs likewise shows an absolute disregard for, or ignorance of, how policy is made in Russia today.
There is no doubt that Putin is a very powerful president wielding strong executive powers. But he is not a dictator, nor is Russia set up to be ruled by a dictator.
Russian policy is made by professional bureaucrat-specialists resident in the extremely dense permanent Russian bureaucracy. These bureaucrats, part of the Russian civil servant class, are responsible for turning policy guidance into detailed implementation plans from which the resources needed for implementation are assigned, along with a timeline for completion of the task.
These implementation plans cut across ministries and are designed to consider all foreseeable variables. In short, Russian policy is the by-product of a process which represents the coordinated effort of a vast bureaucracy—the exact opposite of the individual “impulsivity” ascribed by McFaul, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, and others to Putin.
The plan implemented by Russia regarding Crimea in 2014 was born of the Russian concerns expressed in 2008, and were not the knee-jerk reactions of an impulsive, risk-taking Russian President. The same can be said for the situation unfolding in Ukraine today. The fact that Biden and his national security advisors are locked on to Putin as the personification of all things Russia is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of how Russia works or—worse—a deliberate campaign of perception management intended to deceive the American public about the complexities and realities of US policy objectives.
Putin, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to his right at the Kremlin. Photo: US State Department
Getting it wrong when it comes to defining policy-making reality in Russia today goes well beyond simply formulating bad policy, which is then incompetently implemented. The United States is ceding the initiative to Russia and its president. At the end of the day, one would be hard pressed to make a case where the executive decision-making powers of Vladimir Putin far exceed those of his American counterpart.
The Russians, however, have a two-fold advantage over the United States in terms of policy implementation. First and foremost, they are dealing with an executive who has been at the helm of the Russian ship for two decades; Putin is unmatched when it comes to knowledge of his system of government, and how to make it work. Even someone like Biden, with his four-plus decades of government experience, operates like a rookie during his first few years in office, if for no other reason than he is, in fact, a rookie.
A US presidential administration in its first term is, literally, starting from scratch. True, there is a standing American civil service (some call it part of the “deep state”) which provides a modicum of operational consistency from administration to administration, but the critical leadership for every administration is provided by the political appointees. As opposed to Russia’s twin decades of consistent policy formulation and implementation, the United States has witnessed during the same time frame four changes of administrations, each one with a radically different approach toward governance than its predecessor.
A manufactured narrative
The only consistency between administrations is the need to manufacture narratives used to placate a domestic constituency about policies linked to national defense and, by extension, the defense industry. Here, the demonization of Russia has played a large role in defining US defense needs and, by extension, the acquisition of weapons.
No administration has trusted the American public to engage in a fact-based national dialogue about the “threat” posed by Russia and, by extension, the continued need for NATO. The main reason for this is, if the facts were presented clearly, no American could possibly support the continuation of NATO and, therefore, would not support the elevation of Russia as a threat worthy of hundreds of billions of our taxpayer dollars.
In this way, the United States can produce a class of partisan “experts” on Russia whose only claim to real expertise is the ability to conform to a narrative designed to further a lie, as opposed to seeking the truth. Gone are the days when masters of Russian studies, such as the former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, held sway.
Even when the US produced a qualified Russian expert in academia, such as the late Stephen Cohen, the mainstream media negated his true expertise by either drowning out his message in a sea of Russophobic propaganda spewed by his opposite numbers, or just simply ignoring him. Instead, we get the Michael McFaul’s, Fiona Hill’s, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor’s—academics whose sole claim to relevance is their collective embrace of Putin as the personification of all that ails Russia in the world today.
America’s dependence on this inferior class of ersatz Russian expertise has created a congenital defect in American national security decision making that is best expressed as a variation of John Boyd’s OODA Loop. Boyd, a renowned fighter pilot, claimed he could shoot down any opposing fighter within forty seconds from a position of disadvantage employing a decision-making cycle he called the “OODA Loop” (for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act).
In short, by executing one’s decision-making cycle faster than an opponent, one “got inside” the decision-making cycle of the enemy, forcing them to react to you, and thereby guaranteeing their demise.
The OODA Loop has been adapted by various non-pilot organizations and entities, from the US Marines to business, as a model to improve operational efficiency. While neither the Russian Foreign Ministry nor the US State Department have embraced the theory, it can be used as a vehicle of comparative analysis when assessing the effectiveness of the respective policy formulation and implementation cycles.
Three phases
From the standpoint of observing, the fundamental tenant is to collect data using all possible resources. From the Russian perspective, when it comes to Ukraine and NATO, Russia has been focused on NATO policy, both expressed and implemented, when it comes to its eastward expansion, and the applicability of such expansion to Ukraine. The data collected by Russia is fact-based, and singularly focused on the problem at hand, which is the potential threat posed to Russia by Ukrainian membership in NATO.
The US, however, with its Putin-centric approach, focuses on the person of the Russian president, without any attempt to match observed actions with anything resembling actual policy. The data collected is of the tabloid variety, focusing on posturing, mannerisms, and photo opportunities.
While Putin does provide a plethora of data in the form of speeches and extended press question and answer sessions, the analysis conducted from these opportunities rarely goes deeper than turning the Russian president’s presentation into a cartoon-like depiction of evil.
The next phase, orientation, is guided by the data collected during the observation phase. Here, the Russians can zoom in on the US/NATO centers of gravity, so to speak—that which makes the trans-Atlantic alliance work, and that which could cause problems.
Here, Russia has predicted possible policy options that could be pursued by NATO in response to a wide variety of policy stimuli from Russia and gamed out each to find a range of actions and reaction possibilities that best suit Russian policy objectives.
The US, however, continues to focus on Putin, producing material in book, article, and television formats which attack the character of the Russian president while denigrating Russia as a nation (“Russia is nothing more than a gas station masquerading as a country” seems to be a popular jibe.)
By creating a false narrative built around the absolute nature of Putin’s quasi-dictatorial state, the Americans have lulled themselves into a false sense of complacency premised on the notion of Putin’s impulsivity which, by its very nature, cannot be predicted, and as such cannot be deterred through preventive measures.
The third phase, decision, is paramount. Here, the Russians, having gathered data, assessed its value, and formulated policy options derived from the same, pick the option that best suits their policy objectives. They are in control of the timetable, and as such, can allocate resources sufficient to the task.
The Americans, by comparison, remain engaged in the business of demeaning the Russians and their president in products designed for domestic consumption and, as such, virtually useless in the realm of reality.
The final phase, action, is where the proverbial rubber meets the road. Here the Russians have initiated a process which not only has them operating at a time and place of their choosing, but also to have positioned themselves to immediately begin the next OODA Loop cycle by having the appropriate sensors in place to collect data regarding any potential American reaction so that new decision options can be rapidly prepared and acted on.
The Americans, meanwhile, are alerted to a potential crisis only through the actions of the Russians. The Americans initiate their own observation process, but their collection mechanism, so firmly rooted in the persona of Putin, is oblivious to the complexity and layering of the Russian action.
Russia, armed with the luxury of time and initiative, can isolate American actions as they take place, beginning a process of action-reaction which Russia controls.
In short, if the current diplomatic engagement taking place between the US and Russia over Ukraine were a dog fight, the Americans would be shot down by the Russians inside of forty seconds, guaranteed.
Russia isn’t simply operating inside the American decision-making cycle—they control it.
Propagandized conformity
While the ultimate responsibility for bad policy rests with the senior policy maker—the US president—there is no doubt that successive presidential administrations have been poorly served by the current crop of American Kremlinologists, personified by McFaul, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, and others, who made Putin bashing the standard for what passed for Russian studies.
In short, so long as your world view of Russia conformed with the Putin bashers, you were welcomed into the club; if, however, one opted to take a more nuanced, fact-based approach to Russian studies that went beyond the persona of the Russian president, and explored the complexity of post-Cold War Russia, the powers that be in government, academia and media would relegate you to the trash bin of relevancy.
Every American citizen should realize that they have been poorly served by these slavish servants of propagandized conformity, and the potential consequence of their collective failure—war—stares us all in the face.
If we can emerge from these difficult times intact, it will only be because the Russians—not Biden—picked a policy path that possessed a viable diplomatic offramp.
And if we are so fortunate, then the practitioners of this Putin psychosis—the McFaul’s, Hill’s, Kendall-Taylor’s, and others of their ilk—should be singled out for their respective role in bringing America to such a place policy-wise and treated accordingly—no more sinecures, no more access, no more credibility.
https://orinocotribune.com/americas-putin-psychosis/
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LIKE THE MAN ABOVE WAS SAYIN':
Russia has 70% of the military capabilities in place for full-scale invasion
By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent
Updated 9:30 PM ET, Sat February 5, 2022
(CNN)Russian President Vladimir Putin has now assembled 70% of the military personnel and weapons on Ukraine's borders he would need for a full-scale invasion of the country, according to two US officials familiar with the latest estimates.
The figure is an estimate based on the latest intelligence assessments, but officials would not specify the intelligence they had or how they developed their assessments, citing the sensitivity of how they collect the information.
<snip>
Based on publicly available weather calculations, the optimal time for a Russian invasion would be while there is a hard ground freeze, so heavy equipment can readily move. US officials have said Putin would understand he needs to move by the end of March.
https://us.cnn.com/2022/02/05/politics/ ... index.html
Red added.
An 'invasion' that was never planned for can be declared 'victory' by the other side(accruing massive political credit...) when the unplanned fails to materialize. A cheap and foolproof stratagem that might sucker children or the average brainwashed citizen of The Land Of The Free.
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Putin Announces New Gas Supply Contract with China
February 7, 2022
This Friday, February 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, announced a new contract to supply China 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year from fields in the Far East of Russia. He described relations between the countries as intense.
“Our tankers have prepared very good new solutions for the supply of hydrocarbons to the People’s Republic of China,” the Russian head of state said. “A further step has been taken in the gas industry. I am referring to a new contract for the supply of gas to China from the Russian Far East for 10 billion cubic meters.”
Xi said that the political and strategic mutual trust between China and Russia is getting stronger despite the difficult period of the pandemic.
“We will operate like this,” said the Chinese president, “and continue to work together with you to outline a plan for the development of Sino-Russian relations in a new historical period, we will strive to transform mutual trust between our countries into practical cooperation for the benefit of the two peoples.”
Russia’s Gazprom and China’s state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed an agreement in 2015 on the basic conditions for the supply of gas by pipeline from fields in Western Siberia to China via the “western” route (the Power of Siberia-2 gas pipeline) and a memorandum of understanding on a project to supply natural gas by pipeline to China from the Russian Far East.
In December 2017, Gazprom and CNPC signed an agreement on the main conditions for the supply of natural gas from the Russian Far East to China. Gazprom’s largest field in that area is Yuzhno-Kirinskoye, which will start producing gas in 2023.
Featured image: Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Chinese President Xi Jinping during their bilateral meeting on November 13, 2019, in Brasília, Brazil. File photo by Mikhail Svetlov / Getty Images
(Misión Verdad)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
https://orinocotribune.com/putin-announ ... ith-china/
Looks like Germany gonna need Russia more than Russia gonna need Germany. We'll see what the New Kraut has to say today.....
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The Ukrainian army attacked its own positions in the Donbass. There are wounded
An unmanned aerial vehicle of the Armed Forces of Ukraine dropped a projectile on friendly positions.
According to the " Public News Service " with reference to the press service of the People's Militia of the Lugansk People's Republic, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked their own positions using UAVs. It is noted that as a result of a shell hit, two Ukrainian soldiers were hospitalized.
Also, the People's Militia reported constant movements from the Ukrainian side of the line of contact in the Donbass. It is noted that the officers confiscated phones from the soldiers in order to avoid leakage of information about the preparation of an offensive against the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.
Meanwhile, Polish instructors and mercenaries were seen in the fighting against the DPR and LPR .
https://novorosinform.org/ukrainskaya-a ... 89173.html
Google Translator
Well, they confiscate 'phones' in US prisons for phony reasons in order that the horrid conditions not be greatly broadcast and that might explain the Ukes doing so too.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Biden’s CIA Director Doesn’t Believe Biden’s Story about Ukraine
Peter Beinart
If you’ve followed the diplomacy over Ukraine closely, you may have noticed that the Biden administration has relied heavily on CIA Director William J. (Bill) Burns. In November it dispatched him to Moscow where, according to CNN, he served as a “key intermediary” between the US and Vladimir Putin. In January he flew to Germany to discuss Ukraine with the new government in Berlin. This all makes sense. Burns is the Biden administration’s highest-ranking Russia expert. He’s a fluent Russian speaker who has served twice in the US embassy in Moscow, the second time as ambassador. Which makes it all the more striking that Burns, in his memoir, flatly contradicts the Biden administration’s narrative about how this crisis came to be. Remarkably, one of the most trenchant critics of official US discourse on Russia and Ukraine is the sitting director of the CIA.
<snip>
To hear the Biden administration tell it, the Ukraine crisis is the product of one man: Vladimir Putin. Putin fears that if Ukraine joins NATO and becomes a pro-Western democracy, Russians will want the same for themselves and thus rise up against his tyrannical rule. The idea that Russians genuinely think NATO poses a security threat is transparent bunk.
<snip>
The Biden narrative isn’t entirely false. Putin surely does fear that a democratic, pro-Western Ukraine could inspire popular uprisings in his country. But it is partially false because it suggests that were Putin not in power, Russia’s government would have no problem with Ukraine joining NATO. And it implies that the US bears no responsibility for the current standoff. According to Bill Burns, Biden’s own CIA Director, neither of those claims are true.
Two years ago, Burns wrote a memoir entitled, The Back Channel. It directly contradicts the argument being proffered by the administration he now serves. In his book, Burns says over and over that Russians of all ideological stripes—not just Putin—loathed and feared NATO expansion. He quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow in 1995. ‘Hostility to early NATO expansion,” it declares, “is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.” On the question of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about the breadth of Russian opposition are even more emphatic. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote in a 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
While the Biden administration claims that Putin bears all the blame for the current Ukraine crisis, Burns makes clear that the US helped lay its foundations. By taking advantage of Russian weakness, he argues, Washington fueled the nationalist resentment that Putin exploits today. Burns calls the Clinton administration’s decision to expand NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic “premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.” And he describes the appetite for revenge it fostered among many in Moscow during Boris Yeltsin’s final years as Russia’s president. “As Russians stewed in their grievance and sense of disadvantage,” Burns writes, “a gathering storm of ‘stab in the back’ theories slowly swirled, leaving a mark on Russia’s relations with the West that would linger for decades.”
As the Bush administration moved toward opening NATO’s doors to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about a Russian backlash grew even starker. He told Rice it was “hard to overstate the strategic consequences” of offering NATO membership to Ukraine and predicted that “it will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.” Although Burns couldn’t have predicted the specific kind of meddling Putin would employ—either in 2014 when he seized Crimea and fomented a rebellion in Ukraine’s east or today—he warned that the US was helping set in motion the kind of crisis that America faces today. Promise Ukraine membership in NATO, he wrote, and “There could be no doubt that Putin would fight back hard.”
Were a reporter to read Burns’ quotes to White House press secretary Jen Psaki today, she’d likely accuse them of “parroting Russian talking points.” But Burns is hardly alone. From inside the US government, many officials warned that US policy toward Russia might bring disaster. William Perry, Bill Clinton’s Defense Secretary from 1994 to 1997, almost resigned because of his opposition to NATO expansion. He has since declared that because of its policies in the 1990s, “the United States deserves much of the blame” for the deterioration in relations with Moscow. Steven Pifer, who from 1998 to 2000 served as US ambassador to Ukraine, has called Bush’s 2008 decision to declare that Ukraine would eventually join NATO “a real mistake.” Fiona Hill, who gained fame during the Trump impeachment saga, says that as national intelligence officers for Russia and Eurasia she and her colleagues “warned” Bush that “Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action.”
(more....)
https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/bid ... nt-believe
Some of the opinions of this author are loopy but the words of Bill Burns and other foreign policy fixers make a liar out of Joe Biden, something that becomes increasingly easier as the days pass.
Peter Beinart
If you’ve followed the diplomacy over Ukraine closely, you may have noticed that the Biden administration has relied heavily on CIA Director William J. (Bill) Burns. In November it dispatched him to Moscow where, according to CNN, he served as a “key intermediary” between the US and Vladimir Putin. In January he flew to Germany to discuss Ukraine with the new government in Berlin. This all makes sense. Burns is the Biden administration’s highest-ranking Russia expert. He’s a fluent Russian speaker who has served twice in the US embassy in Moscow, the second time as ambassador. Which makes it all the more striking that Burns, in his memoir, flatly contradicts the Biden administration’s narrative about how this crisis came to be. Remarkably, one of the most trenchant critics of official US discourse on Russia and Ukraine is the sitting director of the CIA.
<snip>
To hear the Biden administration tell it, the Ukraine crisis is the product of one man: Vladimir Putin. Putin fears that if Ukraine joins NATO and becomes a pro-Western democracy, Russians will want the same for themselves and thus rise up against his tyrannical rule. The idea that Russians genuinely think NATO poses a security threat is transparent bunk.
<snip>
The Biden narrative isn’t entirely false. Putin surely does fear that a democratic, pro-Western Ukraine could inspire popular uprisings in his country. But it is partially false because it suggests that were Putin not in power, Russia’s government would have no problem with Ukraine joining NATO. And it implies that the US bears no responsibility for the current standoff. According to Bill Burns, Biden’s own CIA Director, neither of those claims are true.
Two years ago, Burns wrote a memoir entitled, The Back Channel. It directly contradicts the argument being proffered by the administration he now serves. In his book, Burns says over and over that Russians of all ideological stripes—not just Putin—loathed and feared NATO expansion. He quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow in 1995. ‘Hostility to early NATO expansion,” it declares, “is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.” On the question of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about the breadth of Russian opposition are even more emphatic. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote in a 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
While the Biden administration claims that Putin bears all the blame for the current Ukraine crisis, Burns makes clear that the US helped lay its foundations. By taking advantage of Russian weakness, he argues, Washington fueled the nationalist resentment that Putin exploits today. Burns calls the Clinton administration’s decision to expand NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic “premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.” And he describes the appetite for revenge it fostered among many in Moscow during Boris Yeltsin’s final years as Russia’s president. “As Russians stewed in their grievance and sense of disadvantage,” Burns writes, “a gathering storm of ‘stab in the back’ theories slowly swirled, leaving a mark on Russia’s relations with the West that would linger for decades.”
As the Bush administration moved toward opening NATO’s doors to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about a Russian backlash grew even starker. He told Rice it was “hard to overstate the strategic consequences” of offering NATO membership to Ukraine and predicted that “it will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.” Although Burns couldn’t have predicted the specific kind of meddling Putin would employ—either in 2014 when he seized Crimea and fomented a rebellion in Ukraine’s east or today—he warned that the US was helping set in motion the kind of crisis that America faces today. Promise Ukraine membership in NATO, he wrote, and “There could be no doubt that Putin would fight back hard.”
Were a reporter to read Burns’ quotes to White House press secretary Jen Psaki today, she’d likely accuse them of “parroting Russian talking points.” But Burns is hardly alone. From inside the US government, many officials warned that US policy toward Russia might bring disaster. William Perry, Bill Clinton’s Defense Secretary from 1994 to 1997, almost resigned because of his opposition to NATO expansion. He has since declared that because of its policies in the 1990s, “the United States deserves much of the blame” for the deterioration in relations with Moscow. Steven Pifer, who from 1998 to 2000 served as US ambassador to Ukraine, has called Bush’s 2008 decision to declare that Ukraine would eventually join NATO “a real mistake.” Fiona Hill, who gained fame during the Trump impeachment saga, says that as national intelligence officers for Russia and Eurasia she and her colleagues “warned” Bush that “Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action.”
(more....)
https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/bid ... nt-believe
Some of the opinions of this author are loopy but the words of Bill Burns and other foreign policy fixers make a liar out of Joe Biden, something that becomes increasingly easier as the days pass.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
RUSSIA, UKRAINE AND THE US: THE BACKGROUND THEY’RE NOT TELLING YOU
By Phil Wilayto, Popular Resistance.
February 8, 2022
In the winter of 2022, the news is dominated by growing tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Reports that Russia has amassed some 100,000 troops on its border with neighboring Ukraine have brought charges from the United States and NATO that Russia is planning to invade its neighbor, with whom it has had increasingly tense relations.
Will Russia invade Ukraine? And if it does, how will the United States and NATO react? Already, the U.S. and its allies are threatening new sanctions against Russia, sending massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine and beefing up their military presence in bordering countries.
How close are we to war in the region? And how would the U.S. be involved?
Background to the current crisis
It’s impossible to understand anything about present Russian-Ukrainian relations without going back at least to late 2013, when mass demonstrations broke out against then-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Ukraine was trying to decide if it wanted closer economic relations with Russia, its traditional major trading partner, or with the wealthier European Union. The country’s parliament, or Rada, was pro-EU, while Yanukovych favored Russia. At the time – as now – many of the country’s politicians were corrupt, including Yanukovych, so there already was popular resentment against him. When he decided to oppose the Rada over trade agreements, mass protests took place in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in the capital city of Kiev. But what began as peaceful, even celebratory gatherings were quickly taken over by right-wing paramilitary organizations modeled after WWII-era Ukrainian militias allied with the Nazi occupiers. Violence followed and Yanukovych fled the country. He was replaced by acting president Oleksandr Turchynov, and then the pro-U.S., pro-EU, pro-NATO Petro Poroshenko.
The movement that came to be known as Maidan was an illegal, unconstitutional, violent coup – and it was backed to the hilt by the U.S. government and many countries in the European Union.
Then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, who personally cheered on the Maidan protesters in Independence Square, later bragged about the role the U.S. had played in laying the groundwork for 2014. This is how she described that effort in a December 2013 speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, a non-governmental organization:
“Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has sup- ported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”
Translation: The U.S. spent $5 billion intervening in the internal affairs of Ukraine to help steer it away from Russia and toward an alliance with the West, an alliance that would financially benefit the West, while further isolating Russia.
Neo-liberal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation also played a major role, as it explains on its website:
“The International Renaissance Foundation, part of the Open Society family of foundations, has supported civil society in Ukraine since 1990.
For 25 years, the International Renaissance Foundation has worked with civil society organizations … helping to facilitate Ukraine’s European integration. The International Renaissance Foundation played an important role supporting civil society during the Euromaidan protests.”
Aftermath of the coup
The coup split the country along the lines of ethnicity and politics and had devastating consequences for Ukraine, a fragile nation that has only been an independent country since 1991. Before that it was part of the Soviet Union, and before that it was long a contested region dominated by a series of other forces: Vikings, Mongols, Lithuanians, Russians, Poles, Austrians and more. The name Ukraine itself means “borderland.”
Today 17.3 percent of Ukraine’s population is made up of ethnic Russians, who live mainly in the eastern part of the country, which borders Russia. Many more speak Russian as their primary language. And they tend to identify with the Soviet victory over the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.
During Soviet times, both Russian and Ukrainian were official state languages. One of the first acts of the new coup government was to declare that the only official language would be Ukrainian. It also quickly went about banning symbols of the Soviet era, replacing them with memorials to Nazi collaborators. Meanwhile, the neo-Nazi organizations active in the Maidan coup grew in membership and aggressiveness.
Shortly after the coup, fears of domination by an anti-Russian, pro fascist central government led the people of Crimea to hold a referendum in which the majority voted to reunite with Russia. (Crimea had been part of Soviet Russia until 1954, when it was administratively transferred to Soviet Ukraine.) Russia agreed, and annexed the region. This was the “invasion” denounced by Kiev and the West. Curiously, no one died in that “invasion.”
Meanwhile, fighting broke out in Donbass, a heavily industrialized and largely ethnic Russian region of southeastern Ukraine that borders Russia, with local leftists declaring independence from Ukraine. This sparked a fierce Ukrainian opposition and fighting that to date has cost some 14,000 lives.
And in the historically Russian-oriented city of Odessa, a movement emerged that demanded a federal system in which local governors would be locally elected, not appointed by the central government as they are now. On May 2, 2014, at least 42 activists promoting this view were massacred at the House of Trade Unions when a fascist-led mob set it on fire. (See www.odessasolidaritycampaign.org)
All this would make the national situation difficult enough, but these crises took place within the international context of rising tensions between the U.S.-led West and Russia.
What does Russia want?
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, has been recruiting the former Soviet republics into its anti-Russian alliance.
Ukraine is not yet a NATO member, but it operates as such in all but name. The U.S. and other Western countries train and supply its soldiers, help build its bases and conduct regular massive land, sea and air military exercises with Ukraine, which has a 1,200-mile land border with Russia and with which it shares the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. From Russia’s point of view, it’s NATO that is the aggressor. President Vladimir Putin has demanded a guarantee that NATO will not recruit Ukraine into its military alliance; an end to deploying NATO weapons near Russian borders; and an end to U.S.-NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe; all of which Russia views as serious threats to its security.
Let’s look at the history: When NATO was founded on April 4, 1949, it had 12 members: the U.S., Canada and 10 Western European countries. By then the wartime cooperation with the Soviet Union was long over and NATO was essentially an anti-Soviet military/political alliance.
Six years later, as a counterbalance, the Soviet Union formed the nine-member Warsaw Pact, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. That alliance was dismantled in 1991, 10 months before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union. By then the U.S. had assured the Soviets that NATO would not be expanding eastward.
U.S. officials now deny that, but this is from the Los Angeles Times of May 30, 2016:
“In early February 1990, U.S. leaders made the Soviets an offer. Ac- cording to transcripts of meetings in Moscow on Feb. 9. then-Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, [the] U.S. could make ‘iron-clad guarantees’ that NATO would not expand ‘one inch eastward.’ Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.”
But far from limiting NATO’s expansion, the U.S. vigorously promoted it.
In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were admitted into NATO. In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia all became NATO members, followed in 2009 by Albania, Croatia and Montenegro, and then North Macedonia in March 2020.
So today NATO has expanded to 30 member countries, with 14 – nearly half – either former members of the Soviet bloc or part of the former socialist state of Yugoslavia.
All new members admitted into NATO since the collapse of the So- viet Union are in Central or Eastern Europe. From a North American and Western European alliance, it has become a North American and European force that has moved steadily eastward right up to Russia’s borders.
In NATO, the United States, United Kingdom and France together possess a total of 7,315 nuclear weapons. Russia is believed to have about 7,000. But in terms of overall military power, Russia’s military budget in 2016 was just over 8 percent of the combined total of all NATO countries, and just over 11 percent of the U.S. alone.
This is important, because one of NATO’s founding principles is that an attack on any one member country is to be considered an attack on all NATO members.
Today Russia is faced with a massive military and political alliance that includes Estonia and Latvia, two of the six countries on its western and southern borders.
In the present crisis, the U.S. and NATO are accusing Russia of plan ning to invade Ukraine, pointing to Russia’s mobilization of what it says are 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies are sending massive amounts of military aid to Ukraine and are preparing to send their own troops to neighboring countries, to “support” Ukraine.
And ominously, Russia has accused Ukraine of deploying 125,000 troops to Donbass, raising fears that the government may be planning to try and retake the break-away region, in effect daring Russia to militarily intervene.
But as for a Russian invasion? Some key figures are expressing doubt. This is from a Jan. 26 report by the Associated Press:
“[Ukrainian] National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov sounded a similar note, arguing that the wave of Rus- sian troops amassed at Ukraine’s border ‘is not news.’ ‘As of today, we don’t see any grounds for statements about a full-scale offensive on our country,’ Danilov added on Monday, according to the AP.”
And this is from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), on Jan. 23:
“The head of the German navy has resigned over controversial comments he made over Ukraine. Kay-Achim Schönbach said the idea that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine was nonsense. He added that all President Vladimir Putin wanted was respect. Mr Schönbach said on Saturday that he had resigned from his role ‘with immediate effect’ in order to ‘avert further damage’.
What Washington wants
Is war with Russia a real possibility? Yes. It could come to that, most likely as a result of miscalculations by one side or the other operating in a high-tension, high-risk military situation.
But Washington’s real goal is not to destroy Russia, but to dominate it – to turn it into another neo-colony whose role would be to supply the Empire with raw materials, cheap labor and a captive consumer market, just as it has done to Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary and for much longer in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Increasingly, Ukraine is becoming a central battleground in this global campaign for U.S. hegemony.
And what’s the strategy? In the late 1990s, the U.S. basically spent the Soviet Union under the table by forcing it to spend its limited re- sources on matching the U.S. in what was called the Arms Race. The result was growing demoralization among the Soviet people, who ultimately did not mount any mass resistance to the collapse of their country and economic system. The present increasing Western military threat and economic sanctions against Russia seems to be coming from the same playbook.
Further threatening the goal of U.S. world hegemony is the growing alliance between Russia, with its 7,000 nuclear weapons, and China, another nuclear power and the world’s largest economy, after the United States. Breaking up that alliance by bringing Russia to heel is likely another central goal of the propaganda campaign against Russia.
There’s also the matter of the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipe line, which, if implemented, would double the amount of gas flowing directly from Russia to Germany, bypassing the traditional route through Ukraine, depriving it of billions in transit fees. The pipeline is most likely one reason Germany has so far refused to send military equipment to Ukraine.
However the present crisis is resolved, we must remember that working and oppressed people in the West have nothing to gain from this dangerous situation, and everything to lose if war against Russia were actually to break out.
The antiwar movement and its allies must speak out forcefully against U.S. and NATO aggression. We must demand that the massive amounts of tax dollars being spent on war and war preparations instead be used for the good of the people here at home and reparations for the crimes Washington and NATO have committed abroad.
https://popularresistance.org/russia-uk ... lling-you/
I think the idea of war occurring because "things spin out of control" or that the mechanism of military deployment making it inevitable(Tuchman) is self-serving nonsense. These things do not happen overnight and if the preparations had not been made in advance they couldn't happen. It is not human error but long considered intent.
*******************************
Neo-Nazis Active in Ukraine as White House Adds 3,000 Troops
February 9, 2022
By Ben Chacko and John Wojcik – Feb 3, 2022
There’s an increasingly surreal air regarding the war scare over Ukraine.
The original roles in the drama seem to be reversed. Back in December, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Oleksii Reznikov was warning that “not provoking Russia—that strategy does not and will not work,” claiming that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 because NATO hadn’t let it join. In fact, Georgia began that war by attacking South Ossetia, driving tens of thousands of Russian-speaking residents there to flee across the border into Russia, creating an unprecedented refugee crisis for that country. These details, however, rarely trouble Western politicians or journalists.
In December, the US seemed much more reluctant to escalate matters. President Joe Biden said he would not deploy troops to Ukraine, and ruled out a military response to any Russian incursion. The same mood music emanated from Westminster, where UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that British troops would not fight Russia over Ukraine, as the latter was not a NATO member. If Russia did act against Ukraine (and we should remember that it has not at any point threatened to), the US and EU response would be sanctions.
As of last weekend, Reznikov was assuring members of the Ukrainian parliament that actually no Russian military maneuvers had been observed, that there was nothing more threatening happening than what was going on a year ago, and that there was no reason to fear an imminent attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave an even blunter press conference following a phone call with Biden, calling on the US and Britain to tone down their rhetoric about an invasion, since it could create panic and was bad for business.
Asked about the US’s claim that Russia might invade next month, he snapped that, as Ukraine’s head of government, he knew the situation better than Biden. He even cast doubt on the idea that Russia’s military build-up necessarily had anything to do with Ukraine, saying we had no way of knowing it wasn’t a routine troop rotation.
We know, of course, that what really worries the Russians is what the US and NATO have been doing ever since the demise of the Soviet Union. They have been moving Western troops and armaments into one eastern European country after another until now that troops and even offensive missiles are aimed at Russia from places right along that country’s borders.
But did Washington and London heed Zelensky’s pleas? They didn’t even acknowledge them.
Biden has ordered the deployment of 3,000 extra troops to Europe (where the US already has tens of thousands of troops, and NATO has forward bases in Poland and all three of the Baltic states). All of this is in violation of promises made by the US at the end of the Cold War that NATO would not make any moves to the east. Among the troops Biden is sending are 1,000 to Romania, where the US has offensive cruise missiles pointing at Russia. Controls on US placement of such offensive weapons were lifted in 2019 when the Trump administration unilaterally cancelled the INF Missile Treaty with Russia.
Adding to the provocative announcement by Biden regarding 3,000 new troops, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged “land, sea, and air” forces would be sent to eastern Europe to see off the Russian menace.
The more Ukraine insisted last week that it is not afraid that war is coming, the louder the US and Britain declared their readiness to fight one.
The same buildup of war hysteria can be seen in how the U.S. and NATO have handled announcements regarding alleged findings by US and Western “intelligence.”
First we heard that the Russians had massed 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders, and for weeks satellite photos of the same rows of snow-covered tanks were fed to the Western media to “verify” these reports. An invasion is “imminent,” we were told. Soon feeding the press the same old photos was not enough.
When the invasion didn’t happen, the New York Times said that it had word from sources in the Pentagon that the number of troops had to reach 175,000 or more before an invasion began. This information supposedly came from Western “intelligence” sources. By announcing the supposedly “secret” plans by Russians to send more troops before any invasion, but never quite seeing the “175,000 or more” level actually being reached, there was room now for stretching out the timing of the alleged “imminent” invasion.
Several weeks later, again to hype up the expectation of imminent invasion which still had not arrived (we weren’t up to 175,000 yet), we heard that we could expect a “false flag attack” whereby Russia would stage an attack on itself in order to justify an “imminent” invasion.
When, again, the false flag attack triggering the “imminent” invasion also did not happen, there emerged a new story—that there was a “plan” to install a pro-Russian government in power in Kiev. That report supposedly was passed to the Pentagon by British intelligence.
The only time a “pro-Russian” government assumed power in Kiev since the demise of the USSR was when the Ukrainian people elected such a government themselves and that government, in 2014, after it re-buffed IMF austerity demands that should be imposed on the Ukrainian people, was overthrown in a fascist coup backed by the US. Nevertheless, no “pro-Russian” government has been installed in Kiev since the announcement weeks ago by the West that Russia had such a puppet plot.
Children outfitted in military-style outfits shout slogans at a training camp belonging to the Azov Battalion in the village of Mykolaivka, 30 kilometers west of Kiev, Ukraine, in the summer of 2016. At such camps, children are indoctrinated in the group’s fascist ideology and provided weapons training. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky / AP
Now, another version of the false flag story is circulating. At mid-day Thursday, “news” broke that the US had acquired intelligence that Russia was planning to stage and film a fake attack by Ukrainian forces either on Russian territory or Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine. According to the Times, it would have been a production worthy of Hollywood:
“The video was intended to be elaborate, officials said, with plans for graphic images of the staged, corpse-strewn aftermath of an explosion and footage of destroyed locations. They said the video was also set to include faked Ukrainian military equipment, Turkish-made drones and actors playing Russian-speaking mourners.”
In making the alleged scheme public, the US declared it hoped “to spoil” the Kremlin’s plan. US officials, of course, released no direct evidence of their allegation and declined to name the source of their supposed discovery.
One thing about all these provocative announcements about “intelligence” findings that requires very little intelligence to figure out, however, is that each one of these so-called revelations is part of a bigger strategy on the part of the West.
Unfortunately, it is exactly the strategy one would use to spur the Russians into taking an action that would justify imposing strong sanctions. On Wednesday, former US Ambassador William Taylor called for such sanctions immediately, saying the US should not wait for any actual invasion. He said he also supported Biden sending in troops now rather than waiting for any Russian moves.
Most ominous regarding in Biden’s troop buildup, however, is the fact that his decision followed a speech by Putin in which the Russian leader, notably, did not even repeat his prior demands that in order to end the crisis the US and NATO had to remove all their troops from former member nations of the Warsaw Pact.
Putin also did not repeat earlier demands that all US nuclear weapons be removed from Europe, including and especially the nuclear missiles the US has in Germany. Omission of these demands by Putin should have been taken as a point from which negotiations could proceed, not, as they were, as a point from which the US escalates war tensions even more.
War—whether anyone wants it or not
Could all of this mean that we are perhaps dealing only with a shadow-boxing match? Russia deploys troops near its western border and conducts exercises with Belarus to lend weight to security demands it put to the US, such as a mutual commitment not to station nuclear warheads outside their own territory.
The US, meanwhile, ramps up the fear of Russia in order to press longstanding aims such as killing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which it says would pose a security risk by increasing European dependence on Russian gas (and the cancellation of which would, conveniently, force Europe to purchase gas elsewhere—when the US is trying to increase fracked shale gas exports).
Ukraine is also keen to stop Nord Stream 2, since it would lose transit fees for Russian gas currently piped through its territory. Ukrainian state energy firm NAFTOGAZ estimates losses at $3 billion a year if the new pipeline becomes operational.
This could explain why Zelensky, while downplaying the threat of war on Saturday, did call for sanctions on Nord Stream 2 regardless of whether Russia attacks or not.
If this is true, Ukraine’s about-turn reflects its fear that the situation is getting out of hand: An initial policy of talking up the threat to derail the pipeline and get access to advanced weaponry has snowballed to the extent that it might actually start a war, which would clearly be catastrophic for the whole of Europe but most of all for Ukraine. But if neither side actually wants war, what is there to be afraid of?
The answer is that this military posturing is extremely risky, and does significantly increase the chance of a conflict breaking out.
This is true for all the traditional reasons—moves pitched as deterrence by one side can be interpreted as belligerence by the other, and the West has the proven track record of “goading” Russia with air and sea deployments along its borders. As Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins observed a few weeks ago, “the invitation to Moscow to call [the] bluff is glaring.”
More than once in the original Cold War, misunderstandings came close to sparking nuclear conflict, which was averted by the courage and calm of individuals on the front line. Few in the US Congress or the British Parliament, for example, seem to grasp this risk.
But with Ukraine, the risks are enormously multiplied. This is because the war in the Donbass means that fighting does not even have to “break out” in the ordinary way: It could be said to be happening already.
And the nature of that war means a new outbreak might not even be under control from Moscow or Kiev or Washington.
Nazis in the Donbass
The self-governing separatist People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are backed by Russia, but their forces are not part of the Russian army.
On the other side of the trenches the situation is even more complex. The Western media, particularly in Europe, has gushed over the heroic “volunteers” manning the battle lines for Ukraine in the Donbass, even running interviews with ex-soldiers from the West “contracted” to fight for Ukraine (that is, mercenaries).
Kiev’s forces in the Donbass war are by no means all regular soldiers. Far-right forces were the foot soldiers of the 2014 Maidan coup that provoked the conflict, and have been on the front lines ever since.
Most notorious is the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi unit formed from ultras from the Metalist Kharkiv football club in 2014. Its founder, Andriy Biletsky, is an unsubtle fascist, having called on Ukraine to lead a crusade of the “white races” against the “Semite-led untermenschen.”
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry authorized the formation of paramilitary battalions that year, and Azov was one. Another, the Aidar Battalion, formed the same year, also has far-right ideological associations.
Ukrainian nationalists carry torches and a portrait of WWII fascist leader Stepan Bandera during a rally in Kiev, Ukraine, on New Year’s Day, Jan. 1, 2022. The rally was organized to mark the birth anniversary of Bandera, a man who betrayed his homeland and collaborated with the invading armies of Adolf Hitler. Western media, including the Associated Press, downplay who Bandera really was, calling him the ‘founder of a rebel army that fought against the Soviet regime.’ Photo: Efrem Lukatsky / AP
These fascist units are allowed a cloak of respectability by Ukraine’s rehabilitation of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and rewriting of history to portray genocidal organizations like his Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which played a major role in the Holocaust, as anti-Soviet patriots.
People’s World in the US, Morning Star in the UK, and other newspapers are sometimes accused of exaggerating the fascist character of the 2014 coup in Ukraine and its aftermath, since the Kiev government itself is not overtly fascist. But the turning over of police and military units to fascist control by the regular Ukrainian government speaks volumes about the power of fascists in Ukraine. And the current government itself glorifies actual fascists like Bandera. Then, of course, the current government is guilty in the very least of having the bad taste of marches through the capital commemorating regiments of the Waffen SS.
By autumn 2014, Amnesty International was warning the Ukrainian government that it had documented war crimes “including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, robbery, extortion, and possible executions committed by the Aidar Battalion” in the Donbass.
The mother of one separatist fighter reported the head of her son being mailed to her in a box following his capture by “white nationalist paramilitaries.” Yet that September, the Azov Battalion was formally enrolled in the National Guard of Ukraine.
Enter the mercenaries
Are these the forces that Western “volunteers” or mercenaries are signing up with? Certainly they have tried to recruit foreigners in the past. Hope Not Hate warned in 2018 that the Azov Battalion was working with a British group called the Misanthropic Division to recruit far-right British activists to travel to Ukraine to fight.
Ukrainian Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko says foreign mercenaries are allowed to sign up with the Ukrainian military as a matter of course, and it is not just units like Azov which recruit them.
The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion has been integrated fully within the Ukrainian military, with its leaders serving as unit commanders. Here Azov soldiers sit in an armored personnel carrier at a checkpoint in the port city of Mariupol, southeastern Ukraine. The same city has become a hub for Western mercenaries that have been paid to join the fighting. Photo: Sergei Grits / AP
“After the 2014 coup, Ukraine has turned into a sump of neo-Nazis from around the world. In the Donbass, there are mercenaries from many countries as part of the volunteer battalions,” he tells me, “including the UK.”
“In addition to the ideological Nazis you have the ‘human safari’ scum, who see the war in the Donbass as a kind of extreme entertainment.
“Then you have the private military companies—fighters and instructors from Letera-43 from Italy, Halo Trust, Greystone, ‘Academi’ (known as Blackwater before 2009) from the U.S. and others. And there are a lot of official instructors from NATO countries—the US, Britain, Canada, and so on.”
Leaving aside the risks to people back at home of allowing these mercenaries to travel to warzones to fight alongside known extremists—we saw the potential consequences when a fighter, returned from the NATO-backed war to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya, killed 22 people in the Manchester Arena terror attack in 2017—the picture is explosive.
Ukraine’s militarized Donbass border swarms with professional soldiers, neo-Nazi paramilitaries, trigger-happy adventurers and “war tourists,” mercenaries, NATO “advisers,” and, thanks to the recent war scare, there’s a growing direct Western military presence.
It would not take much to light this tinderbox and quite a few of the unsavory characters in that mix would not be averse to doing so.
That is why the only sane approach to this crisis is de-escalation. The governments of the NATO countries must be pressed to withdraw troops from Ukraine and stop loading up an army bristling with “volunteers” with heavy weaponry.
Talks with Russia and Ukraine on reviving the Minsk peace process have to be revived, as Putin requested in Moscow this week. The US and NATO must cease their dangerous brinksmanship.
https://orinocotribune.com/neo-nazis-ac ... 00-troops/
Like our old friend Anax concluded, "Ukrainian Nationalism is Nazism". Thank US policy for that, proof positive that capitalists will do whatever it takes, no matter how vile, to preserve their suzerainty.
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Biden-Scholz Talks: Energy Expert Explains Why Germany Will Never Join US in Ending Nord Stream 2
20 hours ago
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project is seen on a pipe at the Chelyabinsk pipe-rolling plant in Chelyabinsk, Russia, February 26, 2020. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo - Sputnik International, 1920, 08.02.2022
© REUTERS / Maxim Shemetov
US President Joe Biden pledged to nix Nord Stream 2 if Russia invades Ukraine during his Monday meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said that Washington and Berlin are aligned in their positions, but didn't cite suspending the pipeline as a probable measure. Moscow has repeatedly shredded the invasion scenario as groundless.
"Nord Stream 2 is a reality and sooner or later will be getting certification from the German and EU energy regulators", says Dr Mamdouh G. Salameh, international oil economist and visiting professor of energy economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London. "It is first and foremost a viable economic project. If it was certified in last September, it would have helped alleviate Europe’s ongoing energy crisis".
The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline runs under the Baltic Sea from western Russia to north-eastern Germany. It is designed to deliver 55 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas per year to Europe, thus doubling the original Nord Stream capacity to a total of 110 bcm.
Biden and his advisers have long been looking for an excuse to continue their opposition to the pipeline under the false pretext that it will tighten Russia’s grip on Europe’s energy security, according to Salameh. He notes that the ongoing political fuss around Ukraine is just a pretext to try to axe the project. However, the overwhelming majority of Europeans and the whole world know that Washington's motivation is to sell US liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe, which is more expensive than pipeline gas, according to the professor.
US President Ronald Reagan talks with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 1984 in Washington.
© AP Photo / Barry Thumma
The United States has a long and failed history of opposing Soviet and now Russian oil and gas pipelines dating back to the 1960s. The Reagan administration in the 1980s tried to halt the USSR's West Siberian pipeline (“Brotherhood”) aimed at transporting Soviet natural gas to Central and Western Europe through Ukraine. In December 1981, the Reagan administration introduced sanctions preventing US companies from exporting oil and gas technologies to the Soviet Union. In June 1982, these sanctions were expanded to Europe. However, West Germany, France, and the UK opposed Washington's initiative, forcing the White House to lift sanctions against European and American companies participating in the project in November 1982.
Salameh forecasts that Germany and the EU might exclude any sanctions on Russian energy supplies or Nord Stream 2 so as to avoid a complete halt of Russian gas supplies.
Germany has good reasons to withstand Washington's pressure to halt Nord Stream 2, according to Salameh. Firstly, Nord Stream 2 cost €9.5 billion ($10.6 billion) to build, with roughly half of this sum being financed by a European consortium of companies including OMV (Austria), Wintershall Dea (Germany), Engie (France), Uniper (Germany), and Shell (UK). The energy expert explains that if Berlin nixes the project, it will deal a substantial blow to European energy giants and will sink over 150 major German companies which were involved in the construction of the pipeline.
Secondly, if Berlin stops the project it will be a major loser in economic and energy terms, according to Salameh: "Germany depends on Russia for 60% of its natural gas and oil needs", he stresses.
Thirdly, Europe’s energy crisis and shortages of natural gas and LNG supplies is likely to continue throughout 2022 and probably far beyond with gas and LNG prices remaining high. However, the entirety of LNG exports from the United States, Qatar, and Australia could hardly replace the almost 200 billion cubic metres per annum (bcm/y) piped by Russia to the EU in addition to an estimated 15-16 million tons a year (mt/y) of LNG, according to the energy expert. To complicate matters even further, Europe has a limited LNG import capacity. This makes ramp-ups of LNG imports quite useless, particularly if they are needed to replace Russia’s almost 40% share of the European gas market.
"Only Russia can satisfy the EU’s gas demand", says Salameh. "However, Russia isn’t going to ship additional gas supplies to the EU until [the] Nord Stream [2] gas pipeline is certified. The energy balance of power between the EU and Russia has shifted decisively in favour of Russia. By increasing its gas exports to China, Russia is telling the EU that it isn’t dependent on the European gas market for its gas exports. It has a far bigger market in China".
(more...)
https://sputniknews.com/20220208/biden- ... 59146.html
To be sure a self-serving piece from Sputnik, which does not in any way take away from those three very good reasons.
By Phil Wilayto, Popular Resistance.
February 8, 2022
In the winter of 2022, the news is dominated by growing tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Reports that Russia has amassed some 100,000 troops on its border with neighboring Ukraine have brought charges from the United States and NATO that Russia is planning to invade its neighbor, with whom it has had increasingly tense relations.
Will Russia invade Ukraine? And if it does, how will the United States and NATO react? Already, the U.S. and its allies are threatening new sanctions against Russia, sending massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine and beefing up their military presence in bordering countries.
How close are we to war in the region? And how would the U.S. be involved?
Background to the current crisis
It’s impossible to understand anything about present Russian-Ukrainian relations without going back at least to late 2013, when mass demonstrations broke out against then-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Ukraine was trying to decide if it wanted closer economic relations with Russia, its traditional major trading partner, or with the wealthier European Union. The country’s parliament, or Rada, was pro-EU, while Yanukovych favored Russia. At the time – as now – many of the country’s politicians were corrupt, including Yanukovych, so there already was popular resentment against him. When he decided to oppose the Rada over trade agreements, mass protests took place in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in the capital city of Kiev. But what began as peaceful, even celebratory gatherings were quickly taken over by right-wing paramilitary organizations modeled after WWII-era Ukrainian militias allied with the Nazi occupiers. Violence followed and Yanukovych fled the country. He was replaced by acting president Oleksandr Turchynov, and then the pro-U.S., pro-EU, pro-NATO Petro Poroshenko.
The movement that came to be known as Maidan was an illegal, unconstitutional, violent coup – and it was backed to the hilt by the U.S. government and many countries in the European Union.
Then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, who personally cheered on the Maidan protesters in Independence Square, later bragged about the role the U.S. had played in laying the groundwork for 2014. This is how she described that effort in a December 2013 speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, a non-governmental organization:
“Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has sup- ported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”
Translation: The U.S. spent $5 billion intervening in the internal affairs of Ukraine to help steer it away from Russia and toward an alliance with the West, an alliance that would financially benefit the West, while further isolating Russia.
Neo-liberal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation also played a major role, as it explains on its website:
“The International Renaissance Foundation, part of the Open Society family of foundations, has supported civil society in Ukraine since 1990.
For 25 years, the International Renaissance Foundation has worked with civil society organizations … helping to facilitate Ukraine’s European integration. The International Renaissance Foundation played an important role supporting civil society during the Euromaidan protests.”
Aftermath of the coup
The coup split the country along the lines of ethnicity and politics and had devastating consequences for Ukraine, a fragile nation that has only been an independent country since 1991. Before that it was part of the Soviet Union, and before that it was long a contested region dominated by a series of other forces: Vikings, Mongols, Lithuanians, Russians, Poles, Austrians and more. The name Ukraine itself means “borderland.”
Today 17.3 percent of Ukraine’s population is made up of ethnic Russians, who live mainly in the eastern part of the country, which borders Russia. Many more speak Russian as their primary language. And they tend to identify with the Soviet victory over the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.
During Soviet times, both Russian and Ukrainian were official state languages. One of the first acts of the new coup government was to declare that the only official language would be Ukrainian. It also quickly went about banning symbols of the Soviet era, replacing them with memorials to Nazi collaborators. Meanwhile, the neo-Nazi organizations active in the Maidan coup grew in membership and aggressiveness.
Shortly after the coup, fears of domination by an anti-Russian, pro fascist central government led the people of Crimea to hold a referendum in which the majority voted to reunite with Russia. (Crimea had been part of Soviet Russia until 1954, when it was administratively transferred to Soviet Ukraine.) Russia agreed, and annexed the region. This was the “invasion” denounced by Kiev and the West. Curiously, no one died in that “invasion.”
Meanwhile, fighting broke out in Donbass, a heavily industrialized and largely ethnic Russian region of southeastern Ukraine that borders Russia, with local leftists declaring independence from Ukraine. This sparked a fierce Ukrainian opposition and fighting that to date has cost some 14,000 lives.
And in the historically Russian-oriented city of Odessa, a movement emerged that demanded a federal system in which local governors would be locally elected, not appointed by the central government as they are now. On May 2, 2014, at least 42 activists promoting this view were massacred at the House of Trade Unions when a fascist-led mob set it on fire. (See www.odessasolidaritycampaign.org)
All this would make the national situation difficult enough, but these crises took place within the international context of rising tensions between the U.S.-led West and Russia.
What does Russia want?
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, has been recruiting the former Soviet republics into its anti-Russian alliance.
Ukraine is not yet a NATO member, but it operates as such in all but name. The U.S. and other Western countries train and supply its soldiers, help build its bases and conduct regular massive land, sea and air military exercises with Ukraine, which has a 1,200-mile land border with Russia and with which it shares the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. From Russia’s point of view, it’s NATO that is the aggressor. President Vladimir Putin has demanded a guarantee that NATO will not recruit Ukraine into its military alliance; an end to deploying NATO weapons near Russian borders; and an end to U.S.-NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe; all of which Russia views as serious threats to its security.
Let’s look at the history: When NATO was founded on April 4, 1949, it had 12 members: the U.S., Canada and 10 Western European countries. By then the wartime cooperation with the Soviet Union was long over and NATO was essentially an anti-Soviet military/political alliance.
Six years later, as a counterbalance, the Soviet Union formed the nine-member Warsaw Pact, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. That alliance was dismantled in 1991, 10 months before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union. By then the U.S. had assured the Soviets that NATO would not be expanding eastward.
U.S. officials now deny that, but this is from the Los Angeles Times of May 30, 2016:
“In early February 1990, U.S. leaders made the Soviets an offer. Ac- cording to transcripts of meetings in Moscow on Feb. 9. then-Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, [the] U.S. could make ‘iron-clad guarantees’ that NATO would not expand ‘one inch eastward.’ Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.”
But far from limiting NATO’s expansion, the U.S. vigorously promoted it.
In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were admitted into NATO. In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia all became NATO members, followed in 2009 by Albania, Croatia and Montenegro, and then North Macedonia in March 2020.
So today NATO has expanded to 30 member countries, with 14 – nearly half – either former members of the Soviet bloc or part of the former socialist state of Yugoslavia.
All new members admitted into NATO since the collapse of the So- viet Union are in Central or Eastern Europe. From a North American and Western European alliance, it has become a North American and European force that has moved steadily eastward right up to Russia’s borders.
In NATO, the United States, United Kingdom and France together possess a total of 7,315 nuclear weapons. Russia is believed to have about 7,000. But in terms of overall military power, Russia’s military budget in 2016 was just over 8 percent of the combined total of all NATO countries, and just over 11 percent of the U.S. alone.
This is important, because one of NATO’s founding principles is that an attack on any one member country is to be considered an attack on all NATO members.
Today Russia is faced with a massive military and political alliance that includes Estonia and Latvia, two of the six countries on its western and southern borders.
In the present crisis, the U.S. and NATO are accusing Russia of plan ning to invade Ukraine, pointing to Russia’s mobilization of what it says are 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies are sending massive amounts of military aid to Ukraine and are preparing to send their own troops to neighboring countries, to “support” Ukraine.
And ominously, Russia has accused Ukraine of deploying 125,000 troops to Donbass, raising fears that the government may be planning to try and retake the break-away region, in effect daring Russia to militarily intervene.
But as for a Russian invasion? Some key figures are expressing doubt. This is from a Jan. 26 report by the Associated Press:
“[Ukrainian] National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov sounded a similar note, arguing that the wave of Rus- sian troops amassed at Ukraine’s border ‘is not news.’ ‘As of today, we don’t see any grounds for statements about a full-scale offensive on our country,’ Danilov added on Monday, according to the AP.”
And this is from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), on Jan. 23:
“The head of the German navy has resigned over controversial comments he made over Ukraine. Kay-Achim Schönbach said the idea that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine was nonsense. He added that all President Vladimir Putin wanted was respect. Mr Schönbach said on Saturday that he had resigned from his role ‘with immediate effect’ in order to ‘avert further damage’.
What Washington wants
Is war with Russia a real possibility? Yes. It could come to that, most likely as a result of miscalculations by one side or the other operating in a high-tension, high-risk military situation.
But Washington’s real goal is not to destroy Russia, but to dominate it – to turn it into another neo-colony whose role would be to supply the Empire with raw materials, cheap labor and a captive consumer market, just as it has done to Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary and for much longer in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Increasingly, Ukraine is becoming a central battleground in this global campaign for U.S. hegemony.
And what’s the strategy? In the late 1990s, the U.S. basically spent the Soviet Union under the table by forcing it to spend its limited re- sources on matching the U.S. in what was called the Arms Race. The result was growing demoralization among the Soviet people, who ultimately did not mount any mass resistance to the collapse of their country and economic system. The present increasing Western military threat and economic sanctions against Russia seems to be coming from the same playbook.
Further threatening the goal of U.S. world hegemony is the growing alliance between Russia, with its 7,000 nuclear weapons, and China, another nuclear power and the world’s largest economy, after the United States. Breaking up that alliance by bringing Russia to heel is likely another central goal of the propaganda campaign against Russia.
There’s also the matter of the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipe line, which, if implemented, would double the amount of gas flowing directly from Russia to Germany, bypassing the traditional route through Ukraine, depriving it of billions in transit fees. The pipeline is most likely one reason Germany has so far refused to send military equipment to Ukraine.
However the present crisis is resolved, we must remember that working and oppressed people in the West have nothing to gain from this dangerous situation, and everything to lose if war against Russia were actually to break out.
The antiwar movement and its allies must speak out forcefully against U.S. and NATO aggression. We must demand that the massive amounts of tax dollars being spent on war and war preparations instead be used for the good of the people here at home and reparations for the crimes Washington and NATO have committed abroad.
https://popularresistance.org/russia-uk ... lling-you/
I think the idea of war occurring because "things spin out of control" or that the mechanism of military deployment making it inevitable(Tuchman) is self-serving nonsense. These things do not happen overnight and if the preparations had not been made in advance they couldn't happen. It is not human error but long considered intent.
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Neo-Nazis Active in Ukraine as White House Adds 3,000 Troops
February 9, 2022
By Ben Chacko and John Wojcik – Feb 3, 2022
There’s an increasingly surreal air regarding the war scare over Ukraine.
The original roles in the drama seem to be reversed. Back in December, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Oleksii Reznikov was warning that “not provoking Russia—that strategy does not and will not work,” claiming that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 because NATO hadn’t let it join. In fact, Georgia began that war by attacking South Ossetia, driving tens of thousands of Russian-speaking residents there to flee across the border into Russia, creating an unprecedented refugee crisis for that country. These details, however, rarely trouble Western politicians or journalists.
In December, the US seemed much more reluctant to escalate matters. President Joe Biden said he would not deploy troops to Ukraine, and ruled out a military response to any Russian incursion. The same mood music emanated from Westminster, where UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that British troops would not fight Russia over Ukraine, as the latter was not a NATO member. If Russia did act against Ukraine (and we should remember that it has not at any point threatened to), the US and EU response would be sanctions.
As of last weekend, Reznikov was assuring members of the Ukrainian parliament that actually no Russian military maneuvers had been observed, that there was nothing more threatening happening than what was going on a year ago, and that there was no reason to fear an imminent attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave an even blunter press conference following a phone call with Biden, calling on the US and Britain to tone down their rhetoric about an invasion, since it could create panic and was bad for business.
Asked about the US’s claim that Russia might invade next month, he snapped that, as Ukraine’s head of government, he knew the situation better than Biden. He even cast doubt on the idea that Russia’s military build-up necessarily had anything to do with Ukraine, saying we had no way of knowing it wasn’t a routine troop rotation.
We know, of course, that what really worries the Russians is what the US and NATO have been doing ever since the demise of the Soviet Union. They have been moving Western troops and armaments into one eastern European country after another until now that troops and even offensive missiles are aimed at Russia from places right along that country’s borders.
But did Washington and London heed Zelensky’s pleas? They didn’t even acknowledge them.
Biden has ordered the deployment of 3,000 extra troops to Europe (where the US already has tens of thousands of troops, and NATO has forward bases in Poland and all three of the Baltic states). All of this is in violation of promises made by the US at the end of the Cold War that NATO would not make any moves to the east. Among the troops Biden is sending are 1,000 to Romania, where the US has offensive cruise missiles pointing at Russia. Controls on US placement of such offensive weapons were lifted in 2019 when the Trump administration unilaterally cancelled the INF Missile Treaty with Russia.
Adding to the provocative announcement by Biden regarding 3,000 new troops, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged “land, sea, and air” forces would be sent to eastern Europe to see off the Russian menace.
The more Ukraine insisted last week that it is not afraid that war is coming, the louder the US and Britain declared their readiness to fight one.
The same buildup of war hysteria can be seen in how the U.S. and NATO have handled announcements regarding alleged findings by US and Western “intelligence.”
First we heard that the Russians had massed 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders, and for weeks satellite photos of the same rows of snow-covered tanks were fed to the Western media to “verify” these reports. An invasion is “imminent,” we were told. Soon feeding the press the same old photos was not enough.
When the invasion didn’t happen, the New York Times said that it had word from sources in the Pentagon that the number of troops had to reach 175,000 or more before an invasion began. This information supposedly came from Western “intelligence” sources. By announcing the supposedly “secret” plans by Russians to send more troops before any invasion, but never quite seeing the “175,000 or more” level actually being reached, there was room now for stretching out the timing of the alleged “imminent” invasion.
Several weeks later, again to hype up the expectation of imminent invasion which still had not arrived (we weren’t up to 175,000 yet), we heard that we could expect a “false flag attack” whereby Russia would stage an attack on itself in order to justify an “imminent” invasion.
When, again, the false flag attack triggering the “imminent” invasion also did not happen, there emerged a new story—that there was a “plan” to install a pro-Russian government in power in Kiev. That report supposedly was passed to the Pentagon by British intelligence.
The only time a “pro-Russian” government assumed power in Kiev since the demise of the USSR was when the Ukrainian people elected such a government themselves and that government, in 2014, after it re-buffed IMF austerity demands that should be imposed on the Ukrainian people, was overthrown in a fascist coup backed by the US. Nevertheless, no “pro-Russian” government has been installed in Kiev since the announcement weeks ago by the West that Russia had such a puppet plot.
Children outfitted in military-style outfits shout slogans at a training camp belonging to the Azov Battalion in the village of Mykolaivka, 30 kilometers west of Kiev, Ukraine, in the summer of 2016. At such camps, children are indoctrinated in the group’s fascist ideology and provided weapons training. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky / AP
Now, another version of the false flag story is circulating. At mid-day Thursday, “news” broke that the US had acquired intelligence that Russia was planning to stage and film a fake attack by Ukrainian forces either on Russian territory or Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine. According to the Times, it would have been a production worthy of Hollywood:
“The video was intended to be elaborate, officials said, with plans for graphic images of the staged, corpse-strewn aftermath of an explosion and footage of destroyed locations. They said the video was also set to include faked Ukrainian military equipment, Turkish-made drones and actors playing Russian-speaking mourners.”
In making the alleged scheme public, the US declared it hoped “to spoil” the Kremlin’s plan. US officials, of course, released no direct evidence of their allegation and declined to name the source of their supposed discovery.
One thing about all these provocative announcements about “intelligence” findings that requires very little intelligence to figure out, however, is that each one of these so-called revelations is part of a bigger strategy on the part of the West.
Unfortunately, it is exactly the strategy one would use to spur the Russians into taking an action that would justify imposing strong sanctions. On Wednesday, former US Ambassador William Taylor called for such sanctions immediately, saying the US should not wait for any actual invasion. He said he also supported Biden sending in troops now rather than waiting for any Russian moves.
Most ominous regarding in Biden’s troop buildup, however, is the fact that his decision followed a speech by Putin in which the Russian leader, notably, did not even repeat his prior demands that in order to end the crisis the US and NATO had to remove all their troops from former member nations of the Warsaw Pact.
Putin also did not repeat earlier demands that all US nuclear weapons be removed from Europe, including and especially the nuclear missiles the US has in Germany. Omission of these demands by Putin should have been taken as a point from which negotiations could proceed, not, as they were, as a point from which the US escalates war tensions even more.
War—whether anyone wants it or not
Could all of this mean that we are perhaps dealing only with a shadow-boxing match? Russia deploys troops near its western border and conducts exercises with Belarus to lend weight to security demands it put to the US, such as a mutual commitment not to station nuclear warheads outside their own territory.
The US, meanwhile, ramps up the fear of Russia in order to press longstanding aims such as killing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which it says would pose a security risk by increasing European dependence on Russian gas (and the cancellation of which would, conveniently, force Europe to purchase gas elsewhere—when the US is trying to increase fracked shale gas exports).
Ukraine is also keen to stop Nord Stream 2, since it would lose transit fees for Russian gas currently piped through its territory. Ukrainian state energy firm NAFTOGAZ estimates losses at $3 billion a year if the new pipeline becomes operational.
This could explain why Zelensky, while downplaying the threat of war on Saturday, did call for sanctions on Nord Stream 2 regardless of whether Russia attacks or not.
If this is true, Ukraine’s about-turn reflects its fear that the situation is getting out of hand: An initial policy of talking up the threat to derail the pipeline and get access to advanced weaponry has snowballed to the extent that it might actually start a war, which would clearly be catastrophic for the whole of Europe but most of all for Ukraine. But if neither side actually wants war, what is there to be afraid of?
The answer is that this military posturing is extremely risky, and does significantly increase the chance of a conflict breaking out.
This is true for all the traditional reasons—moves pitched as deterrence by one side can be interpreted as belligerence by the other, and the West has the proven track record of “goading” Russia with air and sea deployments along its borders. As Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins observed a few weeks ago, “the invitation to Moscow to call [the] bluff is glaring.”
More than once in the original Cold War, misunderstandings came close to sparking nuclear conflict, which was averted by the courage and calm of individuals on the front line. Few in the US Congress or the British Parliament, for example, seem to grasp this risk.
But with Ukraine, the risks are enormously multiplied. This is because the war in the Donbass means that fighting does not even have to “break out” in the ordinary way: It could be said to be happening already.
And the nature of that war means a new outbreak might not even be under control from Moscow or Kiev or Washington.
Nazis in the Donbass
The self-governing separatist People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are backed by Russia, but their forces are not part of the Russian army.
On the other side of the trenches the situation is even more complex. The Western media, particularly in Europe, has gushed over the heroic “volunteers” manning the battle lines for Ukraine in the Donbass, even running interviews with ex-soldiers from the West “contracted” to fight for Ukraine (that is, mercenaries).
Kiev’s forces in the Donbass war are by no means all regular soldiers. Far-right forces were the foot soldiers of the 2014 Maidan coup that provoked the conflict, and have been on the front lines ever since.
Most notorious is the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi unit formed from ultras from the Metalist Kharkiv football club in 2014. Its founder, Andriy Biletsky, is an unsubtle fascist, having called on Ukraine to lead a crusade of the “white races” against the “Semite-led untermenschen.”
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry authorized the formation of paramilitary battalions that year, and Azov was one. Another, the Aidar Battalion, formed the same year, also has far-right ideological associations.
Ukrainian nationalists carry torches and a portrait of WWII fascist leader Stepan Bandera during a rally in Kiev, Ukraine, on New Year’s Day, Jan. 1, 2022. The rally was organized to mark the birth anniversary of Bandera, a man who betrayed his homeland and collaborated with the invading armies of Adolf Hitler. Western media, including the Associated Press, downplay who Bandera really was, calling him the ‘founder of a rebel army that fought against the Soviet regime.’ Photo: Efrem Lukatsky / AP
These fascist units are allowed a cloak of respectability by Ukraine’s rehabilitation of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and rewriting of history to portray genocidal organizations like his Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which played a major role in the Holocaust, as anti-Soviet patriots.
People’s World in the US, Morning Star in the UK, and other newspapers are sometimes accused of exaggerating the fascist character of the 2014 coup in Ukraine and its aftermath, since the Kiev government itself is not overtly fascist. But the turning over of police and military units to fascist control by the regular Ukrainian government speaks volumes about the power of fascists in Ukraine. And the current government itself glorifies actual fascists like Bandera. Then, of course, the current government is guilty in the very least of having the bad taste of marches through the capital commemorating regiments of the Waffen SS.
By autumn 2014, Amnesty International was warning the Ukrainian government that it had documented war crimes “including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, robbery, extortion, and possible executions committed by the Aidar Battalion” in the Donbass.
The mother of one separatist fighter reported the head of her son being mailed to her in a box following his capture by “white nationalist paramilitaries.” Yet that September, the Azov Battalion was formally enrolled in the National Guard of Ukraine.
Enter the mercenaries
Are these the forces that Western “volunteers” or mercenaries are signing up with? Certainly they have tried to recruit foreigners in the past. Hope Not Hate warned in 2018 that the Azov Battalion was working with a British group called the Misanthropic Division to recruit far-right British activists to travel to Ukraine to fight.
Ukrainian Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko says foreign mercenaries are allowed to sign up with the Ukrainian military as a matter of course, and it is not just units like Azov which recruit them.
The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion has been integrated fully within the Ukrainian military, with its leaders serving as unit commanders. Here Azov soldiers sit in an armored personnel carrier at a checkpoint in the port city of Mariupol, southeastern Ukraine. The same city has become a hub for Western mercenaries that have been paid to join the fighting. Photo: Sergei Grits / AP
“After the 2014 coup, Ukraine has turned into a sump of neo-Nazis from around the world. In the Donbass, there are mercenaries from many countries as part of the volunteer battalions,” he tells me, “including the UK.”
“In addition to the ideological Nazis you have the ‘human safari’ scum, who see the war in the Donbass as a kind of extreme entertainment.
“Then you have the private military companies—fighters and instructors from Letera-43 from Italy, Halo Trust, Greystone, ‘Academi’ (known as Blackwater before 2009) from the U.S. and others. And there are a lot of official instructors from NATO countries—the US, Britain, Canada, and so on.”
Leaving aside the risks to people back at home of allowing these mercenaries to travel to warzones to fight alongside known extremists—we saw the potential consequences when a fighter, returned from the NATO-backed war to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya, killed 22 people in the Manchester Arena terror attack in 2017—the picture is explosive.
Ukraine’s militarized Donbass border swarms with professional soldiers, neo-Nazi paramilitaries, trigger-happy adventurers and “war tourists,” mercenaries, NATO “advisers,” and, thanks to the recent war scare, there’s a growing direct Western military presence.
It would not take much to light this tinderbox and quite a few of the unsavory characters in that mix would not be averse to doing so.
That is why the only sane approach to this crisis is de-escalation. The governments of the NATO countries must be pressed to withdraw troops from Ukraine and stop loading up an army bristling with “volunteers” with heavy weaponry.
Talks with Russia and Ukraine on reviving the Minsk peace process have to be revived, as Putin requested in Moscow this week. The US and NATO must cease their dangerous brinksmanship.
https://orinocotribune.com/neo-nazis-ac ... 00-troops/
Like our old friend Anax concluded, "Ukrainian Nationalism is Nazism". Thank US policy for that, proof positive that capitalists will do whatever it takes, no matter how vile, to preserve their suzerainty.
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Biden-Scholz Talks: Energy Expert Explains Why Germany Will Never Join US in Ending Nord Stream 2
20 hours ago
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project is seen on a pipe at the Chelyabinsk pipe-rolling plant in Chelyabinsk, Russia, February 26, 2020. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo - Sputnik International, 1920, 08.02.2022
© REUTERS / Maxim Shemetov
US President Joe Biden pledged to nix Nord Stream 2 if Russia invades Ukraine during his Monday meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said that Washington and Berlin are aligned in their positions, but didn't cite suspending the pipeline as a probable measure. Moscow has repeatedly shredded the invasion scenario as groundless.
"Nord Stream 2 is a reality and sooner or later will be getting certification from the German and EU energy regulators", says Dr Mamdouh G. Salameh, international oil economist and visiting professor of energy economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London. "It is first and foremost a viable economic project. If it was certified in last September, it would have helped alleviate Europe’s ongoing energy crisis".
The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline runs under the Baltic Sea from western Russia to north-eastern Germany. It is designed to deliver 55 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas per year to Europe, thus doubling the original Nord Stream capacity to a total of 110 bcm.
Biden and his advisers have long been looking for an excuse to continue their opposition to the pipeline under the false pretext that it will tighten Russia’s grip on Europe’s energy security, according to Salameh. He notes that the ongoing political fuss around Ukraine is just a pretext to try to axe the project. However, the overwhelming majority of Europeans and the whole world know that Washington's motivation is to sell US liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe, which is more expensive than pipeline gas, according to the professor.
US President Ronald Reagan talks with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 1984 in Washington.
© AP Photo / Barry Thumma
The United States has a long and failed history of opposing Soviet and now Russian oil and gas pipelines dating back to the 1960s. The Reagan administration in the 1980s tried to halt the USSR's West Siberian pipeline (“Brotherhood”) aimed at transporting Soviet natural gas to Central and Western Europe through Ukraine. In December 1981, the Reagan administration introduced sanctions preventing US companies from exporting oil and gas technologies to the Soviet Union. In June 1982, these sanctions were expanded to Europe. However, West Germany, France, and the UK opposed Washington's initiative, forcing the White House to lift sanctions against European and American companies participating in the project in November 1982.
Salameh forecasts that Germany and the EU might exclude any sanctions on Russian energy supplies or Nord Stream 2 so as to avoid a complete halt of Russian gas supplies.
Three Reasons Why Berlin Won't Abandon Nord Stream 2"Were the United States to try to end Nord Stream 2 and exert pressure on Germany and Europe to follow suit, Germany will never oblige and will lead fierce opposition inside the EU against such action", says the economist. "This will seriously harm transatlantic unity and damage US relations with Germany".
Germany has good reasons to withstand Washington's pressure to halt Nord Stream 2, according to Salameh. Firstly, Nord Stream 2 cost €9.5 billion ($10.6 billion) to build, with roughly half of this sum being financed by a European consortium of companies including OMV (Austria), Wintershall Dea (Germany), Engie (France), Uniper (Germany), and Shell (UK). The energy expert explains that if Berlin nixes the project, it will deal a substantial blow to European energy giants and will sink over 150 major German companies which were involved in the construction of the pipeline.
Secondly, if Berlin stops the project it will be a major loser in economic and energy terms, according to Salameh: "Germany depends on Russia for 60% of its natural gas and oil needs", he stresses.
Thirdly, Europe’s energy crisis and shortages of natural gas and LNG supplies is likely to continue throughout 2022 and probably far beyond with gas and LNG prices remaining high. However, the entirety of LNG exports from the United States, Qatar, and Australia could hardly replace the almost 200 billion cubic metres per annum (bcm/y) piped by Russia to the EU in addition to an estimated 15-16 million tons a year (mt/y) of LNG, according to the energy expert. To complicate matters even further, Europe has a limited LNG import capacity. This makes ramp-ups of LNG imports quite useless, particularly if they are needed to replace Russia’s almost 40% share of the European gas market.
"Only Russia can satisfy the EU’s gas demand", says Salameh. "However, Russia isn’t going to ship additional gas supplies to the EU until [the] Nord Stream [2] gas pipeline is certified. The energy balance of power between the EU and Russia has shifted decisively in favour of Russia. By increasing its gas exports to China, Russia is telling the EU that it isn’t dependent on the European gas market for its gas exports. It has a far bigger market in China".
(more...)
https://sputniknews.com/20220208/biden- ... 59146.html
To be sure a self-serving piece from Sputnik, which does not in any way take away from those three very good reasons.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Across the U.S., protests demand ‘No war on Russia and Donbass!’
February 10, 2022 Struggle - La Lucha
Baltimore
On Feb. 5, anti-war and community organizations took to the streets across the United States in a united demand to the Biden administration: No war on Russia!
It was a crucial moment of visible opposition to the rapid U.S./NATO war buildup that has marked the first weeks of 2022.
An ad hoc coalition of anti-imperialist organizations, including the Socialist Unity Party and Struggle-La Lucha newspaper, Solidarity with Novorossiya and Antifascists in Ukraine, longtime Minneapolis antiwar activist Alan Dale, Women Against Military Madness, the Communist Workers League and Workers Voice Socialist Movement first put out the call for “National Days of Action Feb. 4-12: No War on Russia and Donbass! U.S./NATO Out of Ukraine!”
“Biden claims that there is an imminent threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” says the call to action. “But the real invasion threat stems from U.S.-allied Ukraine against the independent Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, near Russia’s western border.
“Washington and its NATO partners have been pushing Ukraine’s government to invade Donbass, hoping to provoke a response from Russia that can cover further NATO expansion. Ukraine has deployed 125,000 troops [now more than 150,000] to the ceasefire zone, including battalions of neo-Nazis, armed with NATO weapons.
“Poor and working people are wracked with crisis after crisis here at home. … We need a struggle to end racism and poverty, not another criminal war abroad!”
The national call was endorsed by the Anti-War Committee, Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, International League of Peoples’ Struggle – U.S. chapter, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Peoples Power Assembly, Moratorium Now Coalition, Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice and others.
Shortly after, Code Pink: Women for Peace made its own call for a national day for “negotiations, not war” with Russia on Saturday, Feb. 5. Other anti-war formations, including the ANSWER Coalition, Peace Action, United National Antiwar Coalition, Veterans for Peace and International Action Center, also mobilized.
In many cities, the groups joined forces for united anti-war activities.
New York City
New York City
‘Bring the troops home’
In New York City, the anti-imperialist coalition organized a speak-out Feb. 5 at Columbus Circle. Hundreds of fact sheets were distributed to passersby while protesters chanted: “Hands off Russia! Hands off Donbass! Bring the troops home!”
At the speak-out, activists explained that the U.S. and NATO pose the real invasion threat to the Eastern European region. They also contrasted the massive flood of U.S. weapons to Ukraine in recent weeks with the Biden administration’s failure to provide promised N95 masks to people here during the omicron COVID surge.
Speakers included Johnnie Stevens of Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST NYC), Michaela Martinazzi of NY Community Action Project (NYCAP) and International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), Teri Kay of Communist Workers League and Greg Butterfield of Solidarity with Novorossiya and Antifascists in Ukraine.
The protesters then held a small but spirited march down Broadway to join the rally called by Code Pink at Times Square. The group entered chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, NATO has got to go,” helping to set a militant tone for the second event.
Bill Dores spoke at the Times Square rally representing Struggle-La Lucha. He said, “The health care system is collapsing, millions are facing eviction, people are drowning in student debt, Congress can’t pass the Build Back Better Act – but they have endless money for war and destruction. Because only war and destruction can preserve the domination of Wall Street and the U.S. dollar in the world economy. And they’re willing to risk global destruction for that purpose.”
Other speakers included Margaret Kimberley of Black Alliance for Peace and Larry Holmes of Workers World Party.
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
‘Fight fascism and white supremacy’
In Los Angeles, a broad coalition of anti-war forces rallied at the downtown Federal Building.
John Parker, candidate for U.S. Senate in California representing the Socialist Unity Party and Peace and Freedom Party, spoke about his recent visit to Honduras as part of a solidarity delegation to celebrate the inauguration of leftist President Xiomara Castro. He described the parallels between the people’s struggles against fascism and white supremacy under the U.S.-backed coup regimes in Honduras and Ukraine.
“The regime created by the coup in Ukraine in 2014 with U.S. support bans communist and socialist organizations, but they allow Nazi collaborators to be lauded. The FBI finally admitted that some of the white supremacists who were in Charlottesville in 2017 went to Ukraine for training. Then they come back here and attack us. That’s the link, and we have to explain it to people here.”
Organizers from Parker’s Senate campaign said they plan to distribute more fact sheets about the U.S./NATO war danger as they hold neighborhood outreach events.
San Diego
In San Diego, Socialist Unity Party activists visited several locations to distribute fact sheets and talk to organizers about the importance of building the anti-war struggle, including at San Diego State University, Malcolm X Library, Black Resource Center, World Beat Cultural Center, City Heights Library and the Centro Cultural de la Raza.
Baltimore
A rally and car caravan drew about 30 protesters in Baltimore. Bright green signs declared, “Banks and Big Oil profit from Pentagon wars” and “Money for healthcare, not for fascists and war profiteers!”
Despite frigid temperatures, 70 people came out in Minneapolis to demand “No war on Russia” at the call of Minnesota Peace Action Coalition, Anti-War Committee, Veterans for Peace, Women Against Military Madness and others.
The protesters then joined with hundreds of others marching to demand justice for Amir Locke, a young Black man slain by Minneapolis police days before.
Two actions were held in New Orleans. The Workers Voice Socialist Movement held a mass leaflet distribution. “Whether it’s at bus stops, grocery store parking lots, or barber shops, we need to get the word out: We workers have no interest in another bloody war for the rich,” the group explained.
At Congo Square, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, ANSWER Coalition, the Communist Party of Louisiana and others rallied against war on Russia.
Protests were held in dozens of other cities Feb. 5, including Washington, D.C.; Des Moines, Iowa; Topsham, Maine; Kansas City, Missouri; and Missoula, Montana.
In Detroit, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice are planning a rush-hour protest on Friday, Feb. 11. Visit the Facebook event page for details.
With reports from Sharon Black in Baltimore, John Parker in Los Angeles, Greg Butterfield in New York and Gloria Verdieu in San Diego.
SLL photos: Sharon Black, Maggie Vascassenno, Greg Butterfield
https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... d-donbass/
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FROM VIETNAM TO UKRAINE: THE US LIES TO IGNITE ITS WARS
Feb 9, 2022 , 10:13 a.m.
The alleged "Russian threat" is used as an excuse to place as much NATO military equipment as possible near Russia's borders (Photo: Sputnik)
Since the end of World War II, the United States has been involved in many foreign wars. Between the years 1992 and 2017 alone , it accumulates the staggering figure of 188 military interventions. To make these wars famous and persuade the public to accept them, the United States often lies and exaggerates about "military threats" from other countries, and uses them as an excuse to attack sovereign territories. This is what the so-called false flag operations are based on.
Next, we will review some cases that show how, throughout its history, the United States invented incidents that became pretexts for wars.
THE FALSE ATTACK THAT TRIGGERED THE US AGGRESSION IN VIETNAM
A prominent example of Washington's global and deliberate lies was the plotting to start the Vietnam War, which ultimately turned into a national catastrophe for the US. In August 1964, the US government claimed that its destroyer ships had been attacked by torpedo boats from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam while on a "hydrographic survey" mission in the Gulf of Tonkin. This led to the full US military involvement in the Vietnam War.
Many decades after losing the conflict, in 2005 , the US National Security Agency published a report admitting that there was a high probability that there were no Vietnam warships in the vicinity of US warships. .
The price of the American lie about the events in the Gulf of Tonkin was a colossal loss of life . Vietnam lost about 1.4 million military personnel, and another 2 million people were civilian casualties. Americans lost 58,000 people, while an additional 100,000 ex-military people subsequently committed suicide, giving the name to the famous "Vietnamese syndrome".
THE CASE OF NAYIRAH AND THE GULF WAR
In October 1990, a young Kuwaiti woman, Nayirah, tearfully complained to the US Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers break into a Kuwaiti hospital at gunpoint, remove babies from their incubators and leave them alone. die in the cold of the ground. This testimony reinforced the "humanitarian" dimension of the US Gulf War.
The false testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl became one of the reasons for the escalation of the Gulf War (Photo: File)
It was this speech by Nayirah, it is believed, that broke American public opinion and gave supporters of the war with Iraq a fragile preponderance in the Senate in January 1991. Only after the war was it revealed that this whole story about babies that they died on the ground was a fiction orchestrated by the political marketing company Hill & Knowlton and that the young “witness”, daughter of the former Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, was never in such a hospital.
POWELL'S LIES ABOUT IRAQ AT THE UN
In September 2002, a report by journalists Michael Gordon and Judith Miller claimed that Iraq was " trying to acquire nuclear weapons " by purchasing "aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges." This article was cited by several senior officials. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and others used the aluminum tube mentioned in the report to exaggerate the threat of nuclear weapons and convey to the outside world that "America must take immediate action.” Half a year later, in March 2003, the United States unilaterally launched the Iraq War on the grounds that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and other reasons.
On February 5, 2003, a month before the invasion, Colin Powell spoke at the UN Security Council justifying the need to launch a new war against Iraq. In his speech, Powell produced a test tube of "unknown substances" as "evidence," accusing Iraq's "biochemical weapons" of causing "enormous damage."
Until the end of the Iraq War, the United States did not find the so-called "weapons of mass destruction". In 2020, then-President Donald Trump exposed the big lie . He accused Powell on social media of being "a very stubborn man who dragged the United States into a disastrous war in the Middle East (...) Didn't Powell say that Iraq has 'weapons of mass destruction'? It turned out that Iraq did not, but we launched the war."
" IRAN IS A NUCLEAR THREAT"
The United States tried to mislead the entire world with its statements about the nuclear threat from Iran. In 2018, former President Trump announced his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, more precisely, from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear program. He also said that he would immediately sign a document on "highest level sanctions" against Iran and referred to the country as the main sponsor of international terrorism. "We have evidence ... that the abandonment of the nuclear weapons program by the Iranian regime was false," the US president said.
There is only one nuclear power in the Middle East, and it is Israel, which is not subject to any control since it does not adhere to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran has signed. Amid secrecy, the Zionist entity is estimated to have a stockpile of 75 to 400 nuclear warheads , plus enough plutonium to build hundreds more. Israel also produces tritium, a radioactive gas with which it manufactures new generation nuclear weapons.
Trump's decision to withdraw from the JCPOA was illegal, illegitimate and undermined the system of international agreements. That and the subsequent assassination of General Soleimani ordered by himself were about to open the way to war. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and especially Trump's former national security aide John Bolton, were supporters of radical approaches toward Iran. Tehran responded to the assassination of Soleimani by no longer accepting the limits on uranium enrichment provided for by the agreement signed in 2015 by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (USA, France, UK, Russia, China) plus Germany.
Iran, although it does not have nuclear weapons, has a military response capacity that other countries intervened by the US/NATO did not have at the time of being attacked. Hence, the US government could not avoid taking a proper blow for its actions, when Iran successfully attacked US military targets in response to Soleimani's death.
THE REALITY: MOSCOW IS THE LAST INTERESTED IN A WAR WITH UKRAINE
In recent months, statements have been heard in Kiev and in the West about the threat of a Russian attack on Ukraine. The Western media collaborates by constantly distorting the facts about the alleged imminent attack, talking about a build-up of Russian troops (without specifying that they are Russian forces moving on Russian territory) and cultivating Russophobia internationally. Among the many motivations for inventing this scenario is to increase tension in order to interfere in the dialogue and the search for common ground between Kiev and Moscow, which has the objective of resolving the conflict in Donbass.
However, attempts to present Russia in a negative light due to the situation in Ukraine have become too obvious. State Department spokesman Ned Price, in a briefing for journalists, said that Russian special services plan to shoot a video simulating a Ukrainian military attack on Russian territory. This would be the justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When a journalist insisted that he show proof of that accusation, Price ended by responding: "The source of this is the intelligence that we declassified." Basically, he invited the journalist to trust the government that he lied in all the cases we reviewed above.
The New York Times had previously "reported" that Russia had such plans, citing US officials and intelligence sources. None of the media sources provided direct evidence that such a plan actually exists or explained exactly how they found out about it.
Soldiers from the US 2nd Cavalry Regiment prepare to move to Romania from Germany, loading Stryker fighting vehicles. Wednesday, February 9, 2022 (Photo: Michael Probst / AP)
Moscow has repeatedly rejected the idea of starting a war with Ukraine, such statements are used as an excuse to place as much NATO military equipment as possible near the borders of the Russian Federation. This is demonstrated by the US and NATO weapons and the countless advisers that have flooded Ukraine and some other states close to the Russian borders. Washington also has a military presence near the Russian coast, adding to tension in the Black Sea region.
The United States has invented foreign threats and created panic for decades. His formula of false flags may temporarily justify any war in superficial eyes, but, as reality shows, it is impossible to live on lies forever.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/de ... us-guerras
Google Translator
Don't think the US is intent upon war, though it wishes to keep this possibility alive, even though the actual necessaries: soldiers, tanks, etc, currently and maybe soon to be deployed are naught but a token, which if actually committed to full on combat with Russia would be totally overwhelmed by mere numbers alone leaving aside Russia's growing technical superiority. It is a bluff, with a numerous and varied 'target audience'. They ain't fooling the Russians who can see what I can see, the Russian concern is future conflicts and the existential threat of being surrounded by NATO short and mid-range nukes. The big boys of the EU make supportive noises but you're not seeing Leopard tanks lining up on the border either. Be assured, if some sort of false flag or minor incursion by the Uke Nazis in Donbass elicits a proportional Russian response the Germans will blow it off as not rating an 'invasion' and therefore not nixing Nord Stream II, which their industry desperately wants. But the stenographers of the State Dept report whatever ravings of the day come out of DC without flinching, it's their job. And so a wide swath of the US public believes all of this hokum. It matter not at all what side of the bogus 'ideological divide' the source is, other than some partisan flavoring the essential warmongering will be the same. Some politicians may not even believe it but will never say so for fear of being accused of being "soft on communism"(really!). Besides, it never hurts to support your local 'defense' industry'(the check WILL be in the mail). And so the current regime will declare victory and chalk up a desperately needed political win by doing not much more than running it's chops when the promised invasion fails to materialize and the Rs cannot do more than grumble. If there is some sort of Russian reaction that the propagandists can gin up the dreaded sanctions will be invoked and declared a victory. In truth the effectiveness of sanctions is 'past sell date', there ain't much more that can be deployed with effect against Russia as China has made clear that it has Russia's back against US aggression.
February 10, 2022 Struggle - La Lucha
Baltimore
On Feb. 5, anti-war and community organizations took to the streets across the United States in a united demand to the Biden administration: No war on Russia!
It was a crucial moment of visible opposition to the rapid U.S./NATO war buildup that has marked the first weeks of 2022.
An ad hoc coalition of anti-imperialist organizations, including the Socialist Unity Party and Struggle-La Lucha newspaper, Solidarity with Novorossiya and Antifascists in Ukraine, longtime Minneapolis antiwar activist Alan Dale, Women Against Military Madness, the Communist Workers League and Workers Voice Socialist Movement first put out the call for “National Days of Action Feb. 4-12: No War on Russia and Donbass! U.S./NATO Out of Ukraine!”
“Biden claims that there is an imminent threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” says the call to action. “But the real invasion threat stems from U.S.-allied Ukraine against the independent Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, near Russia’s western border.
“Washington and its NATO partners have been pushing Ukraine’s government to invade Donbass, hoping to provoke a response from Russia that can cover further NATO expansion. Ukraine has deployed 125,000 troops [now more than 150,000] to the ceasefire zone, including battalions of neo-Nazis, armed with NATO weapons.
“Poor and working people are wracked with crisis after crisis here at home. … We need a struggle to end racism and poverty, not another criminal war abroad!”
The national call was endorsed by the Anti-War Committee, Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, International League of Peoples’ Struggle – U.S. chapter, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Peoples Power Assembly, Moratorium Now Coalition, Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice and others.
Shortly after, Code Pink: Women for Peace made its own call for a national day for “negotiations, not war” with Russia on Saturday, Feb. 5. Other anti-war formations, including the ANSWER Coalition, Peace Action, United National Antiwar Coalition, Veterans for Peace and International Action Center, also mobilized.
In many cities, the groups joined forces for united anti-war activities.
New York City
New York City
‘Bring the troops home’
In New York City, the anti-imperialist coalition organized a speak-out Feb. 5 at Columbus Circle. Hundreds of fact sheets were distributed to passersby while protesters chanted: “Hands off Russia! Hands off Donbass! Bring the troops home!”
At the speak-out, activists explained that the U.S. and NATO pose the real invasion threat to the Eastern European region. They also contrasted the massive flood of U.S. weapons to Ukraine in recent weeks with the Biden administration’s failure to provide promised N95 masks to people here during the omicron COVID surge.
Speakers included Johnnie Stevens of Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST NYC), Michaela Martinazzi of NY Community Action Project (NYCAP) and International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), Teri Kay of Communist Workers League and Greg Butterfield of Solidarity with Novorossiya and Antifascists in Ukraine.
The protesters then held a small but spirited march down Broadway to join the rally called by Code Pink at Times Square. The group entered chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, NATO has got to go,” helping to set a militant tone for the second event.
Bill Dores spoke at the Times Square rally representing Struggle-La Lucha. He said, “The health care system is collapsing, millions are facing eviction, people are drowning in student debt, Congress can’t pass the Build Back Better Act – but they have endless money for war and destruction. Because only war and destruction can preserve the domination of Wall Street and the U.S. dollar in the world economy. And they’re willing to risk global destruction for that purpose.”
Other speakers included Margaret Kimberley of Black Alliance for Peace and Larry Holmes of Workers World Party.
Los Angeles
Los Angeles
‘Fight fascism and white supremacy’
In Los Angeles, a broad coalition of anti-war forces rallied at the downtown Federal Building.
John Parker, candidate for U.S. Senate in California representing the Socialist Unity Party and Peace and Freedom Party, spoke about his recent visit to Honduras as part of a solidarity delegation to celebrate the inauguration of leftist President Xiomara Castro. He described the parallels between the people’s struggles against fascism and white supremacy under the U.S.-backed coup regimes in Honduras and Ukraine.
“The regime created by the coup in Ukraine in 2014 with U.S. support bans communist and socialist organizations, but they allow Nazi collaborators to be lauded. The FBI finally admitted that some of the white supremacists who were in Charlottesville in 2017 went to Ukraine for training. Then they come back here and attack us. That’s the link, and we have to explain it to people here.”
Organizers from Parker’s Senate campaign said they plan to distribute more fact sheets about the U.S./NATO war danger as they hold neighborhood outreach events.
San Diego
In San Diego, Socialist Unity Party activists visited several locations to distribute fact sheets and talk to organizers about the importance of building the anti-war struggle, including at San Diego State University, Malcolm X Library, Black Resource Center, World Beat Cultural Center, City Heights Library and the Centro Cultural de la Raza.
Baltimore
A rally and car caravan drew about 30 protesters in Baltimore. Bright green signs declared, “Banks and Big Oil profit from Pentagon wars” and “Money for healthcare, not for fascists and war profiteers!”
Despite frigid temperatures, 70 people came out in Minneapolis to demand “No war on Russia” at the call of Minnesota Peace Action Coalition, Anti-War Committee, Veterans for Peace, Women Against Military Madness and others.
The protesters then joined with hundreds of others marching to demand justice for Amir Locke, a young Black man slain by Minneapolis police days before.
Two actions were held in New Orleans. The Workers Voice Socialist Movement held a mass leaflet distribution. “Whether it’s at bus stops, grocery store parking lots, or barber shops, we need to get the word out: We workers have no interest in another bloody war for the rich,” the group explained.
At Congo Square, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, ANSWER Coalition, the Communist Party of Louisiana and others rallied against war on Russia.
Protests were held in dozens of other cities Feb. 5, including Washington, D.C.; Des Moines, Iowa; Topsham, Maine; Kansas City, Missouri; and Missoula, Montana.
In Detroit, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice are planning a rush-hour protest on Friday, Feb. 11. Visit the Facebook event page for details.
With reports from Sharon Black in Baltimore, John Parker in Los Angeles, Greg Butterfield in New York and Gloria Verdieu in San Diego.
SLL photos: Sharon Black, Maggie Vascassenno, Greg Butterfield
https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... d-donbass/
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FROM VIETNAM TO UKRAINE: THE US LIES TO IGNITE ITS WARS
Feb 9, 2022 , 10:13 a.m.
The alleged "Russian threat" is used as an excuse to place as much NATO military equipment as possible near Russia's borders (Photo: Sputnik)
Since the end of World War II, the United States has been involved in many foreign wars. Between the years 1992 and 2017 alone , it accumulates the staggering figure of 188 military interventions. To make these wars famous and persuade the public to accept them, the United States often lies and exaggerates about "military threats" from other countries, and uses them as an excuse to attack sovereign territories. This is what the so-called false flag operations are based on.
Next, we will review some cases that show how, throughout its history, the United States invented incidents that became pretexts for wars.
THE FALSE ATTACK THAT TRIGGERED THE US AGGRESSION IN VIETNAM
A prominent example of Washington's global and deliberate lies was the plotting to start the Vietnam War, which ultimately turned into a national catastrophe for the US. In August 1964, the US government claimed that its destroyer ships had been attacked by torpedo boats from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam while on a "hydrographic survey" mission in the Gulf of Tonkin. This led to the full US military involvement in the Vietnam War.
Many decades after losing the conflict, in 2005 , the US National Security Agency published a report admitting that there was a high probability that there were no Vietnam warships in the vicinity of US warships. .
The price of the American lie about the events in the Gulf of Tonkin was a colossal loss of life . Vietnam lost about 1.4 million military personnel, and another 2 million people were civilian casualties. Americans lost 58,000 people, while an additional 100,000 ex-military people subsequently committed suicide, giving the name to the famous "Vietnamese syndrome".
THE CASE OF NAYIRAH AND THE GULF WAR
In October 1990, a young Kuwaiti woman, Nayirah, tearfully complained to the US Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers break into a Kuwaiti hospital at gunpoint, remove babies from their incubators and leave them alone. die in the cold of the ground. This testimony reinforced the "humanitarian" dimension of the US Gulf War.
The false testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl became one of the reasons for the escalation of the Gulf War (Photo: File)
It was this speech by Nayirah, it is believed, that broke American public opinion and gave supporters of the war with Iraq a fragile preponderance in the Senate in January 1991. Only after the war was it revealed that this whole story about babies that they died on the ground was a fiction orchestrated by the political marketing company Hill & Knowlton and that the young “witness”, daughter of the former Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, was never in such a hospital.
POWELL'S LIES ABOUT IRAQ AT THE UN
In September 2002, a report by journalists Michael Gordon and Judith Miller claimed that Iraq was " trying to acquire nuclear weapons " by purchasing "aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges." This article was cited by several senior officials. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and others used the aluminum tube mentioned in the report to exaggerate the threat of nuclear weapons and convey to the outside world that "America must take immediate action.” Half a year later, in March 2003, the United States unilaterally launched the Iraq War on the grounds that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and other reasons.
On February 5, 2003, a month before the invasion, Colin Powell spoke at the UN Security Council justifying the need to launch a new war against Iraq. In his speech, Powell produced a test tube of "unknown substances" as "evidence," accusing Iraq's "biochemical weapons" of causing "enormous damage."
Until the end of the Iraq War, the United States did not find the so-called "weapons of mass destruction". In 2020, then-President Donald Trump exposed the big lie . He accused Powell on social media of being "a very stubborn man who dragged the United States into a disastrous war in the Middle East (...) Didn't Powell say that Iraq has 'weapons of mass destruction'? It turned out that Iraq did not, but we launched the war."
" IRAN IS A NUCLEAR THREAT"
The United States tried to mislead the entire world with its statements about the nuclear threat from Iran. In 2018, former President Trump announced his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, more precisely, from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear program. He also said that he would immediately sign a document on "highest level sanctions" against Iran and referred to the country as the main sponsor of international terrorism. "We have evidence ... that the abandonment of the nuclear weapons program by the Iranian regime was false," the US president said.
There is only one nuclear power in the Middle East, and it is Israel, which is not subject to any control since it does not adhere to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran has signed. Amid secrecy, the Zionist entity is estimated to have a stockpile of 75 to 400 nuclear warheads , plus enough plutonium to build hundreds more. Israel also produces tritium, a radioactive gas with which it manufactures new generation nuclear weapons.
Trump's decision to withdraw from the JCPOA was illegal, illegitimate and undermined the system of international agreements. That and the subsequent assassination of General Soleimani ordered by himself were about to open the way to war. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and especially Trump's former national security aide John Bolton, were supporters of radical approaches toward Iran. Tehran responded to the assassination of Soleimani by no longer accepting the limits on uranium enrichment provided for by the agreement signed in 2015 by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (USA, France, UK, Russia, China) plus Germany.
Iran, although it does not have nuclear weapons, has a military response capacity that other countries intervened by the US/NATO did not have at the time of being attacked. Hence, the US government could not avoid taking a proper blow for its actions, when Iran successfully attacked US military targets in response to Soleimani's death.
THE REALITY: MOSCOW IS THE LAST INTERESTED IN A WAR WITH UKRAINE
In recent months, statements have been heard in Kiev and in the West about the threat of a Russian attack on Ukraine. The Western media collaborates by constantly distorting the facts about the alleged imminent attack, talking about a build-up of Russian troops (without specifying that they are Russian forces moving on Russian territory) and cultivating Russophobia internationally. Among the many motivations for inventing this scenario is to increase tension in order to interfere in the dialogue and the search for common ground between Kiev and Moscow, which has the objective of resolving the conflict in Donbass.
However, attempts to present Russia in a negative light due to the situation in Ukraine have become too obvious. State Department spokesman Ned Price, in a briefing for journalists, said that Russian special services plan to shoot a video simulating a Ukrainian military attack on Russian territory. This would be the justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When a journalist insisted that he show proof of that accusation, Price ended by responding: "The source of this is the intelligence that we declassified." Basically, he invited the journalist to trust the government that he lied in all the cases we reviewed above.
The New York Times had previously "reported" that Russia had such plans, citing US officials and intelligence sources. None of the media sources provided direct evidence that such a plan actually exists or explained exactly how they found out about it.
Soldiers from the US 2nd Cavalry Regiment prepare to move to Romania from Germany, loading Stryker fighting vehicles. Wednesday, February 9, 2022 (Photo: Michael Probst / AP)
Moscow has repeatedly rejected the idea of starting a war with Ukraine, such statements are used as an excuse to place as much NATO military equipment as possible near the borders of the Russian Federation. This is demonstrated by the US and NATO weapons and the countless advisers that have flooded Ukraine and some other states close to the Russian borders. Washington also has a military presence near the Russian coast, adding to tension in the Black Sea region.
The United States has invented foreign threats and created panic for decades. His formula of false flags may temporarily justify any war in superficial eyes, but, as reality shows, it is impossible to live on lies forever.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/de ... us-guerras
Google Translator
Don't think the US is intent upon war, though it wishes to keep this possibility alive, even though the actual necessaries: soldiers, tanks, etc, currently and maybe soon to be deployed are naught but a token, which if actually committed to full on combat with Russia would be totally overwhelmed by mere numbers alone leaving aside Russia's growing technical superiority. It is a bluff, with a numerous and varied 'target audience'. They ain't fooling the Russians who can see what I can see, the Russian concern is future conflicts and the existential threat of being surrounded by NATO short and mid-range nukes. The big boys of the EU make supportive noises but you're not seeing Leopard tanks lining up on the border either. Be assured, if some sort of false flag or minor incursion by the Uke Nazis in Donbass elicits a proportional Russian response the Germans will blow it off as not rating an 'invasion' and therefore not nixing Nord Stream II, which their industry desperately wants. But the stenographers of the State Dept report whatever ravings of the day come out of DC without flinching, it's their job. And so a wide swath of the US public believes all of this hokum. It matter not at all what side of the bogus 'ideological divide' the source is, other than some partisan flavoring the essential warmongering will be the same. Some politicians may not even believe it but will never say so for fear of being accused of being "soft on communism"(really!). Besides, it never hurts to support your local 'defense' industry'(the check WILL be in the mail). And so the current regime will declare victory and chalk up a desperately needed political win by doing not much more than running it's chops when the promised invasion fails to materialize and the Rs cannot do more than grumble. If there is some sort of Russian reaction that the propagandists can gin up the dreaded sanctions will be invoked and declared a victory. In truth the effectiveness of sanctions is 'past sell date', there ain't much more that can be deployed with effect against Russia as China has made clear that it has Russia's back against US aggression.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
FEBRUARY 11, 2022
The Resurgence of Nazism in Ukraine
BY LUKE BEIRNEF
During the Holocaust, over 1.2 million Jewish people were murdered by Nazis and their collaborators in Ukraine.
Ukraine is now experiencing a militarized resurgence of Nazism. In 2014, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia called Azov Battalion was formed to combat Russian separatism. It was then incorporated into the national guard, making it an official part of the Ukrainian military. There is no secrecy about the unit’s ideological commitments. Azov members wear uniforms adorned with SS symbols, swastikas, and patches celebrating Nazism. Its leader once stated that “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival.”
Azov Battalion has not only been legitimized by the Ukrainian government but has received support and training from both Canada and the United States. The unit’s officers have spoken publicly about the training they have received from Western military powers and the support that they have in Ukraine’s diaspora communities in North America.
In 2018, Canadian military officials specifically met with the battalion. They expressed concern only that their meeting might be exposed by the media, not because of the unit’s ideological commitments. As Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather was a Nazi collaborator in Ukraine during the Holocaust, there is absolutely no excuse for ignorance on this front.
American officials have also been photographed meeting with Azov members. The United States has supplied the unit and, in 2015, a bill was even modified by the Pentagon specifically to remove a clause that intended to prevent military funding and supplies from reaching Azov.
Neo-Nazism is not a fringe movement in Ukraine. It has been steadily gaining a foothold, working its way back into the state, and maintains a presence in both the police and military, the most immediate arms of the state’s repressive apparatus. Nazism in Ukraine is also enabling the strengthening of the ideology elsewhere. It has been alleged that an underground division of Azov recruits white supremacists youth across Europe and offers them military training. Azov allegedly collaborates with American neo-Nazis, and American neo-Nazis have even travelled to Ukraine to fight.
Imperialism is driving the current crisis in Ukraine. Russian officials have repeatedly stated that they are concerned with the constant expansion of NATO forces in Eastern Europe, and NATO forces have indeed been constantly expanding since the Cold War. The presence of Russian forces on Ukraine’s border is not an unprovoked development but it is also a demonstration of military strength grounded in the imperialist notion of territorial sovereignty and right to regional power.
Imperialism is a root cause and one which must be addressed – it is deep-seated and engrained in the very foundation of world powers. But, burgeoning Nazism should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind when watching this crisis unfold. In the throes of civil war, with growing siege mentality, the conditions are ripe for further acceleration.
In many ways, the emergence of Nazi rule in Germany was rooted in imperialism and colonialism. Nazi ideology was driven by logics which had been cultivated across Europe for centuries. That fact is worthy of attention when analyzing the Holocaust. Yet, the Holocaust itself was the greatest concentrated atrocity in human history. It was immediate and overwhelming. To allow the particular manifestation of colonial and imperial logics that drove it to emerge and flourish again is beyond heinous.
Right now, NATO is fueling a resurgence of Nazism in Ukraine for the sake of a stronger position in its struggle with Russia. This is absolutely inexcusable. In the shadow of the Holocaust, the briefest flutter of militant Nazism should be met with force.
All eyes are on Ukraine right now, but the most dangerous piece on the board is being ignored.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/11 ... n-ukraine/
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Sergei Naryshkin announced Ukraine's preparations for war
02/11/2022
Recrimination
The head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin , said that Ukraine is preparing for war on a full scale. To this end, a massive transfer of weapons, ammunition and military equipment is being carried out from bases in Europe, the United States and Great Britain, and a contingent of military advisers and instructors is also being increased. Also, according to the director of the SVR, the Security Service and the armed forces of Ukraine are preparing provocations on the line of demarcation. According to Naryshkin, a possible war is not in the interests of the peoples of the countries, and the consequences of the conflict will be difficult for all its participants.
If you look closely at the situation around Ukraine, it becomes clear that both sides are creating tension. Both sides are moving more and more contingents of troops, military equipment, weapons and ammunition to the border areas. At the same time, each side strongly accuses the other side of aggressive actions, placing the responsibility for a possible war on the opposite side.
There are reasons for this, stemming from the situation in the countries. The coronavirus pandemic has affected both Ukraine and Russia, causing a severe health crisis in these countries, the death rate jumped to record levels: in Russia in 2021, the death rate was 16.8 people per 1,000, and in Ukraine the figure reached 15.7. The result of this was a huge population decline: in Russia - more than a million people, in Ukraine - about 400 thousand. The official annual inflation in Ukraine was 10%, and in Russia- 8.4%. These are just a few indicators that characterize the state of affairs in the two countries, but they also make it clear that things are not going well in them. Under these conditions, despite internal problems, the governments of the states are going to inflate military hysteria and escalate tension in relations between countries.
The war between Ukraine and Russia, if it starts, will bring the working people nothing but ruin, starvation and death. Businessmen and politicians will benefit from it: the former will fill their pockets, while the latter will be able to increase their political weight.
https://www.rotfront.su/sergej-naryshki ... gotovke-u/
Google Translator
*********************************************
Austria resists including Nord Stream 2 in EU package of Russia sanctions
By Francois Murphy
*Austria's OMV is partner of Gazprom's in Nord Stream 2
*Minister: pipeline approval 'unthinkable' in event of war
*Sanctions pose no threat until gas flows, he says
*Nothing ruled out in EU sanctions discussions, he adds
VIENNA, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Austria is sticking with its opposition to including the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in a package of sanctions against Moscow that the European Union is preparing in the event Russia invades Ukraine, Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said on Friday.
Austrian oil company OMV (OMVV.VI) is one of Russian gas giant Gazprom's partners in the pipeline project connecting Russia to Germany, which has been completed but is not yet operational as it is awaiting German and EU regulatory approval. Austria owns 31.5% of OMV and backs the project.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday the United States would "bring an end" to the $11 billion project if Russia, which has amassed more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine, invades the country. Washington has long pushed against Nord Stream 2, saying it will only increase Europe's dependence on Russian gas.
"I once compared it to a car without an engine. It is not even operational," Schallenberg told Reuters in a brief telephone interview.
"To discuss it publicly in Europe as if it were a central element of a credible package of sanctions against Russia makes no sense to me logically," he added.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said earlier on Friday the Ukraine crisis would play a role in the approval process for the project, and Schallenberg argued sanctions would not be necessary.
"It is unthinkable that the German authorities would grant the technical approval for operations if it comes to an act of military aggression," Schallenberg said.
Austria would, however, "support a consensus" regarding sanctions on the project, he said, without elaborating.
In addition to depending on Russia for 80% of its natural gas, Vienna has a vested interest in Russia's banking sector as the country is Austrian lender Raiffeisen Bank International's (RBIV.VI) biggest market. Raiffeisen has a total exposure to Russia of 22.9 billion euros ($26.1 billion).
The European Union says it is ready to impose "massive" economic sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine, but officials say that depends on complex negotiations among member states that are far from complete.
Schallenberg said discussions were "very advanced" and nothing was ruled out, but he declined to provide details. There was a "strong consensus," he added.
"There is no question that if there is military aggression, there must be a clear, unified and strong response from the West," he said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/au ... 022-02-11/
It is one of the Ruling Ideas of capitalist society: "Money talks and bullshit walks."
The Resurgence of Nazism in Ukraine
BY LUKE BEIRNEF
During the Holocaust, over 1.2 million Jewish people were murdered by Nazis and their collaborators in Ukraine.
Ukraine is now experiencing a militarized resurgence of Nazism. In 2014, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia called Azov Battalion was formed to combat Russian separatism. It was then incorporated into the national guard, making it an official part of the Ukrainian military. There is no secrecy about the unit’s ideological commitments. Azov members wear uniforms adorned with SS symbols, swastikas, and patches celebrating Nazism. Its leader once stated that “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival.”
Azov Battalion has not only been legitimized by the Ukrainian government but has received support and training from both Canada and the United States. The unit’s officers have spoken publicly about the training they have received from Western military powers and the support that they have in Ukraine’s diaspora communities in North America.
In 2018, Canadian military officials specifically met with the battalion. They expressed concern only that their meeting might be exposed by the media, not because of the unit’s ideological commitments. As Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather was a Nazi collaborator in Ukraine during the Holocaust, there is absolutely no excuse for ignorance on this front.
American officials have also been photographed meeting with Azov members. The United States has supplied the unit and, in 2015, a bill was even modified by the Pentagon specifically to remove a clause that intended to prevent military funding and supplies from reaching Azov.
Neo-Nazism is not a fringe movement in Ukraine. It has been steadily gaining a foothold, working its way back into the state, and maintains a presence in both the police and military, the most immediate arms of the state’s repressive apparatus. Nazism in Ukraine is also enabling the strengthening of the ideology elsewhere. It has been alleged that an underground division of Azov recruits white supremacists youth across Europe and offers them military training. Azov allegedly collaborates with American neo-Nazis, and American neo-Nazis have even travelled to Ukraine to fight.
Imperialism is driving the current crisis in Ukraine. Russian officials have repeatedly stated that they are concerned with the constant expansion of NATO forces in Eastern Europe, and NATO forces have indeed been constantly expanding since the Cold War. The presence of Russian forces on Ukraine’s border is not an unprovoked development but it is also a demonstration of military strength grounded in the imperialist notion of territorial sovereignty and right to regional power.
Imperialism is a root cause and one which must be addressed – it is deep-seated and engrained in the very foundation of world powers. But, burgeoning Nazism should be at the forefront of everyone’s mind when watching this crisis unfold. In the throes of civil war, with growing siege mentality, the conditions are ripe for further acceleration.
In many ways, the emergence of Nazi rule in Germany was rooted in imperialism and colonialism. Nazi ideology was driven by logics which had been cultivated across Europe for centuries. That fact is worthy of attention when analyzing the Holocaust. Yet, the Holocaust itself was the greatest concentrated atrocity in human history. It was immediate and overwhelming. To allow the particular manifestation of colonial and imperial logics that drove it to emerge and flourish again is beyond heinous.
Right now, NATO is fueling a resurgence of Nazism in Ukraine for the sake of a stronger position in its struggle with Russia. This is absolutely inexcusable. In the shadow of the Holocaust, the briefest flutter of militant Nazism should be met with force.
All eyes are on Ukraine right now, but the most dangerous piece on the board is being ignored.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/11 ... n-ukraine/
**********************************************
Sergei Naryshkin announced Ukraine's preparations for war
02/11/2022
Recrimination
The head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin , said that Ukraine is preparing for war on a full scale. To this end, a massive transfer of weapons, ammunition and military equipment is being carried out from bases in Europe, the United States and Great Britain, and a contingent of military advisers and instructors is also being increased. Also, according to the director of the SVR, the Security Service and the armed forces of Ukraine are preparing provocations on the line of demarcation. According to Naryshkin, a possible war is not in the interests of the peoples of the countries, and the consequences of the conflict will be difficult for all its participants.
If you look closely at the situation around Ukraine, it becomes clear that both sides are creating tension. Both sides are moving more and more contingents of troops, military equipment, weapons and ammunition to the border areas. At the same time, each side strongly accuses the other side of aggressive actions, placing the responsibility for a possible war on the opposite side.
There are reasons for this, stemming from the situation in the countries. The coronavirus pandemic has affected both Ukraine and Russia, causing a severe health crisis in these countries, the death rate jumped to record levels: in Russia in 2021, the death rate was 16.8 people per 1,000, and in Ukraine the figure reached 15.7. The result of this was a huge population decline: in Russia - more than a million people, in Ukraine - about 400 thousand. The official annual inflation in Ukraine was 10%, and in Russia- 8.4%. These are just a few indicators that characterize the state of affairs in the two countries, but they also make it clear that things are not going well in them. Under these conditions, despite internal problems, the governments of the states are going to inflate military hysteria and escalate tension in relations between countries.
The war between Ukraine and Russia, if it starts, will bring the working people nothing but ruin, starvation and death. Businessmen and politicians will benefit from it: the former will fill their pockets, while the latter will be able to increase their political weight.
https://www.rotfront.su/sergej-naryshki ... gotovke-u/
Google Translator
*********************************************
Austria resists including Nord Stream 2 in EU package of Russia sanctions
By Francois Murphy
*Austria's OMV is partner of Gazprom's in Nord Stream 2
*Minister: pipeline approval 'unthinkable' in event of war
*Sanctions pose no threat until gas flows, he says
*Nothing ruled out in EU sanctions discussions, he adds
VIENNA, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Austria is sticking with its opposition to including the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in a package of sanctions against Moscow that the European Union is preparing in the event Russia invades Ukraine, Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said on Friday.
Austrian oil company OMV (OMVV.VI) is one of Russian gas giant Gazprom's partners in the pipeline project connecting Russia to Germany, which has been completed but is not yet operational as it is awaiting German and EU regulatory approval. Austria owns 31.5% of OMV and backs the project.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday the United States would "bring an end" to the $11 billion project if Russia, which has amassed more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine, invades the country. Washington has long pushed against Nord Stream 2, saying it will only increase Europe's dependence on Russian gas.
"I once compared it to a car without an engine. It is not even operational," Schallenberg told Reuters in a brief telephone interview.
"To discuss it publicly in Europe as if it were a central element of a credible package of sanctions against Russia makes no sense to me logically," he added.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said earlier on Friday the Ukraine crisis would play a role in the approval process for the project, and Schallenberg argued sanctions would not be necessary.
"It is unthinkable that the German authorities would grant the technical approval for operations if it comes to an act of military aggression," Schallenberg said.
Austria would, however, "support a consensus" regarding sanctions on the project, he said, without elaborating.
In addition to depending on Russia for 80% of its natural gas, Vienna has a vested interest in Russia's banking sector as the country is Austrian lender Raiffeisen Bank International's (RBIV.VI) biggest market. Raiffeisen has a total exposure to Russia of 22.9 billion euros ($26.1 billion).
The European Union says it is ready to impose "massive" economic sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine, but officials say that depends on complex negotiations among member states that are far from complete.
Schallenberg said discussions were "very advanced" and nothing was ruled out, but he declined to provide details. There was a "strong consensus," he added.
"There is no question that if there is military aggression, there must be a clear, unified and strong response from the West," he said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/au ... 022-02-11/
It is one of the Ruling Ideas of capitalist society: "Money talks and bullshit walks."
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Biden's national security adviser says Russia could invade Ukraine 'any day now'
By Donald Judd
Updated 9:43 AM ET, Sun February 13, 2022
Sullivan warns Russia could potentially invade Ukraine 'any day now'
(CNN)National security adviser Jake Sullivan issued a stark warning on Sunday that the United States believes Russia could launch an invasion of Ukraine this week, but is still holding out hope diplomacy can prevail.
Sullivan told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" that Russian forces are in a place where an invasion could take place before the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which end on February 20.
"We cannot perfectly predict the day, but we have now been saying for some time that we are in the window, and an invasion could begin, a major military action could begin by Russia in Ukraine any day now -- that includes this coming week, before the end of the Olympics," Sullivan told Tapper.
He added, "The way they have built up their forces, the way they have maneuvered things in place, makes it a distinct possibility there will be major military action very soon. And we are prepared to continue to work on diplomacy, but we are also prepared to respond in a united and decisive way with our allies and partners should Russia proceed."
Sullivan was speaking a day after President Joe Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin of "swift and severe costs" if he were to order an invasion of Ukraine.
The US has estimated that Russia has more than 100,000 troops near the Ukraine border, with thousands added just this week, according to an administration official. The US on Saturday moved some of its forces out of Ukraine and ordered the evacuation of most of its embassy staff from Ukraine. Sullivan said the US Embassy in Ukraine is "ready to complete the drawdown ... should that become necessary."
Sullivan on Friday had warned Americans in Ukraine to leave and that military action could begin with an aerial bombardment that could kill civilians.
He reiterated those calls to Tapper, saying that a military attack would likely begin with missile and bomb attacks.
"Those are never as precise as the army -- any army -- would like them to be. We don't even know how precise the Russian army would like them to be," Sullivan said. "Innocent civilians could be killed regardless of their nationality. It would then be followed by an onslaught of a ground force moving across the Ukrainian frontier. Again, where innocent civilians could get caught in the cross fire or trapped in places they could not move from. So that is why we are being so clear and direct to American citizens that while commercial transport options are still available, they should take advantage of them."
(more...)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/13/politics ... index.html
We've been hearing for weeks now that Russia has '100,000' troops on the border with Ukraine with more arriving damn near every day. So how many then? Most be the whole Russian army...Whatever, it sounds scary.
And speaking of scary, how about the inference that the Russians don't give a damn about 'collateral damage'? From a representation of the US government which has murdered many millions of civilians over the last 60 years...With a straight face...where do they get these zombies?
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US Sends B-52 Nuclear Bombers to UK Amid Ukraine Tensions
Ukraine crisis: American sends four B-52 long-range 'Stratofortress' bombers to UK. Feb. 12, 2022. | Photo: Twitter @jonathon793793
Published 12 February 2022 (20 hours 34 minutes ago)
The news comes to light at a time when relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the U.S., are experiencing a tension unseen since the Cold War.
As reported on Friday by the British newspaper The Telegraph, citing military sources, four U.S. B-52 long-range bombers landed Thursday at RAF Fairford (Royal Air Force Fairford, for short) in Gloucestershir, in the southwest of the United Kingdom.
This comes while the deployment of U.S. personnel had occurred two days earlier at the same base.
At the same time, U.S. officials stated that this Bomber Task Force mission is a joint military practice operation that had been planned for a long time.
The news comes to light at a time when relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the U.S., are experiencing a tension unseen since the Cold War.
The rising tensions are triggered by the hypothesis that the deployment of Russian forces on its territory near Ukraine is part of the preparation for a military invasion of Ukraine, an accusation that Moscow categorically denies.
Russia accuses the U.S. of inciting tensions near its western borders and has repeatedly asserted that Washington's accusations of an alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine serve as a “smokescreen” for the U.S. “military provocations” in Eastern Europe.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/US- ... -0006.html
Ya see how 'creative marketing' can take a routine object or affair and jack it into more screaming propaganda? Keep that drama coming...
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The inviolability of Minsk and de-escalation: Donetsk philosopher on new trends in geopolitics
What is the reason for the marked decrease in the belligerent rhetoric of the West against Russia, how will this affect the Donbass? Andrey Konovalov, an expert from the Izborsk Club, Donetsk philosopher, gave his opinion to Novorossiya news agency.
Over the past few days, the West has suddenly begun to reduce the degree of tension around Donbass. From the high offices of the United States, speeches were heard about returning to Minsk, as the only option for de-escalating the armed conflict.
Thus, at a briefing yesterday with the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken admitted that Ukraine could be ready to grant a special status for Donbass, if the sequence of implementation of the Minsk agreements is agreed.
Blinken also drew the attention of those present to the special role of Russia in this process, promising a reliable partnership.
"...if Russia is serious about implementing the Minsk agreements, I think it will find a strong partner in Ukraine, France and Germany to help it lead these efforts," the politician said.
IA "Novorossiya": What is the reason for Blinken's statement that the United States admits Ukraine's readiness to recognize the special status of Donbass?
Andrey Konovalov: The reason lies in the limited opportunities that the West really has now. A clear example that America no longer has the opportunity to simultaneously solve internal and external problems is Afghanistan, from which the Americans fled. The realization that the United States would not be able to pull Afghanistan financially, and that this was a waste of money, came long before American troops were removed from the country. The former President of America, Donald Trump, understood this, but only the current head of the United States, Joe Biden, decided to do this.
Today this process will expand. It will affect not only Ukraine, which is becoming a burden for the West, but a number of other EU countries, which are also financially fed by the United States. This situation is forcing the United States to actively look for various formats that repeat the fate of Afghanistan, but in a more favorable light for the Americans. That is, the image losses for the United States should not be the same as in Afghanistan.
At present, there are no more than 6-7 countries in Europe that are able, relying on their own strength, to somehow maintain the quality of life. All the rest maintained this standard of living at the expense of American injections, including through various funds.
I emphasize that the process, when the Americans begin to intensively shed ballast, will grow more and more. And Ukraine is the very ballast that needs to be thrown off. As US national security adviser Joe Sullivan said, Europe in the current environment is not a priority for America.
IA "Novorossiya": What are the primary problems facing the United States in your opinion?
А.К.: First of all, economic problems. There is a structural crisis in the USA, very high industrial inflation up to 25%, lack of resources. Domestic political problems - the issue of power between the four main power groups has not been resolved, there is a loss of military dominance in the world. America does not have the ability to simultaneously invest in its own industry and support all political projects outside the United States.
Something must be given up. And it is desirable to do this while saving face.
Therefore, Minsk for the Americans, as well as for the French, as the Putin-Makron press conference showed, is a kind of opportunity to save face and solve their domestic political, economic and military-technical problems.
IA "Novorossiya": Does the West have a common position on Minsk?
A.K.: She was and still is. But today the situation is changing dramatically in world politics, as stated by the leaders of Russia and China in a joint statement. And Minsk is only a special case of the old, one-dimensional, Western approach in world politics. But the world has already become multipolar and there is no getting away from it. Therefore, there is no single position regarding Minsk either in America or in Europe. Some Western politicians demand to punish Russia, accusing it of not fulfilling Minsk, others demand to force the Donbass, but no one Kiev. It is no coincidence that the head of Russia, Vladimir Putin, frankly said at a press conference that there were two military attempts to change the situation after the signing of Minsk, and no one guarantees that such an attempt will not be made by the West a third time. That is, for Putin, this is understandable.
IA "Novorossiya": How can Russia make changes in geopolitical processes, including in relation to Minsk?
A.K.: I believe that after the joint statement of Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, a new era of international relations was actually announced, where one pole represents a minority, which is the collective West led by the United States. On the other hand, these are cultures, civilizations that represent the majority.
First of all, China, India and Iran. I will note an interesting thing about the last player on the geopolitical map, Iran. The visit of the leader of this country to Russia took place two weeks before the official one. What has no analogues in the practice of international relations. It is no coincidence that Putin, before meeting with Biden during the pandemic, got on a plane and flew to Delhi. I believe that both with Iran and India there was an agreement on the provisions that we see today in the joint declaration of the Chinese and Russian leaders.
In the new trends of world politics, Putin will do everything possible to force the West (France and Germany) to comply with the Minsk agreements approved by the UN when solving existing problems, without involving the armed forces. Otherwise, if the West continues to unleash an escalation, the question of Ukraine's statehood will arise, that is, it will simply disappear from the world map.
I liked Putin's statement at a press conference about the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not like some points of the agreements. He said "like it or not like it, be patient my beauty." Written means to be done. This is the general line for today. Because the execution of Minsk is the end of the Kiev regime. It can be called differently: nationalist, Nazi, fascist, but all this terminology comes down to one term - Anti-Russia.
IA "Novorossiya": What about the issue that was raised in Russia earlier, about the recognition of the LDNR?
A.K.: I believe, based on what was stated at Putin's press conference that Kiev should fulfill Minsk, there will be no recognition of the republics. In this situation, there is a certain opinion on the part of the Russian leadership that the main and main instrument regarding the problems of Donbass will be forcing Ukraine to comply with Minsk.
IA "Novorossiya": Does this rule out the use of armed forces by Russia in the event of Ukraine's aggression against the inhabitants of Donbass?
А.К.: Doesn't rule it out. The implementation of Minsk may be the basis for the implementation of the most serious actions on the part of Russia. And if the West suddenly tries to close the issue of Minsk again by military means, the consequences for it will be catastrophic.
But war, in principle, is not ruled out, including by Putin. That is, all these geopolitical collisions that occur in the world correspond to the logic of dramaturgy - a loaded gun at the end of the act should fire. When it will fire is unknown. Now there is discord in Europe, and in America, and in Ukraine itself, where different power groups are guided by different players.
The problem is that the consolidated position that the West had yesterday is no longer there today. None of the Western groups in America or Europe can achieve anything independently, without the support of other power groups. Biden's recent attempts to unite at least two groups in the US to build a relatively logical position have come to nothing. The chasm between power groups is only widening, which is bringing nervousness into international relations. The inhabitants of the United States, who are not privy to the intricacies of political alignments, constantly hear such diametrically opposed statements from politicians that they can no longer perceive America as a kind of monolithic whole.
In principle, we in Donbass had the same illusion regarding the events of 2014. When we perceived Russia as a powerful and united power, but life forced us to look at it with slightly different eyes. We suddenly saw that within Russia there are various groups with different goals, and it is the balance of power of these groups that determines the line of conduct that the President of Russia is forced to pursue.
Prepared by Natalia Zalevskaya
https://novorosinform.org/nezyblemost-m ... 89351.html
Google Translator
Well, that was interesting...I dunno about the rhetoric being ratcheted down, doesn't seem like that on this end. And the 'take' on 'Minsk' is not the one I saw from Donbass seven years ago, wherein the progressive forces called the potential agreement a betrayal by Russia as the region would rejoin greater Ukraine as an autonomous region. But a lot of those people are gone now, some of the best of them assassinated by parties unknown. It's pretty clear that Russia will sacrifice the people of Donbass for a neutral, non-NATO Ukraine. I have been following this since 2014 and this is heartbreaking. If 'Minsk' is implemented we can expect considerable migration east from Donbass, and so the Nazis will get the ethnic cleansing they crave.
By Donald Judd
Updated 9:43 AM ET, Sun February 13, 2022
Sullivan warns Russia could potentially invade Ukraine 'any day now'
(CNN)National security adviser Jake Sullivan issued a stark warning on Sunday that the United States believes Russia could launch an invasion of Ukraine this week, but is still holding out hope diplomacy can prevail.
Sullivan told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" that Russian forces are in a place where an invasion could take place before the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which end on February 20.
"We cannot perfectly predict the day, but we have now been saying for some time that we are in the window, and an invasion could begin, a major military action could begin by Russia in Ukraine any day now -- that includes this coming week, before the end of the Olympics," Sullivan told Tapper.
He added, "The way they have built up their forces, the way they have maneuvered things in place, makes it a distinct possibility there will be major military action very soon. And we are prepared to continue to work on diplomacy, but we are also prepared to respond in a united and decisive way with our allies and partners should Russia proceed."
Sullivan was speaking a day after President Joe Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin of "swift and severe costs" if he were to order an invasion of Ukraine.
The US has estimated that Russia has more than 100,000 troops near the Ukraine border, with thousands added just this week, according to an administration official. The US on Saturday moved some of its forces out of Ukraine and ordered the evacuation of most of its embassy staff from Ukraine. Sullivan said the US Embassy in Ukraine is "ready to complete the drawdown ... should that become necessary."
Sullivan on Friday had warned Americans in Ukraine to leave and that military action could begin with an aerial bombardment that could kill civilians.
He reiterated those calls to Tapper, saying that a military attack would likely begin with missile and bomb attacks.
"Those are never as precise as the army -- any army -- would like them to be. We don't even know how precise the Russian army would like them to be," Sullivan said. "Innocent civilians could be killed regardless of their nationality. It would then be followed by an onslaught of a ground force moving across the Ukrainian frontier. Again, where innocent civilians could get caught in the cross fire or trapped in places they could not move from. So that is why we are being so clear and direct to American citizens that while commercial transport options are still available, they should take advantage of them."
(more...)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/13/politics ... index.html
We've been hearing for weeks now that Russia has '100,000' troops on the border with Ukraine with more arriving damn near every day. So how many then? Most be the whole Russian army...Whatever, it sounds scary.
And speaking of scary, how about the inference that the Russians don't give a damn about 'collateral damage'? From a representation of the US government which has murdered many millions of civilians over the last 60 years...With a straight face...where do they get these zombies?
***************************************************************
US Sends B-52 Nuclear Bombers to UK Amid Ukraine Tensions
Ukraine crisis: American sends four B-52 long-range 'Stratofortress' bombers to UK. Feb. 12, 2022. | Photo: Twitter @jonathon793793Published 12 February 2022 (20 hours 34 minutes ago)
The news comes to light at a time when relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the U.S., are experiencing a tension unseen since the Cold War.
As reported on Friday by the British newspaper The Telegraph, citing military sources, four U.S. B-52 long-range bombers landed Thursday at RAF Fairford (Royal Air Force Fairford, for short) in Gloucestershir, in the southwest of the United Kingdom.
This comes while the deployment of U.S. personnel had occurred two days earlier at the same base.
At the same time, U.S. officials stated that this Bomber Task Force mission is a joint military practice operation that had been planned for a long time.
The news comes to light at a time when relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the U.S., are experiencing a tension unseen since the Cold War.
The rising tensions are triggered by the hypothesis that the deployment of Russian forces on its territory near Ukraine is part of the preparation for a military invasion of Ukraine, an accusation that Moscow categorically denies.
Russia accuses the U.S. of inciting tensions near its western borders and has repeatedly asserted that Washington's accusations of an alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine serve as a “smokescreen” for the U.S. “military provocations” in Eastern Europe.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/US- ... -0006.html
Ya see how 'creative marketing' can take a routine object or affair and jack it into more screaming propaganda? Keep that drama coming...
**********************************************
The inviolability of Minsk and de-escalation: Donetsk philosopher on new trends in geopolitics
What is the reason for the marked decrease in the belligerent rhetoric of the West against Russia, how will this affect the Donbass? Andrey Konovalov, an expert from the Izborsk Club, Donetsk philosopher, gave his opinion to Novorossiya news agency.
Over the past few days, the West has suddenly begun to reduce the degree of tension around Donbass. From the high offices of the United States, speeches were heard about returning to Minsk, as the only option for de-escalating the armed conflict.
Thus, at a briefing yesterday with the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken admitted that Ukraine could be ready to grant a special status for Donbass, if the sequence of implementation of the Minsk agreements is agreed.
Blinken also drew the attention of those present to the special role of Russia in this process, promising a reliable partnership.
"...if Russia is serious about implementing the Minsk agreements, I think it will find a strong partner in Ukraine, France and Germany to help it lead these efforts," the politician said.
IA "Novorossiya": What is the reason for Blinken's statement that the United States admits Ukraine's readiness to recognize the special status of Donbass?
Andrey Konovalov: The reason lies in the limited opportunities that the West really has now. A clear example that America no longer has the opportunity to simultaneously solve internal and external problems is Afghanistan, from which the Americans fled. The realization that the United States would not be able to pull Afghanistan financially, and that this was a waste of money, came long before American troops were removed from the country. The former President of America, Donald Trump, understood this, but only the current head of the United States, Joe Biden, decided to do this.
Today this process will expand. It will affect not only Ukraine, which is becoming a burden for the West, but a number of other EU countries, which are also financially fed by the United States. This situation is forcing the United States to actively look for various formats that repeat the fate of Afghanistan, but in a more favorable light for the Americans. That is, the image losses for the United States should not be the same as in Afghanistan.
At present, there are no more than 6-7 countries in Europe that are able, relying on their own strength, to somehow maintain the quality of life. All the rest maintained this standard of living at the expense of American injections, including through various funds.
I emphasize that the process, when the Americans begin to intensively shed ballast, will grow more and more. And Ukraine is the very ballast that needs to be thrown off. As US national security adviser Joe Sullivan said, Europe in the current environment is not a priority for America.
IA "Novorossiya": What are the primary problems facing the United States in your opinion?
А.К.: First of all, economic problems. There is a structural crisis in the USA, very high industrial inflation up to 25%, lack of resources. Domestic political problems - the issue of power between the four main power groups has not been resolved, there is a loss of military dominance in the world. America does not have the ability to simultaneously invest in its own industry and support all political projects outside the United States.
Something must be given up. And it is desirable to do this while saving face.
Therefore, Minsk for the Americans, as well as for the French, as the Putin-Makron press conference showed, is a kind of opportunity to save face and solve their domestic political, economic and military-technical problems.
IA "Novorossiya": Does the West have a common position on Minsk?
A.K.: She was and still is. But today the situation is changing dramatically in world politics, as stated by the leaders of Russia and China in a joint statement. And Minsk is only a special case of the old, one-dimensional, Western approach in world politics. But the world has already become multipolar and there is no getting away from it. Therefore, there is no single position regarding Minsk either in America or in Europe. Some Western politicians demand to punish Russia, accusing it of not fulfilling Minsk, others demand to force the Donbass, but no one Kiev. It is no coincidence that the head of Russia, Vladimir Putin, frankly said at a press conference that there were two military attempts to change the situation after the signing of Minsk, and no one guarantees that such an attempt will not be made by the West a third time. That is, for Putin, this is understandable.
IA "Novorossiya": How can Russia make changes in geopolitical processes, including in relation to Minsk?
A.K.: I believe that after the joint statement of Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, a new era of international relations was actually announced, where one pole represents a minority, which is the collective West led by the United States. On the other hand, these are cultures, civilizations that represent the majority.
First of all, China, India and Iran. I will note an interesting thing about the last player on the geopolitical map, Iran. The visit of the leader of this country to Russia took place two weeks before the official one. What has no analogues in the practice of international relations. It is no coincidence that Putin, before meeting with Biden during the pandemic, got on a plane and flew to Delhi. I believe that both with Iran and India there was an agreement on the provisions that we see today in the joint declaration of the Chinese and Russian leaders.
In the new trends of world politics, Putin will do everything possible to force the West (France and Germany) to comply with the Minsk agreements approved by the UN when solving existing problems, without involving the armed forces. Otherwise, if the West continues to unleash an escalation, the question of Ukraine's statehood will arise, that is, it will simply disappear from the world map.
I liked Putin's statement at a press conference about the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not like some points of the agreements. He said "like it or not like it, be patient my beauty." Written means to be done. This is the general line for today. Because the execution of Minsk is the end of the Kiev regime. It can be called differently: nationalist, Nazi, fascist, but all this terminology comes down to one term - Anti-Russia.
IA "Novorossiya": What about the issue that was raised in Russia earlier, about the recognition of the LDNR?
A.K.: I believe, based on what was stated at Putin's press conference that Kiev should fulfill Minsk, there will be no recognition of the republics. In this situation, there is a certain opinion on the part of the Russian leadership that the main and main instrument regarding the problems of Donbass will be forcing Ukraine to comply with Minsk.
IA "Novorossiya": Does this rule out the use of armed forces by Russia in the event of Ukraine's aggression against the inhabitants of Donbass?
А.К.: Doesn't rule it out. The implementation of Minsk may be the basis for the implementation of the most serious actions on the part of Russia. And if the West suddenly tries to close the issue of Minsk again by military means, the consequences for it will be catastrophic.
But war, in principle, is not ruled out, including by Putin. That is, all these geopolitical collisions that occur in the world correspond to the logic of dramaturgy - a loaded gun at the end of the act should fire. When it will fire is unknown. Now there is discord in Europe, and in America, and in Ukraine itself, where different power groups are guided by different players.
The problem is that the consolidated position that the West had yesterday is no longer there today. None of the Western groups in America or Europe can achieve anything independently, without the support of other power groups. Biden's recent attempts to unite at least two groups in the US to build a relatively logical position have come to nothing. The chasm between power groups is only widening, which is bringing nervousness into international relations. The inhabitants of the United States, who are not privy to the intricacies of political alignments, constantly hear such diametrically opposed statements from politicians that they can no longer perceive America as a kind of monolithic whole.
In principle, we in Donbass had the same illusion regarding the events of 2014. When we perceived Russia as a powerful and united power, but life forced us to look at it with slightly different eyes. We suddenly saw that within Russia there are various groups with different goals, and it is the balance of power of these groups that determines the line of conduct that the President of Russia is forced to pursue.
Prepared by Natalia Zalevskaya
https://novorosinform.org/nezyblemost-m ... 89351.html
Google Translator
Well, that was interesting...I dunno about the rhetoric being ratcheted down, doesn't seem like that on this end. And the 'take' on 'Minsk' is not the one I saw from Donbass seven years ago, wherein the progressive forces called the potential agreement a betrayal by Russia as the region would rejoin greater Ukraine as an autonomous region. But a lot of those people are gone now, some of the best of them assassinated by parties unknown. It's pretty clear that Russia will sacrifice the people of Donbass for a neutral, non-NATO Ukraine. I have been following this since 2014 and this is heartbreaking. If 'Minsk' is implemented we can expect considerable migration east from Donbass, and so the Nazis will get the ethnic cleansing they crave.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
FEBRUARY 12, 2022 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
US war hysteria over Ukraine won’t gel
Breakaway Donbass region prepares for attack by Ukrainian extreme nationalist forces emboldened by western support
The two takeaways out of the French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Moscow and his six-hour long talks with President Vladimir Putin have been the assurance held out by the latter that Russian forces would not ramp up the crisis near Ukraine’s borders — “there would be no deterioration or escalation” — and second, an agreement that Russia would pull troops out of Belarus at the end of exercises taking place currently near Ukraine’s northern borders.
The very fact of the French side putting such sensitive details in the public domain suggests that Moscow sees nothing wrong in it. Moscow has simply clarified that the redeployment of troops out of Belarus is not to be construed as any “deal” with France.
The paradox is, instead of working on these crucial assurances from Moscow, Washington has since chosen to travel in the opposite direction with the White House orchestrating a war hysteria through last week. President Biden and his advisor Jake Sullivan have conjured up an apocalyptic scenario.
The White House claims it has intelligence but dodges details. All we have are some satellite imagery from Max (which works for US intelligence). The patchy details have led to Biden speculating about a world war!
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is creating diplomatic synergy out of the war hysteria. On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an audacious bid to hustle the US’ QUAD partners to endorse Washington’s allegations of Russia’s “aggression” — although the group has nothing to do with European security issues.
Again on Friday, Biden with a stroke of his pen effectively commandeered the foreign reserves of Afghanistan to the tune of 7 billion-plus dollars. According to the New York Times, “It is highly unusual for the United States government to commandeer a foreign country’s assets on domestic soil.”
But Biden is getting away with such high-handed behaviour that might be deemed illegal or immoral or cynical when the Beltway is caught up in a frenzy over an incoming war with Russia! To be sure, all through Friday, the White House strove to keep the headlines on “Russian aggression.” Biden held a videoconference with the European allies while Sullivan networked with the EU bureaucrats in Brussels to coordinate on “preparations to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia should it choose military escalation.”
Sullivan also gave a press briefing at the White House to highlight that “we are in the window when an invasion [by Russia] could begin at any time should Vladimir Putin decide to order it. I will not comment on the details of our intelligence information. But I do want to be clear: It could begin during the Olympics.”
So, that’s it. Sullivan’s latest version is that Russia may invade Ukraine before Feb. 20. The timeline has been tweaked, as the prognosis a week ago was that such an invasion was “imminent” — and still earlier, that it would happen no sooner than deep frost set in so that tank manoeuvring on Ukrainian terrain would become feasible!
Yet, isn’t it amazing that at such a tumultuous time in modern history when Biden visualises a potential world war, he sent away his state secretary on a 6-day tour of Asia-Pacific? In fact, at the moment, Blinken is shuttling somewhere in the tropics — between Suva (Fiji) and Honolulu (Hawaii)!
What do we make out of this charade of war hysteria? Three things can be said. First, the US feels a constant need to rally European allies who are sceptical about the Russia bogey, and the war hysteria helps. Second, Washington is overtly keen to severe Russia’s relations with European countries where energy cooperation is a template — especially, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Three, most important, the war hysteria provides the alibi to step up US deployments in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. The size of the NATO deployment on Russia’s western borders already stands at 175,000 troops! Advanced weapons have been deployed too. (Eight nuclear-capable heavy B-52 members are deployed to a forward base in the UK.) Over and above, US has established an air bridge to ferry weapons to Ukraine. As of Friday, more than 15 military flights landed in Ukraine with 1200 tonnes of materials.
Quite obviously, this war hysteria cannot be sustained indefinitely. Something has to give way. Now, the big question is: What if Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine, as Putin reportedly assured Macron as recently as on Monday?
Evidently, the US predicament is two-fold: While war hysteria helps to rally the European allies, Washington also cannot afford to let the Europeans dominate the dialogue track with Moscow lest it created a dynamics of its own. Washington has a trust deficit with Macron who is a passionate advocate of European initiatives on European security issues.
Macron is in record that Europe’s security cannot be assured without Russia’s security! Equally, there is panic in the Beltway that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also heading for Moscow on Tuesday. And, Macron is expected to have a call with Putin today! Curiously, Biden decided that he too should have a call with Putin later today!
Above all, the UK too has entered the diplomatic fray. All indications are that Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Friday was substantive. (Interestingly, the UK Chief of Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin who accompanied Wallace separately met with his Russian counterpart General Valery Gerasimov.)
Wallace described his talks as “frank and constructive.” The MOD readout in London was couched in a restrained tone as if UK is impervious to Biden and Sullivan’s war hysteria. Importantly, it highlighted Shoigu’s assurance to Wallace that Russia will not invade Ukraine.
Notably, the Russian readout too sought to put the accent on “urgent measures to ensure security guarantees” to Russia. It said, “Army General S. K. Shoigu pointed out that the military and political situation in Europe had worsened considerably due to tension whipped up around Ukraine and NATO’s military presence near the Russian borders.”
How far this pantomime on the diplomatic stage continues is unclear. There is the lurking danger that extreme nationalist forces who call the shots in Kiev, egged on by Washington, may feel emboldened to create new facts on the ground in Donbass. This was precisely how the Georgian war had erupted in 2008.
Indeed, a new level of criticality has appeared lately in Donbass with large scale mobilisation by Ukrainian forces and reports of western mercenaries in the guise of military advisors. The US intentions remain unclear.
A conflict in Donbass will put the Kremlin in dilemma. If Russia intervenes in Donbass to keep at bay the rampaging radical Ukrainian nationalist forces, Washington will certainly use it as alibi to impose harsh sanctions to isolate Russia and severely damage Moscow’s ties with European countries.
On the contrary, Russia will have no option but to intervene, as hundreds of thousands of Russian passport holders live in Donbass. (Some put the figure around 700,000.) The radical neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists are known to be notoriously anti-Russian and all sorts of atrocities — even genocide — may take place.
The likelihood of conflict erupting in Donbass remains high. Biden may get a splendid opportunity to salvage his reputation after the debacle in Afghanistan. He has an eye, for sure, on the mid-term elections in November and the bipartisan consensus supportive of tough line on “Putin’s Russia” also helps.
Fundamentally, the US has no intentions of giving Russia the security guarantee it needs. For, NATO’s eastward expansion and encirclement of Russia happens to be Washington’s core agenda. And, since 2014, that agenda has been so far advanced that there is no turning point now. It must be carried forward to its logical conclusion.
The Washington elites realise that the US lacks the capability to take on China and Russia simultaneously. A paradigm shift is needed. In the US calculus, forcing Putin to abdicate after a humiliating retreat over Ukraine and a severe weakening of Russian military power only can bring about the strategic rollback of Russia’s resurgence and its alliance with China.
It is, therefore, an imperative first step on the pathway to an eventual epochal confrontation with China, which poses a formidable challenge to America’s global hegemony in the 21st century.
https://www.indianpunchline.com/us-war- ... -wont-gel/
Well, of those '175,000' troops most of them are soldiers of the bordering states whose offensive capability is questionable at best. Wake me when the Leopard tanks are lined up on the 'Eastern Front'...
And the grand strategic aspect while a strong motivation is not the only one. Stopping the operation of Nord Stream II would be a big win justifying all:causing Europe to buy expensive Yankee natural gas and severing economic ties of Europe with Russia, a preliminary necessity for the grand strategic goal.(Russia, by it's recent announcement of a gas deal with China makes clear that they are not direly in need of those European sales so the premise that shuttering the pipeline will motivate Russia holds no water.
And of course there's Biden's domestic political bacon, badly in need of being saved, which might be facilitated by assuming the 'War-Time President & Tough Guy' mantle, the bogus-ity of which is no impediment in this 'Information Age'.
US war hysteria over Ukraine won’t gel
Breakaway Donbass region prepares for attack by Ukrainian extreme nationalist forces emboldened by western support
The two takeaways out of the French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Moscow and his six-hour long talks with President Vladimir Putin have been the assurance held out by the latter that Russian forces would not ramp up the crisis near Ukraine’s borders — “there would be no deterioration or escalation” — and second, an agreement that Russia would pull troops out of Belarus at the end of exercises taking place currently near Ukraine’s northern borders.
The very fact of the French side putting such sensitive details in the public domain suggests that Moscow sees nothing wrong in it. Moscow has simply clarified that the redeployment of troops out of Belarus is not to be construed as any “deal” with France.
The paradox is, instead of working on these crucial assurances from Moscow, Washington has since chosen to travel in the opposite direction with the White House orchestrating a war hysteria through last week. President Biden and his advisor Jake Sullivan have conjured up an apocalyptic scenario.
The White House claims it has intelligence but dodges details. All we have are some satellite imagery from Max (which works for US intelligence). The patchy details have led to Biden speculating about a world war!
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is creating diplomatic synergy out of the war hysteria. On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an audacious bid to hustle the US’ QUAD partners to endorse Washington’s allegations of Russia’s “aggression” — although the group has nothing to do with European security issues.
Again on Friday, Biden with a stroke of his pen effectively commandeered the foreign reserves of Afghanistan to the tune of 7 billion-plus dollars. According to the New York Times, “It is highly unusual for the United States government to commandeer a foreign country’s assets on domestic soil.”
But Biden is getting away with such high-handed behaviour that might be deemed illegal or immoral or cynical when the Beltway is caught up in a frenzy over an incoming war with Russia! To be sure, all through Friday, the White House strove to keep the headlines on “Russian aggression.” Biden held a videoconference with the European allies while Sullivan networked with the EU bureaucrats in Brussels to coordinate on “preparations to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia should it choose military escalation.”
Sullivan also gave a press briefing at the White House to highlight that “we are in the window when an invasion [by Russia] could begin at any time should Vladimir Putin decide to order it. I will not comment on the details of our intelligence information. But I do want to be clear: It could begin during the Olympics.”
So, that’s it. Sullivan’s latest version is that Russia may invade Ukraine before Feb. 20. The timeline has been tweaked, as the prognosis a week ago was that such an invasion was “imminent” — and still earlier, that it would happen no sooner than deep frost set in so that tank manoeuvring on Ukrainian terrain would become feasible!
Yet, isn’t it amazing that at such a tumultuous time in modern history when Biden visualises a potential world war, he sent away his state secretary on a 6-day tour of Asia-Pacific? In fact, at the moment, Blinken is shuttling somewhere in the tropics — between Suva (Fiji) and Honolulu (Hawaii)!
What do we make out of this charade of war hysteria? Three things can be said. First, the US feels a constant need to rally European allies who are sceptical about the Russia bogey, and the war hysteria helps. Second, Washington is overtly keen to severe Russia’s relations with European countries where energy cooperation is a template — especially, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Three, most important, the war hysteria provides the alibi to step up US deployments in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. The size of the NATO deployment on Russia’s western borders already stands at 175,000 troops! Advanced weapons have been deployed too. (Eight nuclear-capable heavy B-52 members are deployed to a forward base in the UK.) Over and above, US has established an air bridge to ferry weapons to Ukraine. As of Friday, more than 15 military flights landed in Ukraine with 1200 tonnes of materials.
Quite obviously, this war hysteria cannot be sustained indefinitely. Something has to give way. Now, the big question is: What if Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine, as Putin reportedly assured Macron as recently as on Monday?
Evidently, the US predicament is two-fold: While war hysteria helps to rally the European allies, Washington also cannot afford to let the Europeans dominate the dialogue track with Moscow lest it created a dynamics of its own. Washington has a trust deficit with Macron who is a passionate advocate of European initiatives on European security issues.
Macron is in record that Europe’s security cannot be assured without Russia’s security! Equally, there is panic in the Beltway that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also heading for Moscow on Tuesday. And, Macron is expected to have a call with Putin today! Curiously, Biden decided that he too should have a call with Putin later today!
Above all, the UK too has entered the diplomatic fray. All indications are that Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Friday was substantive. (Interestingly, the UK Chief of Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin who accompanied Wallace separately met with his Russian counterpart General Valery Gerasimov.)
Wallace described his talks as “frank and constructive.” The MOD readout in London was couched in a restrained tone as if UK is impervious to Biden and Sullivan’s war hysteria. Importantly, it highlighted Shoigu’s assurance to Wallace that Russia will not invade Ukraine.
Notably, the Russian readout too sought to put the accent on “urgent measures to ensure security guarantees” to Russia. It said, “Army General S. K. Shoigu pointed out that the military and political situation in Europe had worsened considerably due to tension whipped up around Ukraine and NATO’s military presence near the Russian borders.”
How far this pantomime on the diplomatic stage continues is unclear. There is the lurking danger that extreme nationalist forces who call the shots in Kiev, egged on by Washington, may feel emboldened to create new facts on the ground in Donbass. This was precisely how the Georgian war had erupted in 2008.
Indeed, a new level of criticality has appeared lately in Donbass with large scale mobilisation by Ukrainian forces and reports of western mercenaries in the guise of military advisors. The US intentions remain unclear.
A conflict in Donbass will put the Kremlin in dilemma. If Russia intervenes in Donbass to keep at bay the rampaging radical Ukrainian nationalist forces, Washington will certainly use it as alibi to impose harsh sanctions to isolate Russia and severely damage Moscow’s ties with European countries.
On the contrary, Russia will have no option but to intervene, as hundreds of thousands of Russian passport holders live in Donbass. (Some put the figure around 700,000.) The radical neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists are known to be notoriously anti-Russian and all sorts of atrocities — even genocide — may take place.
The likelihood of conflict erupting in Donbass remains high. Biden may get a splendid opportunity to salvage his reputation after the debacle in Afghanistan. He has an eye, for sure, on the mid-term elections in November and the bipartisan consensus supportive of tough line on “Putin’s Russia” also helps.
Fundamentally, the US has no intentions of giving Russia the security guarantee it needs. For, NATO’s eastward expansion and encirclement of Russia happens to be Washington’s core agenda. And, since 2014, that agenda has been so far advanced that there is no turning point now. It must be carried forward to its logical conclusion.
The Washington elites realise that the US lacks the capability to take on China and Russia simultaneously. A paradigm shift is needed. In the US calculus, forcing Putin to abdicate after a humiliating retreat over Ukraine and a severe weakening of Russian military power only can bring about the strategic rollback of Russia’s resurgence and its alliance with China.
It is, therefore, an imperative first step on the pathway to an eventual epochal confrontation with China, which poses a formidable challenge to America’s global hegemony in the 21st century.
https://www.indianpunchline.com/us-war- ... -wont-gel/
Well, of those '175,000' troops most of them are soldiers of the bordering states whose offensive capability is questionable at best. Wake me when the Leopard tanks are lined up on the 'Eastern Front'...
And the grand strategic aspect while a strong motivation is not the only one. Stopping the operation of Nord Stream II would be a big win justifying all:causing Europe to buy expensive Yankee natural gas and severing economic ties of Europe with Russia, a preliminary necessity for the grand strategic goal.(Russia, by it's recent announcement of a gas deal with China makes clear that they are not direly in need of those European sales so the premise that shuttering the pipeline will motivate Russia holds no water.
And of course there's Biden's domestic political bacon, badly in need of being saved, which might be facilitated by assuming the 'War-Time President & Tough Guy' mantle, the bogus-ity of which is no impediment in this 'Information Age'.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
French Foreign Minister Says Nothing Points to Moscow's Decision to Invade Ukraine
16 hours ago
PARIS (Sputnik) - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian on Monday said that while there is evidence for a possible Russian incursion into Ukraine, there is no indication that Moscow has made a decision of this sort.
"Is there all the evidence for a major offensive of the Russian troops in Ukraine? Yes, there is, it is possible. This can happen swiftly," le Drian said in a televised appearance of broadcaster France 5, highlighting that nonetheless "today nothing points out" that Russia has made the decision to invade Ukraine.
The minister did not specify what "evidence" he was talking about.
In the past few months, Western countries and Ukraine have accused Russia of deploying additional troops along the Ukrainian border in alleged preparation for invasion. Moscow has repeatedly denied these allegations by saying that it has no intention of invading Ukraine, while stressing that it has the right to move its troops within its national territory.
Russia has also expressed concerns over NATO military activity near its borders and ongoing military support to Ukraine, including an increase in the number of Western military advisers in the breakaway Donbas region and increased arms deliveries to Kiev.
https://sputniknews.com/20220214/french ... 34970.html
***************************************
German CP, No to war on Donbass
2/15/22 8:55 AM
Statement of the German Communist Party
No to war in Donbass!
In recent weeks, the aggressive policy of NATO, the USA, and the German government against the Russian Federation has been intensified. More and more troops from NATO countries, including the Bundeswehr, are stationed in the immediate vicinity of the Russian border, in Poland, and in the Baltic countries, while Russia, in the view of NATO and the German government, is not allowed to station its troops in its own country. Due to this policy of the West, the danger of war in Europe is increasing considerably.
Western war propaganda and war policy is exacerbated by the fact that Russia is accused of planning a war against Ukraine. In fact, however, it is Ukraine that has been waging a war with Western support for nearly eight years against the Donbass, where people rose up in 2014 against a Western-backed coup by nationalist and pro-fascist forces. In this war, week after week, people in the Donbass’s People’s Republics are being injured and killed, and housing and infrastructure are being destroyed. One of the goals pursued by NATO and the USA in supporting this coup is continuing the military encirclement of Russia. This is being consistently pursued even today, despite all the offers made by the Russian Federation concerning negotiations on common security. Therefore, it is not surprising that Ukraine is supported by the EU and NATO, especially the German government, in its complete sabotage of the Minsk agreements, which provide for direct negotiations between Ukraine and the People’ s Republics of the Donbass on a political solution to the conflict. Contrary to what is often claimed by NATO and the German government, the Russian Federation is not a party to the conflict in these negotiations, but has the role of a guarantor state on the same level as Germany and France.
In recent months, the arms deliveries of some NATO countries to Ukraine have increased considerably; accordingly, Ukraine’s provocations towards the Donbass are being intensified again. According to statements by the German government, Germany has also supported the coup government in Kiev with several billion US dollars since 2014.
In this situation, our comrades from the Donetsk People’s Republic declare:
*The Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic urges all sister parties and organizations to raise protest against Kiev’s fomenting of war and to draw the attention of the international public to the social misery produced by imperialism.
*No to the war in the Donbass!
*Yes to the self-determination of the DPR and LPR!
(http://wpered.su/2022/02/10/zayavlenie- ... nbasse-en/)
We join this call for action and declare our solidarity with our comrades in the Donbass. The people in the Donbass must be able to decide their own fate in peace.
We demand from the German government:
- No arms deliveries and no military aid of any kind to Ukraine.
- An end to political support for the Kiev regime.
- Out of NATO – peace with Russia and China!
http://solidnet.org/article/German-CP-S ... Bundestag/
****************************************
Blackwater is in Donbas with the Azov Battalion
February 15, 2022
By Manlio Dinucci – Feb 1, 2022
The CIA and MI6 are reorganizing NATO stay-behind networks in Eastern Europe. If after the Second World War they relied on former Nazis to fight the Soviets, they still support neo-Nazi groups against the Russians. There is no obvious reason for this. The Nazis were omnipresent in the 1940s, but they are very few today and only exist thanks to the help of the Anglo-Saxons.
The phone call between President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelensky “did not go well,” wrote CNN in its headlines. “Biden warned his Ukrainian counterpart that a Russian attack may be imminent, saying that an invasion was now virtually certain, once the ground had frozen later in February,” wrote CNN. “Zelensky urged his American counterpart to ‘calm down the messaging.'” As the Ukrainian president takes a more cautious stance, Ukrainian armed forces are massing in Donbas, near the area of Donetsk and Lugansk, inhabited by Russian populations.
According to reports from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, obscured by our mainstream media, which only speaks about the Russian deployment, Ukrainian Army and National Guard units, amounting to about 150,000 troops, are positioned here. They are armed and trained, and thus effectively commanded, by US-NATO military advisers and instructors.
From 1991 to 2014, according to the US Congressional Research Service, the US provided Ukraine with $4 billion in military assistance, which was added to by over $2.5 billion after 2014, plus over a billion provided by the NATO Trust Fund in which Italy also participates. This is only part of the military investments made by the major NATO powers in Ukraine. Great Britain, for example, concluded various military agreements with Kiev, investing among other things £1.7 billion to the strengthening of Ukraine’s naval capabilities. This program provides for the arming of Ukrainian ships with British missiles, the joint production of eight missile ships, the construction of naval bases on the Black Sea and also on the Sea of Azov between Ukraine, Crimea, and Russia. In this framework, Ukrainian military spending, which in 2014 was equivalent to 3% of GDP, increased to 6% in 2022, corresponding to more than $11 billion.
In addition to the US-NATO military investments in Ukraine, there is the $10 billion plan being implemented by Erik Prince, founder of the private US military company Blackwater, now renamed Academi, which has been supplying mercenaries to the CIA, Pentagon, and State Department for covert operations (including torture and assassinations), earning billions of dollars. Erik Prince’s plan, revealed by a Time Magazine investigation [1], is to create a private army in Ukraine through a partnership between the Lancaster 6 company, with which Prince has supplied mercenaries in the Middle East and Africa, and the main Ukrainian intelligence office controlled by the CIA. It is not known, of course, what would be the tasks of the private army created in Ukraine by the founder of Blackwater, certainly with funding from the CIA. However, it can be expected that it would conduct covert operations in Europe, Russia, and other regions from its base in Ukraine.
Against this background, it is particularly alarming that the Russian Defense Minister Shoygu denounced that in the Donetsk region there are “private US military companies that are preparing a provocation with the use of unknown chemicals.” This could be the spark that causes the detonation of a war in the heart of Europe: a chemical attack against Ukrainian civilians in Donbas, immediately attributed to the Russians of Donetsk and Lugansk, which would be attacked by the preponderant Ukrainian forces already deployed in the region, to force Russia to intervene militarily in their defense.
In the front line, ready to slaughter the Russians in the Donbas, is the Azov Battalion, promoted to a special forces regiment, trained and armed by the US and NATO, distinguished for its ferocity in attacks on the Russian populations of Ukraine. The Azov Battalion, which recruits neo-Nazis from all over Europe under its flag, traced from that of SS Das Reich, is commanded by its founder Andrey Biletsky, promoted to colonel [2]. It is not only a military unit, but an ideological and political movement, of which Biletsky is the charismatic leader, especially for the youth wing educated to hate the Russians with his book The Words of the White Führer.
Notes:
[1] « Exclusive : Documents Reveal Erik Prince’s $10 Billion Plan to Make Weapons and Create a Private Army in Ukraine », Simon Shuster, Time, July 7, 2021.
[2] « Le vivier Otan de néonazis en Ukraine », par Manlio Dinucci, Traduction Marie-Ange Patrizio, Il Manifesto (Italie) , Réseau Voltaire, 23 juillet 2019.
Featured image: Demonstration of the Azov battalion, in the center on the platform, its führer: Andriy Biletsky.
(Voltairenet.org) with additional translation by Orinoco Tribune
https://orinocotribune.com/blackwater-i ... battalion/
Yesterday's local paper featured a photo of a 76 year old woman getting rifle training from an AZOV instructor, described as 'special forces' but in fact fascist with a punitive mission. In Donbass they are referred to as "punishers".
*******************************************
The 'Frozen Ground Theory' And Other Ukraine War Nonsense
Since October 30 2021 first U.S. and then other 'western' media have been filled with predictions of a Russian war against the Ukraine.
Today David Ignatius, the CIA's spokesperson resident at the Washington Post, makes another dire claim:
The world will be watching in horror if Russia invades Ukraine this week — but just watching. Ukraine will fight alone, as Russian tanks roll across the flat, frozen terrain; precision bombs destroy key targets near Kyiv and other cities; and the country becomes a killing field unlike anything Europe has seen since 1945.
...
U.S. military officials say Putin has sent orders to his commanders to prepare for possible battle by the middle of this week, when the ground in central Ukraine will have frozen more than a foot deep, allowing rapid tank advance.
I found that 'frozen terrain' bullshit annoying enough to look up the weather forecast for Donetzk.
The day temperatures this week will be consistently above zero degree centigrade. Some mild night frost might freeze over the grass but little below that. It has been the same last week in Donetzk as well as in Kiev, Moscow and Minsk. There is certainly no frozen ground anywhere between those cities.
Alexander Marquardt, currently in the Ukraine on behalf of CNN, confirms that observation:
Alexander Marquardt @MarquardtA 12:14 UTC · Feb 14, 2022
I’m not taking measurements but if you’re into the frozen ground theory, it’s been mostly above freezing for the week I’ve been in central and eastern Ukraine and all the mud I’ve stepped in is squishy.
Ignatius, and the U.S. military officials he claims to have spoken to, are bullshitting and deceiving the public.
They also lack an understanding of geography and history. Their 'frozen ground theory' is based on reading about the famous Pripyat Marshes (also written Pripet or Pinsk) that are hard to cross with tanks unless the ground is deeply frozen:
Known as Pripjet-Sümpfe by the Germans, the wetlands were dreaded by the Wehrmacht troops. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Third Reich armies skirted the wetlands, passing through the north or south of it. However, after the debacle of the Eastern Front in 1944, many retreating units such as the 7th, 35th, 134th and 292nd Infantry Divisions had to cut across the marshy areas. They often needed to build tracks with logs over which they could pull light loads in horse-drawn vehicles.
The Pripyat Marshes do hinder warfare unless the ground is deeply frozen. But they are in southern Belarus and north-west Ukraine.
The grounds in south-east Ukraine, where a war would most likely play out, are much firmer. They can be crossed by tanks at any time without much problems.
Nonsense is also what Melinda Haring, the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, is producing. Three days ago she predicted a dire weekend:
Well the weekend has come and is gone. Power and heat in Kiev are on and not one of her predicted incidents has happened. Haring's Twitter profile says that she is:
Trying to nudge history in the right direction.
Nudge, nudge, nudge ... one lie after the other.
Haring has coauthored the Atlantic Council's script, Biden and Ukraine: A strategy for the new administration, which proposed an aggressive anti-Russian plan which the U.S. is now playing along. It was paid for by a Ukrainian oligarch:
Finally, think tanks were contacted more than 1,100 times by Ukraine’s agents, and more than half of these were directed at one in particular: the Atlantic Council. This extraordinary outreach included multiple meetings with Atlantic Council scholars, like ex-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, who has advocated for a more militarized approach to Russia amid the Ukraine crisis. Herbst recently told NPR that President Joe Biden should “send more weapons to Ukraine now. By all means, get additional U.S. and NATO forces up along Russia’s border.” Herbst was also at the center of an Atlantic Council kerfuffle last March, when he and 21 other Atlantic Council staff signed a letter opposing the work of two Atlantic Council colleagues who suggested a restraint-based approach to dealing with Russia.
The Atlantic Council has also launched “UkraineAlert” which publishes daily pieces on deterring Russia. A recent article, “Survey: Western public backs stronger support for Ukraine against Russia,” notes the survey in question was commissioned by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and Yalta European Strategy, which Pinchuk founded; however, the article does not mention that the foundation is a large contributor to the Atlantic Council, donating $250,000-499,000 a year, or that Pinchuk himself — the second wealthiest man in Ukraine — sits on the international advisory board of the Atlantic Council.
Russia will not attack the Ukraine. If the Ukraine attacks the rebellious Donbas region Russia will likely wait until Ukrainian 'progress' is visible for all to see to then let the Russian military take care of the aggressors by means of artillery and other stand-off weapons.
Today the Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his foreign and defense ministers who reported on recent 'western' responses to Russia's security demands:
The Eurasianist
@Russ_Warrior - 12:42 UTC · Feb 14, 2022
Breaking! President #Putin asked #Lavrov to provide the list of #Russia's responses, developed by the Foreign Ministry, to #US/#NATO rejection of Russian security proposals.
#Shoigu will then deliver the list of options developed by the Ministry of Defense.
Grumbling will be heard from the various 'western' military headquarters when Russia reveals and implements the 'military-technical measures' it had promised should the 'western' responses turn out to be insufficient as it now seems to be the case.
Except for more bullshit from clowns like Harding and Ignatius there will likely be nothing that the 'west' has to respond to those.
Posted by b on February 14, 2022 at 14:16 UTC | Permalink
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/02/t ... .html#more
*******************************************
Meanwhile, in Bizzarro World:
"Skeered 'im off, Joe Biden did!. USA! USA! Yep, that bastard commie gonna lose face alright! USA!" Of course Putin was a KGB officer during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and he sat on his hands at best if not actively betraying the Soviet Union.He has been dismantling all that the Soviet People had built as fast as his buddies can steal it. He tries to have it both was in his rhetoric only to not piss off the workers, very many of whom greatly regret the return of capitalism. But let's not let that get in the way of repurposed Cold War propaganda.
And if Zelensky was kidding we should ask who.
16 hours ago
PARIS (Sputnik) - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian on Monday said that while there is evidence for a possible Russian incursion into Ukraine, there is no indication that Moscow has made a decision of this sort.
"Is there all the evidence for a major offensive of the Russian troops in Ukraine? Yes, there is, it is possible. This can happen swiftly," le Drian said in a televised appearance of broadcaster France 5, highlighting that nonetheless "today nothing points out" that Russia has made the decision to invade Ukraine.
The minister did not specify what "evidence" he was talking about.
In the past few months, Western countries and Ukraine have accused Russia of deploying additional troops along the Ukrainian border in alleged preparation for invasion. Moscow has repeatedly denied these allegations by saying that it has no intention of invading Ukraine, while stressing that it has the right to move its troops within its national territory.
Russia has also expressed concerns over NATO military activity near its borders and ongoing military support to Ukraine, including an increase in the number of Western military advisers in the breakaway Donbas region and increased arms deliveries to Kiev.
https://sputniknews.com/20220214/french ... 34970.html
***************************************
German CP, No to war on Donbass
2/15/22 8:55 AM
Statement of the German Communist Party
No to war in Donbass!
In recent weeks, the aggressive policy of NATO, the USA, and the German government against the Russian Federation has been intensified. More and more troops from NATO countries, including the Bundeswehr, are stationed in the immediate vicinity of the Russian border, in Poland, and in the Baltic countries, while Russia, in the view of NATO and the German government, is not allowed to station its troops in its own country. Due to this policy of the West, the danger of war in Europe is increasing considerably.
Western war propaganda and war policy is exacerbated by the fact that Russia is accused of planning a war against Ukraine. In fact, however, it is Ukraine that has been waging a war with Western support for nearly eight years against the Donbass, where people rose up in 2014 against a Western-backed coup by nationalist and pro-fascist forces. In this war, week after week, people in the Donbass’s People’s Republics are being injured and killed, and housing and infrastructure are being destroyed. One of the goals pursued by NATO and the USA in supporting this coup is continuing the military encirclement of Russia. This is being consistently pursued even today, despite all the offers made by the Russian Federation concerning negotiations on common security. Therefore, it is not surprising that Ukraine is supported by the EU and NATO, especially the German government, in its complete sabotage of the Minsk agreements, which provide for direct negotiations between Ukraine and the People’ s Republics of the Donbass on a political solution to the conflict. Contrary to what is often claimed by NATO and the German government, the Russian Federation is not a party to the conflict in these negotiations, but has the role of a guarantor state on the same level as Germany and France.
In recent months, the arms deliveries of some NATO countries to Ukraine have increased considerably; accordingly, Ukraine’s provocations towards the Donbass are being intensified again. According to statements by the German government, Germany has also supported the coup government in Kiev with several billion US dollars since 2014.
In this situation, our comrades from the Donetsk People’s Republic declare:
*The Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic urges all sister parties and organizations to raise protest against Kiev’s fomenting of war and to draw the attention of the international public to the social misery produced by imperialism.
*No to the war in the Donbass!
*Yes to the self-determination of the DPR and LPR!
(http://wpered.su/2022/02/10/zayavlenie- ... nbasse-en/)
We join this call for action and declare our solidarity with our comrades in the Donbass. The people in the Donbass must be able to decide their own fate in peace.
We demand from the German government:
- No arms deliveries and no military aid of any kind to Ukraine.
- An end to political support for the Kiev regime.
- Out of NATO – peace with Russia and China!
http://solidnet.org/article/German-CP-S ... Bundestag/
****************************************
Blackwater is in Donbas with the Azov Battalion
February 15, 2022
By Manlio Dinucci – Feb 1, 2022
The CIA and MI6 are reorganizing NATO stay-behind networks in Eastern Europe. If after the Second World War they relied on former Nazis to fight the Soviets, they still support neo-Nazi groups against the Russians. There is no obvious reason for this. The Nazis were omnipresent in the 1940s, but they are very few today and only exist thanks to the help of the Anglo-Saxons.
The phone call between President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelensky “did not go well,” wrote CNN in its headlines. “Biden warned his Ukrainian counterpart that a Russian attack may be imminent, saying that an invasion was now virtually certain, once the ground had frozen later in February,” wrote CNN. “Zelensky urged his American counterpart to ‘calm down the messaging.'” As the Ukrainian president takes a more cautious stance, Ukrainian armed forces are massing in Donbas, near the area of Donetsk and Lugansk, inhabited by Russian populations.
According to reports from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, obscured by our mainstream media, which only speaks about the Russian deployment, Ukrainian Army and National Guard units, amounting to about 150,000 troops, are positioned here. They are armed and trained, and thus effectively commanded, by US-NATO military advisers and instructors.
From 1991 to 2014, according to the US Congressional Research Service, the US provided Ukraine with $4 billion in military assistance, which was added to by over $2.5 billion after 2014, plus over a billion provided by the NATO Trust Fund in which Italy also participates. This is only part of the military investments made by the major NATO powers in Ukraine. Great Britain, for example, concluded various military agreements with Kiev, investing among other things £1.7 billion to the strengthening of Ukraine’s naval capabilities. This program provides for the arming of Ukrainian ships with British missiles, the joint production of eight missile ships, the construction of naval bases on the Black Sea and also on the Sea of Azov between Ukraine, Crimea, and Russia. In this framework, Ukrainian military spending, which in 2014 was equivalent to 3% of GDP, increased to 6% in 2022, corresponding to more than $11 billion.
In addition to the US-NATO military investments in Ukraine, there is the $10 billion plan being implemented by Erik Prince, founder of the private US military company Blackwater, now renamed Academi, which has been supplying mercenaries to the CIA, Pentagon, and State Department for covert operations (including torture and assassinations), earning billions of dollars. Erik Prince’s plan, revealed by a Time Magazine investigation [1], is to create a private army in Ukraine through a partnership between the Lancaster 6 company, with which Prince has supplied mercenaries in the Middle East and Africa, and the main Ukrainian intelligence office controlled by the CIA. It is not known, of course, what would be the tasks of the private army created in Ukraine by the founder of Blackwater, certainly with funding from the CIA. However, it can be expected that it would conduct covert operations in Europe, Russia, and other regions from its base in Ukraine.
Against this background, it is particularly alarming that the Russian Defense Minister Shoygu denounced that in the Donetsk region there are “private US military companies that are preparing a provocation with the use of unknown chemicals.” This could be the spark that causes the detonation of a war in the heart of Europe: a chemical attack against Ukrainian civilians in Donbas, immediately attributed to the Russians of Donetsk and Lugansk, which would be attacked by the preponderant Ukrainian forces already deployed in the region, to force Russia to intervene militarily in their defense.
In the front line, ready to slaughter the Russians in the Donbas, is the Azov Battalion, promoted to a special forces regiment, trained and armed by the US and NATO, distinguished for its ferocity in attacks on the Russian populations of Ukraine. The Azov Battalion, which recruits neo-Nazis from all over Europe under its flag, traced from that of SS Das Reich, is commanded by its founder Andrey Biletsky, promoted to colonel [2]. It is not only a military unit, but an ideological and political movement, of which Biletsky is the charismatic leader, especially for the youth wing educated to hate the Russians with his book The Words of the White Führer.
Notes:
[1] « Exclusive : Documents Reveal Erik Prince’s $10 Billion Plan to Make Weapons and Create a Private Army in Ukraine », Simon Shuster, Time, July 7, 2021.
[2] « Le vivier Otan de néonazis en Ukraine », par Manlio Dinucci, Traduction Marie-Ange Patrizio, Il Manifesto (Italie) , Réseau Voltaire, 23 juillet 2019.
Featured image: Demonstration of the Azov battalion, in the center on the platform, its führer: Andriy Biletsky.
(Voltairenet.org) with additional translation by Orinoco Tribune
https://orinocotribune.com/blackwater-i ... battalion/
Yesterday's local paper featured a photo of a 76 year old woman getting rifle training from an AZOV instructor, described as 'special forces' but in fact fascist with a punitive mission. In Donbass they are referred to as "punishers".
*******************************************
The 'Frozen Ground Theory' And Other Ukraine War Nonsense
Since October 30 2021 first U.S. and then other 'western' media have been filled with predictions of a Russian war against the Ukraine.
Today David Ignatius, the CIA's spokesperson resident at the Washington Post, makes another dire claim:
The world will be watching in horror if Russia invades Ukraine this week — but just watching. Ukraine will fight alone, as Russian tanks roll across the flat, frozen terrain; precision bombs destroy key targets near Kyiv and other cities; and the country becomes a killing field unlike anything Europe has seen since 1945.
...
U.S. military officials say Putin has sent orders to his commanders to prepare for possible battle by the middle of this week, when the ground in central Ukraine will have frozen more than a foot deep, allowing rapid tank advance.
I found that 'frozen terrain' bullshit annoying enough to look up the weather forecast for Donetzk.
The day temperatures this week will be consistently above zero degree centigrade. Some mild night frost might freeze over the grass but little below that. It has been the same last week in Donetzk as well as in Kiev, Moscow and Minsk. There is certainly no frozen ground anywhere between those cities.
Alexander Marquardt, currently in the Ukraine on behalf of CNN, confirms that observation:
Alexander Marquardt @MarquardtA 12:14 UTC · Feb 14, 2022
I’m not taking measurements but if you’re into the frozen ground theory, it’s been mostly above freezing for the week I’ve been in central and eastern Ukraine and all the mud I’ve stepped in is squishy.
Ignatius, and the U.S. military officials he claims to have spoken to, are bullshitting and deceiving the public.
They also lack an understanding of geography and history. Their 'frozen ground theory' is based on reading about the famous Pripyat Marshes (also written Pripet or Pinsk) that are hard to cross with tanks unless the ground is deeply frozen:
Known as Pripjet-Sümpfe by the Germans, the wetlands were dreaded by the Wehrmacht troops. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Third Reich armies skirted the wetlands, passing through the north or south of it. However, after the debacle of the Eastern Front in 1944, many retreating units such as the 7th, 35th, 134th and 292nd Infantry Divisions had to cut across the marshy areas. They often needed to build tracks with logs over which they could pull light loads in horse-drawn vehicles.
The Pripyat Marshes do hinder warfare unless the ground is deeply frozen. But they are in southern Belarus and north-west Ukraine.
The grounds in south-east Ukraine, where a war would most likely play out, are much firmer. They can be crossed by tanks at any time without much problems.
Nonsense is also what Melinda Haring, the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, is producing. Three days ago she predicted a dire weekend:
Well the weekend has come and is gone. Power and heat in Kiev are on and not one of her predicted incidents has happened. Haring's Twitter profile says that she is:
Trying to nudge history in the right direction.
Nudge, nudge, nudge ... one lie after the other.
Haring has coauthored the Atlantic Council's script, Biden and Ukraine: A strategy for the new administration, which proposed an aggressive anti-Russian plan which the U.S. is now playing along. It was paid for by a Ukrainian oligarch:
Finally, think tanks were contacted more than 1,100 times by Ukraine’s agents, and more than half of these were directed at one in particular: the Atlantic Council. This extraordinary outreach included multiple meetings with Atlantic Council scholars, like ex-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, who has advocated for a more militarized approach to Russia amid the Ukraine crisis. Herbst recently told NPR that President Joe Biden should “send more weapons to Ukraine now. By all means, get additional U.S. and NATO forces up along Russia’s border.” Herbst was also at the center of an Atlantic Council kerfuffle last March, when he and 21 other Atlantic Council staff signed a letter opposing the work of two Atlantic Council colleagues who suggested a restraint-based approach to dealing with Russia.
The Atlantic Council has also launched “UkraineAlert” which publishes daily pieces on deterring Russia. A recent article, “Survey: Western public backs stronger support for Ukraine against Russia,” notes the survey in question was commissioned by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and Yalta European Strategy, which Pinchuk founded; however, the article does not mention that the foundation is a large contributor to the Atlantic Council, donating $250,000-499,000 a year, or that Pinchuk himself — the second wealthiest man in Ukraine — sits on the international advisory board of the Atlantic Council.
Russia will not attack the Ukraine. If the Ukraine attacks the rebellious Donbas region Russia will likely wait until Ukrainian 'progress' is visible for all to see to then let the Russian military take care of the aggressors by means of artillery and other stand-off weapons.
Today the Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his foreign and defense ministers who reported on recent 'western' responses to Russia's security demands:
The Eurasianist
@Russ_Warrior - 12:42 UTC · Feb 14, 2022Breaking! President #Putin asked #Lavrov to provide the list of #Russia's responses, developed by the Foreign Ministry, to #US/#NATO rejection of Russian security proposals.
#Shoigu will then deliver the list of options developed by the Ministry of Defense.
Grumbling will be heard from the various 'western' military headquarters when Russia reveals and implements the 'military-technical measures' it had promised should the 'western' responses turn out to be insufficient as it now seems to be the case.
Except for more bullshit from clowns like Harding and Ignatius there will likely be nothing that the 'west' has to respond to those.
Posted by b on February 14, 2022 at 14:16 UTC | Permalink
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/02/t ... .html#more
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Meanwhile, in Bizzarro World:
Not even a dog&pony show, not even Punch & Judy, but more like a monologue with the US as the sole speaker. Crank up the drama, inoculate a little fear, lie like a rug. Jfc can Biden not get on with it and declare victory? We are seeing the beginning of the end of this lame drama in which there are no actors, only the US Narrator.A world on edge awaits Putin's critical move
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 7:51 AM ET, Tue February 15, 2022
(CNN)The world is suspended in an extraordinary moment of geopolitical limbo, on edge for a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine amid conflicting signals in Moscow, confusion in Kyiv and dire warnings from Washington.
Already extreme tensions rose even further as one of the most dangerous moments in Europe since World War II stretches nerves and leaves everyone -- apart perhaps from President Vladimir Putin -- wondering what is next.
On Monday, there were signs of a possible last-minute openness to a diplomatic off-ramp in the Kremlin, but the spectacle of an estimated 130,000 troops on high alert outside Ukraine's borders suggested a feint as much as a blink by Putin. And Russia announced Tuesday that some of its troops would return to their bases after completing recent drills, but stressed that major military exercises would continue. It was not immediately clear how many troops were involved, following weeks of military buildups. Still, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said signs from Moscow showed that "diplomacy should continue." He added: "This gives grounds for cautious optimism. But so far, we have not seen any sign of de-escalation on the ground."
Tuesday's developments saw confusion reigning -- not for the first time -- in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, as President Volodymyr Zelensky, a young leader facing the highest stakes, sarcastically dismissed Western projections of a possible Russian invasion on February 16. And in contrast with the foreboding signs elsewhere, couples flocked to Kyiv's bars and restaurants to celebrate Valentine's Day despite the looming threat of war.
<snip>
A crisis America doesn't need
At a moment when many Americans are facing rising prices for basic goods and gasoline and are exhausted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ukraine crisis seems distant and esoteric. But a Russian invasion could force up energy prices even more and rock stock markets, on which many rely for their retirements.
<snip>
If America's long support for democracy and free-market capitalism is to mean anything in a new era when its power and example are being challenged by autocracies like China, it has no alternative but to stand up for Ukraine.
<snip>
The continuing diplomatic dance is a reason for hope that war could be avoided. But the fact that Putin has built such a massive force around Ukraine, in Russia, Belarus and in the Black Sea means that a decision not to invade may be seen as a loss of face. The former KGB officer, who was in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, also feels the humiliation of the Soviet collapse deeply.
<snip>
"Signals today suggest that they may be looking at some last-minute diplomatic maneuvers," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told CNN's Becky Anderson in an interview. "I do think as Putin gets closer to pulling the trigger here, he is better understanding the costs." Washington and its allies have threatened the most crippling sanctions ever on Russia's economy if Putin invades.
Michael Bociurkiw, the former spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, also expressed tempered hope.
"It's hard to know what to believe coming out of Mr. Lavrov's mouth," Bociurkiw said on "CNN Newsroom" but added that the airing of his encounter with Putin on Russian state TV was significant.
"To me, it indicated that they're willing to hold off on a possible military solution to their Ukraine issue. There are more foreign ministers coming later in the week. ... So that was their way of saying, 'We're open to more dialogue.' "
<snip>
But all along, there has been a gap between Washington and Kyiv on the possibility of an invasion. Zelensky sent shock waves all the way to the US on Monday when he named February 16 a day of national unity, while referencing foreign fears of an invasion. But when CNN asked Mykhailo Podoliak, a presidential adviser, how to take his comments, he replied: "Of course, with irony." It seems an odd time for sarcasm. But Zelensky is a former comic actor and might feel justified in dark humor given the circumstances.
https://us.cnn.com/2022/02/15/politics/ ... index.html
"Skeered 'im off, Joe Biden did!. USA! USA! Yep, that bastard commie gonna lose face alright! USA!" Of course Putin was a KGB officer during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and he sat on his hands at best if not actively betraying the Soviet Union.He has been dismantling all that the Soviet People had built as fast as his buddies can steal it. He tries to have it both was in his rhetoric only to not piss off the workers, very many of whom greatly regret the return of capitalism. But let's not let that get in the way of repurposed Cold War propaganda.
And if Zelensky was kidding we should ask who.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."