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

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 28, 2023 12:52 pm

plans
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 02/28/2023

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As the situation becomes more complicated for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Artyomovsk area, where the advance of Russian troops southwest of the city has begun to seriously threaten the main Ukrainian supply route, they begin to appear with more and more forces the announcements of the future offensive. Over the past 12 months, Ukraine has always tried to wait for good news before admitting defeat. This was the case recently with the loss of Soledar, a city that lacked strategic importance, but to which the speeches of President Zelensky had given an epic resonance. Twelve days after Russian control became apparent,

Original Article: Antifashist

The deputy head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Vadim Skibitsky has specified the timing and objective of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. He will start in the spring and will seek to cut the land corridor to the Crimea. He referred to it in an interview with DW . “I think we will be ready for the counteroffensive in the spring,” Skibitsky said, adding that the specific timing depends on a number of factors, including Western weapons supplies. In his words, one of the strategic objectives will be the attempt to "open a gap on the Russian front in the south, between Crimea and Russia."

The GUR representative also did not rule out the possibility that Ukraine could attack weapons depots on the territory of the Russian Federation, specifically in the Belgorod region. “The attacks against Ukraine start there. It poses a threat, for example, to Kharkov, ”he stated. The objective of the announced counteroffensive is to “liberate all the territories of Ukraine, including Crimea. We will only stop when we restore the country according to the 1991 borders,” Skibitsky summarized.

According to the Ukrainian Telegram channel Rezident , the Pentagon, in collaboration with the General Staff, continues to prepare the counteroffensive towards Crimea, which would consist of two stages and six directions. According to the ideas of the Americans, the main blow at the beginning of the campaign should consist of two operations:

“For closing Tokmak-Vasilevka to take the main support cities before the attack on Melitopol.
Landings at Golaya Pristan, Alyoshka, Novaya Kakhovka, Staraya Kakhovka, Kamenka, Energodar in order to spread out the Russian troops and thus be able to accumulate a grouping for a blow towards Armyansk-Genichesk [already towards the isthmus leading to Crimea].
The plan foresees 7-14 days for both operations in this first phase for which, according to the General Staff, the best date option is April, when the fields dry and spring blooms.

The second phase would start ten days after the capture of the main points on the left bank of the Dnieper and the creation of a bridgehead to attack Melitopol,” the source writes.

The Idi i Smotri channel , for its part, stated that Ukraine is currently concentrating forces in the Svatovo, Ugledar and Zaporozhie directions. "In addition to attack plans against Melitopol and Svatovo, there is also talk of another series of basic and diversionary operations," added the channel, which specifically referred to an attack in the Ugledar area.

Columns with equipment and personnel and fuel trucks circulating daily on the kyiv-Kharkov highway have been seen. Every night, trains with equipment run through Lubotin to Kharkov.

As the Russian ambassadors to China and the United Kingdom stated in interviews with local media, Russia will be forced to respond if the United States and NATO countries supply Ukraine with weapons to attack territories inside the country. On February 21, during his speech to the Federal Assembly, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured that the armed forces will move threats away from the borders of the Russian Federation as more long-range weapons arrive in Kiev.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/02/28/planes-2/#more-26730

Google Translator

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The Stage is Set for Hybrid World War III
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 27, 2023
Pepe Escobar

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A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you’re immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by selected stops and enlightening conversations, crystallizing disparate vectors one year after the start of the accelerated phase of the proxy war between US/NATO and Russia.

That’s how Moscow welcomes you: the undisputed capital of the 21st century multipolar world.

A long, walking meditation impregnates on us how President Putin’s address – rather, a civilizational speech – last week was a game-changer when it comes to the demarcation of the civilizational red lines we are all now facing. It acted like a powerful drill perforating the less than short, actually zero term memory of the Collective West. No wonder it exercised a somewhat sobering effect contrasting the non-stop Russophobia binge of the NATOstan space.

Alexey Dobrinin, Director of the Foreign Policy Planning Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia, has correctly described Putin’s address as “a methodological basis for understanding, describing and constructing multipolarity.”

For years some of us have been showing how the emerging multipolar world is defined – but goes way beyond – high speed interconnectivity, physical and geoeconomic. Now, as we reach the next stage, it’s as if Putin and Xi Jinping, each in their own way, are conceptualizing the two key civilizational vectors of multipolarity. That’s the deeper meaning of the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership, invisible to the naked eye.

Metaphorically, it also speaks volumes that Russia’s pivot to the East, towards the rising sun, now irreversible, was the only logical path to follow as, to quote Dylan, darkness dawns at the break of noon across the West.

As it stands, with the wobblin’, ragin’ Hegemon lost in its own pre-fabricated daze, the real runners of the show feeding burning flesh to irredeemably mediocre political “elites”, China may have a little more latitude than Russia, as the Middle Kingdom is not – yet – under the same existential pressure Russia has been put under.

Whatever happens next geopolitically, Russia is at heart a – giant – obstacle on the warmongering path of the Hegemon: the ultimate target is top “threat” China.

Putin’s ability to size up our extremely delicate geopolitical moment – via a dose of highly concentrated, undiluted realism – is something to behold. And then Foreign Minister Lavrov provided the sweet cherry on top, calling the hapless US ambassador for a hardcore dress down: oh yeah, this is war, hybrid and otherwise, and your NATO mercenaries as well as your junk hardware are legitimate targets.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council, now more than ever relishing his “unplugged” status, made it all very clear: “Russia risks being torn apart if it stops a special military operation (SMO) before victory is achieved.”

And the message is even more acute because it represents the – public – cue to the Chinese leadership at the Zhongnahhai to understand: whatever happens next, this is the Kremlin’s unmovable official position.

The Chinese restore the Mandate of Heaven

All these vectors are evolving as ramifications of the bombing of the Nord Streams, the only military attack – cum industrial terrorism – ever perpetrated against the EU, leave the Collective West paralyzed, dazed and confused.

Perfectly in tandem with Putin’s address, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs chose the geopolitical/existential moment to finally take the gloves off, with a flourish: enter the

US Hegemony and its Perils essay cum report, which became an instant massive hit across Chinese media, examined with relish all across East Asia.

This blistering enumeration of all the Hegemon’s lethal follies, for decades, constitutes a point of no return for trademark Chinese diplomacy, so far characterized by passivity, ambivalence, actual restraint and extreme politeness. So such turnaround is yet another proud “achievement” of the outright Sinophobia and mendacious hostility exhibited by American neocons and neoliberal-cons.

Scholar Quan Le notes that this document may be regarded as the traditional form – but now filled with contemporary wording – the Chinese Sovereigns used in their millenary past before going to war.

It is in fact an axio-epistemo-political proclamation justifying a serious war, which in the Chinese universe means a war ordained by a Higher Power capable of restoring Justice & Harmony in a troubled Universe.

After the proclamation the warriors are equipped to strike mercilessly at the entity judged to be troubling the Harmony of the Universe: in our case, the psycho Straussian neo-cons and neoliberal-cons commanded as rabid dogs by the real American elites.

Of course in the Chinese universe there’s no place for “God” – much less a Christian version; “God” for the Chinese means the Beauty-Goodness-Truth trinity, Timeless Heavenly Universal Principles. The closest concept for a non-Chinese to understand is Dao: the Way. So the Way to the Beauty-Goodness-Truth trinity represents symbolically Beauty-Goodness-Truth.

So what Beijing did – and the Collective West is completely clueless about it – was to issue an axio-epistemo-political proclamation explaining the legitimacy of their quest to restore Timeless Heavenly Universal Principles. They will be fulfilling the Mandate of Heaven – nothing less. The West won’t know what it hit them until it’s too late.

It was predictable that sooner or later the heirs of Chinese civilization would have had enough – and formally identify, mirroring Putin’s analysis, the upstart Hegemon as the premier source of chaos, inequality and war across the planet. Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder, in a nutshell.

To put it bluntly, in streetwise language, the hell with this Americana crap of hegemony being justified by “manifest destiny”.

So here we are. You want Hybrid War? We will return the favor.

Back to the Wolfowitz Doctrine

A former CIA advisor has issued a quite sobering report on a pebble along the rocky way: a possible endgame in Ukraine, now that even some elite-run parrots are contemplating a “way out” with minimal loss of face.

It’s never idle to remember that way back in 2000, the year Vladimir Putin was first elected as President, in the pre-9/11 world, rabid neocon Paul Wolfowitz was side by side with Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski in a huge Ukraine-US symposium in Washington, where he unabashedly raved about provoking Russia to go to war with Ukraine, and committed to finance the destruction of Russia.

Everyone remembers the Wolfowitz doctrine – which was essentially a tawdry, pedestrian rehash of Brzezinski: to keep permanent US hegemony it was primordial to pre-empt the emergence of any potential competitor.

Now we have two nuclear-powered, tech savvy peer competitors united by a comprehensive strategic partnership.

As I finished my long walk paying due respect by the Kremlin to the heroes of 1941-1945, the feeling was inescapable that as much as Russia is a master of riddles and China is a master of paradox, their strategists are now working full time on how to return all strands of Hybrid War against the Hegemon. One thing is certain: unlike boastful Americans, they won’t outline any breakthroughs until they are already in effect.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/02/ ... d-war-iii/

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Massive rally in Berlin demands peace in Ukraine
On the one year anniversary of the state of the war, Berliners took to the streets to demand deescalation and peace

February 27, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Anti-war rally in Berlin. Photo: JungeWelt

On Saturday February 25, tens of thousands of people rallied at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin demanding that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz take an active role in encouraging negotiations to end the ongoing war in Ukraine. The mobilization with the slogan ‘Uprising for Peace’ was called for by Left party MP Sahra Wagenknecht, journalist Alice Schwarzer, retired Brigadier General Erich Vad, economist Jeffrey Sachs and others. It called for negotiations, diplomacy and peace, instead of the ongoing escalation of the war by delivering sophisticated arms and ammunition to Ukraine.

Sahra Wagenknecht MP and Alice Schwarzer also initiated a petition titled ‘Manifesto For Peace’ demanding the German Chancellor to “make a strong alliance for a ceasefire and peace negotiations at both the German and European levels.”

The anti-fascist groups who attended the rally in Berlin also protested the presence of far-right groups like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the rally.

A day prior, on February 24, anti-war groups including the Berlin Peace Coordination (FRIKO), German Communist Party (DKP), and others also rallied in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin calling for peace.

The eight year long Russia-Ukraine conflict escalated to a full-fledged war on February 24, 2022, when Russian armed forces crossed into Ukraine. According to the Manifesto for Peace, as of now over 200,000 soldiers and more than 50,000 civilians have been killed in the war. As all attempts at peace talks have been sabotaged, the death toll is likely to increase. Currently, there are millions of Ukrainians living as refugees in countries across Europe.

The heavy sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States against Russia and Russian energy companies have triggered a steep increase in energy prices across Europe, which was dependent on cheap Russian gas for years. This has sparked a broader cost of living crisis across the region. While under the instigation of US and NATO, the political leadership in EU countries continue war mongering, the crisis-hit working class sections across Europe have now strengthened their mobilizations demanding peace.

In their ‘Manifesto for Peace’, Sahra Wagenknecht MP and Alice Schwarzer have stated that “negotiating does not mean capitulating. Negotiating means making compromises, on both sides. With the aim of preventing hundreds of thousands more deaths and worse.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/27/ ... n-ukraine/

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Prolonged crisis only benefits Washington
By Wang Zhen | China Daily | Updated: 2023-02-25 09:34

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Local residents walk an empty street in the frontline city of Bakhmut, Ukraine on Feb 21, 2023. [Photo/Agencies]

It comes as no surprise at all that on the first anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine military conflict, some Western media outlets and politicians are blaming China for failing to persuade Russia to end the conflict. On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated his contention that Beijing was toying with the idea of providing military support to Russia, which is nothing but a malicious lie.

Instead, in a 12-point paper released on Friday, China has made clear it is promoting political settlement of the crisis. It calls for respecting the sovereignty of all countries, resuming peace talks, resolving the humanitarian crisis, protecting civilians and prisoners of war, and keeping nuclear power plants safe.

As China's newly published Global Security Initiative Concept Paper says,"War and sanctions are no fundamental solution to disputes; only dialogue and consultation are effective in resolving differences." So the highest priority of Russia and Ukraine should be to look for a "political settlement" of the conflict through "dialogue and consultation".

However, it's the United States that benefits from the continuing Russia-Ukraine military conflict and wants to prolong the crisis.

According to US media reports, in less than a year, US military and financial aid to Ukraine has exceeded $100 billion, with more on the way. What's more, the US will provide Ukraine an additional $2 billion in security assistance, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday.

Why is the US sparing no effort in its support of Ukraine against Russia?

First, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is helping the US consolidate its transatlantic partnership with the European Union, although EU countries such as Germany and France opposed former US president George W. Bush's plan to invade Iraq in 2003, and in recent years, European countries have distanced themselves from the US to devise their own trade policy, continue EU-Russia cooperation and take an independent stance on many issues.

The US-EU relationship can be described as lacking in momentum, with the cracks in their ties becoming apparent. By hyping up the "Russian threat", the US has been projecting itself as a "security umbrella" for European countries while trying to resurrect the transatlantic partnership damaged by previous US president Donald Trump's capricious EU policy, in a bid to prevent some EU states from adopting independent foreign policies.

Second, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has helped the US to strengthen its military hegemony, which is essential for it to maintain its global hegemony and military alliance with NATO.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, international observers expected NATO, the antithesis of the Warsaw Pact, to be disbanded. But that didn't happen. In recent years, however, NATO has been wracked by controversies and criticism, with some EU countries questioning the functions and the future of the transatlantic military alliance. In fact, Trump's allegation that EU countries contribute too little to NATO upset the latter so much that French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview that NATO was "brain dead".

Yet the US has once again succeeded in coercing EU countries to jump onto its war bandwagon and used the West's hatred and fear of Russia, triggered by the conflict, as an excuse for NATO's expansion.

Third, the Ukraine crisis has helped the US to stamp its authority on the global energy sector. The shale revolution has transformed the US from a major oil importer to a major oil exporter. But the fall in global oil prices has hit US shale gas production hard, because it is relatively more expensive to extract.

Washington has been using sanctions against Moscow to cut off Russian oil and gas supply to EU countries, so as to end their dependence on Russia for energy. This will have a dual effect. On the one hand it will weaken Russia's economy, as energy export is a big revenue-earner for Moscow. On the other hand, it will allow US energy companies to reap handsome profits by exporting more oil and gas to Europe, possibly at higher prices. As a matter of fact, crude oil shipped from the US to Europe in 2022 was 70 percent higher than the previous year, according to oilprice.com.

Finally, hyping up Russia's so-called aggressive role in the conflict and supporting Ukraine both militarily and strategically will earn the Joe Biden administration a lot of political advantage, notwithstanding the fact that the conflict has proved lucrative for a host of US energy companies and the military-industrial complex, which are the very entities the US politicians are trying to please.

By supporting Ukraine, US politicians can not only say they are "politically correct", but also claim the moral high ground in the name of protecting "freedom", and gain more votes in elections. It is for this reason that the US has been supporting Ukraine — President Biden even visited Kyiv a few days ago — while playing down more important events like the giant chemical fire and "toxic mushroom cloud" in East Palestine, Ohio, following a railway derailment, which has left residents worried about the long-term health problems they might face.

Whether the US admits it or not, it has benefited enormously from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This shows the Biden administration's support for Ukraine has nothing to do with defending "freedom" and "democracy", but rather with promoting the US' own interests. However, military assistance will not restore peace in Eurasia, nor will it help safeguard EU countries' security.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b0d64.html

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Zelensky fires Ukraine's commander of joint forces
From Kostan Nechyporenko in Kyiv

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a news conference in Kyiv on February 24. (James McGill/SOPA Images/SIPA/AP)
Ukraine’s commander of joint forces operation has been dismissed from his post, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced in a decree Sunday.

Major Gen. Eduard Mykhailovich Moskalov had been appointed to the position last March when Lt. Gen. Oleksandr Pavliuk was appointed head of the Kyiv regional military administration.

Zelensky did not provide an explanation for Moskalov's dismissal, but it's the latest in a long line of recent leadership changes made by his administration.

Ukrainian authorities have conducted a series of anti-corruption searches and crackdowns across the country, and a variety of high-profile dismissals have followed.

It is not yet clear if Moskalov's firing was connected to the recent corruption purge.

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ru ... f27711588f

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The Empire Gives People The Illusion Of Fighting The Power Without Ever Endangering Real Power

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The one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen countless emotional news segments and heartstring-plucking articles, wall-to-wall social media posts, and public demonstrations decrying the evils of Vladimir Putin throughout the western world.

For what’s probably the first “anti-war” protest of most of their lives, American liberals gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC over the weekend to bravely condemn the leader of a foreign government thousands of miles away. There they were joined by empire managers like the virulent warmonger Samantha Power, who spoke at the rally opposing Russian warmongering at the capital of the most warlike nation on the planet.

For the last year, mainstream westerners have been using this war to act out their fantasies of being courageous up-punching anti-imperialists, fighting powerful bloodthirsty tyrants in defense of the needful, all while living directly under the thumb of the most tyrannical regime in the world. They mindlessly regurgitate the propaganda of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, parrot the same lines that are already being said all day long by all the most powerful institutions in the western world, all in service of the hegemonic agendas of the largest and most murderous power structure on earth, while pretending to be standing in opposition to the powerful.

The way the war in Ukraine allows mainstream liberals to play-act as rebellious anti-imperialists is a good illustration of how the empire gives people the illusion of fighting the power without their ever opposing the empire.



We saw this same trend take place in the US throughout the Trump administration, where mainstream liberals branded themselves “The Resistance” like they were socialist revolutionaries or insurgents opposing Hitler in Nazi-occupied France. In reality Trump’s presidency had little actual impact on the comforts of their lives, because beneath all the narratives Trump was a fairly normal US president whose most heinous crimes were all of the customary variety we see in all US presidents — including his predecessor and his successor. Democrats just spent four years LARPing as brave revolutionaries, and then he left office and the game ended.

In exactly the same way, Trump’s presidency allowed right wingers to pretend they were part of a movement against the establishment, despite Trump never actually challenging the establishment in any meaningful way. They believed he was fighting the Deep State even after he imprisoned Assange. They believed he was “ending the wars” even as he ramped up aggressions against Russia which helped bring us to where we are today, killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans with starvation sanctions, vetoed attempts to save Yemen from U.S.-backed genocide, worked to foment civil war in Iran using starvation sanctions and CIA ops with the stated goal of effecting regime change, occupied Syrian oil fields with the goal of preventing Syria’s reconstruction, greatly increased the number of troops in the Middle East and elsewhere, greatly increased the number of bombs dropped per day from the previous administration killing record numbers of civilians, and reduced military accountability for those airstrikes. They believed he was draining the swamp after packing his cabinet with establishment swamp monsters.

Trump supporters are just George W Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters. They role-play a fight against the empire that is never actually happening anywhere except in their imaginations.


For four years this went on, with Democrats acting like they were fighting the power because Trump was the power and Republicans acting like they were fighting the power because Trump’s enemies were the power. And the entire time real power went completely unchallenged, because the empire always marches forward regardless of the imperial puppet who’s sitting in the White House.

And as the war drums with China heat up we’re seeing Trump supporters turn into the mirror image of the mindless Ukraine flag-waving liberals we’re seeing today, swallowing every narrative their media feeds them right down their throats without the slightest twinge of critical thinking gag reflex. Now we’re seeing the same people who used to spew vitriol about Muslims in the Middle East suddenly metamorphose into heroic human rights champions for Muslims in Xinjiang, and the same people who’ve been shining the bright light of truth on propaganda about Russia suddenly switch it off because they believe Biden is a Xi Jinping puppet.

Imperial narrative managers actively foster these delusions of revolution and up-punching among the mainstream herd because it’s a great way to kill the possibility of any real revolutionary zeitgeist. If you can give people the illusion that they are fighting the power without their ever actually fighting the power, then you can always remain in power.

It doesn’t take much. Just a few trusted voices in their ideological echo chamber posing as passionate opponents of tyranny and abuse, and people’s natural desire to oppose those things does the rest. It naturally feels right to oppose the depravity of the powerful on behalf of the weak and defenseless; all they have to do is divert that healthy human impulse into something illusory.

Here’s hoping enough of us learn to see through the illusion one day.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/02/26 ... eal-power/

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HOW MUCH WILL ANTI-RUSSIAN "SANCTIONS" COST GERMANY?
Feb 27, 2023 , 2:18 p.m.

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Aerial image of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant, in Essenbach, Germany (Photo: AP Photo)

According to Bloomberg projections , by 2030 the German government will have to allocate more than 1 trillion dollars to face the risks and challenges that have arisen due to the energy crisis, product of the "sanctioning" schemes of the United States and the European Union (EU) against Russia.

The huge cost would include investments in modernizing the country's power grids and a planned phase-out of its coal and nuclear plants. Because?

Berlin will face a growing demand for electric vehicles and heating systems. To this we must add that the German authorities are obliged to comply with climate commitments.

According to data provided by the country's network regulator and think tank , Agora Energiewende, increasing power demand by 30% of the country's current consumption will bring the new capacity projected to be installed by 2030 to about 250 gigawatts. that the transition will require the installation of solar panels, as well as onshore and four offshore wind farms built per week.

Earlier this month, the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel reported that EU nations had spent almost 800 billion euros on support measures in the face of rising energy costs. According to the record, Germany topped Bruegel's spending chart, having set aside almost 270 billion euros, while the next highest three – the UK, Italy and France – each spent around 150 billion euros.

The current energy crisis and the transition to "green" processes will have a high cost for the German government in the years to come. However, this does not guarantee that they can overcome the situation, nor that they achieve a change in the more efficient and less polluting use of energy.

https://misionverdad.com/cuanto-le-cost ... antirrusas

Google Translator

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Russia welcomes China's peace proposal
By REN QI in Moscow | China Daily Global | Updated: 2023-02-28 09:09

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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. [Photo/Agencies]

A position paper that China has issued setting out a possible path to peace in Ukraine needs to be analyzed in detail, the Russian government said on Monday.

Analysis of the paper, which urges both sides in the conflict to agree to a gradual de-escalation and warns against the use of nuclear weapons, should take into account the interest of all sides, the Kremlin said.

"We paid a lot of attention to our Chinese friends' plan," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that: "Of course, the details need to be painstakingly analyzed taking into account the interests of all the different sides. This is a very long and intense process."

He said Russia was continuing to carry out what it calls its special military operation in Ukraine, and for now didn't see any signs suggesting a peaceful resolution could be achieved.

China called for peace talks as it issued a 12-point position paper on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis, which included the respect of all countries' sovereignty.

After meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday, Saudi Arabia pledged humanitarian assistance to Ukraine worth $410 million, Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, the country's foreign minister, told a news conference in Kyiv.

It is the first time since the two countries established diplomatic relations 30 years ago that a Saudi foreign minister has visited Ukraine.

According to the El Sharq television channel, Riyadh and Kyiv signed a memorandum of mutual understanding on the supply of oil products to Ukraine.

It comes as fighting continues in the city of Bakhmut and the casualties are high.

Eduard Moskalov, Ukraine's commander of joint forces operation, has been dismissed from his post, Zelensky announced Sunday. He did not provide an explanation for the dismissal, but it's the latest in a long line of recent leadership changes made by his administration.

Also on Sunday, Chairperson of the United States House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul said the US could send more advanced weapon systems for Ukraine, including longer-range missile systems or fighter jets.

However, US President Joe Biden on Friday ruled out providing the F-16 fighter jets Ukraine has requested, at least for the time being, telling ABC News in an interview that Zelensky "doesn't need F-16s now".

Peskov said that Moscow considers supplies of Western weapons to Ukraine as the West's growing involvement in the conflict.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b12fd.html

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
2:59
The American mercenary went over to the side of Russia after a year of service in the "Foreign Legion" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the national battalion "Carpathian Sich".

John McIntyre, who provided the Russian military with papers, files, intelligence and maps that he collected in Ukraine.

It turned out that the man had originally planned this operation: “I am a communist, an anti-fascist. I decided to collect as much useful information as possible and run across the front line. When I was in Kharkiv, I wanted to swim across, but I discovered that they [AFU] have snipers ... not for protection, but to shoot defectors.”

According to him, in the ranks of the nationalists, everyone uses fascist greetings, including mercenaries from Croatia or the Czech Republic:

“Everyone has tattoos, Nazi symbols ... At some point, they pestered me with questions about my communist views. I said that I was an anti-fascist, I came to fight the Russian imperialists and the Nazis. And they say: "No, the Russians are not Nazis - we are Nazis . "

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forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
Military expert Boris Rozhin on the situation in the Artemovsky direction on February 27, 2023, specially for the Voenkor Kotenok channel Z @voenkorKotenok :

Our troops continue to bring the situation of the operational encirclement of the APU grouping in the city closer. At the moment, the main roads are under incomplete fire control. This applies incl. and the route through Khromovo, which is already covered by artillery. The enemy claims that at night it is passable enough. This suggests that there is no complete operational environment for Bakhmut yet, but everything is moving towards this.

The abandonment of Yagodnoye and Berkhovka has already led to the fact that the enemy began to retreat from the Stupka region and a number of the northern regions of Artemovsk.

To the south of the city, our troops continue fighting in the Krasnoye area, trying to reach the Chasov Yar - Krasnoye - Artemovsk highway. Assault units make their way from the side of the Mariupol cemetery in the direction of the stele with the aircraft in the southern part of Artemovsk. There are premature reports that even broke through, but they are not true. The goal is clear - to go to this road and cut it, eliminating any possibility of use by the enemy.

Taking into account the cutting of the Artemovsk-Slavyansk and Artemovsk-Konstantinovka highways and the upcoming cutting of the road through Khromovo, it will be possible to say that the situation with the city's encirclement is close to a denouement.

The enemy has not yet withdrawn his main forces from Artemovsk and is preparing to defend himself, as expected, in the western part of the city, gradually retreating. His task is to exchange people for time. That is, he is trying to win the maximum time before the loss of Artemovsk.

It is obvious that they most likely have already written off the city, but they expect to win some more time before going over to the defensive on the line Rai Aleksandrovka - Chasov Yar - Konstantinovka.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 01, 2023 1:13 pm

maximalist positions
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 03/01/2023

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After the first year of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the conflict continues to mark politically and economically the reality of all the countries directly and indirectly involved in the fight. But while the economic consequences go beyond the territory in which the battle is taking place, the direct consequences of the death and destruction that the war entails occur daily in the territories controlled by Russia and Ukraine. The destruction is maximum especially in the towns and cities of Donbass, fortified by Ukraine during the seven years of Minsk, a process in which Kiev has always shown not to believe and which it now openly denies. The disinterest of Ukraine's Western partners in forcing their ally to comply with the agreement that all of them had negotiated has made it possible for the change of discourse not to be shocking in the press. kyiv can now openly claim that it never intended to implement the Minsk agreements without even needing to justify the change in narrative, if not in action. Despite the commitment promised by the candidate Zelensky and the appearance, throughout 2019, of a movement "against the capitulation", there was never any option to follow the path of Minsk.

According to United Nations data, as of February 13, more than eight million people remained abroad, more than two million of them refugees in the Russian Federation, a loss of population that joins the demographic crisis that precedes the war and that it will hardly be able to fully recover. The situation for those who have remained in the country borders on catastrophe even in the places furthest away from the front. To the blackouts and conditions directly associated with the war, we must add the strong inflation. According to data from the National Bank of Ukraine, in the year since the start of the Russian intervention, inflation has gradually risen from an already high 10% to the current 26%, where it has stabilized in the last three months. And despite the fact that the Ukrainian economic performance has not opted, As Russia, the European Union or even the United States have done, through a form of Keynesianism to respond to the economic crisis linked to the war, state intervention has minimized, at least in part, the economic difficulties. Taking into account the strong imbalance in the balance of payments since February 2020, the intervention of the Bank of Ukraine in defense of the hryvnia has ensured that, for example, the population's savings did not disappear at a stroke.

However, despite the success that, according to some sources, means that the Ukrainian economy has not completely collapsed, the difference between income and expenses that currently exists is hardly sustainable in the medium term. Although Ukraine managed to increase the value of its exports in the first months of Western assistance, in the last six months it has fallen sharply while imports have increased sharply, which have tripled in the last year. That trend, coupled with the growing disconnect between income and spending, points to falling reserves, a problem that will further perpetuate Ukraine's reliance on international aid and credit lines for years to come.

Nor should the maintenance of the current level of economic and financial support from Western countries to Ukraine be assumed to be viable. Although Kiev continues to insist on installing in the collective consciousness the idea that Ukraine not only fights for itself and its freedom but also for collective security and for the defense of Western and European values, a discourse that was also used during the years of war in Donbass, war fatigue can be seen in recent survey data. The European and North American populations have accepted support for Ukraine as necessary, but the numbers of approval of the arms supply are gradually declining. Coinciding with Joe Biden's visit to Kiev, APpublished the data of a survey that shows the decrease in the percentage of the population favorable to sending arms from 60% last May to the current 48%.

What happened last weekend in Berlin is also illustrative that there is a part of the population, although for the moment it is not the majority, opposed to contributing to the continuation of the war by sending increasingly heavy weapons. In the German capital, the placement of a Russian tank destroyed at the front and recovered by the Ukrainian forces should become a sign of rejection of the Russian invasion. However, coinciding with a significant anti-war demonstration in the city, the tank was covered in flowers and protesters even removed the Ukrainian flag that was flying above it. Referring to both the poll results and what happened in Berlin, the Ukrainian Telegram channel Rezident commented, with concern, that the Ukrainian side is currently seen as the war party, so an increase in popular support is not to be expected.

The decline in the active support of the population towards the reality of a long, hard and dangerous war in Europe contrasts with the determined support that continues to be proclaimed by the political class, which periodically promises to continue assisting Ukraine until the final victory. The situation has proven to be propitious to assume the immense unforeseen expense that is being assumed, for example, for the countries of the European Union. In a year of expansive policies and the availability of large amounts of euros, both the EU itself and the different countries have opted for policies to alleviate the economic effects of the war on the population and control, for example, gas prices or the inflation. However, This ability to act will be limited as the demands for deficit control return to the public debate and the idea of ​​austerity makes an appearance. According to data published byStatista , between January 24, 2022 and January 13, 2023, Ukraine has received a commitment to deliver a total of 73.17 billion euros, the equivalent of 36% of the country's GDP in 2021. Of that assistance, 25,100 Millions of euros correspond to financial assistance that is allowing Ukraine to continue paying pensions and salaries, among others those of the Armed Forces. In the current situation, the 1,500 million per month committed by the European Union represent a lifeblood for the country at war, whose industry is, as shown by the increase in imports, practically paralyzed and whose ability to maintain the economy on its own is limited. , right now, impossible.

Aware of the infeasibility of maintaining long-term military and financial support for Ukraine, kyiv's partners have opted for the next spring-summer offensive as the definitive tool to defeat Russia. More clearly than his counterparts, Emmanuel Macron has referred to the southern offensive as a way to corner Russia -in Crimea- and force Moscow to accept the terms offered by the West. As Jens Stoltenberg repeated last weekend, “in order to achieve peace, Ukraine must be armed”. According to the West, which appears to have gambled on Western weapons and Ukraine's fighting ability to cause a collapse of the Russian military that is unlikely to happen if it didn't last September,proxy .

But Western countries are already looking beyond the war and looking for a way out for the day after . An extensive article published in The Wall Street JournalHe referred to it a few days ago. “We have to start thinking, and we are doing it, about how the post-war future looks to ensure that we have security and stability for the Ukrainians and security and stability in Europe,” Antony Blinken was quoted as saying by the outlet. Neither Blinken nor his European partners have tried to explain, nor will they do so in the future, what they did during the eight years in which, with their help, Ukraine continued to pose a security risk to the population of Donbass thanks to their support. diplomatically and politically to prevent compliance with the Minsk agreements, which might not have prevented war, but would have significantly reduced the risk in Donbass and Ukraine.

After eight years of ignoring the danger that the war posed to a part of the country they claim to defend, it is not surprising that for Western diplomacy only the security of Ukraine, specifically the part of Ukraine under their control, counts as a significant factor. The American newspaper refers to an approach that is being worked on by Germany, France and the United Kingdom to guarantee the security of Ukraine beyond the war and that, judging by the scant data offered, has broad similarities with the guarantees that Russia offered in March 2022 in the peace negotiations between the two countries. According to The Wall Street Journal, the offer of security guarantees would imply neither the direct and fast path to NATO that Ukraine demands nor would it compromise Article V of collective security. However, this seems to be the offer with which the European allies intend to offer Zelensky a "political victory that he can present at home as an incentive for negotiations."

For the moment, imbued with the rhetoric of military victory that they present daily to their population and their creditors, the Ukrainian representatives persist in their maximalist discourse and there seems to be no intention of preparing the population for a possible compromise, either in terms territorial - not even its partners trust that Ukraine will be able to recover Crimea - or in terms of the political question.Ukraine continues to present future victories both in the military -sure victory and restitution of the 1991 borders- and in the achievement of its political objectives -immediate start of the accession talks to the European Union and subsequent NATO accession plan- without that the uncertainty of a war in which there will still be many battles to be fought can change the official script of those who do not seek peace but rather impose their force in many cases on a population that will resist it.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/03/01/26737/#more-26737

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European Antiwar Protests Gain Strength as NATO’s Ukraine Proxy War Escalates
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 27, 2023
Stavroula Pabst and Max Blumenthal

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Europeans are storming the streets in unprecedented numbers to protest NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and their own declining living standards. The Grayzone has covered demonstrations and interviewed protest leaders in several countries since the war erupted.

Athens, Greece –– This February 21, several thousand Greeks filled Athens’ streets to denounce NATO and the United States in the wake of Antony Blinken’s Greece visit, where the US Secretary of State applauded the Mediterranean country for being amongst the first European countries to support Ukraine, thus leading to way for “the support of democracy.”

It was just one action among many protest actions across the continent as the NATO proxy conflict in Ukraine approached its first anniversary. European citizens are growing agitated as their leaders appear set on extending the war at least another year: they’ve approved several rounds of sanctions on Russia, provided billions of euros in assistance to Ukraine, and have agreed to train thousands of Ukrainian soldiers.

Such actions have blighted living standards for average Europeans. Although the continent has avoided a widely feared energy collapse thanks to successful efforts to secure energy alternatives and unseasonably warm weather, European governments had already prepared for possible power outages and mobile blackouts earlier this winter due to the severing of Russian energy.

As the war escalates, so too are protest actions in core NATO states, from Greece to Britain to the Czech Republic to France and Spain. The recent wave of demonstrations builds on sizable displays of opposition to the war throughout the winter in cities from Chișinău to Paris to Brussels to Tirana to Vienna.

In Germany, where Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has declared that “we are at war with Russia” amid reports that the US military destroyed the country’s Nord Stream pipeline connecting it to Russia’s gas supply, demonstrations against the NATO proxy war are surging as well.

The rising tide of protests across the continent appear to have have rattled European leaders, triggering police repression, demagogic denunciations, and even prosecution of protest leaders for publicly criticizing their governments’ military support to Ukraine.

Unlike Western mainstream media, which has treated the protests with contempt when it has not ignored them altogether, The Grayzone attended several protests and interviewed the labor and antiwar activists who have mobilized their fellow citizens against NATO’s proxy war.

Popular resistance builds in Europe as leaders grovel to Washington

By the arrival of the February 24, 2023 anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a growing number of German citizens had begun to bristle at their government’s submissive attitude to Washington. Not only had Chancellor Olaf Scholz acceded to US demands to send Leopard tanks to the Ukrainian military, setting up what could be the first confrontation between German and Russian armor since World War Two, he seemed studiously disinterested in determining who was responsible for destroying the Nord Stream pipelines.

An antiwar manifesto authored by Sahra Wagenknecht of the Die Linke (Left) party and feminist writer Alice Schwarzer has provided a vehicle for German outrage at their government’s military support for Ukraine. Calling on Scholz to “stop the escalation in arms deliveries” and “lead a strong alliance for negotiations,” the open letter had garnered over 700,000 signatures at the time of publication.

On February 25, Wagenknecht and Schwarzer summoned supporters of the manifesto to rally in central Berlin. Over 15,000 protesters, and possibly many more, heeded their call, flooding Brandenburg Gate to hear speeches by the two authors and speakers including Jeffrey Sachs and former German Brigadier General Eric Vad.

Wagenknecht framed the delivery of German tanks to Ukraine against the ghosts of country’s past, proclaiming, “We don’t want German tanks firing on the great grandchildren of Russian women and men. This is complete historical amnesia! Have you forgotten German history?”

A 2/25 rally in Berlin led by Left Party’s Sahra Wagenknecht brought tens of thousands of Germans together in support of a peace manifesto signed by 670,000 people

“We don’t want German tanks firing on the great-grandchildren of Russian women and men!”pic.twitter.com/dbiSQS7q8U

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 27, 2023


While participants in the Berlin rally belted out the East German anthem, “Ami Go Home!”, calling on US Army personnel to leave German soil, hundreds of protesters surrounded the US military’s Ramstein Airbase, which serves as headquarters for Air Forces activities in Europe and Africa. There, they demanded their government end its participation in the US-led coalition against Russia.

Activists picket near the Ramstein airbase in Germany, headquarters for the United States Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa and also for NATO Allied Air Command. They protest against further arms supplies to Ukraine and demand peace talks. pic.twitter.com/bgC0UTWVwx

— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) February 26, 2023


Also on February 25, the UK’s Stop The War Coalition held a march in London against shipping arms to Ukraine and escalating NATO’s proxy war. On the same day in London, a No 2 NATO, No 2 War conference organized by former MP’s George Galloway and Chris Williamson opened to a packed crowd despite intimidation campaigns that prompted two venues to cancel on the event’s planners.

Fantastic turnout at the #PeaceNow protest in London today calling to #StopTheWar in #Ukraine

Escalation is not the solution.
Peace talks now. pic.twitter.com/iWjJC2alfh

— London CND (@LondonRegionCND) February 25, 2023


The London rallies were supplemented by substantial protests against NATO’s proxy war in Paris and Brussels, where thousands marched outside European Parliament to demand immediate negotiations with Russia.

“Ceasefire now! Support peace talks! No nuclear escalation! Stop NATO expansion! Negotiate peace!”

1000s on the streets of Brussels yesterday demanding deescalation and peace talks.

The European peace movement will not be silenced.pic.twitter.com/2dPBMjDf0E

— Clare Daly (@ClareDalyMEP) February 27, 2023


The February 25 rally in Paris was convened by a group called The Patriots, which has demanded French President Emmanuel Macron immediately resign.

Nouvelle manifestation contre la subvention de la guerre en Ukraine 🇺🇦 et la sortie de la France 🇫🇷de l’OTAN.
Les médias continuent de nous ignorer, mais la résistance monte en France👊

👉Des milliers de personnes à Paris ce 26/02/23 @_LesPatriotes @f_philippot ! #1an pic.twitter.com/3XKhijHoRc

— Tamila Tapayeva (@tamilatapayeva) February 26, 2023


Recent protests build on months of antiwar activity across Europe

The recent spate of demonstrations follows protests in Italy, where tens of thousands demonstrated in November 2022 against PM Giorgia Meloni’s decision to send arms to Ukraine, and burned their electricity bills in a display of civil disobedience.

A poll of Italians taken this February shows that a major of the country’s citizens oppose sending arms to Ukraine, and favor an immediate negotiated solution.

In Leipzig, Germany, meanwhile, mass protests against skyrocketing food and energy prices have been surging since last Fall. As in Berlin, where Wagenecht openly declared that anyone was welcome regardless of their political persuasion, these demonstrations presented a show of unity against the war between the left-wing Die Linke party and the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Leipzig’s protests have been portrayed as a revival of the “Cold War Mondays” held in the city throughout the late 1980s, where the public demonstrated against a faltering German Democratic Republic. This time, however, the protest target is a centrist, neoliberal regime that is hellbent on conflict with Russia.

100s of citizens protest in Leipzig, Germany against Berlin’s supply of weapons to Kiev

People are outraged by the ever-increasing heating and electricity bills and record inflation, and the fact that Germany has become a puppet of the United States and NATO – Financial Times. pic.twitter.com/p2ENA2WNwH

— Bethany cox # (@ARTESOSCURASBOO) January 9, 2023


Czech protesters reject serving as “subcontractors to foreign capital”

In the Czech Republic, meanwhile, some 70,000 people gathered in Prague in early September for a “Czech Republic First” demonstration. There, they called for Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s coalition government to resign over its pro-Western and pro-NATO policies.

The country’s center-right PM Petr Fiala responded by tarring the demonstrations as pro-Russian, “extreme,” and “against the interests of the Czech Republic.”

🇺🇦🇨🇿Protesters in Prague spoke out for neutrality in the conflict in Ukraine.

A large-scale rally called “The Czech Republic first of all” was held on Wenceslas Square today.

From 70,000 to 100,000 Czech citizens gathered for it, according to local publications. pic.twitter.com/LsNnKVSnjt

— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) September 3, 2022


Fiala’s comments did little to faze Czech protestors, who returned to the streets in late September and October, and continued to organize smaller events across the country. The anti-EU and anti-NATO protests channeled the sentiment best encapsulated by a banner entitled, “The best for Ukrainians and two sweaters for us.”

To better understand the Czech Republic First demonstrations, The Grayzone spoke with Josef Skála from the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy, or KSČM). A prominent Czech Republic First supporter, Skála ran for President of the Czech Republic last year, but withdrew his candidacy in November after failing to collect enough signatures for the ballot.

Skála emphasized the Czech Republic First protests’ unique nature; while participants spanned the political spectrum, they united around their frustration with the country’s sagging economy and the government’s refusal to heed popular opposition to the Ukraine proxy war. “We have in the Czech Republic, a government which is totally Pro-American, Pro-EU, Pro-Brussels and so on,” he complained to Τhe Grayzone. “They do not care about [our] national interests.”

Skála explained that inaction over high prices is ushering in an “absolutely unprecedented era of [Czech] history, which is creating the demolition of the living standards of the people and demolishing most of the sectors of our economy.”

“And, no, the government is doing nothing against [these problems]. The government is assisting such dramatic policies…We are subtractors of foreign capital.”

Skála’s comments highlight an issue looming behind the proxy war: while today’s European protest demands focus on the current energy crisis, many demonstrators are infuriated by their governments’ willingness to prioritize EU dictates over the national interest.

As protests continue, Skála hopes he can bring more from the left to the demonstrations by emphasizing the Ukraine proxy war’s threat to the economy and to human survival. “The danger of war… is imminent,” he explained to The Grayzone. “And what is missing is an urgent and well-organized anti-war peace movement.”

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Antiwar protesters march in Athens, Greece on 21 February 2023

The view from Greece: “Americans are the killers of the people”

As the conservative Mitsotakis government bends over backwards to please Washington, average Greek citizens struggle with impossibly high living expenses and energy bills. Protesters I spoke with in Athens on February reflexively linked their government’s support for NATO’s proxy war with their own eroding living conditions. Their anger is widespread throughout a country where anti-NATO and anti-EU sentiment remains relatively high.

Banners at the February 21 protest denounced US Secretary of State Blinken, while slogans like “Solidarity is the peoples’ gun!”, and “They killed Lambrakis and Beloyiannis — Americans are the killers of the people!” reverberated through the crowd. (Grigoris Lambrakis and Nikos Beloyiannis were prominent twentieth century Greek leftists killed by right-wing extremists and executed by the Greek government respectively.).

The February 21 demonstration concluded at the American Embassy, despite warnings of repression by heavily militarized police. Later in the evening, clashes between police and those still protesting erupted in Athens’ Exarchia neighborhood, as is common after major demonstrations in the country’s capital.

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Greek protesters declare, “Blinken, the American murderers’ representative, is unwelcome! US-NATO, and Russia stay out of Ukraine! Left organizations and collectives”

The sentiments expressed in late February echoed those at earlier protests in the Greek capital.

Each November 17th, Greeks take the streets to commemorate the historic 1973 Polytechnio uprising against the country’s former military junta, where anti-imperialist and antiwar student organizations were crushed and, in many cases, disappeared by the US-backed dictatorship.

Like the 1973 uprising, the annual Polytechnio demonstrations convey a distinct antiwar character, and usually result in face-offs between police guarding Athens’ US Embassy and protesters – with many drafted and uniformed military personnel fighting on the demonstrators’ side.

This year, Greece’s November 17th tradition took on a new conflict: the NATO proxy war in Ukraine, which European leaders appear set on extending for at least another year.

When the Polytechnio anniversary arrived in 2022, protesters aimed their action directly at the US-dominated military alliance, with participants waving signs reading “Ή με το ΝΑΤΟ ή με την ειρήνη” (Either with NATO or with peace) while passing by the US Embassy in Athens.

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Demonstrators participating in the annual November 17 demonstration in Athens, Greece, to commemorate the historic 1973 Polytechnio uprising. Photo provided by the membership of Λαϊκή Ενότητα (Popular Unity).

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Soldiers and sailors drafted into service join the November 17th Polytechnio demonstration. Based on the principle that drafted soldiers maintain civil and political rights in uniform, the gesture defies the military’s use as an apparatus against the people. Short-term military service is mandatory for all eligible men in Greece. Photo provided by the membership of Λαϊκή Ενότητα (Popular Unity) in Athens, Greece.

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November 17th demonstrators facing off with police forces in front of the United States Embassy in Athens, Greece. Photo provided by the membership of Λαϊκή Ενότητα (Popular Unity).
Greek general strikes set the stage for antiwar protests

The Greek rallies against NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine have capitalized on the momentum of labor actions against the cost of living crisis. On November 9th, 2022, about a week before the antiwar rally, labor unions convened a general strike, demanding wage increases, a ban on electricity and utility stoppages in homes, and for an abolition of consumption-based taxes and VAT taxes for energy sources.

Sotiris Lapieris is a municipal councilor in the Athens suburb pf Chalandri and a member of Λαϊκή Ενότητα (Popular Unity), a breakaway left coalition founded after Syriza capitulated to international creditors in 2015. Lapieris told The Grayzone that the November 9th strike was likely the biggest in Greece since the 2015 bailout referendum, if not the largest since the 2012 anti-austerity strikes. “There’s a widespread despair about the cost of living and [low] wages,” he explained.

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Sotiris Lapieris (left) with Λαϊκη Ενότητα (Popular Unity) at the General Strike on 9 November, 2022..

Lapieris emphasized that while the current energy crisis has exacerbated material hardship in Greece, the situation is symptomatic of the calamitous Greek-EU relationship. “The cost of living crisis in Greece is the product of three different …things,” he explained. “One is the memoranda that destroyed the Greek economy a decade [ago]. Second, the energy stock market that was started in 2001 [the Greek Energy Exchange Market, as part of the EU Target Model for electricity markets] pulled the prices of energy [up] to the sky. And third, those two things were met by the sanctions of the European Union on Russia. This is a disastrous mix.”

Speaking with The Grayzone shortly before the November 9th strike, trade union front Π.Α.Μ.Ε. (Πανεργατικό Αγωνιστικό Μέτωπο, or All-Workers Militant Front) secretariat member Nikolas Theodorakis explained how the energy crisis and war had worsened living standards in Greece.

“The percentage of the Greek budget [allocated to] military armaments… especially for NATO, is number one or number two in the NATO alliance,” Theodorakis said. “At the same time, Greek schools will not have heating and hospitals will not have doctors [this winter]. So we say it’s a clear contradiction” in how EU funds are being used, he further explained, highlighting Greece’s bloated military budget. “One of our basic demands on the conflict is the budget, and that our financial priorities must be changed in order to protect and serve the people.”

Nikos Chistodoulakis, a member of Greece’s communist revolutionary action front (Κομμουνιστική Επαναστατική Δράση, or ΚΕΔ), observed that many of the protests seen across Greece, including November’s general strike, had not made substantial war-related demands, instead focusing on economic relief and corporate greed. He added that many leftists were afraid to make demands or statements that could be construed as Pro-Kremlin. Indeed, much of the November 9th strike signage and messaging was limited to economic demands, including calls for higher wages and guaranteed electricity and heating for winter.

“If you don’t touch the elephant in the room, which is the European Union and the Greek government’s stance towards Russia and their alliance with the US, you can’t demand wage rises or price stops,” Lapieris agreed. “This [cost of living crisis] is an obvious consequence of all this policy.”

Below: Protesters throw red paint on a warship at an anti-NATO demonstration in the city of Patras, Greece


Antiwar protests face police violence, anti-free speech state repression

Europe’s cost-of-living and anti-NATO demonstrations are often sidelined by police brutality, mass arrests, and mainstream media silence alike. As they did to repress protests against the draconian Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020, militarized French riot police dispersed protestors at October anti-NATO and cost of living rallies with violent tactics, including with truncheon beatings and tear gas.

French police have been repressing marches across the nation in response to widespread protests over rising costs of living.

French workers called for a General Strike over the weekend. pic.twitter.com/ytFxrvBnNr

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) October 20, 2022


During the February 25 mass demonstration in Berlin, German police deployed 1400 officers to enforce recently instituted speech laws criminalizing public displays of support for Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, forbidding everything from the display of the St. George’s Cross to the letter “Z,” the letter “V,” and the Soviet flag.

According to Reuters, German “police mobilised 1,400 officials to keep the peace and to enforce bans on military uniforms, Russian and Soviet flags, Russian military songs and right-wing symbols.” https://t.co/ZnQ9qBn7lX

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 27, 2023


The German state is also prosecuting Heinrich Bücker, a leading Berlin-based antiwar activist, for criticizing his government’s support for neo-Nazi regiments of the Ukrainian military like the Azov Battalion. Bücker stands accused by the German state of having made statements with the “potential to shake confidence in legal certainty and to incite the mental climate of the population.” Because he is unlikely to pay the 2000 Euro fine, he will go to jail for a mandatory 40-day sentence.

When Western media has not ignored Europe’s antiwar protest wave altogether, its coverage has alternated between dismissive and contemptuous. German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle sneeringly characterized the February 25 demonstration in Berlin as “naive” while providing glowing coverage to smaller shows of support for the war by the Ukrainian diaspora. The New York Times, for its part, mentioned the European protests in just a single generic line buried in an article on minuscule anti-Putin protests held by Russian emigres.

For those organizing on the ground, the stakes are too high to submit to state repression or media demonization. “We are going back to the Dark Ages; our leaders are demanding we live without electricity. So, how can you accept this?” exclaimed Nikolaos Theodorakis of the Greek ΠΑΜΕ union. “For us, the only alternative to these conditions is to struggle, to organize, to demand better conditions.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/02/ ... escalates/

“When You See It, You Won’t Forgive”: Part III of an Investigative Report on Human Trafficking in Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 28, 2023
Deborah L. Armstrong

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Photo: New Eastern Outlook

Shortly after the beginning of the year, on January 14th, 2023, videos of a large protest in the Ukrainian capitol of Kiev began to surface on social media. The majority of the protesters were women, though some men can also be seen in the crowd. The women are identified as the widows and wives of the 24th Division of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Protestors in Kiev demand the return of their loved ones’ bodies.

They carry signs, mostly in English, demanding that the soldiers’ remains be returned for burial. Some of the signs also bear the nationalist Ukrainian symbol of the Galician lion, which was an SS symbol in WW2. The protesters shout, “Slava Ukraine! Slava geroyam!” — the obligatory chant of the nationalists, which means “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!”

Yellow and blue smoke in the colors of the Ukrainian flag is released and wafts over the chanting demonstrators, mixing with red and black smoke that symbolizes the flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the OUN-B, which collaborated with Nazis in WW2 under the direction of Stepan Bandera, a mass murderer responsible for the slaughter of 100,000 Jews, Poles, and Russians.

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Women in Kiev demand the return of their loved ones’ remains. Photo: Ruptly/zpnews.ru

Other videos show the women holding up photos of their missing husbands, sons, fathers and brothers. Why are all of these men missing? Were they killed in action or taken captive by Russian troops? Are the women demanding that Russia return their loved ones’ bodies? And if so, why are their signs in English? Why is Russia not even mentioned…?

Or, are the protesters actually making a statement — carefully framed with all the prerequisite patriotism — to their own government?

If you’ve read parts one and two of this investigative report on human trafficking in Ukraine, you have already read testimony from people claiming to have witnessed or taken part in the harvesting of organs from Ukrainian soldiers and civilians who did not always give consent.

You have also read how organ harvesting on the battlefield has been going on since at least the late 1990’s, according to a 2009 report: “Inhuman Treatment of People and Illicit Trafficking in Human Organs in Kosovo” by Deputy Dick Marty of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). And you have read how, according to Dr. Vladimir Ovchinsky, adviser to the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs, some of the same people who spearheaded the transplantation program in Kosovo, are allegedly now in Ukraine, directing transplantation efforts there.

What would it take for such a program to run more smoothly in Ukraine? The witnesses in part one of our series said that organs can be removed from a donor’s body and prepared for transport in as little as seven minutes, and that there was an emphasis on speed as the surgeons were faced with a practical conveyer belt of bodies.

Perhaps Ukrainian law could be changed to make this process more efficient and cut away some of the red tape, such as the requirement for consent if the person is already deceased. Well, that’s exactly what happened on December 16th, 2021, just two months before Russia crossed the Ukrainian border and began its Special Military Operation (SMO) on February 24, 2022.

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The Verkhovna Rada, Ukrainian Parliament. Photo: Spzh.news

305 members of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukrainian Parliament, voted to pass bill No. 5831, which was signed into law by President Volodymyr Zelensky and went into effect the very next day. You can see the entire text of the law, “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine Regulating the Transplantation of Human Anatomical Materials,” in Ukrainian here, and a summary of the law here, at the Rada’s own website.

Under the 2021 law, organs can be removed from a deceased person even if there is no written consent, and consent is no longer mandatory if the person is deceased. Additionally, written consent no longer requires authentication or the signature of a notary. The donor can give consent to an authorized transplant coordinator and consent can be given in electronic form.

If the deceased did not give consent, the transplant coordinator is supposed to get it from the spouse of the deceased or from close relatives such as parents, siblings, or children. If no family can be found, the coordinator may get consent from the person who buries the deceased. In the case of a military death, that means that a unit commander can give consent for the removal of a soldier’s organs.

The law also makes it clear that common-law spouses can not prevent removal of organs from the deceased, and takes away the right of a person to authorize an unrelated representative to give consent for them (such as a common-law spouse or a surrogate family).

According to Mykhailo Radutsky, chairman of the Ukrainian Committee on National Health, Medical Care and Health Insurance, consent for posthumous donation of organs can now also be given electronically via an app known as the Diia program.

Radutsky wrote on Telegram in 2021 that the law “improves the algorithms for matching donor-recipient pairs, expands the range of persons who can make decisions on organ removal, and establishes a transition from a pilot transplant project to funding from 2023 under the medical guarantees program.” He further noted that in 2019, 78 organ transplants were performed in Ukraine and that 250 operations were planned by the end of 2021.

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Mykhailo Radutsky, chairman of the Committee on National Health, Medical Care and Health Insurance. Photo: Verkhovna Rada

So the law, as you can see, makes it easier for organs to be harvested without consent of the deceased. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to envision how that would work out on the battlefield, where fighting is intense and chaotic, and next of kin may not always be located. Especially when, according to some sources, bodies can sell for $150 — $200 in the field, and the total value of harvested organs from just one body can add up to $10 million.

Add to this the numerous reports in Russian media, and in the Russian blogosphere, of mass burials of people in eastern Ukraine with all of their organs removed. Though such stories are mocked in the west and dismissed as “Russian disinformation,” there are an alarming number of them to be found.

One blogger named Sergei Perekhod, whose nationality is unclear (but most likely Russian or Ukrainian), put together a list of the grisly discoveries which took place in just 2014 alone. Here are some of the atrocities he noted:

On September 24, militias from the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) were shocked to find graves in the settlements of Lower Krynka and Kommunar, and that two of the graves contained the bodies of men and women who had been shot, and the third contained the bodies of 40 people without internal organs. Indeed, the American-owned “Moscow Times” even reported about this.
On May 5, rumors were flying in Ukraine about “soldiers’ organs being harvested en masse.” Officials announced that 5 people had been killed and 12 wounded, and yet there were so many ambulances coming and going that it seemed the casualties must have been two or three times greater. Indeed, the Odessa Massacre, in which at least 48 people were driven into the Trade Union Building and burned alive, shot or beaten to death, occurred just three days earlier, on May 2, and one of the eye-witnesses in part one of this series claims to have harvested many organs following the massacre.
On May 20, militiamen during a night reconnaissance operation near Karachun Hill, found the bodies of 180 Ukrainian National Guard soldiers “with ripped-up bellies.” A little further away in the vicinity of Troitsk cemetery, 300 more bodies were discovered, unburied, their organs removed. Locals reportedly saw Red Cross vehicles and foreign doctors with specialized equipment. Ukrainian media reported about heavy fighting at Karachun Hill on that day, but little else can be found outside of Russian media.
On June 28, sources in the Anti-Terrorist Operation zone (ATO) reportedly found graves of people without internal organs in the Lugansk region near Rubizhne. The sources noted that a “special group” was working in eastern Ukraine, and was engaged in the sale of human organs.
I couldn’t find any corroborating articles about mass graves discovered on that last date. However, in 2021, Donbass resident Russell Bentley was present when 200 bodies were exhumed in that same region of Lugansk, and he writes that they were murdered and buried there when fighting was heavy, in the summer of 2014.

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In 2021, a militiaman from DPR is at the site of the mass graves of discovered outside Donetsk. [Source: rt.com]

Should Russell Bentley be believed? Should the word of that blogger be believed? Should any blogger be believed? In these days when mainstream media routinely lies, gaslights and misleads us, or diverts our attention from real news… perhaps no one can be believed.

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Cartoon by Chip Bok. Photo: Yahoo news

In any case, horrifying stories about the bodies of soldiers and civilians in mass graves in Ukraine, with their internal organs cut out, abound on the internet. And if even one of these stories is based on anything true, it’s worth a deeper look.

In December of 2022, a video appeared on Telegram, then on Rumble, in which an unidentified Russian-speaking man describes atrocities he witnessed in Izyum, a city in the Kharkov Oblast of Ukraine. He looks late 20’s, early 30’s, and he’s wearing a sky-blue beret which could represent Russian Airborne forces or Spetsnaz, depending on whom you’re asking, and it’s decorated with the Red Star of the Soviet Union which makes me suspect he is not regular Russian military, but a member of one of the militias in the breakaway People’s Republics of Donbass.

You can watch him here, in this video with English subtitles:https://rumble.com/embed/v1vu5og/?pub=1kd5o4

Russian Troops Uncover Ukrainian Child Organ Harvesting Operation
A first-hand account of the horrors that happen in Ukraine. Adrenochrome and organ harvesting from children is…


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Russian-speaking man who claims children’s organs were harvested in Izyum.

“Their group, as it turns out,” he says, referring to what the Russian side discovered, “was gathering kids around Izyum. Little ones from two to six, seven years old, and was bringing them to that… particular place.” Here, the soldier pauses a bit the way you might if you’re remembering something truly horrifying. He sighs deeply, then proceeds. “There they got undressed on the first floor. And on the second…”

He pauses again, a haunted look in his eyes. “On the second… they got carved up,” he says quietly. There is a break in the video, probably to allow the man time to recover. The video resumes as he answers another question that may have been asked off-camera. “Like discarded waste, either just kept in pits or taken out somewhere and buried. And those guys, you know, were talking about them [the children] as if they were slaughtering some livestock, like a piglet or a rabbit. They were like ‘yeah, we brought them,’ as if it was some farm, you understand?”

The soldier appears quite shaken. He goes on, “I had heard about it, but I didn’t believe it,” he says. “Until you see all of this with your own eyes, you won’t comprehend it. But when you see it, you won’t forgive.”

Though most of the reports about bodies found with organs removed appear to originate on the Russian side, there are still plenty of articles which have been published all around the world, about organ harvesting in Ukraine, dating as far back as the 2000’s. The stories are easy to find up until the beginning of the Russian SMO, when suddenly western mainstream media began referring to such stories as “Russian disinformation.”

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Dr. Michael Zis. Photo: Ynetnews.com

For example, In 2003, the National Library of Medicine of the United States cited a report from the European Council’s parliamentary assembly which stated that organ-trafficking networks “target poor European countries such as Estonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, where people are pressured into selling their kidneys for as little as $2,500.”

In 2010, the Jerusalem Post reported that 12 Israelis were arrested in Ukraine for organ trafficking there and in other former Soviet countries. They were accused of selling mostly livers to Israelis and citizens of other countries, for $10,000 per body part. The transplants were performed mostly in Kiev, Azerbaijan and Ecuador.

In 2011, Ukrainian Week published an article stating black market organ trade was thriving in Ukraine. The article detailed how a group of “black transplantologists” in Kiev removed the eyeballs from 26 bodies in 2010 during autopsies and that the organs were transferred to a hospital in Kiev for transplant. The article also referred to the 2007 arrest of Israeli citizen Michael Zis in Donetsk. His license in Israel had been revoked so he had moved to Ukraine to make some black market money. There, Moldovans and Ukrainians agreed to sell organs for $10,000, while Zis was allegedly paid $135,000 for every surgery he performed, money which went into his bank account in the US.

Also in 2011, Bloomberg reported about how investigators from five continents had uncovered a massive, intertwining network of criminal gangs, run by Israelis and eastern Europeans, which forced people of lesser means to sell organs such as their kidneys.

The WHO warned in 2012 that human organs were being sold on the black market at the rate of one per hour, and that wealthy people in need of healthy, young organs were paying more than $150,000 for kidneys which were acquired from criminal gangs in China, India and Pakistan, who harvest the organs from desperate people for as little as $3,500.

Also in 2012, an Australian newspaper reported on the grisly discovery of “bones and other human tissues crammed into coolers in a grimy white minibus” in Ukraine. Documents seized by authorities suggested that the remains were on their way to a factory in Germany belonging to the subsidiary of a US medical products company known as RTI Biologics, based in Florida.

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“Two ribs, two Achilles heels, two elbows, two eardrums, two teeth, and so on…” A relative holds a picture of Oleksandr Frolov, whose body parts were found during a raid in Ukraine. Photo: The Sydney Morning Herald.

In 2016, the Washington, DC think-tank Atlantic Council ran an article titled “Ukraine Should Do More to Combat Human Trafficking,” in which it stated that more than 160,000 men, women, and children from Ukraine have been “exploited for labor, sex, forced begging, and organ removal.”

Though the article blamed “Russian aggression” for much of Ukraine’s problems, it was also critical of Ukrainian authorities, which displayed “poor coordination at the national level” according to the US Department of State and the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA).

The GRETA report, published in 2014, cited “poor coordination among government ministries,” stating that Ukraine’s governing council on human trafficking had not convened in five years.

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“Human life is not for sale” reads a Ukrainian sign in Kiev in 2016, which includes hotlines for victims of human trafficking to call. Photo: Atlantic Council.

Another study published in 2015 by the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF), concludes that Ukraine is an “origin, transit and destination country” for human trafficking including organ harvesting. The full report can be read at this link.

After the Russian SMO began, western news all but ceased its coverage of illegal organ harvesting in Ukraine. However, in March of 2022, the BBC reported that thousands of Ukrainian children are missing and feared to have fallen into the hands of human traffickers.

In February of 2022, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said that Ukraine would receive a field hospital complete with a mobile crematorium. Lambrecht, who opposed sending weapons to Ukraine, resigned in January of this year “amid mounting scrutiny over Berlin’s response to the war in Ukraine.”

The news about the field hospital and crematorium reportedly caused serious unrest among the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but before long western mainstream media was abuzz with stories claiming that the crematoriums were operated by Russia and that they were used to conceal the numbers of casualties among Russian troops.

The truth, already scarce and often difficult to distinguish from falsehoods, became a metaphorical needle in a stack of newspapers.

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Cartoon by Joel Pett/The Week

Black and gray transplants

Illegal organ transplants — those performed without consent from the donor or the donor’s family, are referred to as “black transplants.” But there are also “gray transplants,” in which the donors often live in desperate and/or impoverished conditions and are strong-armed to “voluntarily” sell their organs.

Though people can sell a kidney or part of a liver for thousands of dollars, the health risks are enormous. In addition to the immediate risks related to the surgery itself, there are long-term health risks such as high blood pressure, pain, nerve damage, hernia, intestinal obstruction, and an increased likelihood of chronic illness. And there are other kinds of risks, such as difficulty getting disability or life insurance.

In October, 2022, the Asian News Network ran an article about how Ukrainians with financial hardships were identified as organ donors whose kidneys were trafficked through a Tokyo-based non-profit organization which mediates transplants with foreign donors.

The article refers to posts popping up on Ukrainian-language websites offering money to anyone who wants to sell a kidney. Such posts, the article says, began appearing four times more frequently following the Covid-19 disaster of 2020. The posts list the age, blood type, and type of organ they wish to buy or sell, as well as the price. The “quality” of the organ is included in statements such as “Perfectly healthy 20-year-old!” Contact information like phone numbers and addresses are also listed.

According to the article, these posts kept appearing without pause even after Russia’s SMO began. One post from someone claiming to be a neurologist stated, “If you are suffering from economic hardship, I will buy your kidney.” He added that he had “bases in Japan” as well as in the US and India.

“You can buy a house!” another post claimed. According to the article one Ukrainian woman received $15,000 for a kidney donated to a 58-year-old Japanese woman. A Turkish national was arrested by Ukrainian authorities for his involvement in trafficking the organ.

Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens in Ukraine who applied for a transplant through official channels must continue to wait.

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A Ukrainian woman on dialysis waits for a kidney transplant. Photo: Asian News

Though it’s illegal in most countries to directly pressure someone into donating an organ, there is a growing interest around the globe in incentivizing people to do so. In February, legislators in the State of Massachusetts proposed a bill that would let prison inmates donate organs or bone marrow in order to reduce their sentences.

The ethics of such a law are still in question, but the Democratic sponsor of the bill, State Representative Judith Garcia, told reporters that it might help to end “the vicious cycle of unjust incarceration and over-policing of Black and Brown communities.”

Garcia explained that Black and Hispanic people have a higher need for organ transplant due to specific health conditions but that discriminatory incarceration rates lead to longer waiting periods for Blacks and limit the number of matches.

The bill already has plenty of critics. Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a criminal justice reform advocacy group based in Washington, DC, said that the bill “reads like something from a dystopian novel.” He told reporters that “promoting organ donation is good. Reducing excessive prison terms is also good. Tying the two together is perverse.”

The program proposed in the bill would give prisoners sentence reductions ranging from 60 days to a year in exchange for the donation of an organ or bone marrow, and a committee would be assigned to determine how much each prisoner’s sentence could be reduced.

Currently, there is no law in the US against prisoner organ donation, however, the transplant community has discouraged donation of inmates’ organs since the 1990’s because of the high risk of infectious diseases among prisoners.

Federal prisoners are allowed to donate organs, but only to family members.

In conclusion

I realize that after these three exhaustive reports, I still haven’t even scratched the surface of other forms of human trafficking such as sex trafficking of women and children and the human slave trade, which continues in some parts of the world despite being outlawed everywhere. Ukraine is already well established as a source, transit, and destination country for commercial sexual exploitation and slavery.

These topics are exhaustive and deserving of investigative reports of their own, and it’s my intention to explore the issues further at a future date.

For now, though, this concludes part three of an investigative series on human trafficking in Ukraine. You can read part one here and part two here.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/02/ ... n-ukraine/
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 02, 2023 12:51 pm

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POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 03/02/2023
Original article: Alexander Grishin / Komsomolskaya Pravda

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Not a single day goes by without one of the figures from the upper echelons of power in Ukraine giving an interview to this or that Western media. It seems as if Zelensky had ordered his team to do so. Kuleba, Shmygal, Reznikov, Podoliak, Melnik and a whole host of less significant characters do not leave the screens of the Western media or the pages of foreign print publications. Like miners who work to meet the minimum requirements, only they do not do it in the mine and with the hammer, but in their offices and using language.

Here is Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, who recently showed an Su-27 [believing it to be an F-16] embroidered on a scarf, giving another interview, this time to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, in the who has detailed how things are going in relation to Western arms assistance: “The SAMs have not yet been delivered, but we will have them. Our people are learning to use them. It is thanks to them that we will be able to protect the skies. And on land we will have Leopard tanks. I have also ordered new armored vehicles like Bradley, Spartan, Mastiff. In my letter to Ded Moroz, of course, there are the fighters," Reznikov told Italian journalists.

But the bad news for Reznikov has come from the United States. Washington has once again insisted that he sees no need to deliver to kyiv the Abrams tanks or the F-16 fighters that Zelensky has pleaded with Biden. It was first confirmed by the coordinator of strategic communications of the National Security Council, John Kirby, and then confirmed by Biden himself.

According to Reznikov, the situation should change dramatically this spring after the arrival of Western air defenses, the Iris-T, Patriot or Nasams in Ukraine. Because? Reznikov shouldn't have bothered Ded Moroz, he's searched for the person he wasn't. Santa Claus is persona non grata, a Putin agent and a Russian spy. They have even gone so far as to hang Ded Moroz and Snegurochka from a bridge. Do they write you letters now? Why not Saint Nicholas, who has replaced Ded Moroz for the Ukrainians? The defense minister may not have been informed that Ded Moroz has been written off in the Ukraine and that he is now an outlaw. Let's see if it's going to be that Reznikov is a Russian agent and that all this corruption plot that has been detected in the Ministry of Defense is something orchestrated to weaken the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

In any case, the promised anti-aircraft systems will soon arrive in the Ukraine, so Reznikov need not beg like a poor man to ask for and thus pity himself and Zelensky. Furthermore, at one of the most important international arms fairs, the International Defense Exhibition (IDEX) in Abu Dhabi, Lieutenant Keyes, a US Army officer, who was accompanying a battery of Patriots, inadvertently gave the military secret to an NTV team .. “It takes fifteen months of instruction to operate a Patriot system. We have intensive instruction daily with constant maneuvers. The Ukrainian military is being trained alongside the Americans,” Keyes said, dropping that “there were Ukrainian officers in my group. I was trained three years ago and there were several Ukrainians studying with us. But now there are many more coming to us. Three years ago, Ukrainians were already training in the United States to handle Patriot systems. Long before this started. Around the time Zelensky was doing his homework at the Normandy Format summit in Paris [in December 2019].” And when asked if the Ukrainians already knew how to drive the Patriots, the American answered with an unequivocal “yes”.

The work was already underway when kyiv did not say anything publicly or officially. And there is reason to suspect that the current laments about the long training time to effectively handle Western tanks is quackery designed to, among other things, create a surprise effect when the Leopards appear on the front lines. Actually, tankers may have been training in tanks for a while now. And maybe flying American fighters. So the former lawyer Reznikov, who dreams of killing Russians [he confessed in another interview last week], is lying. He has not written any letter to Ded Moroz and if he wrote to any grandfather, it could only be to Joe Biden. To a perfectly known address.Ed ]. But that will be decided by the results of the next offensive.

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The West’s Narrative of the ‘Russian Threat’: A Tool for Destabilization and Hegemonic Control
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 28, 2023
Erkin Öncan

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The Western world’s threat narrative seeks to disrupt the concept of multipolarity by imposing sanctions and military deterrence.

On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the Federal Assembly, which received significant attention, particularly from Western media, as the first anniversary of the Ukrainian war approached.

Although Western analysts anticipated an aggressive tone from Putin’s speech, it did not materialize. Their expectation was primarily that Putin would make statements about “shifting gears” in Ukraine and declaring the beginning of a new phase in the operation.

However, Putin’s speech focused more on domestic issues in Russia. He recalled how the Soviet economy faced difficulties in its final days, stating that the Soviet Union began creating a market economy, similar to that of Western countries, but the result was the Russian economy becoming “dependent on the West as a source of raw materials.”

While these are well-known facts following the collapse of the Soviet Union, what made this repetition significant was that it was directly declared by the President of Russia during a time of war. In the same speech, Putin’s use of the phrase “ordinary Russians did not feel sorry for those who lost their yachts and palaces abroad” in reference to oligarchs, was also significant and complementary in this regard.

Regarding the war, Putin’s speech had an ideological tone rather than military, contrary to expectations. In a more clichéd expression, Putin explained how he viewed the “big picture.

Putin openly declared that the war with Ukraine was not only fought against Ukraine but also against the “masters of the Kiev administration,” and that Russia defended not only its interests but also the principle that the world should not be divided into “civilized countries and others,” stating that “Western elites have turned into a society of unprincipled lies.”

The decision to freeze Russia’s participation in the START agreements was undoubtedly one of the most critical issues addressed in the speech. Putin’s remarks preceding this decision indicate that it was made from a historical perspective: “There was a time when the USSR and the USA did not view each other as enemies. That time has passed. Our relations have deteriorated, thanks to the USA’s desire to build a world order based on its model and with only one master.”

The local and regional crises since the USSR’s collapse and the Maydan coup in 2014, which has escalated into violent conflicts, are significant indications that Russia is on the brink of a political and economic transformation. Although the Russian leadership is unlikely to return to a “Soviet model” as feared by the West, this transformation will not only impact Russia but also the emerging new world outside the so-called “Collective West” (US/EU, NATO).

This transformation has already been named: Multipolarity.

Following Putin’s speech, the visit of Wang Yi, the head of the Foreign Affairs Commission Office of the CCP Central Committee, to Russia can be considered as the first handshake of this new era.

As expected, the meeting between Wang and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov conveyed the message that “China and Russia are moving forward confidently towards a multipolar world formation.” During his meeting with Putin, Wang also noted that China-Russia relations are “resisting pressure from the international community and progressing steadily.”

For almost a century, the intellectual circles and policymakers of the West have associated all their theses on the region with first the Soviet and then the “Russian threat”. Because the Russian threat is essential for the consolidation of Europe and the existence of NATO and media design for the Collective West.

With this awareness, Putin said the following not only last year, in 2014, but also exactly 16 years ago in his famous speech in Munich:

“I think it is clear that NATO expansion has no relation to the modernization of the Alliance itself or to ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?”

The answer to Putin’s question was clear, and all the developments of the last 16 years have confirmed it. However, the fundamental perception of the Western public, including Turkey, is that NATO’s expansion and the aid to Ukraine started after the February 2022 attack by Russia.

The Western media had predicted a similar outcome for China’s expected peace proposal. However, unlike the doomsday scenario painted by Western media, China’s peace proposals included rational and practical solutions:

Putting an end to the Western sanctions on Russia, avoiding the use of nuclear weapons, establishing humanitarian aid corridors for civilians, and keeping the grain corridor open.

Regardless of China’s “centralistic” stance, the Western media has echoed the same concerns about China’s alleged military and economic aid to Russia.

Although these analyses may point to specific “threats,” they could also be considered the West’s ’wishes.’ Despite their messages of peace, the Western elites are not afraid of escalation; on the contrary, they seem to want it. This has become the main intellectual preoccupation of the Western ruling classes as the “Russian invasion” narrative.

The threat narrative is designed to undermine the idea of multipolarity, which is being led by Russia and China, through sanctions and military deterrence.

Simultaneously, as the sanctions against Russia backfire on the European economy, the perception of “Russian involvement” is being used to destabilize the socio-economic concerns of the European people, who are becoming an increasingly organized force. This tactic has been frequently employed by Europe, as evidenced by the theories about the Yellow Vest Movement in France, which emerged long before the Ukrainian conflict, suggesting that “Russians are leading the movement.”

Furthermore, the threat is being exploited to propagate the notion that the far right, which has gained strength by taking an “extra-systemic” position amidst crises like the migrant crisis and economic recession, is being “strengthened by Russian support.” By latching onto the “Russian outbreak,” the West is deflecting crises caused by its own policies.

These crises include the global economic crisis of 2008, the Arab Spring of 2011 and the resulting migration movements, the 2014 Ukraine Maidan Coup, the Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic that began on December 31, 2020.

The Western world’s threat narrative seeks to disrupt the concept of multipolarity, led by Russia and China, by imposing sanctions and military deterrence. These sanctions, which have hit the European economy like a boomerang, are being used to destabilize the socio-economic concerns of the European people with the perception of “Russian involvement.” This method has been frequently used in Europe, as seen with the theories about the Yellow Vests Movement in France.

Furthermore, the far-right, which has gained strength due to crises such as the migrant crisis and economic recession, is being portrayed as “strengthened by Russian support” through propaganda. The West deflects even the crises caused by its own policies by attaching them to the “Russian outbreak,” including the global economic crisis in 2008, the Arab Spring, the Ukraine Maidan Coup, Brexit, and the COVID-19 epidemic.

While this situation strengthens the demand for security, stability, and prosperity among the peoples of Europe, the potential left-wing centers that could have addressed these demands have been liquidated since the Cold War. The far right has been maintaining and increasing its mainstream position in European politics for years, as evidenced by the rise of far-right parties in Italy, Sweden, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

As a result of this erosion, those who are showcased in the name of the left in the USA and Europe are now positioned against “Authoritarian Russia.” In summary, the immigration wave, economic crises, and far-right tendencies in Europe are basically the result of the Collective West’s actions, of which Europe is also a part. However, the Western media focuses on the “Russian threat.”

The aim of prohibiting or restricting Russian and Chinese media under the guise of “freedom of the press” and accusing them of disinformation and propaganda is to solidify the “Russian threat” narrative. The “Free West” continues to silence alternative voices.

We should recall the US media campaigns against the Soviets in the past and their current operations against Russia in Europe through the US Global Media Agency (USAGM). Organizations such as Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) (formerly Radio for the Liberation of Bolshevism) have been established directly by the CIA, using Nazis, and have expanded to include countries like Cuba and China. However, it is Russian and Chinese media organizations that have been banned, restricted, and labeled as sources of disinformation.

In summary, all these events are connected to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and, even earlier, to imperialism’s attempts to use Ukraine as a base against the USSR/Russia in the last century.

As a result, Ukraine has been turned into a stronghold of czarist supporters during the October Revolution, Nazism during World War II, and extreme right and neo-Nazism after the Maidan coup.

The competition between those advocating complete surrender to the West and those seeking friendship with Russia began in post-Soviet Ukraine and culminated in the victory of the former with the Maidan coup in 2014.

This is the underlying reason for the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine, which is now in its ninth year, with the Russian operation merely ushering in a new phase. The fact that the crisis took on an international dimension was only a matter of time.

It is evident that this longstanding conflict aligns with the picture that Putin drew in his speech. The war’s participants are following a well-defined course.

Even Ukrainian leader Zelensky, in his motivational speech on the war’s first anniversary, highlighted Western weapons such as “Himars, Patriot, Abrams, IRIS-T, Challenger, NASAMS, Leopard” as proof of his country’s resistance unifying the world. However, the new world order extends far beyond the West.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/02/ ... c-control/

In a Compromised Media Environment, Western Intelligence Agencies Escalate NATO’s Proxy War in Ukraine Unchallenged
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on FEBRUARY 28, 2023
Stavroula Pabst

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The NATO Proxy War: A Bird’s Eye View

As winter bites, the current NATO proxy war that has raged for almost a year shows no signs of stopping, with November 2022 reports quietly admitting that roughly 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded in action. Millions of Ukrainians have fled their homes, and those who remain face conscription, power outages, and a lack of other basic resources. Meanwhile, the conflict has strained supply chains and energy access internationally, leading to sky-high inflation of basic items and slashed living standards, especially in Europe.

But perhaps “proxy war” is now a misnomer: officials are planning for long-term, hot conflict, and US leaders have even said they’re ready to “fight to the last person” in Ukraine. On 25 January, German Foreign Defense Minister Annalena Baerbock openly stated “We are fighting a war against Russia.” And a US official quoted by the Washington Post explained M1 Abrams tanks set aside for Ukraine are “probably not for the near fight,” and “are not likely to arrive for many months, if not years.” Recent statements from US officials, further, indicate that the US may help Ukraine strike Crimea, which would effectively constitute an attack on Russian soil, likely triggering significant retaliation.

But a major force carrying the world on a runaway train to war — the western intelligence community — remains little discussed, despite evidence it has sparked much of the ongoing war escalations.

From the Kerch Bridge explosion to the Nord Stream pipelines’ sabotage, a growing body of evidence reveals Western intelligence organizations, especially US and British intelligence communities, are playing key roles in sparking and escalating NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.

A corporatized media sphere, including significant intelligence and elite ties to mainstream media institutions, however, mean intelligence actions, and the war’s true gravity, are kept out of public scrutiny at a time when anti-war movements are critically weak. As a result, the intelligence community can continue operations uninhibited, perhaps even sparking a hot war.

Western Meddling and Intelligence Operations in Ukraine Before and During the Current Conflict

Recent events indicate western intelligence is behind significant conflict escalations before and during the war in Ukraine, with incidents including, but not limited to, the Kerch Bridge attack, likely the Nord Stream pipeline explosions, and, as recent reporting from journalist and former US special operations officer Jack Murphy reveals, the CIA’s collaborations with a European NATO ally’s intelligence forces to conduct ongoing sabotages within Russia’s borders.

Even the New York Times has acknowledged major intelligence operations throughout the war, reporting in June 2022 that a “secretive operation involving U.S. Special Operations forces hints at the scale of the effort to assist Ukraine’s still outgunned military.”

But the West has meddled in Ukrainian affairs long before 2022. In fact, CIA documents declassified in 2016 reveal proof of intelligence involvement in Ukraine dating back to at least 1953. The CIA’s Codename: AERODYNAMIC, for example, was established “to provide for the exploitation and expansion of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance for cold war and hot war purposes.” And CAPACHO, an AERODYNAMIC affiliate project, is described by author Amit Bagaria as a psychological warfare operation, where CIA operatives organized and participated in Ukrainian study groups and publications, then distributed materials en masse to Ukrainian civilians, libraries, newspapers and cultural institutions to encourage nationalism and strengthen anti-Soviet sentiment and resistance. The intelligence operations, which TeleSUR English reported had been executed to destabilize and “nazify” Ukraine, continued into the 1970s.

Decades later, the United States played a major role in Ukraine’s 2014 western-backed coup, which replaced democratically elected Viktor Yanukovich with Petro Poroshenko, whose Washington-influenced government set Russia and Ukraine on a path for collision as Ukraine subsequently sought out NATO membership, one of Russia’s diplomatic “red lines.”

Mainstream western media portrayed the Maidan uprisings as a spontaneous mass movement towards alignment with Europe. While some protests arose organically, they posed an opportune time for Washington to facilitate Yanukovich’s ousting from power and form a government of their choosing through various covert efforts.

The late Robert Parry observed in late February 2014, for example, that the US intelligence proxy National Endowment of Democracy’s (NED) whopping 65 projects in Ukraine could serve as a “shadow structure” for Americans to influence the country’s decisions, or even whip up unrest. And former US Agent Scott Rickard told Russia Today in 2014 that US foreign aid agencies flooded about 5 billion USD into groups protesting the Ukrainian government during the Maidan protests.

United States Senators Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and John McCain (R-Arizona) even went to Ukraine to attend the Maidan protests, with McCain telling CNN that “What we’re trying to do is try to bring about a peaceful transition…This is a grassroots revolution here.” Infamously, US Official Victoria Nuland’s call revealing plans for a “transition” in Ukraine, and who would be part of a possible new Ukrainian government, was also leaked.

Setting the stage for today’s war, the 2014 coup and its aftermath gave the US ample opportunities to expand influence in Ukraine while boosting the Eastern European country’s military capacities. As TJ Coles reported for The Grayzone, the Ukraine component of the US State Department and Pentagon Global Security Contingency Fund (GSCF), founded in the coup’s wake, provided “tens of millions of dollars-worth” towards the Ukraine Ministry of Defense, National Guard, and especially the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces “in developing tactical and institutional capabilities that are compatible with Western models,” according to the US State Department.

Paving the way for greater conflict, President Barack Obama also authorized covert measures to plant “cyber weapons” in Russia that could be “detonated” in case of conflict escalation. While the Obama Administration could only authorize the measures, which were up to the Trump Administration to subsequently execute, ongoing sabotages as per Jack Murphy’s reporting suggest their likely success.

Since the war’s beginning, moreover, major intelligence operations are ongoing. As The Grayzone reported in October 2022, documents obtained showed British intelligence plans to blow up the Kerch Bridge, the bridge connecting Russia and Crimea, about six months before Ukraine did so in a suicide bombing apparently overseen by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence services. Kit Klarenberg later reported in The Grayzone that, according to documents obtained in 2022, UK intelligence is training Ukrainian soldiers to form a “partisan” army with plans to attack premeditated targets in Crimea.

And now, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh’s bombshell scoop claims US Navy divers, in a covert operation carried out by the US in collaboration with Norway’s Secret Service and Navy, planted remotely triggered explosives at the Nord Stream pipelines under the cover of NATO BALTOPS 22 exercises.

Hersh’s reports came out after months of media radio silence on Nord Stream. But even before his scoop dropped, it was clear the US had incentives to carry out the pipeline attacks. United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Nord Stream’s end was “a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy, and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs,” which “offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come.” And President Biden even suggested in early 2022 that “If Russia invades … then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2 ….We will bring an end to it.”

Further, Jack Murphy’s reporting on intelligence-backed sabotage networks in Russia elucidates the depth of pre-planning against Russia. According to Murphy, the intelligence-established sabotage framework in Russia is “years in the making” and inhibits the country’s supply lines. A former CIA officer he interviewed, moreover, said the sabotages are especially damaging because they create a perceived Russian inability to control the country’s basic matters. As Murphy reports, the sabotages apparently explain or otherwise contribute to recent and mysterious incidents in Russia, such as damages to fuel depots, bridges and power plants, all ongoing since Russia’s Special Operation began early last year.

Finally, the AP missile story in November 2022, which incorrectly reported a Russian missile hit Poland, was based on incorrect information from anonymous US intelligence. The moment that led Zelensky to call for further conflict escalation forces skepticism about whether intelligence was looking to stir the pot.

While certainly incomplete, the breadth of known intelligence participation in Ukrainian affairs before and during the current war paints a picture of significant involvement able to drive both public opinion and the course of the war.

The Revolving Door Between Media, Intelligence, and the Elite

Western intelligence communities have carried out significant operations in and around Ukraine for years. Due to the lack of mainstream reporting on the subject, however, few are aware of the phenomenon even as dangerous conflict escalates, meaning the organizations can work without scrutiny.

While striking, the lack of media interest in western intelligence operations, in Ukraine and in general, is unsurprising considering the relationship media and intelligence communities enjoy. The relationship’s full extent remains unknown to the public, but hints at deep ties between the two entities frequently emerge.

Of course, the revolving door between the US media, elite and government is a visible phenomenon, with Jen Psaki, Kayleigh McEnany, and now Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders all receiving high-tier cable news positions after stints as White House Press Secretary. The same goes for prominent US intelligence community members, where former CIA director John Brennan is now an NBC senior national security and intelligence analyst, and Former Director of National Intelligence of the United States James Clapper is a CNN national security analyst.

On an international level, as journalist Jordan Schachtel revealed early this year, heads and higher-ups of major publications and media corporations, including the New York Times, NBCUniversal and TIME Magazine were slated to attend the elite, invite-only Davos forum that took place earlier this winter. They did not attend to cover the event, but rather as participants.

Further, the recently-released Twitter files show how US government and intelligence have extensively curated the public’s understanding of major current events, such as the coronavirus crisis, Russiagate, and the current conflict in Ukraine, through social media content. In the case of Russiagate, for example, the files reveal US government officials fabricated and pressured Twitter to accept phony Russiagate narratives, including the lie that Russian bots propagated the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag in 2018. Twitter’s public silence on the matter allowed Russiagate narratives to circulate throughout mainstream media, priming the public for the anti-Russian hysteria that now dominates coverage of the current war.

While the Twitter files come with significant limitations due to the opaque, limited purview of their release and the corporate nature of and defense contractor ties twitter and its current CEO, Elon Musk, embody and enjoy, the released materials elucidate significant government and intelligence interference with the news feeds that millions scroll through every-day.

The United States government- and intelligence-adjacent organizations, further, have played significant roles in funding and shaping media institutions in the US and internationally. As Alan MacLeod notes in Mintpress News, the United States Embassy and CIA front group National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have funded a multitude of media organizations in the United States and elsewhere, including fact-checking organizations like VoxCheck, the Poynter Institute, and StopFake. Billionaire oligarch and Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar, furthermore, is known for funding a number of media publications and organizations, such as The Intercept until early 2023, as well as, as Alex Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal report for Mintpress News, funding a number of pro-regime change networks and fostering partnerships with CIA front-groups.

As Kit Klarenberg reports in his 2022 Substack piece “Anatomy of a Coup: How CIA Front Laid Foundations for Ukraine War,” similar phenomena are ongoing in Ukraine’s media sphere. For example, Omidyar, the NED, the US Embassy in Ukraine, in addition to USAID, have all funded Ukrainian media network Hromadske, which Klarenberg emphasizes played a key role in the coup’s success due to its fast growth and adept ability to disingenuously depict the Maidan protests as organic and representative of the larger populations’ political sentiments. The network was founded in late 2013 as the Maidan demonstrations began.

And attempts to report on intelligence operations only reveal more about the intelligence community-media relationship. In his article outlining intelligence-executed sabotages in Russia, for example, Jack Murphy admits he had to self-publish his work, explaining that other publication attempts entailed unethical work practices and even intelligence sabotage, where a senior CIA official “leaked a story to the New York Times to undermine his piece.”

At the end of his article, Murphy opines that the current state of journalist-intelligence relationships has hampered critical reporting, leaving the public completely unaware of ongoing intelligence activities contributing to escalating hostilities. Here, he criticizes the media industry for prioritizing its intelligence community relationships over the public’s need to know:

“….Journalists can lack the circumspection to examine how their organizations come to mimic the institutions of power that they claim to speak truth to. At some point the equities they build with the intelligence community and military commands become more important than informing the public.

Indeed, the Russian government knows perfectly well who is sponsoring these sabotage strikes. Moreover, the intelligence community wants them to know. The only party left in the dark is the public at large, left unaware of the shadow war taking place behind the scenes.”


The Impact

Unfortunately, intelligence ties to our media and major institutions leave major aspects of the current conflict opaque, just as they have obstructed the public’s understanding of previous conflicts they’ve contributed to. As a result, the anti-war movement remains critically weak despite today’s acute crisis.

Even as the world teeters towards possible nuclear war, the mass demonstrations and resistance present against the Iraq war two decades ago, which brought out the largest coordinated protests in history, are now almost nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, European anti-war and anti-NATO protests, when they do take place, occur with little media coverage.

No prominent US politician in office currently supports an anti-war position, and Congress almost unilaterally voted in favor of sending 40 billion USD in assistance to Ukraine in May 2022, with those opposing it largely doing so in order to investigate whether it was a reasonable use of taxpayer funds. And Democrats quickly withdrew a lackluster letter calling to prioritize diplomatic efforts in the Ukraine conflict in late 2022 after significant establishment blowback.

The moment is ripe for abuse from American officials, who openly admit to meddling in other countries’ affairs. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the United States Victoria Nuland, for example, even boasted recently that “we are working closely with the Belarusian opposition.” Recent Financial Times pieces, moreover, highlighted the United States’ efforts to prepare for war with China, including a leaked memo where General Mike Minihan, head of US Air Mobility Command, admitted, “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.”

Without change, the current conflict could easily escalate into a hot war amongst the superpowers — some, including French historian Emmanuel Todd, argue we’ve already entered World War III. In the meantime, millions of Ukrainians, who have been reduced to cannon fodder in the West’s deadly war against Russia, are suffering with little recourse or chance at diplomacy.

Although poor media coverage of the war and mass censorship has hindered an anti-war movement thus far, previous roadblocks cannot get in the way of calls for diplomacy before it’s too late. The West’s hunger for conflict is insatiable: without mass public resistance, it seems little short of inevitable that the world could be submerged in a large-scale and deadly war.

The time for an anti-war movement, and an anti-war movement that recognizes and condemns the reckless actions of western intelligence agencies, is now.

Works Cited:

Bagaria, Amit. I-SPY: A peep into the world of Spies. Chennai, India: Notion Press, 2019.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/02/ ... hallenged/

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NATO WEAPONS SHIPPED TO UKRAINE END UP IN THE HANDS OF CRIMINAL GANGS IN EUROPE
28 Feb 2023 , 1:52 pm .

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Since the start of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, experts have argued that sending weapons to Ukraine could have unintended consequences given the difficulty of monitoring their end use (Photo: File)

An arms smuggling expert with the Swedish Customs Service said that in the country's largest city, Gothenburg, traffickers receive requests to buy weapons from Ukraine to later sell to criminal gangs.

Jesper Liedholm in an interview with the Swedish media spoke about the danger of high-caliber weapons falling into the hands of criminals. "Why wouldn't a grenade launcher be interesting for an irregular group in Sweden?" he asked rhetorically, pick up Sputnik .

Likewise, the specialist in international arms smuggling from the Flemish Institute for Peace Research in Brussels, Nils Duquet, pointed out that this same danger is latent in all European countries.

Both Russian political leaders and Interpol officials have been warning for months that weapons shipped to Ukraine are likely to leak onto the black market and end up in the hands of organized bandits in Europe and beyond. Weapons of the conflict have already turned up in Finland, the Sahel region of Africa and countries in the Chad area.

Since last year, political analyst Jordan Cohen has argued that sending weapons to Ukraine could have unintended consequences given the difficulty of monitoring their end use.

https://misionverdad.com/armas-otan-env ... -en-europa

Google Translator

****

Russian Roulette: The Ruble Rises as European Economies Crumble
FEBRUARY 26, 2023

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The Russian and NATO flags in contrast to each other. Photo: NATO

By Fra Hughes — Feb 23, 2023

Has Biden bitten off more than he and NATO can swallow?

Did anyone say it would be over by Christmas like they did in 1914? Well, Christmas has come and gone, and very much like the trenches of the First World War, the ground lost and won can sometimes be measured in single-digit meters and kilometers. To be fair, Russia is doing most of the winning and Ukraine is doing much of the losing.

How did this ever come to pass? Well, context and history will show that American leaders promised Russian leaders that NATO would not expand one inch east toward the Russian borders after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

They lied.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO, in tandem with the European Union, has marched steadily toward Russia’s borders, and now many of the ex-Soviet satellite states are now de facto EU and NATO members with American/NATO nuclear bases now within strike range of Russian cities and military infrastructure, and the Kremlin is literally only a few minutes away from a NATO missile attack. As part of this encroachment policy, each country that borders the Russian Federation is a geopolitical target for American/NATO/EU recruitment. If they can hoodwink the populations of the targeted states with promises of a land of milk and honey within the European Union and if compliant state establishments and political leaders encourage a Yes vote for accession into the NATO-dominated EU, then another piece of the jigsaw puzzle of a new Russophobic Europe is complete. If, however, the targeted state, Ukraine in this case, does not toe the line of American client states, then unpopular coups are the orders of the day.Witness Maidan Square in 2014, the fascist stormtroopers of American imperialism, lead the violent murderous insurrection of a western-financed and armed coup and voilà, as the French might say, a country opposed to joining NATO and the EU whose leaders had planned that Ukraine would remain a neutral sovereign state were forced to flee for their lives from the fascist lynch mob; and Ukraine became a de facto fascist armed camp whose political policies where being dictated by the democratic party leaders in DC and not the undemocratic, unelected coup leaders in Kiev. The fascists now in charge in Ukraine began the systematic repression of the Russian language, Russian culture, and the Russian-speaking peoples of Crimea and Donbass; political opposition was banned and the military occupation of Lugansk and Donetsk began.

The seeds of Ukraine’s implosion may have been sown during the Second World War when many Ukrainian fascists joined the German army and committed heinous war crimes against their fellow Ukrainians, including Jews, communists, socialists, and those they considered racially impure. Those seeds were then watered, nurtured, and harvested by the imperialist hegemonic West in 2014.

The result? Two breakaway Ukrainian Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk are now members of the Russian Federation. Crimea is now also a part of the Russian Federation, we have witnessed the deaths of over 14,000 Eastern Ukrainians murdered by their own government between 2014 and 2022, two broken agreements Minsk I and Minsk II, the duplicitous clown of a President in Kiev, and a stumbling, bumbling, mumbling forgetful clown of a President in Washington. Both intend to fight Russia to the last 16-year-old Ukrainian boy or girl. As part of the American/NATO strategy to put boots on the ground, planes in the air, and nuclear missiles within a few minutes reach of Moscow, their brinkmanship has led us to the cusp of a global engulfment with potential nuclear escalation.

The West’s combined greed, coupled with its need to remain the dominant World superpower, backed by American military superiority, has created a false sense of invincibility and a level of brinkmanship that defies logic. From instigating a regime change coup in 2014 to being signatories of the internationally recognized Minsk I and Minsk II accords, the West, including the leaders in Berlin, Paris, and Kiev, has blatantly lied, by signing Agreements they had no intention of implementing. They have now stated publicly that those accords were simply used to misdirect Moscow of their true intentions, which included the reorganization and rearmament of the Ukraine fascist-led forces, including the reoccupation and possible attendant massacres in the now independent republics of Lugansk, Donetsk, and Crimea.

The Russian special military operation to denazify Ukraine began In February 2022. Its sole purpose was to defend the new republics from a fascist-led pogrom and the possible massacre and brutal repression of local Russian-speaking citizens, many of whom have memories of the German/Ukrainian brutal nazi occupation and war crimes committed against them by the Ukraine Banderite fascists in 1941. America started this war with its fascist-led coup in 2014.Many people refused to live under an unelected fascist junta, and they resisted .The threatened Ukrainian invasion, reoccupation, and possible massacre of civilians in the breakaway republics forced Moscow to intervene to protect the populace. An intervention that was 8 years late. Russia believed Germany and France when they said they would guarantee Kiev would comply with the Minsk Agreements. They lied, and Russia was deceived. Kiev was rearmed, and the Russian Federation was given no choice but to conceive of a plan to defend innocents from slaughter. The outcome is a de facto NATO-American-Russian war in Eastern Ukraine.The sanctions imposed by the West have backfired. Germany is being deindustrialized.

The collective Western imperialist countries, the empires of old, are heading into a recession. The rest of the Global South, Asia, Africa, and others who account for 87% of the world’s population are now focusing on a multipolar world order, where respect, tolerance, acceptance, and mutually compatible interests combine to the benefit of all parties. Economic growth can be achieved through sustainable partnerships. Countries that believe in observing international law are coming together to form a new world order. The threat of mutual nuclear destruction is being replaced with the promise of mutual cooperation. Uncle (Joe) Biden and the Democratic Party’s war on Russia have spectacularly backfired. Mishandled and misjudged from the very start, the dream of balkanizing Russia for the benefit of American and European capital has failed. The hope of fragmenting the Russian Federation for profit and plunder is over. American hegemony is failing. It is only in writing this piece that I now realize the true hope that lies before us.

Hope in humanity, hope in a better more equal world, and hope for future generations born into a more progressive tolerant multi-polar world.I have visited Donetsk and Lugansk and have many friends there. Russia has won the war both within and without Ukraine on the political, ethical, and military battlefields. What we must all do now is demand Zelensky’s departure. After all, he was elected on a mandate of seeking peace with the people of Eastern Ukraine not to butcher them.A negotiated comprehensive peace deal must be concluded, although going by the sad shenanigans of the West how could Russia possibly believe anything Kiev and others might sign?I am content to let others describe the depth of the war and how it has progressed on the battlefield. I see the bigger prize. Global peace secured by mutual honorable advocates for multipolarism. We are witnessing the end of Western imperialist hegemony, which invades and destroys its targeted enemies, causing millions of deaths, displacements, and refugees.Hasn’t the poor of the world been occupied, exploited, and mistreated enough?

(almayadeen)

https://orinocotribune.com/russian-roul ... s-crumble/

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The people of Europe vs. NATO

Progressive across Europe have called NATO a ‘destabilizer’ and a major culprit in escalating the Russia-Ukraine conflict into a full fledged war

February 28, 2023 by Muhammed Shabeer
24-02 Anti-NATO round up

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Protest against the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, in June 2022. (Photo: via PCE)

On February 24, 2022, Russian armed forces crossed the Ukrainian border and launched a Special Military Operation (SMO) to, as Vladimir Putin put it, ‘de-Nazify’ and ‘demilitarize’ Ukraine. The already eight-year-long Russia-Ukraine conflict had escalated into a full-fledged war. A year later, the war is still raging, millions have been displaced, and hundreds of thousands are dead. As Ukraine gears up for another round of mobilization and awaits new shipments of strategic arms from the West, rumors of a massive Russian ‘spring’ offensive and an Ukrainian counter offensive are in the air, making chances for a negotiated peace settlement even more unlikely.

At the start of the war, large sections of the people across Europe had vociferously rallied against Russia, supporting the sending of arms to Ukraine, and harsh sanctions against Russia.

However, the impact was felt in a matter of days. Due to the sanctions on Russian energy imports and profiteering by multinationals, energy prices skyrocketed across Europe, provoking an acute cost of living crisis. Amid soaring inflation and facing a fuel-strapped winter, working people have began to call on their political leadership to immediately start negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine. However, many European leaders have remained insensitive to people’s demands, and, instead, have resorted to increasing military spending and providing shipment of arms and ammunition to Ukraine, thereby escalating and prolonging the conflict.

The leadership of the European Union (EU) has failed miserably in de-escalating the conflict and mitigating the crisis. It now seems clear that the EU has become completely subservient to the influence of the United States and its imperialist policies enacted through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe.

NATO Expansion
NATO has been preparing the ground for expanding its sphere of influence up to the vast borders of its arch enemy, Russia, by getting access to more bases in Europe and conducting joint military exercises in the region. Communists and peace groups in Norway, Germany, and Luxembourg have long warned about the possible impacts of NATO’s military maneuvers, such as the Trident Juncture 2018 and Exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20.

Many in the global anti-war movement believe that NATO’s actions, not Russia’s, actually sparked the war in Ukraine. NATO is de-facto led by the United States, which for decades have ignored Russia’s security concerns by using NATO to build bases and recruit member nations closer and closer to Russia’s borders—despite promising to not spread “an inch” of NATO jurisdiction eastward. Most recently, the US has ignored Russia’s security concerns by sending weapons to Ukraine and courting the nation as a potential NATO member, which some argue triggered the outbreak of war.

NATO conducted three major military exercises in Europe last year alone—Neptune Strike 22.2 in the Mediterranean, Cold Response 2022 in Norway, and Iron Spear in Latvia—while a deadly war was raging in Ukraine.

In May 2022, Sweden and Finland formally submitted a joint request to join NATO, reversing their longstanding policy of neutrality. Communists in both countries intensified their campaigns protesting this decision to join NATO, arguing that it will endanger peace and stability in the region, which has been undergoing rapid militarization. Leftists in Norway are protesting the militarization of the country, which has become an important host and party to NATO-US military exercises in the Scandinavian region.

Working class against the war
Protests were staged outside the 2023 Munich Security Conference on February 18 which was widely criticized for not supporting a negotiated settlement to end the war in Ukraine and instead encouraging further military escalation under the leadership of NATO members.

Another major anti-NATO protest took place last year ahead of the NATO 2022 Summit in Madrid. In June 2022, anti-war and anti-imperialist groups in Spain and across Europe gathered in Madrid to protest the three-day conference attended by the heads of state of NATO member countries. The organizers of the protests also held a two-day peace summit in Madrid over June 24 and 25, at the conclusion of which a joint declaration was issued asserting that “NATO is a serious threat to world peace, having left a trail of destruction from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan.”

Working class organizations in Greece have also consistently mobilized against the transfer of arms and ammunition to Ukraine via Greek territory. On multiple occasions, they have protested at railway yards and ports across the country against the transport of tanks destined for Ukraine and the docking of NATO warships. Turkey also witnessed protests by communists demanding the closure of NATO bases in the country. Progressives in Cyprus have protested the cost of living crisis and denounced the intimidating presence of NATO in the Mediterranean, which has also derailed the Cyprus peace process.

In Italy, unionists from USB and the members of communist parties and youth groups, including Potere al Popolo, have been protesting the use of Italian airstrips and ports for transferring arms. The anti-base movement is campaigning against plans for a new military base in Coltano, and has demanded an end to NATO/US bases in the country. The Italian working class also continues to protest against attempts by the far-right government led by Giorgia Meloni to reinforce the war effort in Ukraine.

In Belgium, anti-imperialists forces like Intal Globalize Solidarity, the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA), and the Communist Party of Belgium (PCB-CPB) have taken to the streets several times demanding that the government tackle the cost of living crisis and to denounce the war in Ukraine. They have also protested the Belgian federal government’s decision in February last year to allocate EUR 10.2 billion (USD 10.76 billion) in additional defense spending, anticipating the war. The Czech Peace Movement (CHM) and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) have also organized protests along the same lines.

In Denmark, on February 5, working class sections organized a massive protest against the government’s decision to add an extra working day to the annual calendar to raise an extra 3 billion kroner (USD 0.43 billion) for the rearmament of the country.

In Berlin and several cities across Italy, anti-war and leftist groups organized major mobilizations on February 25, calling for peace. Tens of thousands participated in the mobilization in Berlin called for by Left party MP Sahra Wagenknecht, journalist Alice Schwarzer, and others demanding that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz take an active role in encouraging negotiations to end the war. In Italy, trade unionists, and leftist-communist parties, including Potere al Popolo and youth-student groups, took part in the mobilizations denouncing the war and called for ‘negotiations instead of escalation.’ Meanwhile, far-right forces are also trying their best to exploit the situation and people’s anger.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/28/ ... e-vs-nato/

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad

Image

The battle for Bakhmut
situation by the end of February 28, 2023

🔻To the south of Yagodnoye, assault detachments of the PMC "Wagner" established control over the hills and approached Artemovsky (Khromovo) . The last physical supply route for the Armed Forces of Ukraine runs through this suburb of Bakhmut .

▪️In addition, the "Wagnerites" advanced in the area of ​​​​the meat processing plant and went to one of the sites on the banks of the Bakhmutka River .

🔻In the east of the city, Russian units lined the front along Shchedraya Street in Zabakhmutovka . In the south, the Wagnerites reached Tselyannaya Street , and in Sobachevka they are fighting in residential areas.

▪️At the moment, the situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has noticeably worsened. A partial withdrawal of Ukrainian formations to the opposite bank of Bakhmutka is currently underway - new firing positions are being set up in the central districts of the city.

🔻In the south-west of Bakhmut, regular raids by Wagner PMC units on Ukrainian positions near the highway to Konstantinovka and in Krasnoe allow fettering the capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the southern front.

On March 6, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine plans to transfer additional reinforcements of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from various formations to Chasov Yar . Now the personnel are completing their training in training centers in the west of Ukraine.

▪️Ukrainian artillery groups are firing at the areas of offensive of Russian units. At the same time, the issuance of ammunition is strictly rationed due to problems with the supply of shells. Target designation is provided by UAV calculations - 24 drones were spotted in Bakhmut and its environs per day.

***

Colonelcassad
📌 Chronicle of the special military operation
for March 1, 2023

🔻Republic of Crimea:

▪️At night, Ukrainian formations tried to attack Crimea with drones. Six aircraft were shot down near Cape Tarkhankut , eight were landed by means of electronic warfare near Evpatoria and Saki , and one more was landed near Krasnoperekopsk .

🔻Starobelsk direction:

▪️In the Limansky sector , Ukrainian forces tried to attack Russian positions in the direction of Kremennaya , however, having come under fire from Russian artillery, they suffered losses and retreated.

🔻Soledar direction:

▪️To the west of Bakhmut (Artemovsk), the fighters of the Wagner PMC continue to move towards the village of Khromovo (Artemovskoye) , through which the last relatively safe road passes, allowing supplying the Bakhmut garrison of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

▪️In Bakhmut itself , fierce fighting is going on in the area of ​​Shchedraya Street in Zabakhmutovka and the Sobachevka microdistrict in the south of the city.

▪️To the southwest of the city, clashes continue on the outskirts of the village of Krasnoe (Ivanovskoye) near the Bakhmut-Konstantinovka highway.

🔻Donetsk direction:

▪️In the center of Maryinka, clashes continue in the area of ​​Druzhby Avenue. Russian troops switched to the tactics of enveloping the Maryinsky fortified area from the south and north, which can have a greater effect than head-on strikes.

▪️The enemy once again fired at the Donetsk agglomeration : Donetsk, Makeevka, Shirokaya Balka, Vladimirovka, Gorlovka, Panteleymonovka and Yasinovatsky district were hit.

🔻Poltava region:

▪️Over the past day, Russian troops hit several critical infrastructure facilities in the Kremenchug district of the Poltava region.

🔻Southern front. Kherson direction:

▪️In the Kherson region, the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired on Novaya Kakhovka, Kakhovka, Aleshki, Heroiskoye and Gornostaevka . Russian artillerymen responded by hitting targets in and around Kherson .

Image

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

****

Tank in Berlin
March 2, 8:37 am

Image

Tank in Berlin

When you can feel the drin behind your back,
It's time to go for broke.
Dill brought to Berlin A destroyed Russian tank.

They staged a fuss,
Like a "fraer on show-off",
They say, we are successfully beating the Russians
On all their fronts.

And here on the square stands
the Padded Giant.
But in a strange way, this view
was perceived by all of Berlin.

And in defiance of independent lies,
Not listening to nonsense,
Suddenly someone put a rose
On the gray armor.

The mouths of the Pindos crows fell silent in confusion
,
When suddenly the crowd carried flowers
from all sides.

And it was the highest of awards
For the sacrifice of attacks, When our RUSSIAN tank met
its last parade . (With) . Frolov


t.me/imsindi_z/9932 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8197533.html

Google Translator

****

Finland moves toward NATO membership
China Daily Global | Updated: 2023-03-02 09:36

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A NATO flag is seen at the Alliance headquarters ahead of a NATO Defence Ministers meeting, in Brussels, Belgium, in this file photo. [Photo/Agencies]

Finland moved a step closer toward joining the NATO military alliance on Wednesday after lawmakers ratified the nation's bid for membership with a vote of 184 to 7 in Parliament.

Public opinion in Finland supports NATO membership and Helsinki wants to progress with its bid before the general election in April, reported Agence France-Presse news agency, or AFP.

Having held neutral status for decades, both Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO last year after the outbreak of conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

NATO requires unanimous approval from its members to approve accession, but two of its 30 member countries, Turkiye and Hungary, are yet to formally endorse the bids from Sweden and Finland.

Sweden's campaign is being obstructed by Turkiye, which accuses it of supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Ankara considers to be a terrorist group.

Talks between Ankara and Sweden were put on hold after an activist burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm in January.

Finland is said to face fewer diplomatic hurdles than Stockholm, and wants to push ahead with its effort to join the Western alliance rather than wait to make a joint bid with Sweden, reported AFP.

Finland's vote on speeding up the accession process coincided with a visit to Helsinki by Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general.

In a joint news conference on Tuesday with Sanna Marin, Finland's prime minister, Stoltenberg said membership for Finland and Sweden was a "top priority". Both Scandinavian countries meet NATO's entry criteria, he said.

"My message has been for a long time... that time has come to finalize the ratification process. The time is now to ratify in both Budapest and in Ankara," he said.

Stoltenberg urged Turkiye and Hungary to urgently approve the accession of both Nordic nations. He noted that the Hungarian Parliament has "made it clear" that it would deliberate ratification within a few days, and that he hoped for an imminent and "positive" vote.

Marin's government wants to move ahead with the bid and avoid any potential political vacuum, with elections due on April 2, reported Euronews.

In a preliminary vote last spring, there was near-unanimous support in the Finnish Parliament for joining NATO, and the legislature has now approved a law permitting the country to join the organization.

Speaking at the news briefing, Marin hinted that the delayed accession process for the two countries risked damaging NATO's authority.

Marin said: "We would have hoped to become members of NATO already. Finland and Sweden fulfil all the criteria, as has been mentioned, and we are yet waiting. And of course, this strains the open-door policy of NATO; it's also to do with NATO's credibility."

Finland announced on Tuesday that it has started construction of a fence along parts of its 1,340-km border with Russia "to boost security".

A 3-km pilot project in southeastern Finland will be completed in June, with more construction planned between 2023 and 2025.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b1a98.html
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 02, 2023 11:41 pm

The Ukraine Conflict: The Responsibility of the Rulers
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 1, 2023
Thierry Meyssan

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Before coming to Kiev, President Joe Biden sought assurances from Russia that it would not bomb his special train.

The Atlantic Alliance magnifies Ukraine on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Russian military intervention on its territory. Before our very eyes, we see it resorting to the most deceptive propaganda, handling with skill omissions and sometimes lies. Contrary to what she claims, this war was never illegal, even if today it no longer seems necessary and should be stopped. However, the causes of the war remain and the Kremlin anticipates a second round, not to annex Ukraine or Moldova, but to save Transnistria.


The first anniversary of the East-West military confrontation in Ukraine was an opportunity for the West to convince its people that they were “on the right side of history” and that their victory was “inevitable.”

None of this is surprising. It is normal for governments to communicate about their activities. Except that here the information is lies by omission and the comments are propaganda. This is such a reversal of reality that one wonders whether the defeated of the Second World War have not come to power in Kiev today.

“RUSSIA’S ILLEGAL, UNJUSTIFIABLE AND UNPROVOKED WAR

All Western interventions claim that we condemn the “illegal, unjustifiable and unprovoked war of Russia” [1]. This is factually wrong.

Let’s leave aside the qualification of “unjustifiable”. It refers to an indecent moral position. No war is just. Every war is the acknowledgement, not of a fault, but of a failure. Let us examine the qualifier “unprovoked”.

According to Russian diplomacy, the problem began with the 2014 US-Canadian operation and the overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and thus the UN Charter. There is no denying that Washington was instrumental in this so-called “revolution of dignity”: the then Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, Victoria Nuland, posted herself at the head of the coup plotters.

According to Chinese diplomacy, which has just published two documents on the subject, one should not stop at this operation, but go back to the “Orange Revolution” of 2004, also organized by the United States, to see the first violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and the United Nations Charter. Obviously, if Russia does not mention it, it is because it also played a role in it, which it did not do in 2014.

The Western public is so shocked by the ease with which the United States manipulates mobs and overthrows governments that it is no longer aware of the seriousness of these events. From the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 to the overthrow of Serge Sarkissian in Armenia in 2018, it has become accustomed to forced regime changes. Whether the deposed leaders were good or bad should not matter. What is unbearable and inadmissible is that a foreign state organized their overthrow by masking its action behind a few national opponents. These are acts of war, without military intervention.

Facts are stubborn. The war in Ukraine was caused by the violations of Ukrainian sovereignty in 2004 and 2014. These violations were followed by an eight-year civil war.

Nor is war illegal under international law. The UN Charter does not prohibit the use of war. The Security Council even has the possibility of declaring war (articles 39 to 51). This time the particularity is that it opposes permanent members of the Council.

Russia co-signed the Minsk Agreements to end the civil war. However, not having been born yesterday, it understood from the start that the West did not want peace, but war. So she had the Minsk Agreements endorsed by Security Council Resolution 2202, five days after their conclusion, and then forced the Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev to withdraw his men from the Ukrainian Donbass. It attached to the resolution a statement by the presidents of France, Ukraine and Russia, as well as the German chancellor, guaranteeing the implementation of these texts. These four signatories committed their countries.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko declared in the following days that there was no question of giving anything up, but rather of punishing the inhabitants of Donbass.

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel told Die Zeit [2] that she only wanted to buy time so that NATO could arm the authorities in Kiev. She unknowingly clarified her statement in a discussion with a provocateur she believed to be former President Poroshenko.
Former President Francois Hollande confirmed in Kyiv Independent the words of Mrs. Merkel [3].

That left Russia, which implemented a special military operation on February 24, 2022 under its “responsibility to protect”. To say that its intervention is illegal is to say, for example, that France’s intervention during the genocide in Rwanda was also illegal and that the massacre should have been allowed to continue.

Emails from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special adviser Vladislav Surkov, which have just been revealed by the Ukrainian side, only confirm this process. In the years that followed, Russia helped the Ukrainian republics of Donbass prepare intellectually for independence. This interference was illegal. It was in response to the equally illegal interference of the United States, which armed not Ukraine but the Ukrainian “integral nationalists. The war had already begun, but Ukrainians exclusively conducted it. It resulted in 20,000 deaths in 8 years. The West and Russia intervened only indirectly.

It is important to understand that by pretending to negotiate peace, Angela Merkel and François Hollande have committed the worst of crimes. Indeed, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, “crimes against peace” are even more serious than those “against humanity”. They are not the cause of this or that massacre, but of the war itself. This is why the chairman of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, has called for the convening of a new Nuremberg Tribunal to try Angela Merkel and François Hollande [4]. The Western press has not relayed this call, which shows us the gulf between the two perceptions of the conflict.

The order of the International Court of Justice of March 16, 2022 stated, as a precautionary measure, that “the Russian Federation must immediately suspend the military operations which it began on February 24, 2022 on the territory of Ukraine” (ref: A/77/4, paragraphs 189 to 197). Moscow did not comply, considering that the Court had been asked about the requirement of genocide perpetrated by Kiev against its own population and not about the military operation to protect the Ukrainian population.

For its part, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted several resolutions, the latest of which is A/ES-11/L.7, of February 23, 2023. The text “Reiterates its demand that the Russian Federation immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all its military forces from Ukrainian territory within the internationally recognized borders of the country, and calls for a cessation of hostilities.

Neither of these texts declares the Russian intervention “illegal. They order or demand that the Russian army withdraw. 141 of 193 states consider that Russia should stop its intervention. Some of them think it is illegal, but most of them think it is “no longer necessary” and is causing unnecessary suffering. This is not the same thing at all.

States have a different point of view than jurists. International law can only sanction what exists. States must protect their citizens from the conflicts that are brewing, before it is too late to respond. That is why the Kremlin did not comply with the UN General Assembly. It did not withdraw from the battlefield. Indeed, it has watched for eight years as NATO has armed Ukraine and prepared for this war. It knows that the Pentagon is preparing a second round in Transnistria [5] and must protect its population from this second operation. Just as it chose the date of its intervention in Ukraine on the basis of information indicating an imminent attack by Kiev on the Donbass, which was only confirmed later [6], so ot is deciding today to liberate the whole of Novorossia, including Odessa. This is legally unacceptable as long as the proof of the Western shenanigans is not provided, but it is already necessary from the point of view of its responsibility.

Clearly, these two ways of thinking have not escaped the notice of observers. Judging that Russian intervention is no longer necessary must be distinguished from supporting the West. That is why only 39 out of 191 states participate in Western sanctions and send weapons to Ukraine.

UKRAINE IS A “DEMOCRACY”

The second message from Western leaders is that Ukraine is a “democracy”. Apart from the fact that this word has no meaning at a time when the middle classes are disappearing and income disparities have become greater than at any other time in human history, moving away from the egalitarian ideal, Ukraine is anything but a “democracy.

Its constitution is the only racist one in the world. It states in Article 16 that “Preserving the genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people is the responsibility of the state”, a passage written by Slava Stetsko, the widow of the Ukrainian Nazi prime minister.

This is the subject that makes people angry. At least since 1994, “full nationalists” (not to be confused with “nationalists”), i.e., people who claim to follow the ideology of Dmytro Dontsov and the work of Stepan Bandera, have held high positions in the Ukrainian state [7]. In fact, this ideology has become more radical over time. It did not have the same meaning during the First World War as during the Second. Nevertheless, Dmytro Dontsov was, from 1942 on, one of the designers of the “final solution of the Jewish and Gypsy questions”. He was the administrator of the organ of the Third Reich in charge of murdering millions of people because of their ethnic origin, the Reinhard Heydrich Institute in Prague. Stepan Bandera was the military leader of the Ukrainian Nazis. He commanded numerous pogroms and massacres. Contrary to what his successors claim, he was never interned in a concentration camp, but under house arrest in the suburbs of Berlin, at the headquarters of the concentration camp administration. He ended the war leading the Ukrainian troops under the direct orders of the Führer Adolf Hitler.

One year after the beginning of the Russian military intervention, full nationalist and Nazi symbols are visible everywhere in Ukraine. Forward journalist Lev Golinkin, who has started an inventory of all monuments to criminals involved in Nazi crimes all over the world, has compiled an amazing list of such monuments in Ukraine [8]. According to him, almost all of them are after the 2014 coup. Therefore, it must be admitted that the coup authorities do claim to be “integral nationalism”, not simply “nationalism”. And for those who doubt that the Jewish President Zelensky celebrates the Nazis, two weeks ago he awarded the “Edelweiss title of honor” to the 10th separate mountain assault brigade in reference to the Nazi 1st mountain division that “liberated” (sic) Kiev, Stalino, the Dnieper crossings and Kharkov [9].

Few Western personalities have agreed with the words of President Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on this subject [10]. However, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his Defense Minister, General Benny Gantz, have repeatedly stated that Ukraine must comply with Moscow’s injunctions at least on this point: Kiev must destroy all Nazi symbols it displays. It is because Kiev refuses to do so that Israel does not deliver weapons to it: no Israeli weapons will be handed over to the successors of the mass murderers of Jews. This position may of course change with the coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu, himself an heir to Vladimir Jabotinsky’s “revisionist Zionists” who formed an alliance with the “integral nationalists” against the Soviets.

The current policy of the government of Volodymyr Zelensky is incomprehensible. On the one hand, the democratic institutions are functioning, on the other hand, not only are the integral nationalists being celebrated everywhere, but the opposition political parties and the Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate have been banned; millions of books have been destroyed because they were written or printed in Russia; 6 million Ukrainians have been declared “collaborators of the Russian invader” and the personalities who support them are being assassinated.

Translation by Roger Lagassé

Notes:

[2] “Hatten Sie gedacht, ich komme mit Pferdeschwanz?“, Tina Hildebrandt und Giovanni di Lorenzo, Die Zeit, 7. Dezember 2022.

[3] «Hollande: ‘There will only be a way out of the conflict when Russia fails on the ground’», Theo Prouvost, Kyiv Independent, December 28, 2022.

[4] «Володин призвал рассмотреть на трибунале признания Меркель, Олланда и руководства Украины», Tass, 18 января 2023.

[5] “The defeat of Ukraine does not mean the end of the war”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 21 February 2023.

[6] Ukrainian plan to attack the Donbass, document seized by the Russian army. Note that it was published before the International Court of Justice issued its order. It did not examine it because Russia, sure of its right, practiced the empty chair.

[7] “Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists ?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 15 November 2022.

[8] «Nazi collaborator monuments in Ukraine», Lev Golinkin, Foward, January 27, 2021.

[9] “The Ninth Anniversary of The War in Ukraine”, by Manlio Dinucci, Global Research , Voltaire Network, 28 February 2023.

[10] “Lavrov challenges Community definition of anti-Semitism”, Voltaire Network, 3 May 2022.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... he-rulers/

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EUROPEAN COUNCIL THINK-TANKERS FABRICATE RESEARCH RESULTS TO CONCEAL EUROPEAN OPPOSITION TO NATO WAR AGAINST RUSSIA

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By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

Two Englishmen, Timothy Garton Ash (lead image, left) and Mark Leonard (right), and Ivan Krastev (centre), a Bulgarian, claim to have discovered from opinion polls they conducted in nine European Union (EU) countries during January that “since Russia’s war on Ukraine began, the US and its European allies have regained their unity and sense of purpose…Russia’s aggression in Ukraine marks both the consolidation of the West and the emergence of the long-heralded post-Western international order.”

“The growing hostility of Europeans towards Russia is reflected in their preference not to buy Russian fossil fuels even if it results in energy supply problems. This is the prevailing view in every one of the nine EU countries polled, with an average of 55 per cent of these EU citizens supporting it.It is now clear that, contrary to the Kremlin’s expectations, the war has consolidated the West, rather than weakened it.”

“Average” is a telltale admission from Ash, Leonard, and Krastev.

They have been employed to undertake the polling and write a summary of its reults by a European government think tank called the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Their report was published on February 22. Click to read it here.

This “average” result has been fabricated by counting the response percentages in each of the EU country polls and dividing by their sum, nine. This “average” distorts and conceals the large differences in the poll percentages between the most anti-Russian countries – Estonia and Poland – and the more pro-Russian and antiwar states, such as Italy, Spain, and Germany.

“Unity”, “consolidation”, and “hostility towards Russia” are the “prevailing view in every one of the nine EU countries” – that’s the headline conclusion from the think tank. It appears to mean the majority of people in Estonia think the same towards Russia and the war as the majority of Italians; the majority of Poles the same as the majority of Spaniards or Germans.

But the evidence from Ash, Leonard and Krastev is a slip of their tongue between “prevailing”, which is a political term that doesn’t mean numerical majority; and “average” which is an arithmetical operation which doesn’t measure difference – it erases the variation around the numerical mean.

Politically speaking about the Europe peoples, this is faking. “I found the degree to which the national EU findings were subsumed in the overall figures, so that Germany could be diluted by Poland, for instance, fairly blatant,” commented a British expert on the war.

Asked to clarify the methodology for his published conclusion, Krastev refused, saying “I am putting in cc my colleagues from ECFR as they can answer your question.”

Speaking for Krastev, Ash and Leonard, Andreas Bock, a Berlin-based spokesman for the ECFR, acknowledged the individual country tabulations for each of the poll questions asked in each of the European countries were available to the report authors. But when asked for a public or press copy of these data, Bock refused to disclose them. He claimed “we can’t provide the intra-European data as we are preparing another piece using this [sic] data”.

Ash has been travelling outside England, his secretary said, but he had received the request for evidence to substantiate what he had written, and he would be replying. He has not, however. “Misrepresenting research data, withholding research data tables, faking research results, refusing to substantiate factual claims, and representing propaganda as professional work are grave violations of duty, standard and conduct for the holder of a university professorship”, Ash was asked. “How do you respond?” He has not answered.

Ash, Leonard, and Krastev were asked by telephone and email to explain the stonewalling. “Is there a reason in evidence or interpretation why you believe this statement [of fabrication] does not apply to you?” There has been no response.

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The headline of a “united West” is not substantiated in the evidence of the report. Source: https://ecfr.eu/publication/

The symbolism of the gold wedding ring displayed on the middle finger of the male right hand in the picture is disputed among jewelers and cultural anthropologists; their interpretation of the signal varies between vulgarity, gender change, and ostentation; it does not symbolize unity.

The money to pay for this report is not identified in the document. Instead, the think tank reports its sources of money here. They include the defence and foreign ministries of the NATO governments; US foundations including Rockefeller Brothers, Bill and Melinda Gates, and George Soros (Open Society); a Balkan group created by the US government; and foundations financed by German political agencies (von Humboldt, Adenauer) or business groups funded by German, Danish, Swedish and other companies. According to the ECFR, “the diversity of funding sources is critical to ensure the independence of our organisation.”

At the conclusion of the report there is a methodology note:
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Testing whether this is a sleight of hand, the sample sizes for each of the nine countries polled have been compared to the latest population figure for each country. A ratio was then calculated by dividing the population denominator into the sample-size numerator. The larger this ratio, the more over-represented the country is in the polling. This results in the exaggeration of that country’s responses compared to the other countries. The hostility of a small number of Estoanians has been magnified in order to minimize the contrary views of much larger numbers of Germans, French, Italians, and Spaniards.

Dividing the sum of these ratios creates an average ratio of 140. Estonia’s ratio turns out to be more than five times greater than this average. It is also evident that combining Estonia, Denmark, Romania and Poland — which together comprise just 64.1 million people – over-represents their polled responses in the EU9 aggregate, while the four large states, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany, with 257.5 million have been under-represented.

COMPARISON OF COUNTRY POLL SAMPLES WITH COUNTRY POPULATION
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This outcome appears to have the intention of Ash, Leonard and Krastev; it also appears to be the reason they have refused to disclose the individual country tabulations so that the extent of the distortion can be analyzed.

When Bock claimed these data are being withheld because “we are preparing another piece using this data”, he refused to say who is writing the new report, when it will be published, or whether it is planned to correct mistakes in the initial report.

The central table in the ECFR report claims to assess how friendly, hostile, or uncommitted the EU9 populations are towards Russia and the present NATO war; and to compare them as a single “European” opinion with the US, Britain, India, China, and Turkey. On the two measures of hostility towards Russia, marked in red colours, the US result was 71%, the EU 66%. This led Ash, Leonard and Krastev to conclude there is a “new consensus among European governments that only a Ukrainian victory will stop Putin’s war. Although significant numbers of European citizens still wish the war to cease as soon as possible, the poll appears to show a clear trend over the last year towards preferring Ukraine to win even if the conflict endures some time longer.”

They add: “Reflecting on the war, Americans and Europeans are united in believing that Russia is an ‘adversary’ or a ‘rival’.” But what evidence is there — Ash, Leonard and Krastev were requested to explain — that between the European states, and inside the largest of them, opinion is “united”? The authors and their organization are hiding the evidence, if it exists.

“The reality”, Ash and the others claim, “is that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine confirmed the renewed centrality of American power to Europe – with billions of dollars spent maintaining the war effort, which has sustained unity across the Atlantic on sanctions and diplomatic positions towards Russia and given a new lease on life for Western-led institutions such as NATO and the G7.” By avoiding accountability, Ash represents himself, Leonard and Krastev as propagandists for the NATO war.

For the contrasting Indian, Chinese and Turkish support for Russia in the war, click to read this.

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Source: https://ecfr.eu/ -- page 4.

Comparable polling for each of the European states is difficult to come by. None is available from a source that isn’t state funded and committed to the European Union and NATO war aims. The German Marshall Fund of the United States, for example, issued its poll survey, entitled “Transatlantic Trends 2022” on September 29 last. However, the polling was done in the mid-summer, between the last week of June and first week of July. The impact of the cutoff of Russian gas supplies, energy price inflation, and foodstuff shortages, combined with the cold weather, the electricity war in the Ukraine, and the escalation of NATO weapons and forces on the battlefield had yet to materialize for those surveyed. Click to read.

The German Marshall Fund report’s note on methodology admits that its averages across the European Union have no relationship to country size. “EU average: This is the simple average of all EU member states polled.”

The German Marshall Fund is paid by the US, German, Swedish, Latvian, Canadian, Belgian, and Norwegian governments; the European Commission in Brussels; and US and German corporations and foundations, including George Soros’s Open Society entities. The polling was done primarily through computer or smartphone online questioning, designed by the Kantar polling company. Its chief pollster is an ex-French government official; other Kantar executives have come from the British, US, and Australian governments.

While interpretation of the individual country results is disputable on methodological grounds, one of their results is clearly in contrast with the ECFR report of “European unity” whose polling occurred six months later. There is also significant evidence in the German Marshall Fund report of disunity inside the European states between right, centre, and left wing political parties.

“In Europe, supporters of far-right and far-left parties have a more positive assessment of Russia’s influence. In France, 26% of supporters of the far-left La France Insoumise describe it as very or generally positive, compared to 16% for all respondents. There is a similar picture in Germany with 30% for supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany compared to 14% for all respondents. Likewise, Russia’s influence is seen as more positive by Italian supporters of the Lega (29%) or of Fratelli d’Italia (27%) than the national average (21%). This is also the case in Spain, where 26% of supporters of Vox judge Russia’s influence as positive compared with the national average of 17%.”

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The “average” reported in the left column is the simple sum of the country percentages in the right columns divided by the number of country columns. Source: https://www.gmfus.org -- page 44.

In Italy, France and Spain, the German Marshall Fund reported, there was significantly less public support for security in conflict with Russia by buying more NATO and US bases, weapons and troops. The magnitude of difference on these issues between Italy, France and Spain, as well as Germany, on the one hand, and the Baltic states on the other is so plain in the German Marshall Fund report, it is likely to be just as visible in the country tables which the ECFR has concealed.

https://johnhelmer.net/european-council ... more-70806

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NATO's War in Ukraine Accelerates McCarthyism with Omali Yeshitela
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor, Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 01 Mar 2023



https://www.blackagendareport.com/natos ... -yeshitela

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Sanctions On Russia Come Back To Bite Their Issuers

Unlike 'western' politicians I try to think ahead of the consequences certain foreign relation policies might have.

On March 9 2022 I predicted:

The Sanction Backlash Will Push The 'West' To Accept Russia's Demands

For years the U.S. committed policies that have left a lot of countries grumbling. Now, as the U.S. needs support to milden the consequences of 'punishing' Russia, those policies come back to bite. So will the secondary effects of sanctions the 'west' has imposed on Russia.
...
The first [map] shows the countries which banned Russian airplanes from their airspace. Russia in turn denied its airspace to operators from those countries. It will cost quite a bit for U.S. and EU airlines as their flight times and cost to and from Asia, which typically fly through Russian airspace, will now increase. Carriers from Asian countries will now easily out-compete U.S. and European airlines on these routes.


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A year later the Financial Times and Fortune finally wake up to the issue:

Airlines say Chinese carriers have an ‘unfair advantage’ as China reopens: They’re allowed to fly over Russia

“If you’ve got a Chinese carrier that is flying over Russia, they’ve got an unfair advantage over us,” Ben Smith, CEO of Air France-KLM, told the Financial Times on Friday. Smith complained that skipping Russian airspace added “three hours in flight time” for a plane traveling from Paris to Seoul.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, airlines often flew over Russia to connect Asia with destinations in Europe or North America. But Russia barred many Western airlines from using its airspace last February, in retaliation for governments in Europe and North America banning Russian airlines from flying over the West.

European, Canadian and U.S. airlines are thus forced to fly different routes to avoid Russia. Longer flights burn more fuel, meaning higher costs and emissions. Longer flights can also upend tight flight schedules, as well as breach limits on working hours for flight crew.

Yet carriers from several non-Western countries, including China, continue to fly over Russian airspace, allowing them to offer faster and cheaper flights to European and North American destinations.

European airlines are now worried that they’ll lose out on the wave of Chinese rebound travel, as Beijing reopens from years of COVID-era isolation. (Chinese tourism plummeted after the country required all international arrivals—including returning Chinese tourists—to spend weeks in quarantine.)

“It will be very hard to make secondary cities of China profitable in terms of flying,” Topi Manner, CEO of Finnair, said to the Financial Times last week. The closure of Russian airspace has hurt Finnair, kneecapping an effort by the airline to turn Helsinki as a hub for flights connecting northern Asia with Europe.


These were Finnair's most profitable routes before the country sanctioned its flag carrier from using them:

Alex Macheras @AlexInAir - 11:09 UTC · Feb 27, 2022
Finland and Russia have an agreement with guarantees Finnair 80+ round trip flights per week over Siberia, and it’s this Russian overflight gives Finnair 🇫🇮 the “shortest route to Asia” which is quite literally their core biz/USP/their moneymaker/their everything.


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This one was easy to predict. The government of Finland, which owns the majority of Finnair's stocks, has quite a loser in its hands:

Long term investing is the way to go, but that doesn't mean you should hold every stock forever. We really hate to see fellow investors lose their hard-earned money. Anyone who held Finnair Oyj (HEL:FIA1S) for five years would be nursing their metaphorical wounds since the share price dropped 95% in that time. And the share price decline continued over the last week, dropping some 6.4%.

It is funny how it is now 'unfair' that China's carriers are still allowed to fly over Russia. Who please introduced that unfairness?

Hint: It was not China or its airlines.

Here is a current British Airways flight from London to Hongkong. The route looks a bit curious doesn't it?

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This is the ideal route between London and Hongkong. It is the route BA was flying before the British government put sanctions on Russian air carriers.

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Yes. The higher price tags and longer flights are totally 'unfair'. On wonders who could change that?

Don't fear for that. The sanction nonsense won't stop anytime soon:

The United States is sounding out close allies about the possibility of imposing new sanctions on China if Beijing provides military support to Russia for its war in Ukraine, according to four U.S. officials and other sources.
The consultations, which are still at a preliminary stage, are intended to drum up support from a range of countries, especially those in the wealthy Group of 7 (G7), to coordinate support for any possible restrictions.
...
It was not clear what specific sanctions Washington will propose. The conversations have not been previously disclosed.
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The Biden administration's initial steps to counter Chinese support for Russia have included informal outreach at the staff and diplomatic levels, including the Treasury Department, sources familiar with the matter said.

They said officials were laying the groundwork for potential action against Beijing with the core group of countries that were most supportive of sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine a year ago.
...
China's role in the Russia-Ukraine war is expected to be among the topics when Biden meets with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House on Friday. Before that in New Delhi on Wednesday and Thursday, the war will be discussed by foreign ministers from dozens of countries, including Russia, China and the United States.
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As part of a related diplomatic push, Washington won language in a Feb. 24 G7 statement to mark the war's first anniversary that called on "third-countries" to "cease providing material support to Russia's war, or face severe costs."

...
Among the challenges the United States faces in putting sanctions on China, the world's second-biggest economy, is its thorough integration in the major economies of Europe and Asia, complicating the talks. U.S. allies from Germany to South Korea are reticent to alienate China.

Anyway. We can be assured that Scholz and other dimwit 'leaders' will fall for this. They will ruin their countries before they dare to tell the U.S. to f*** off.

Let's hope that their voters will punish them for this.

Posted by b on March 2, 2023 at 6:56 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/03/s ... .html#more

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Despair and Joy: Berlin Bulletin 208, February 28, 2023
By Victor Grossman (Posted Mar 01, 2023)

In conflicts, I know, neither side can be trusted. Both sides twist and distort, magnify and minimize in support of their cause. But the daily, almost hourly pictures from Ukraine—of hardship, suffering, of death, destruction and flight, all too genuine, cause me the despair I have always felt on hearing—and worse seeing, if only on a screen—any pain inflicted on my fellow human beings, no matter what insignia they wear or flag they honor.

But I must also recoil at the hypocrisy and dishonesty which so often go unnoticed. The propaganda producers who feign despair but seek more conflict, more medals, more billions, always praise a noble cause: freedom, democracy, rule of order, and always warn of despicable enemies; Bolsheviks, anarchists, Stalinists, communist aggressors and, when these are eliminated, terrorism. When that, too, erodes, authoritarianism must serve, or “imperialism” turned upside down. A nasty “villain” is always effective, justly or not, an Iago: Lenin, Stalin, Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Putin.

Is hypocrisy involved? Double standards? Chinese sources, like all others, must be met with caution. But can all the charges in their Foreign Affairs Department memorandum be completely denied?

The history of the USA is characterized by violence and expansion… After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War… In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries…The United States has also adopted appalling methods in war… massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution… Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the USA in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions.

Did none of this deserve the opprobrium now directed at Putin? Were any flags of sympathy displayed when the people of Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan were bombed? When drones exploded on hospitals and wedding processions—were there also calls for tribunals against Bush—or Obama?

My despair grew far more intense when I felt the menace of escalating demands, after Leopard tanks, for powerful artillery, fighter planes and boats, and not just to win back Crimea; when I read the editorials insisting on “fighting on to victory,” no matter what it costs, above all to the people of Ukraine. Or when I read the following:

“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”

Adm. Richard’s threat came after the U.S. released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which reaffirms the U.S. doctrine on first use of nuclear weapons. The review says that the purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to “deter strategic attacks, assure allies and partners, and achieve U.S. objectives if deterrence fails.” What are then the U.S. objectives in Europe, Asia—or Africa and Latin America?

Only a few lonely voices questioned them and their likely cost, but were quickly muzzled. Peace rallies, rarely attracting more than 2-3000 faithful leftists even in Berlin, were mentioned, if at all, superciliously and dismissed as ragged little remnants of the huge rallies of the 1980’s. The media kept up its routine of repeated scenes of death, flight and destruction in Ukraine (not in Yemen), combined with rousing calls for more and deadlier instruments of war—until Ukraine was fully restored and Putin defeated, humbled, possibly deposed and preferably tried and sentenced.

How then, could I find any cause for joy, any reason to smile?

Almost surprisingly, two of the best-known women in Germany overcame past differences and joined hands. Alice Schwarzer, now 80, had once, with her magazine “Emma,” been the main founder and expounder of the women’s rights movement in West Germany, including abortion rights, but had later drifted politically rightwards. Sahra Wagenknecht, 52, with an East German background, was alongside party founder Gregor Gysi the most prominent, media-wise and popular spokesperson of the LINKE, the Left, a truly brilliant orator, but who has been disavowed by most of the present reformist leaders of her party, with some of them even demanding her ouster.

This unusual duo joined to publish a manifesto calling for a cease-fire in Ukraine and urging—not tanks and armaments for the Zelenskiy government in Kyiv but pressure on both sides for peace negotiations. It warned of the consequences of more weapons—and more active participation by Germany, basically in the wake of Washington.

But what could these two women achieve against such high tidal waves? Their position, in today’s Germany, was considered purest heresy, which must quickly be exorcized.

Suddenly, the witch-doctors found this far tougher than expected—after 69 prominent Germans signed the manifesto, people originally from all the parties, popular, respected people: a former female church leader, singers, actors, the son of one-time Chancellor Willy Brandt. And then the numbers of signers grew, and grew, and grew! 50,000, 100,000—by Saturday it had topped 650,000 and was aiming at a million!

The alarm bells rose to a deafening cacophony! The media, the politicians, sadly including many of the LINKE, they all joined in a wild attack against the manifesto and especially against Sahra.

Their attempts to disprove its arguments were less and less convincing. Could more weapons really bring Russia to its knees, forcing it to give up claims it deemed necessary to its independence—if not its survival, like keeping NATO missiles at least a minimal distance from Moscow’s doorsteps and preserving safe, unmonitored warm-water Black Sea routes to the world’s oceans? Or might bigger attacks by Ukraine-USA lead instead to desperation? All such questions are publicly taboo—like questions about who really blasted the German-Russian underwater gas pipelines, who was really throwing dangerous missiles at atomic energy plants controlled by Russian troops, or what the USA-Ukrainian biological laboratories were really researching. There were too many such questions to permit discussion; it was like opening Pandora’s box. The lid must be kept sealed!

Common lid sealers were the usual accusations of Putin-endearment, of blindness to death and destruction, denial of Kyiv’s right to territorial sovereignty and free choice of its alignments, awarding Putin territorial seizures without a fight. But none of this applied; the Manifesto made no demands on anyone—except to sit down and end the slaughter before it exploded further and irreparably.

When Sahra and Alice called for a big rally in Berlin on February 25th the fears multiplied. A counter-demonstration was organized for the 24th, the anniversary of open warfare, mostly with Ukrainians (66,000 now live in Berlin) but aimed at convincing Germans who sympathize with Ukraine and its suffering to reject any blame on the preceding NATO provocation and blame Putin alone. One effort was to transport a wrecked Russian tank to a spot next to the Russian embassy, with its big gun aimed directly at its entrance.

But the main argument against Sahra and Alice stressed the support by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose anti-European Union, pro-Russian positioning led its leaders to add their names to the manifesto and announce their intention to join the peace rally. Sahra answered: “We can have nothing to do with fascists or racists, we must not permit them to raise their banners or posters. But we simply do not wish, nor or we able to exclude anyone from singly signing or attending whose heart is honestly devoted toward ending further bloodshed—or worse.”

Many in eastern Germany vote for the AfD because of anger and disappointment at hardships caused by unification and their treatment as second-class citizens. Too many are fooled into blaming “privileged foreigners.” Many are just against “those on top,” somewhat like many simpler Trump voters, they want (affordable) butter not guns, therefore distrust further involvement in the Ukraine war. Since some LINKE leaders gratefully joined in state governments they were seen, not always falsely, as “part of the Establishment,” so many LINKE voters switched to the AfD or didn’t vote at all. Such support is certainly embarrassing to Sahra and Alice, but they hope a Manifesto for Peace movement can become a healthy antidote to fascists and their deceitful initiatives.

Yet it was this issue which was played upon by both media and politicians—trying to depict the Manifesto movement as a unity: right-wing nationalists with leftist “Putin-lovers”. This method of attack has been utilized in the past to split and wreck attempts at building a broad peace movement. One might suspect that powerful groups grasp this function of the far right all too well and apply it whenever required.

Would such constant media hammering succeed? Would this peace rally end up as a pathetic flop, with a meager crowd like the Zelenskiy-friendly Ukrainian rally the evening before? Waiting for the subway, I feared to find, once again, that same small bunch of the faithful, many of them old friends.

And what did I find? On this icy-cold Saturday afternoon, with snowflakes beginning to flutter down, the subway was jammed! There was hardly room to even stand properly! And at the next station more tried to push into the car! Where were they all going?

There was no doubt about it! When I arrived at the station near the Brandenburg Gate, the site of the rally, thousands and thousands climbed out of the jammed cars, ascended and merged into the crowded streets, all headed in one direction! I too moved through the famous arch towards the big speakers’ stage—but never got to a place where I could see them. I had just barely enough room to squeeze in to a free spot. And only later did I learn from my sons that the crowd had been huge on all sides, jammed, chilly, but friendly, polite, in wonderfully high spirits at the giant turn-out, and determined in their applause, cheers, occasional boos (when war-hungry politicians were named), with occasional shouts like “No Weapons! Negotiations!”- “Make Peace not War”.

Many, perhaps most of those present, on or below the speakers’ stage, deplored and condemned the Russian invasion. But many also insisted that Kyiv’s big planned attack on the Donbas, the numerous maneuvers all around Russian ports and borders, a secret CIA intensive training program in 2015 for elite Ukrainian special operations forces, had made it unavoidable, that these were part of a trap—which Russia either fell into or was forced to fall into, as in Afghanistan in 1979.

I, too, knew of an MSNBC report on March 4, saying:

Russia’s Ukraine invasion may have been preventable: The U.S. refused to reconsider Ukraine’s NATO status as Putin threatened war. Experts say that was a huge mistake…The abundance of evidence that NATO was a sustained source of anxiety for Moscow raises the question of whether the United States’ strategic posture was not just imprudent but negligent…Senator Joe Biden knew as far back as 1997 that NATO expansion, which he supported, could eventually lead to a hostile Russian reaction.

Views on the war were far distant from those in the media!

People discussed and debated, but all I spoke to agreed that further conflict would only continue the terrible afflictions for the Ukrainians, could achieve no victories but only create giant dangers—also atomic dangers threatening the entire world.

And the neo-fascists? In media reports afterwards they were very much present, with an interview with one of their leaders somewhere on the periphery. We heard later that a few known far-rightists had indeed shown up with a banner, but a “left-wing Linke” group, at the ready, had quickly covered it over with a bigger anti-war banner and pushed the rightists—non-violently—away from the rally. I saw a few Russian and pro-Russian flags, carried, I think, by Russian-speakers, perhaps adult children of the many Russians who have moved here in recent decades. One of my sons did see a small group with nationalist flags, which could not easily be banned in that giant but always peaceful crowd, but can hardly have reached anywhere near 1%. And as for me, in all the time I spent there, or getting there and back, I saw not one rightist sign, but rather many hundreds carrying peace dove depictions or self-made anti-war slogans, happily ignoring the organizers’ request to carry no signs at all.

As Sahra and Alice commented: the Manifesto, now being signed by additional tens of thousands, and especially the rally, have frightened all those who want to continue the war, who want no negotiations, who are determined, as some say openly, ”to ruin Russia” and unseat anyone like Putin who, love him or hate him, refuses, unlike Yeltsin, to take orders from abroad. Policy-makers in the American seats of power clearly want to prevent even the weak but potentially growing cooperation between Germany with its European allies and Russia or China, which had been supported by some sectors in Germany—but had now been suffocated, with the current near-total domination by those German Herren, now in modern dress, but who recall all too frighteningly the stiffly monocled, heel-clicking warriors of past generations.

Of course, détente between Western Europe, Russia and China could mean fewer billions for U.S. frackers and fuel providers, could cut profits for weapon-makers and other hungry expanders, from Amazon, Coca-Cola and Disney to Facebook, Unilever and the other queen bees in the honeyed hives of the pharmaceutical, movie, herbicide, food and other empires. Above all, the CEOs at Lockheed, Northrup, Raytheon, at Rheinmetall, Exxon Mobil and Chevron could then no longer rub their hands quite so gleefully or buy quite so many yachts, jets or mansions.

In her speech, Sahra reiterated: “We want no German tanks firing at those Russian women and men whose great-grandparents, in millions, were inhumanly slaughtered by the German Wehrmacht.” She condemned as cynical the signing of agreements to provide armaments for years in advance and said that true solidarity meant getting engaged for peace, not war.

Of course Vladimir Putin must also be willing to make compromises, she said, Ukraine must not be turned into a Russian protectorate. But as we have since learned, negotiations were not stymied by the Russian side. Several speakers recalled that Blinken, like his predecessors, had continued to push eastward, rejecting Russian appeals and offers and a final red-line warning in December 2021 to agree on security guarantees for all sides. New revelations by Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister of Israel, indicate that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine were moving ahead in March until Boris Johnson from London and his prompters in Washington made clear that an agreement was not desired. Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, though he succeeded in achieving grain shipments, prisoner exchanges and even a safe travel guarantee for Biden’s trip to Kyiv, felt the same outside pressure against further agreement.

Sahra and Alice got cheers when they stressed that agreements are not impossible, but must be fought for—and must be wanted! There is no need for tanks but rather for diplomacy, for a readiness to find compromises. A broad new peace movement is urgently necessary—and this rally must provide an impetus.

The media and the politicians, now more frightened than ever, were unsurprisingly quick, later, to dig up a solitary rightist they could use as Exhibit A, and then to lie about the figures. After the pro-Zelenskiy rally the night before, with about 7,000, they estimated 10,000; in our peace rally they could only count up to the same 10,000 figure, when everyone else saw 30,000, 50,000, perhaps even more. Since too many had taken part who would not swallow such a nonsense figure, TV reporters shame-facedly revised it to 13,000 or, vaguely, “thousands.” These were the least nasty, distorting even insulting examples of the immense efforts—even within a fracturing LINKE—to strangle this baby in its cradle before it emulates Hercules’ swift growth in muscle!

It was in fact the biggest peace rally in many, many years, good cause for them to fear—and for me and so many I have spoken to a source of great, unaccustomed joy! So close can despair and joy occupy one’s heart!

Two postscripts
1. See, if it is possible, the following very brief episode. You will be amazed!

[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1629149586223775745[/youtube]

2. The current political scene in Berlin is confused, important, indeed quite critical, with possible big changes. But I must wait until the next Berlin Bulletin to discuss it.

https://mronline.org/2023/03/01/despair ... y-28-2023/

********

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
in the Bryansk region.
At 12 o'clock it is reported:

1. 2 civilians were killed (including one child). Several people were injured
2. An unspecified number of civilians were taken hostage.
3. Fighting continues in the area of ​​the village of Sushany.

In terms of the situation, everything is quite prosaic - the shelling of border villages and the actions of the DRG in the border areas are the result of the withdrawal of Russian troops from the northern regions of the Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkov regions. Without the establishment of military control over these areas, the shelling and actions of the DRG against the border settlements will continue.

Also, the refusal to recognize the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense and the Security Service of Ukraine as terrorist organizations continues to be puzzling, although their actions are completely identical to those of ISIS. We see here, we don't see here. The infantile approach continues to triumph.

***

Colonelcassad
A Ukrainian DRG of about 40 people took hostages in the village of Sashuny, Bryansk region. Two Ukrainian DRGs with a total number of up to 40 people penetrated the Bryansk region and took local residents hostage. Both groups penetrated the Klimovsky district. Earlier it was reported about the shelling of border villages, as well as an attack on a civilian car. There are clashes in the area of ​​the village.

***

forwarded from
Readovka
0:23
“They shot at a woman who was standing near the house” – the story of a resident of Sushan, who is now right there, about Ukrainian saboteurs with grenade launchers who took hostages in the village

A resident of Sushan, who is at the epicenter of the ongoing events, told Readovka how the Ukrainian DRG entered the village. According to her, seven people with machine guns went down one street, the rest - down another. In total, several dozen people entered the village, completely burned the house, now they are holding hostages in residential buildings. The locals are in panic - a woman with a trembling voice talks about what is happening right now.

“I saw everyone with my own eyes… [They] with grenade launchers, machine guns, leaflets. They shot at a woman who was standing near the house,a resident told Readovka in hysterics.

***

Colonelcassad
Details of the attack on a car with children in the Bryansk region from Baza

"According to the story of the children, there was a driver and three guys in the car: a boy Fyodor from the third grade and two girls, Zlata and Lena. The children were taken from the village of Brakhlov to Novy Ropsk - they were supposed to be there pick up the school bus.

On the way, they were suddenly attacked by a group of unknown men - the driver died immediately, and Fedor was wounded in the chest. Nevertheless, he helped the girls get out, told them to hide in the forest. Later, the wounded boy was able to catch the car on the same road "She took the children away from the scene of the attack. An ambulance was immediately called for Fyodor. According to the doctors, a fragment or a bullet passed along the rib. The guy has already had an operation, now his life is not in danger"

***

forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
Military expert Boris Rozhin on the situation in the Artemovsk direction on March 02, 2023, especially for the Voenkor Kotenok Z @voenkorKotenok channel :

1. As of March 2, the situation for the enemy in the Artemovsk area continued to deteriorate. In the north, the fighting is shifting towards Khromovo. Bogdanovka has not yet been taken, the battles are going on nearby. Dubovo-Vasilyevka has not yet been taken. Reports of its control are premature.

2. The battles are shifting strictly to the south from Yagodny and Berkhovka. The enemy left part of the northern quarters of Bakhmut due to the threat of encirclement and, obviously, will defend himself based on the AZOM plant and adjacent quarters, to which our assault groups are approaching from the north and northeast.
Premature reports of complete control of Zabakhmutovka. It has not been completely taken and cleaned up, but the process is underway. The enemy is gradually crushed.

4. In the south, it is not yet possible to reach the plane. The enemy holds positions in the northern part of the Mariupol cemetery and quarters near the road from Krasnoe.

5. Not being able to stabilize the situation in the north of the city and regain control over the highway from Slavyansk, the enemy is trying with all his might to push us back from the Chasov Yar - Krasnoye - Artemovsk highway in order to use it at least at night to supply forces in the city. The transfer of tanks and light armored vehicles to Chasov Yar was noted for counterattack attempts. So far, there are no signs of withdrawal of the Ukrainian group from Bakhmut. Despite the losses and some demoralization among the TrO units, however, one cannot speak of collapse and loss of control.

6. The enemy hastily prepares a new defensive line Rai-Aleksandrovka - Chasov Yar - Konstantinovka after the loss of Bakhmut. Now fortification work is underway there and reinforcements are being transferred. Both Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka are close enough to our forward positions, and the intensification of hostilities in this direction is predictable even before the end of the battle for Artemovsk.

7. Western sources have been very pessimistic in recent days with a slight hint that Artyomovsk is not worth the losses and costs that the Ukrainian army incurs in trying to keep the city. Nevertheless, in the slogans of Kyiv, Bakhmut continues to be "heroically" defended. The more troops we grind here, the better it will be for other operations in other directions.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 03, 2023 1:03 pm

"Partisans" of the Ministry of Defense
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 03/03/2023

Image

Throughout the morning of yesterday, March 2, 2023, the Russian security services announced an incident in which a sabotage group from Ukraine would have crossed the border in the Bryansk region and, in an act described as terrorist , fired at a moving vehicle, killing a civilian and injuring a ten-year-old boy. Although there was even speculation that a group had taken hostages, there is no confirmation that such an incident took place. However, coinciding with the Russian complaint, the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps, RDK for its acronym in Russian, published a video in which its leader Denis Kapustin "Nikitin", White Rex, announced that the group had crossed the border . With the banner of his Russian legionin hand, they claimed to have crossed the state border and, after denying having attacked civilians, appealed to the Russian population to "stop being slaves" and overthrow the "Putin regime", a clear objective set by the group.

Despite being a battalion already mentioned even by major international media and whose leader is a relatively well-known figure in the world of the extreme right, Western experts, analysts and journalists yesterday placed quotation marks around the name Russian Volunteer Corps, thus giving some credibility to the allegations of the Ukrainian Government. In his usual mocking tone, Mikhailo Podoliak wrote on his Twitter account that "the story about the Ukrainian sabotage group in the Russian Federation is the classic deliberate provocation," again appealing to the idea that Russia carries out false flag attacks .against herself. "The Russian Federation wants to justify the attack against another country and the growing poverty after a year of war," continued Podoliak, not caring that the data on the growth of poverty in Ukraine have been absolutely scandalous this year despite economic assistance. constant that Kiev receives from its partners. Finally, the adviser from the Office of the President got to his main message of future threat: “The partisan movement in the Russian Federation is getting stronger and more aggressive. Fear your partisans ”, he insisted without explaining why he claimed so much that everything had been a false flag and, at the same time, a partisan act.

Also the statement of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine denies Podoliak's accusation of false flag attack . Andriy Yusov, as the spokesman for military intelligence, stated that “What is called the Russian Federation is an absolutely unstable entity with a large number of internal conflicts: inter-ethnic, social and political. And in fact, concretely, those things indicate a confrontation within the Russian Federation between citizens of the Russian Federation itself.”

This version of a "Russian partisan act" not only clashes with the reality that the leader of the group and protagonist of the claim for the action, Denis Nikitin, has lived in Ukraine for several years, but also because of the presence of the group in performances similar to the one that took place yesterday as part of a whole series of far-right battalions operating under the umbrella of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. RDK members were photographed, for example, by The New York Timesin the report on a night raid carried out by the Bratstvo battalion across the Dnieper on territory controlled by the Russian Federation in Kherson. At the time, Carlotta Gall's report did not mention the group by name, instead describing them as "a group of Russian volunteers, political refugees who have been residing in Ukraine for several years." On February 13, 2023 , the outlet not only confirmed the existence of this group as a participant in the Ukrainian offensive actions, but also featured it on its front page with the headline "A Russian Legion Fights Against Their Homeland."

Dmitry Korchynksy's battalion with which the Russian volunteers operate has also carried out raids across the border, specifically in the Briansk region, where on December 25, in a failed attack, four members of Bratstvo were killed . These types of actions prove that the statement published by Mikhailo Podolyak on his Telegram account, where he assured that Ukraine "does not attack Russian territory", is also false.

Nikitin's figure is not too far from that of other soldiers of Russian origin fighting in Ukraine, such as the well-known neo-Nazi Sergey Korotkij. Nikitin, a football ultra like Denis Prokopenko who declares himself a traditionalist - a characteristic they share with both Dmitro Korchynsky and Alexander Duguin - and a member of right-wing movements, has been declared a danger to the constitutional order in Germany for what falls on him a ban on entering the Schengen area. Interviewed by the Italian fascist movement Casa Pound, Nikitin, who at the time was promoting a mixed martial arts (MMA) tournament, an area in which the extreme right has a large presence, claimed that "Europe will be reborn from combat" and appealed to the Vikings, the Praetorian Guard and the Crusaders as referents of this new continent. Nikitin, a white nationalist and formerly associated with the international Azov movement led by Olena Semenyaka, has organized MMA tournaments from the "Reconquista Club" linked to the movement. A declared enemy of Vladimir Putin, Nikitin was referring to in a recent interview published in a Ukrainian mediato the possibility of dividing Russian territory, an idea that the most radical sectors of Ukraine and the West are trying to promote with increasing insistence. “If Russia for the Russians is reduced to the size of Moscow, its region or the European part, as a nationalist, that suits me quite well. Here our vision coincides with that of the Ukrainian nationalists, ”he explained, making it clear that his interest in Russia is limited only to the part that, coincidentally, has the lowest percentage of ethnic minorities, that is, the whitest part.

Image
Image taken from a propaganda video published on the group's Telegram profile on January 14.

The fascist and traditionalist tendencies of the group members are not limited to Nikitin. Although you had to get to the end of the article to know some detail of RDK's political position. The protagonist of the report presented himself as “an example of a Russian man and an example of a man like those described by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky (…). That's the kind of man I am. They are not, they are not Russians”, he added in reference to those who fight against him, “scoundrels and thieves” without nationality. The New York TimesHe added, without explaining the origin of the group, that his interviewee was not only a Russian nationalist, but also a member of the Russian Imperial Movement. Arguing that it "has provided paramilitary-style training to white supremacists and is actively working to rally these types of groups into a common front against their perceived enemies," in 2020, the United States listed the group and its leaders as " global terrorists ”.

However, members of the group and people like Nikitin who share its values ​​and ideology have found the freedom they were looking for in Ukraine. “I started to see that in Russia you can't do anything, but in Ukraine you can be left, right, communist, traditionalist. That's what freedom is to me. In Russia, either you are in favor of power or you are in jail," said Denis Nikitin in an interview, who seems to have no knowledge of the outlawing of communist ideology, symbols and parties or the harassment, both institutional and extreme. right-wing against all kinds of movement or minimally opposition person throughout the years in which he has resided in Ukraine.

The neo-Nazi Wotanjugend platform, of Russian origin but led mainly by Russians linked to the Azov movement, celebrated the incursion yesterday and stated, as quoted by the Russian opposition journalist Leonid Ragozin, "as a historic act that will mark the beginning of the war against the regime of Putin». As on previous occasions, when the Bratstvo battalion wanted to imply that it had attacked a helicopter with senior officials from the Ministry of the Interior of the Russian Federation despite there being no evidence to believe such a version, yesterday RDK wanted to disguise the account of its action by stating having crossed the border with a group of 45 soldiers, a fact consistent with what Russia denounced, and having "carried out an ambush against two infantry vehicles." The details are scarce and the evidence of what happened yesterday, non-existent. However,

The collaboration between the different Volunteer Corps operating under the cover of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is well known. An example of the joint action of the different groups that make up the network is the action against a Russian command post in the Novaya Kajovka area that took place between January 23 and 24, 2022.

According to sources from the Ministry itself ( 1 and 2 ), this action is attributable to “special forces of the General Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine”, supported by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They include the participation of personnel from the Bratstvo Battalion, the Russian Volunteer Corps (RBK) and the Belarusian Volunteer Corps (BDK). The participation of the Bratstvo Battalion is presented in great detail in two videos on the ARTE network ( 1 and 2). These two videos confirm the artillery support for the action by the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the direction of the action by the Bratstvo intelligence unit. The participation of members of the Battalion on the bank of the Dnieper controlled by the Russian Federation is also mentioned in the report. According to usual sources in Bratstvo, two of his men returned wounded. According to the ARTE reporter , one death and three injuries were recorded in the action.

According to Belarusian BDK sources, a third person, a group commander (Radzivon Batulin, "Hena"), was actually injured in the operation. This source also mentions the action of a unit of the GUR of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. For its part, the participation in the action of these forces by the Russian RBK is collected on the group's Telegram channel.

It should be noted that another similar group, also linked to the Ministry of Defense and not to the Ukrainian International Legion, has been formed: the Polish Volunteer Corps (PKO). On the group's social networks , the new Polish unit supports the action of the RBK in Bryansk. Thus, he “officially congratulates the boys for their exemplary work and, above all, for returning in full lineup, without casualties. Thank you for your help in building our unit and we look forward to the honor of participating in joint operations! ”.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/03/03/26750/#more-26750

Google Translator

******

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
❗️🇬🇧🇺🇦How the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were able to destroy the energy sector in Odessa - an analysis of Rybar and the Military Chronicle



Against this background, the strikes of the RF Armed Forces seem meaningless, since in Ukraine they say over and over again that they managed to solve the problem of electricity supply. In fact, it is not. The practical result is visible on the example of Odessa . In fact, this is the first Ukrainian region whose energy system has been critically damaged .

🔻How is the power supply system in Odessa arranged?

The distribution of electricity with a voltage of 330 kV is organized through one key node - the Usatovo substation .

It suffered the most from the strikes of the RF Armed Forces: two 330/110kV autotransformers were destroyed, and the third burned out from overvoltage. But the substation can still redistribute the energy received from the Moldavskaya GRES and the South Ukrainian NPP to the neighboring 330 kV substations - Novoodesskaya and Adzhalyk .

They were also hit: one of the two 330/110kV autotransformers was hit. A similar situation is developing at the Artsyz substation..

Judging by open sources, the total transformer capacity with its own generation is only a third of the previous one - about 471.7 MW (out of 1332 MW) . This is critically insufficient for Odessa.

🔻Do preventive shutdowns help?

This helps to minimize damage in the event of an attack, but if there are no hits, then it only hurts. Each shutdown causes an overvoltage. As a result, equipment and transformers fail not only for 110 and 35 kV, but also for medium voltage - 10 / 0.4 kV and 6 / 0.4 kV - necessary for the normal life of the city.

Constant switching on / off of equipment causes damage, sometimes comparable to the impact itself, but in this case, not a point, but distributed over the network. The restoration of power supply may be delayed for a long time, and the city is being transferred to generators. In a certain sense, the announcement of an air raid alert in this case is more dangerous than the strike itself.

🔻What are Ukrainian power engineers busy with?

DTEK's main efforts are focused on several areas:

➖Preservation of the remaining high voltage equipment
➖Equipment maintenance
➖Restoration of networks 110, 10 and 6 kV

❗️330 kV networks are the most difficult to restore. They are repaired pointwise to maintain the minimum functionality of the substation. But it is now impossible to replace autotransformers.

Due to the restoration of low voltage networks, the need to be powered from a limited number of substations is increasing.

This leads to voltage drops in the network, which are compensated by a rise in voltage at the power transformers. However, as new substations are switched on, the drop stops and the high voltage of the transformers remains unchanged. It turns out that in apartments and houses of residents, the level rises to 260-270 V instead of the usual 220 V - and loads the power grid even more.

🔻Prospects

Attacks on the energy system of Ukraine, despite their non-obviousness, are bearing fruit , which are most seriously felt in the Odessa region. If the strikes continue, the city's energy simply will not cope, and the region will be isolated from the general network for a long time - from several weeks to several months.

In theory, this will limit the transfer of personnel and equipment from Romania and Moldova along the railway lines and reduce the logistical capabilities of the Odessa port. But this is a double-edged sword: the energy crisis may push the Armed Forces of Ukraine to seize the Moldavskaya GRES in Transnistria.

The deterioration of the situation will put even more pressure on the local population: discontent is growing every day. And the forced mobilization of citizens exacerbates the situation in the region.

❗️Odessa is the first region where it was possible to implement the plan to destroy the energy infrastructure, which led to military and political changes.

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***

forwarded from
Special for RT
Expert of the Center for Military-Political Journalism, author of the Telegram channel @boris_rozhin Boris Rozhin

Against the backdrop of the ongoing battle for Artyomovsk, which is approaching its culmination, the prospects for the summer campaign in Donbass, which are associated with operations to liberate the Slavic-Kramatorsk agglomeration

, are already being considered . Before the liberation of the city and the complete liquidation of the grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Artyomovsk, it is premature to talk about the next stage, however, in the event that our troops reach Konstantinovka (as a result of moving towards Chasov Yar and the area of ​​​​the village of Stupochki ), the enemy will have difficulties.

After the withdrawal from Artyomovsk (if the enemy does not end up there in the boiler), he obviously expects to build a defense based on Chasov Yar, Konstantinovka, Ray-Aleksandrovka, etc., taking advantage of the convenient terrain and extensive industrial buildings.

In fact, to the west of Artemovsk, the first defensive line of the enemy will be waiting for us, covering Slavyansk and Kramatorsk . In addition, the issue of the Seversky ledge has not yet been resolved, which will for some time bind the activity of our troops to the north-west of Artemovsk.

Of course, with the further advancement of PMC "Wagner" in the area of ​​​​Razdolovka and Vasyukovka , coupled with the actions of the RF Armed Forces on the northern coast of the Seversky Donetsit is possible in the medium term to create a threat to the Krasny Liman-Seversk highway, increasing the chances of an operational encirclement of the entire Seversk group.

The enemy plans to drag out the issue of the Seversky salient as much as possible and to keep our troops at the Rai-Aleksandrovka-Chasov Yar line, relying on supplies from Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.

The time gained is planned to be used for offensive actions in other directions during the spring-summer campaign (potential strikes in the Zaporozhye and Svatovsky directions) and the preparation of defense, which will have to be deepened and strengthened, taking into account the forces that PMCs and the RF Armed Forces have.

A key role for the implementation of any plans for Kramatorsk and Slavyansk is played by the combat capability of the enemy troops after the Battle of Artyomovsk. This section of the front has devoured a huge amount of forces and means, and if our troops continue to press with the same intensity, the enemy will still face a choice: to pump up forces in one or two directions at the expense of reserves from other sectors, or again rely on flooding with meat with a slow retreat to the west, while the main mechanized reserves will be thrown at Melitopol or Svatovo.

In this regard, the time during which our forces after Artemovsk can create a threat of a serious advance deep into the Slavic-Kramatorsk agglomeration is important, which will not only create problems for the enemy in holding the Western Donbass, but may also force him to adjust his strategic plans.


https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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About Chinese drones
colonelcassad
March 2, 18:47

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About Chinese drones

Regarding reports about restrictions on the purchase of Chinese drones by volunteers for the needs of the RF Armed Forces.
Those who are involved in the process know that in practice this will affect a little more than nothing - drones have been and will be purchased in China and third countries and imported into the Russian Federation in commercial quantities. This is a direct consequence of the failure of the West's strategy of economic and trade isolation of Russia.

Of course, there are a number of problems that, as a rule, do not write about in the "sensational" headlines "China banned the purchase of drones", but they are not of any administrative nature. From a commercial point of view, there are no problems with the purchase of drones at the moment and are not expected.

It is worth clarifying that we are talking about the purchase of commercial and industrial drones. Ukraine buys from the same way, through third countries. Military drones like Wing Loong 4 or 5 were not recorded at the front. Which of course does not mean that they will not appear sometime later, but at the moment there is no evidence that China has supplied us with serial military drones. The Americans have been pumping up on this for more than a month, but they cannot present anything to China. At the same time, of course, they are making efforts to make it difficult for Russia to purchase Chinese drones, but they cannot stop it due to the lack of the possibility of trade isolation of the Russian Federation.

At the same time, the urgent need to expand production capacities for the production of drones directly in Russia and the construction of new enterprises is not removed. Production volumes have obviously grown over the year (especially for Cubes and Lancets, it is noticeable, but this is not enough. The front de facto requires thousands and thousands of drones. And while we do not fully cover the needs, the ability to stock up with the Chinese will play an important role in providing our troops with this consumable.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8198618.html

Artemovsk. 03/02/2023
March 3, 6:42 am

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About the situation in the Artemovsk region for the channel of military commissar Yuri Koteno

1. As of March 2, the situation for the enemy in the Artemovsk area continued to deteriorate. In the north, the fighting is shifting towards Khromovo. Bogdanovka has not yet been taken, the battles are going on nearby. Dubovo-Vasilyevka has not yet been taken. Reports of its control are premature.

2. The battles are shifting strictly to the south from Yagodny and Berkhovka. The enemy left part of the northern quarters of Bakhmut due to the threat of encirclement and, obviously, will defend himself based on the AZOM plant and adjacent quarters, to which our assault groups are approaching from the north and northeast.
Premature reports of complete control of Zabakhmutovka. It has not been completely taken and cleaned up, but the process is underway. The enemy is gradually crushed.

4. In the south, it is not yet possible to reach the plane. The enemy holds positions in the northern part of the Mariupol cemetery and quarters near the road from Krasnoe.

5. Not being able to stabilize the situation in the north of the city and regain control over the highway from Slavyansk, the enemy is trying with all his might to push us back from the Chasov Yar - Krasnoe - Artemovsk highway in order to use it at least at night to supply forces in the city. The transfer of tanks and light armored vehicles to Chasov Yar was noted for counterattack attempts. So far, there are no signs of withdrawal of the Ukrainian group from Bakhmut. Despite the losses and some demoralization among the parts of the TrO, nevertheless, one cannot speak of collapse and loss of control.

6. The enemy hastily prepares a new defensive line Rai-Aleksandrovka - Chasov Yar - Konstantinovka after the loss of Bakhmut. Now fortification work is underway there and reinforcements are being transferred. Both Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka are close enough to our forward positions, and the intensification of hostilities in this direction is predictable even before the end of the battle for Artemovsk.

7. Western sources have been very pessimistic in recent days with a slight hint that Artyomovsk is not worth the losses and costs that the Ukrainian army incurs in trying to keep the city. Nevertheless, in the slogans of Kyiv, Bakhmut continues to be "heroically" defended. The more troops we grind here, the better it will be for other operations in other directions.

https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/45787 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8198732.html

Google Translator

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Can Beijing Find a Way to End the Russia-Ukraine Conflict, Despite Open Hostility from the US and NATO?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 2, 2023
Maxim Hvatkov

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Moscow and Kiev have conditionally welcomed the intervention, but the latter’s chief patrons appear to be bitterly opposed.

Throughout the latter half of February, China was increasingly active diplomatically. Its highest-ranking diplomat, the Director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party Wang Yi, made a European tour. After attending the Munich Security Conference, he traveled to Hungary and Russia. In Moscow, he held talks with Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and finally, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Yi assured Putin that China is ready to strengthen strategic cooperation with Russia. He stressed that Russian-Chinese relations are not directed against third countries, and will not yield to outside pressure.

The Russian President confirmed that he is looking forward to the state visit of his “friend Xi Jinping” after the session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), an event where key government officials will be appointed. According to The Wall Street Journal, this visit may take place in April or at the beginning of May, when Russia celebrates WWII Victory Day.

WSJ sources also reported that Beijing wishes to play a greater role in the settlement of the Ukraine conflict, and Xi plans to discuss multilateral peace talks. Soon afterwards, China proposed its peace initiative for the conflict. However, for many observers, Beijing’s proposals generate far more questions than answers.

The Chinese document

While Yi was touring Europe, China published two documents expressing its position on a new global security architecture. On February 21, the Foreign Ministry released the concept of a global security initiative based on six main principles. The document mostly restated Beijing’s neutral rhetoric regarding the conflict in Ukraine.

For example, the principle of the sovereignty of all countries stands next to that of a “serious attitude” towards legitimate security concerns. While the first thesis is occasionally interpreted as China’s rejection of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the second point refers to the Western leaders’ decision to ignore Moscow’s concerns about the expansion of NATO to the East. At the same time, China has particularly stressed that it remains committed to resolving differences and disputes through dialogue and consultations, not wars and sanctions.

On February 24, the anniversary of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs published another document, widely referred to in the media as China’s “peace plan”. In fact, Beijing never offered its text, titled “China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis”, as a roadmap. The document contains only vague formulations tinged with an air of philosophy.

Here’s the outline of the twelve points:

• respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and the norms of international law;
• rejection of the “cold war mentality” (including the expansion of military blocs);
• a ceasefire and an end to hostilities (“in war, no one wins”);
• a return to peace negotiations;
• the settlement of the humanitarian crisis;
• the protection of civilians and prisoners of war;
• ensuring the safety of nuclear power plants;
• the reduction of strategic risks and prevention of the use of nuclear weapons;
• the export of food within the grain corridor;
• an end to unilateral sanctions;
• securing the stability of production and supply chains;
• the involvement of the international community in post-war reconstruction.

‘Too much’ peace

China’s peacemaking proposal didn’t spark a positive reaction from all key players. Russia’s reception was polite, but tepid – Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow will pay great attention to the “plan of our Chinese friends” but added that so far it does not see any prerequisites for a return to a peaceful course. He added that the military operation would continue, and Russia is moving towards achieving its goals.

Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier said that Moscow shares Beijing’s core ideas and remains committed to the principles of compliance with international law and indivisible security. Russia is ready to achieve its objectives through political and diplomatic means, but a peace agreement should imply “a stop to supplies of Western weapons and mercenaries to Ukraine, the end of hostilities, the return of the country to a neutral non-aligned status, and the recognition of new territorial realities.”

Beijing’s initiative provoked an outburst of criticism against China on behalf of US authorities, who wrongly assessed Moscow’s enthusiasm for the proposals.

“Putin’s applauding it, so how could it [the peace plan] be any good? I’ve seen nothing in the plan that would indicate that there is something that would be beneficial to anyone other than Russia, if the Chinese plan were followed. The idea that China is going to be negotiating the outcome of a war that’s a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational,” US President Joe Biden said in an interview with ABC. Adding to the rhetoric, Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan suggested that Beijing stick to the first point about respecting the sovereignty of all countries.

Commenting on China’s plan, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg pointed out that Beijing “doesn’t inspire much trust.” He went so far to state that his bloc suspects Chinese weapons may be supplied to Russia, even though “there is no such evidence yet.” Meanwhile, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that the EU will study China’s document, but only in the light of the “friendship between Beijing and Moscow”.

The President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, spoke out about China’s “reflections” in a more neutral way. Zelensky noted that while he doesn’t share all the ideas outlined in Beijing’s proposals, some are quite suitable for Ukraine – for example, the support of the territorial integrity of all countries. However, Zelensky stressed that unless China’s plan includes a proposal on the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s territory, it will be unachievable. At the same time, Zelensky said that he also wishes to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Zelensky’s advisor, Mikhail Podolyak, reacted more strongly. He indicated that any proposals should include “a return to 1991 borders’‘. The head of the the president’s “Servant of the People” faction, David Arakhamiya, dunbend Beijing’s suggestion for both parties to immediately start negotiations “unacceptable” due to the current realities.

Against this background, the position of Poland, one of the closest allies of the US in Europe, came as a surprise. Polish President Andrzej Duda stated that the initiative might become a way towards peace, and that one “should not underestimate a great power like China”. These words may indicate his desire to maintain beneficial economic ties with Beijing

What China meant

So why did China’s “peace plan” remain so vague and why did its appeal to “the good of mankind” provoke such a strong reaction from the West?

“What we have seen is by no means an action plan or a peacemaking appeal. Rather, it is a declaration of China’s position. It is important for the world community to see what China has called for and what it wants. It has been rumored that China wants to supply lethal weapons or otherwise intervene in the conflict. With this document, China has demonstrated that it has different intentions, and it stands on the side of peace,” Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Asian and African Countries at the Moscow State University, told RT.

According to Maslov, China’s proposal is insufficiently radical for the West and is too mild for Russia since it doesn’t directly condemn Western actions.

“But if you closely examine the text, you’ll see that it includes some anti-Western statements – for example, a call for the non-proliferation of military blocs. We may call this the kind of neutrality that favors Russia,” the expert says.

Vasily Kashin, director of the Higher School of Economics Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies, agreed that for Russia, the Chinese “peace plan” is mostly acceptable, but will likely be rejected by the West and Ukraine. At the same time, he believes the document was originally created with a different purpose in mind.

“China wanted to show everyone that it can come up with good peace proposals which may act as an alternative to the West’s bellicose rhetoric. A number of developing countries that remain neutral may support this initiative,” the Kashin stated.

China’s initiatives directly proceed from the foreign policy concepts of the Communist Party and Xi himself – viewing the world as a community involved in shaping the common destiny of mankind. Only uninformed observers could expect China to take a different standpoint, Alexander Lomanov, head of the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies of the IMEMO RAS, told RT. In his opinion, the negative reception that the proposal received from Europeans and Americans are a result of the general tensions between the West and Beijing.

“China believes that in the future, humanity should solve serious problems together. Xi’s initiatives are indisputable – they talk about joint prosperity, the support of production chains, etc. However, in the modern world, which has apparently lost all mutual trust, it remains unclear how all of this can be implemented. Especially in the context of the current confrontation with the West, which sides against Beijing. Are America and its satellites ready to form such a community, based on the Chinese model? No. Even some third world countries are not ready for it,” the expert said.

Lomanov added that the West has ignored Russia’s concerns about NATO expansion over the past 25 years, and neither will it listen to Beijing’s appeal.

“China is a powerful country. But it can hardly become a broker that all sides of the conflict will trust. For example, the cessation of fire is hardly possible as long as the idea of a military victory over Russia dominates in the West,” he explained.

The experts added that historically, China has never been a mediator and it is not interested in becoming one in the context of the Ukrainian conflict. According to Kashin, the US suggested that China take on such a role at the start of Russia’s military offensive, but there entreaties were refused.

We are allowed to, but you’re not

At the same time as Beijing delivered peace initiative, there was increasing talk concerning possible weapons supplies from China to Russia. Sullivan declared that the US sent Beijing a clear warning regarding any such steps. CIA Director William Burns claimed to CBS News that US intelligence has evidence that China is seriously considering the possibility of supplying weapons to Russia, but has not made a final decision yet. Both Beijing and Moscow deny the existence of such plans.

Previously, Secretary of State Antony Blinken had asserted that Chinese companies were already helping Russia fight Ukraine by providing non-lethal military assistance and assisting Moscow in avoiding Western economic sanctions. Some Chinese organizations have already fallen under US sanctions, as a result. For example, on January 26, the US Treasury imposed restrictions against the Tianyi Research Institution (Changsha) and its subsidiary in Luxembourg for supposedly providing the Russian company Terra Tech with images of Ukraine from satellites equipped with synthetic-aperture radars (SAR). Terra Tech, in turn, allegedly transmitted the images to PMC Wagner.

Consequently, China reacted sharply to the West’s attempt to interfere in its policy towards Moscow. While in Russia, Wang Yi said that Chinese-Russian relations are rock solid and will withstand any test proposed by the evolving international situation.

The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, claimed that during an informal conversation in Munich, Wang Yi asked him why Beijing should not supply weapons to Russia if the EU supplies weapons to Ukraine. “I had to explain the big difference, telling him what a big threat the war in Ukraine poses to us,” Borrell said.

According to Lomanov, this is China’s way of showing its weariness with the West’s double standards, and its dwindling hope in cooperating with the European Union on equal footing.

“For a long time, China has believed in the strategic autonomy of Europe. But Europe is increasingly becoming an appendage of the American policy in containing China.

That’s how it was with the sanctions: The EU imposed restrictions because of the situation in Xinjiang, but was very surprised to face countermeasures. And now Beijing is demonstrating that theoretically, it is able to take symmetrical action regarding the situation in Ukraine. However, I think that in the matter of weapons supplies to Russia, China won’t go past rhetoric statements,” Lomanov concluded.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... -and-nato/

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Faits divers, or, if you will, straws in the wind as WWIII blows in

Now that www.smotrim.ru is back up and running, I have been immersing myself in Russian news, which in the past couple of days has included an assortment of separate items, or faits divers as the French would have it, which are frankly ominous when taken all together. Why ominous? Because they fit the description of WWIII that the most recent Russian talk shows say has already begun and is about to transition from hybrid war to hot war.

A couple of days ago Russian news showed images of six Yars ICBMs rolling into Moscow on their self-propelled launchers. Yars, to those who are not familiar with the Russian missile families, are the backbone of the present ground-based Russian strategic nuclear strike force. They date from 2007 and their numbers are listed in the now scrapped New Start arms limitation treaty. These solid fuel three stage rockets have a range of 12,000 km and carry multiple warheads (MIRV). Each launch unit on wheels weighs 100 tons and their route into town was carefully selected accordingly. But what are they doing in Moscow?

The Vesti reporter said they have been brought there in preparation for the Victory in Europe Day parade. However, that takes place on May 9th, so the arrival now two months ahead catches your attention.

Then today Russian news informed us that a United States “Doomsday Plane,” as it is known on the street, officially a Boeing E-4 Advanced Airborn Command Post capable of supervising military operations in case of nuclear war, has landed earlier today in Iceland on its way to Europe. To Europe? Why is a Doomsday Plane going to be stationed here unless a nuclear scenario is being worked out by the US and Allied forces?

It is also worth mentioning something else you will not find in the New York Times or the Frankfurter Allgemeine today: yesterday the air space over Petersburg and within 200 km radius of the city was closed to civilian air traffic. No explanation was given at the time, but today mail.ru briefly ran an article explaining that there had been intelligence reports of a possible Ukrainian drone strike on the city. Meanwhile Moscow today claimed to have recovered fragments of a drone downed in the Moscow Oblast bearing Ukrainian military signs. All such attacks in the very center of European Russia must be seen as a direct provocation.

However, the Russian military yesterday and today came forward with information about far more serious provocations that the Ukrainians have been planning in the Donbas and Transdnistrie (Russian patrolled territory in Moldova). The Russian military gave details of the delivery by train into Kramatorsk of cases of poisonous chemicals which, they say, the Ukrainians have planned to release into the atmosphere to poison the population of this city in the Ukrainian occupied portion of the Donetsk Oblast, intending to put the blame for the chemical attack on Russia, just as US and British forces had done in Syria three years ago when they staged and filmed a supposed attack on civilians by the Assad government forces. Only this time the chemicals would be real and many civilians would be endangered. The Russian military also issued a detailed statement today on cases of radioactive materials which the Ukrainians have just now delivered by train to Moldova to stage a similar provocation that could be blamed on the Russians.

It is fairly obvious why these vile attacks were being prepared by Ukrainian military precisely now – to distract from the impending fall of Bakhmut which they have defended in the past several weeks at a cost of more than 20,000 casualties.

The aforementioned intended ‘false flag’ operations approach the realm of the insane. In that sense they reflect perfectly well the mentality of Zelensky and his neo-Nazi collaborators, as well as the madness of Nuland and other sponsors of Zelensky in the U.S. State Department.

As I said at the outset, these assorted facts taken separately are worrisome. Taken all together, they provide compelling reason why this war should be ended by negotiations forced on Zelensky at the earliest opportunity. The Wall Street Journal has in the last few days reported that both Macron and Scholz have, behind closed doors, been telling him it is time to sit down with the Russians. Perhaps when the Democrats take in the power of Donald Trump’s latest message on Ukraine in a Tweet that has attracted nearly 4 million views in the United States, and reckon how this logic can be used in the 2024 elections, they will also see the wisdom of pressing for talks now, before all hell breaks loose. See

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/03/01/ ... -blows-in/

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Dr. Strangelove is No Longer Satire
By Dee Knight - March 1, 2023 1

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[Source: russia-insider.com]

Expansion of U.S. weapons supplies to Ukraine makes nuclear war more conceivable

“We are fighting a war against Russia,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the Council of Europe on January 24. The next day German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans to send high-powered tanks to Ukraine, in a major escalation of the conflict.

“Germany has really stepped up,” Biden said, “and the chancellor has been a strong, strong voice for unity…and for the level of effort we’re going to continue.”

Biden said nothing about destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines last September, considered by many as a direct attack on its European “ally.” Other voices were not so united. Croatian President Zoran Milanovic commented at the Council of Europe meeting that “The German FM said we must be united because we are at war with Russia. I did not know that. Maybe Germany is at war with Russia again, then good luck to them, maybe it will turn out better than 70 years ago.”

World-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs declared on January 25 that “We are at the brink of a disaster…first and foremost because of the United States which is a major provocateur of this war, and a major threat to peace.” He made an impassioned plea to “get us off this reckless war between Russia and NATO, which is escalating by the day. The Doomsday Clock was moved to 90 seconds to midnight at the same time as the U.S. and Germany agreed to send new highly advanced tanks to Ukraine, in a guaranteed reckless escalation that brings us closer to nuclear war.”

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[Source: futurehorizons.blogspot.com]

Sachs said the conflict goes back more than 30 years to 1990, when the U.S. began to “pursue its unipolar agenda, moving its systems further east, with the idea of surrounding Russia.”

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Jeffrey Sachs [Source: smith.edu]

“Passing Germany the Poisoned Chalice”

A leader of Germany’s Left Party (Die Linke), Sevim Dagdelen said “This is obviously about passing Germany the poisoned chalice. Berlin is to be sent into the line of fire, to conclusively destroy German-Russian relations and turn them into open war for others’ benefit.” Dagdelen is the spokesperson for her party in the German Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Dagdelen’s view echoes economist Michael Hudson, who says the U.S. war against Russia is actually waged against Europe, to keep the European Union (EU) subordinated to U.S. capital. Hudson says the sanctions against Russia and China aim to prevent America’s allies from opening up more trade and investment with Russia and China, to “keep them firmly within America’s own economic orbit.” European industry has been shutting down recently as energy prices soar due to sanctions.

The German Left Party leader said delivering German tanks to Ukraine would “entail the greatest security threat to face the German population since the Second World War.” She added that “many Russians, especially those who lost loved ones in [WWII]…will see in these weapons a renewed German military campaign against their country.”

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[Source: thestrollingeconomist.substack.com]

A large majority of Germans and other Europeans share these concerns. In a recent poll by Project Europe, more than two-thirds of respondents in the 27 countries of the EU think the conflict is “worrisome.”

Across Europe, more than 80% want negotiations, not continued war, the poll said. European public opinion reflects the impact of sanctions against Russia, which have had a “boomerang” effect, with skyrocketing inflation leading to near-depression conditions. Street protests and strikes across Europe have had an impact, as people pressure their leaders to stop doing Washington’s bidding.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Washington’s loudest “poodle” in London, was toppled by the crisis, along with Italy’s ex-Prime Minister Mario Draghi; and French President Macron lost his majority in the French National Assembly.

In the United States, people are more divided: A survey completed in late November by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found the U.S. public split 48% to 47% on whether Washington should “support Ukraine as long as it takes,” or “urge Ukraine to settle for peace as soon as possible.”

It is a changing trend: The percentage supporting “as long as it takes” went down ten points from 58% in July; and the “settle for peace” percentage rose from 38% in the same period. During that time there were anti-war protests in dozens of cities and towns across the country. More recently the protests intensified—spreading to more than 90 localities, as major national coalitions joined forces around Martin Luther King’s birthday weekend.

Mission Creep: How the U.S. Role Has Escalated
A January 28 article in Responsible Statecraft by Branko Marcetic says “NATO and the United States are creeping closer to the catastrophic scenario President Joe Biden said ‘we must strive to prevent’ — direct conflict between the United States and Russia….NATO arms transfers have now escalated well beyond what governments had worried just months ago could draw the alliance into direct war with Russia, with the U.S. and European governments now sending armored vehicles and…preparing to send tanks.”

The article adds that, “[d]espite stressing at the start of the war that ‘our forces are not and will not be engaged in the conflict,’ current and former intelligence officials…[said] ‘there is a much larger presence of both CIA and U.S. special operations personnel’ in Ukraine than there was when Russia invaded, conducting ‘clandestine American operations’ in the country that ‘are now far more extensive.’”

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U.S. and Ukraine troops during military drills in 2017. [Source: themillenniumreport.com]

Responsible Statecraft cites a January 18 report in the New York Times that U.S. officials are “strongly considering giving Ukraine the green light to attack Crimea, even while acknowledging the risk of nuclear retaliation that such a move would carry. Fears of such an escalation ‘have dimmed,’ U.S. officials told the paper.”

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov is quoted in Newsweek saying that “We have repeatedly warned the U.S. about the consequences that may follow if the U.S. continues to flood Ukraine with weapons. It effectively puts itself in a state close to what can be described as a party to the conflict.”

A “Spanner in the Works”
German Left Party leader Dagdelen says “we must do all we can to put a spanner in the works” – that is, do something that prevents this plan from succeeding (Cambridge Dictionary explanation). “If the German tanks are delivered, the door will be open for more weapons. Calls for combat aircraft have already been voiced…The next thing will be missiles, followed, when that does not work either, by our own soldiers. But a gambler’s mentality, which responds to losses by raising the stakes and eventually betting everything on one play, is a bad guide for any society.”

Dagdelen adds: “The tank deliveries are today what war loans were in 1914. They lead directly to participation in the war. They cannot be considered in isolation from their purpose—that is, victory in NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. But consideration must also be given to the Russian response. In the end, after all, Western tanks would practically invoke the use of nuclear weapons—against Germany first…

“Why is it in Washington’s interest to send the Germans, of all people, into Russia’s line of fire?…Germany, it appears, is supposed to draw Russia’s counterfire…The United States would thus have achieved one of its long-term strategic objectives, namely to prevent cooperation between Germany and Russia forever.”

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Sevim Dagdelen [Source: die-linke-sha.de]

It is a reminder of the September 26 explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines, which can be seen as a guarantee, at least for now, that Europe cannot depend on Russian gas. All evidence about who did this has disappeared. But months before, Biden assured reporters the U.S. “has the capacity” to do it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message to ordinary Germans during his visit to Volgograd—formerly Stalingrad—on February 2, the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s historic and decisive 1943 victory against Nazi Germany in the Battle of Stalingrad. Russia’s official news agency Tass reported that Putin said “they remember it in Germany, that German anti-fascists became the first victims of the German fascism, Nazism. And it is very good that such memory remains in ordinary citizens. Unfortunately, modern elites seem to be losing it.”

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Putin at Stalingrad Memorial on 80th anniversary. [Source: pbs.org]

He noted that an “ordinary citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany treats Russia and the heroes that defeated Nazism with respect.”

The RAND Corporation, which functions as the Pentagon’s planning agency, released a January 2023 study entitled “Avoiding a Long War,” which concludes that “the consequences of a long war—ranging from persistent elevated escalation risks to economic damage—far outweigh the possible benefits.”

This is not the view of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who declared on January 5 that “weapons are, in fact, the way to peace.” Victoria Nuland, along with her bosses, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, tend to see things more like Stoltenberg than their RAND advisers. “They don’t see the world the way sane people do,” commented Margaret Kimberley, of Black Agenda Report, in a February 1 article. “They have made the Ukraine conflict an existential crisis, and then decide they have no choice but to engage in dangerous actions…The idea of peaceful coexistence is anathema to Nuland, Biden, and Blinken. Blown up pipelines are seen as proof of victory to people who thought they could make dangerous and irrational obsessions come true.”

“Dr. Strangelove Is No Longer Satire”

Roger D. Harris, of the U.S. Peace Council and the SanctionsKill campaign, says “The world was fortunate that the Cuban Missile Crisis ended with both sides willing to seek accommodation rather than victory. In contrast, the currently raging and indeed escalating Ukraine War could be the prelude to World War III because neither side appears to have an exit strategy; one by choice, the other because its back is to the wall.”

“The U.S.’s intent,” Harris further wrote, “is victory by ‘overextending and unbalancing’ Russia,” as a 2019 RAND paper suggested. Harris cites analyst Rick Sterling that “this was the playbook for the U.S. to provoke Russia into the current conflict. Bombers have been repositioned within striking range of key Russian strategic targets, additional tactical nuclear weapons deployed, and U.S./NATO war exercises have been held on Russia’s borders.”

Harris adds that “Now the prevailing propaganda from Washington is that nuclear war can be ‘won.’ Dr. Strangelove is no longer satire. This planning to fight a nuclear war as if it were not an existential threat is institutionalized insanity.” He cites Robert Kagan, spouse of U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, asking: “Can America learn to use its power?” He says Kagan “argues in favor of a vigorous nuclear confrontation with Russia on the grounds that Putin will most likely back down.”

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[Source: deviantart.com]

Whether Russia will “back down” or not is debatable. But back in December 2021, Russian initiatives might have prevented hostilities and made the region more secure with a reduced likelihood of war. Following are the proposals Russia made then:

*Russia and the U.S. shall not use the territory of other countries to prepare or conduct attacks against the other.
*Neither party shall deploy short- or intermediate-range missiles abroad or in areas where these weapons could reach targets inside the other’s territory.
*Neither party shall deploy nuclear weapons abroad, and any such weapons already deployed must be returned.
*Both parties shall eliminate any infrastructure for deploying nuclear weapons outside their own territories.
*Neither party shall conduct military exercises with scenarios involving the use of nuclear weapons.
*Neither party shall train military or civilian personnel from non-nuclear countries to use nuclear weapons.

When these measures were proposed by Russia in December 2021, they were considered “non-starters” by the U.S. Now the question is whether there is anyone in Washington, D.C., who could convince the Biden administration to reconsider. That is what Jeffrey Sachs is demanding.

Events in Munich and Moscow since Blinken’s late January ‘trial balloon’ clarify that the U.S. is really offering nothing for peace. Instead it continues to escalate the war while attempting to project blame onto both Russia and China.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/0 ... er-satire/

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At least one dead leaves Ukrainian bombardment in Kursk, Russia

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As a result of the attack carried out by the Ukrainian forces, three houses were affected. | Photo: Sputnik
Posted 2 March 2023 (2 hours 52 minutes ago)

The governor of the territory, Román Starovoit, pointed out that due to the five bombings, the electrical service was interrupted.

Bombardments by the Ukrainian army against the town of Tiotkino, located in the Russian region of Kursk, left one dead and one wounded, Russian regional authorities reported Thursday.

The governor of the territory, Román Starovoit, pointed out in his Telegram account that “two men were injured in the town of Tiotkino as a result of a shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Unfortunately, one of them died before the ambulance arrived."

“I offer my deepest condolences to his family and friends. The other was hospitalized with moderate injuries and is receiving urgent medical attention," she added.


At the same time, Starovoit pointed out that five bombardments were registered in the place where, according to preliminary information, three homes suffered shrapnel damage.

In this sense, he specified that “the situation will be clearer after a house-to-house visit. In addition, as a result of the bombardments, the electricity supply in the town was interrupted”.

For its part, the Federal Security Service (FSB, for its acronym in Russian) and the Russian Army announced that they took measures to eliminate the Ukrainian saboteurs who this day infiltrated two towns in the Klimovski district, in the Russian region of Briansk.

The Ukrainian attackers fired on a vehicle, killing one person and injuring a child, while also taking six civilians hostage in a shop in the border town of Lubechane.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/bombarde ... -0006.html

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RUSSIA STUDIES A NEW NUCLEAR DETERRENCE STRATEGY
2 Mar 2023 , 1:49 p.m.

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Russia displays nuclear arsenal during a military parade (Photo: File)

A Russian Defense Ministry magazine claims that Moscow is developing a new military strategy based on nuclear deterrence to protect itself from possible US aggression, reports the RIA news agency.

According to the outlet, the article published in the Voennaya Mysl ( Military Thought ) magazine concluded that Washington was concerned that it was losing its grip on the world and, therefore, had "apparently" prepared plans to attack Russia in order to neutralize it.

Faced with this attack, Russia would appeal to nuclear deterrence. This "presupposes the use of modern strategic offensive and defensive weapons, nuclear and non-nuclear, taking into account the latest military technologies," they collect from the magazine.

Moscow's argument is that it needed to be able to show the American country that it could not disable its nuclear missile system and that it would not be able to repel a retaliatory strike.

President Vladimir Putin recently suspended a historic nuclear arms control treaty, which was being used by the West to manipulate and pressure, because he had no guarantee that the other party, the United States, would respect it. He also announced the commissioning of new strategic systems.

https://misionverdad.com/rusia-estudia- ... on-nuclear

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

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 04, 2023 1:10 pm

The collapse of international law in Europe
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 03/04/2023

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This article aims to draw attention to the collapse of international law after the failure of the conflict regulation model that the so-called international community imposed in the period of dissolution of the USSR and the former Yugoslavia. This collapse, accentuated after the secession of Kosovo, largely explains the option for war that both the Russian Federation and Ukraine and the great Western powers have adopted.

The phases of the collapse of international law until February 2022.

From June 1991 to February 2022, in the European context, there are three main phases that mark the process of collapse of international law in its approach to the joint application of the principles of self-determination and sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.

The initial phase is located in the secession of Slovenia and Croatia , essentially imposed by Germany, although with the subsequent determined support of the United States and other Western countries. In legal terms, in the context of the war in Croatia and in other Yugoslav regions, the conflict is resolved by appealing for the effective dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with a regulation of this process framed in the Opinions of the Badinter Commission. In political terms, the acquiescence with the process of the Russian Federation, then chaired by Boris Yeltsin, which facilitates the entry of Croatia and Slovenia into the UN, is decisive.

The second phase would be more critical and would never find an adequate legal and political solution. After the defeat of Serb forces in 1999, Kosovo's declaration of independence in February 2008 laid the foundations for the subsequent fracture of international law on the matter. In this sense, the secession of Kosovo occurs in complete contradiction both with the content of the Opinions of the Badinter Commission and with the, still in force, Resolution 1244 of the UN Security Council. This resolution reaffirmed “ the adherence of all Member States to the principle of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ” and “ substantial autonomy and true self-administration for Kosovo ”.

Unlike the cases of Croatia and Slovenia, the decision to go beyond autonomy and to bet on the total independence of Kosovo by the majority of Western countries has not yet found resolution in the international system and, in fact, , Kosovo is not part of the United Nations Organization. The unilateral independence of this region of Serbia supposes the rupture of both the regulatory principles of secession in case of state dissolution, centered on the idea of ​​uti possidetis(recognition of new states in terms of the old administrative borders, which guaranteed Kosovo's belonging to Serbia) as the central authority of the UN Security Council on the matter. Kosovo becomes independent regardless of the resolution of this organization, 1244, which internationally regulates its legal-political status, without the UN having updated its position on the case since 1999 through its Security Council.

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The action of the Kosovar institutions is also carried out against the principles affirmed regarding the recognition of new states by the European institutions. Thus, in the Directives on the recognition of new states in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union of December 16, 1991, the European Council affirmed respect for the inviolability of all borders, borders that could only be modified by peaceful means and by mutual agreement. As is well known, Kosovo has not achieved its independence by peaceful means or as a result of an agreement with Serbia.

In this case, Russia's opposition to the unilateral secession of Kosovo has immediate consequences in the same year, 2008. Largely as a consequence of Georgia's attack on South Ossetia, but influenced by the Kosovar action, the Russian Federation decides to recognize in August of 2008 the secession of Georgia by Abkhazia and South Ossetia , appealing in this case to the legislation in force at the time of Georgia's independence, that of the Soviet Union (Law 1409-I of April 3, 1990). The reference law guaranteed the right to a separate referendum in autonomous regions such as Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The decision of the Russian Federation regarding Abkhazia and South Ossetia is of great importance. It means de facto, and for the first time, calling into question the principles applied by Western countries, including the European Union, in the process of dissolution of the USSR and the former Yugoslavia, that of uti possidetis which, in this case , guaranteed the territorial integrity of Georgia. In the case of Kosovo, however, most European countries would also choose to go beyond that principle by recognizing the new Kosovar Albanian state.

Crimean secessionin 2014, and its subsequent incorporation into the Russian Federation, constitutes a new step towards the collapse of current international law. As in the case of Kosovo, the unilateral action of Crimea is in line with the Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) according to which the declarations of independence made by the representatives of a certain people cannot be considered illegal. in the context of international law. Although there are other political and legal aspects that must be considered when dealing with this issue (the absence of recourse to force, the need for mutual agreement of the affected states, etc.), Russia takes advantage of the approach advocated by the ICJ to try to legitimize the Crimean incorporation process.

Kosovo versus Crimea

To justify his position on Crimea, in his speech in the State Duma on March 18, 2014 , the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, mentioned the Kosovo precedent in the following terms:

“ a precedent that our Western colleagues created with their own hands in a very similar situation, when they agreed that the unilateral separation of Kosovo from Serbia, exactly what Crimea is doing now, was legitimate and did not require any permission from the country's central authorities . Pursuant to Article 2, Chapter 1 of the Charter of the United Nations, the International Court of the United Nations agreed with this approach and made the following comment in its judgment of July 22, 2010, and I quote: “None general prohibition can be inferred from the practice of the Security Council with respect to declarations of independence”, and “General international law does not contain any prohibition on declarations of independence” .

What arguments can be held against this thesis? In an article published on opendemocracy.net , Paul Linden-Retek and Evan Brewer argued in the same month of March 2014 that the cases of Kosovo and Crimea were very different. The position is particularly interesting, given the links of the writers to the Legal Unit of the International Civil Office/Office of the Special Representative of the European Union in Kosovo.

To defend their main conclusion, the authors argue that Kosovo did not seek independence under a post-Yugoslav or Serbian constitution, in fact it was not under any national constitution at all, but that UN Security Council Resolution 1244 constituted the order. binding legal. This resolution, according to the authors, refused to take a position on the final status of Kosovo, leaving the matter for future decisions by the Security Council, and did not prevent or prevent a declaration of independence.

This is clearly an erroneous argument, as shown by the international legal framework and the Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Kosovo itself. In manifest contradiction with the thesis defended by Linden-Retek and Brewer, on the one hand, the aforementioned regulatory resolution 1244 is still in force. On the other hand, to argue its position in favor of pointing out that the Kosovar declaration of independence does not violate international law, the ICJ Opinion does not limit itself to pointing out that neither general international law nor Security Council resolutions, including the 1244, expressly prohibit such action by Kosovar Albanian political leaders. Actually, to justify the non-illegality of the Kosovar decision, the ICJ clearly states that the declaration of independence is not an act of Kosovo's institutions of self-government. According to the court, the authors of the declaration would not have acted as an institution within the constitutional framework derived from Resolution 1244, but in their capacity as representatives of the people of Kosovo, outside of said legal framework. Its objective was to establish a sovereign and independent State, with a meaning and effects of such action outside the order established by that resolution.

This unprecedented position of the ICJ, aimed at not confronting the position of the large Western countries, invalidates any claim to adjust the legality of the Kosovar declaration of independence to the content and framework of Resolution 1244. The Court maintains that there is no prohibition any specific international law that prevents some actors from declaring independence who, when acting in this sense, do so in a different capacity than that of the provisional institutions of self-government regulated in Resolution 1244. As the declarants are not conditioned by the framework of powers and responsibilities that regulates the conduct of these institutions, the declaration does not violate the constitutional framework established by the United Nations. A thesis that has not been accepted by many countries, including Spain,

The authors of the article in opendemocracy.net are aware of their lack of argument when they point out, regarding the opinion of the ICJ, that it not only made it clear that international law does not prohibit the holding of a referendum like the one held in Crimea, but that it opened the doors for Kosovo to stop being the so-called “unique case” that the great Western powers talked about. In Linden-Retek and Brewer's own words: “ To say that opinion supports a broader right [to secede] misrepresents its content, but the door is left wide open to invite such a combination [ of referendum and secession]". And, in this sense, they assume -correctly in this case- that "the ICJ has implicitly allowed states like Russia to endorse illegal acts of secession that suit their particular political interests .”

With an important nuance, however: what the Russian Federation is being criticized here for is what, with its opinion, it intended to facilitate ICJ in Kosovo to Western countries: an illegal act, adapted to particular political interests. It is not, however, that the ICJ refused, as the authors maintain, to adequately develop the body of international secession law. Because well aware that they could never have argued in favor of Kosovar independence within the framework of Resolution 1244, the writers of the ICJ Opinion choose to legitimize the non-prohibition of secessionist action by placing said action outside of that norm of the UN Security Council.

Since 2014 some more elaborate legal analyzes have tried to deepen the argumentation presented. To cite some, such as the study by Francisca Aguayo Armijo on the foundations and limits of international law regarding the Crimea case, the orientation is aimed at justifying the obligation not to recognize secession and incorporation into Russia, even if it is admitted that " the referendum in Crimea and the declaration of independence are not, in themselves, contrary to international law ”.

According to the author, “ the essential distinction between Kosovo and Crimea is not located in the political framework of the legitimacy of secession, but in the legal framework of conformity to international law of secessionist actions. This explains why the recognition of Crimea's independence and its annexation to Russia is illegal, while, in the case of Kosovo, international law does not impose a solution and recognition remains essentially discretionary, and determined by political factors . .

It would be necessary to address in more detail the consideration of the associated aspects to point out that the use of force and the violations of rights that Aguayo Armijo mentions regarding Crimea are part of a broader debate that is also applicable to the Kosovar case. In particular, the anti-Serb pogroms prior to the declaration of independence, scheduled for 2004, should be remembered; as well as the previous action of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK) in places like Prizren, where a systematic elimination in 1999 of the presence of the small non-Albanian population that remained in the city, most of them advanced people age. The contradiction of imposing independence by force in areas with a Serb majority, clearly opposed to secession, should also be noted,

Although the author does not mention it other than in reference to Kosovo, on the other hand, there is no resolution of the UN Security Council ruling on the independence of Crimea or preventing its secession. In addition, unlike Crimea, and contrary to Aguayo Armijo's theses, international law does impose a solution for Kosovo, which is within the development framework of Security Council Resolution 1244. The trajectory of this Council makes it clear that the solution adopted, secession, is not recognized by the UN Security Council: Resolution 1244 is still in force and Kosovo is not part of the Organization.

It is significant, in this context, that Aguayo Armijo does not consider at any time that the non-violation of international law observed by the International Court of Justice is only justified, in the position of the ICJ, in terms of the position of the representatives of the Kosovar people outside of Resolution 1244, a resolution that would have forced them to act in a different direction from the one decided. Within the framework of said resolution. the Kosovar authorities lacked the authority to impose secession unilaterally.

Without therefore resolving the substance of the issue, the author herself acknowledges that, in a factual sense, the situations of Kosovo and Crimea “ are close when it comes to evaluating the weight of politics in the final result of the secessionist attempt. Indeed, the great paradox in the case of Crimea is that, despite the violation of fundamental norms of international law whose verification does not depend on the action of the Security Council, the blockade of this results in an extremely restricted nature of the international reaction ”. The author further acknowledgesthat the permanent members of the Council who have taken a sharply condemnatory position regarding the Russian action in Crimea have likewise, in recent years, violated the fundamental principles of international law. Some examples are provided by the NATO air raid on Serbia in 1999 to protect the Kosovar population - whose legitimacy is, however, in our opinion, greater than that of the other situations discussed - and the interventions, at the beginning of the years 2000, of the United States and the United Kingdom in Afghanistan and Iraq, on the basis of dubious legal grounds if not non-existent in the latter case ”.



February 2022 and the international law of secession

Despite its opportunistic position in Crimea and the decision in favor of recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia after Georgia's intervention in this region, the position of the Russian Federation in the rest of the ex-Soviet space had been, in general, respectful until 2022 of the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. Their commitment to Minsk in the case of the Donbass conflict or their positions in cases such as Transnistria or Nagorno Karabakh, in favor of maintaining a status quo that is not incompatible with the acceptance of the respective sovereignties of Moldova and Azerbaijan, responded to this.

The breakdown of the Minsk process leads, however, to a practically definitive collapse of the international system in Europe, with at least two associated consequences. On the one hand, the extension by the Russian Federation of the Crimea model to several oblasts of the state of Ukraine is observed, not only in the secessionist region of Donbass. Thus, on October 5, 2022, the Presidency of the Russian Federation promulgates the incorporation into Russia of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, but also the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.

On the other hand, recent positions show a radicalization of positions regarding Transnistria that could further complicate the political and war situation in eastern Europe. While many countries of the Western alliance clearly appeal to retake Transnistria, in accordance with the positions held by the current Moldovan leaders, some voices in the current Russian Federation seem to defend the extension of the model of the .from eastern Ukraine to that region formally belonging to Moldova, although de facto independent in its internal organization. Although it could only have preventive objectives of a unilateral Moldovan aggression in Transnistria, it is striking that the presidency of the Russian Federation revoked on February 22 the 2012 decree that affirmed the sovereignty of Moldova with a view to resolving the future of the region. .

The main significance of the reported facts, in which the West cannot deny its great responsibility, particularly in relation to the case of Kosovo, is the definitive rupture, in the post-Soviet space, of the international legal framework that regulates the disappearance and creation of new state. For this reason, today, and throughout the war, we are witnessing the reconsideration of that framework, fundamentally by the Russian Federation, but in a context of warlike confrontation assumed by Ukraine and, potentially now, by Moldova (also, although in another context, by Azerbaijan).

The Minsk agreements not only constituted a favorable parapet for Ukraine in Donbass, but a framework that allowed the maintenance of a certain political and legal stability, despite the precedents in Slovenia, Croatia, Kosovo, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Crimea. The final option for war, and for the abandonment of the Minsk agreements, both by Russia and by Ukraine and the allied Western countries constitutes the acceptance, perhaps not consciously, but now inevitable, of the rupture of the model of hitherto prevailing international law in relation to state sovereignty and secession. A legal model that the United States and its allies undoubtedly intend to rebuild, after the crisis of legitimacy that the Kosovo precedent represents for them; but not through an agreed recomposition of said model,

The resignation of Minsk therefore has much more relevant implications than the mere disappearance of some agreements that allowed Ukraine and, through it, Western countries to buy time. It is the beginning of a war of unknown development in geopolitical terms, and of a period of uncertainty regarding the future of the current system of international relations. We are thus entering an era of great instability that the left and progressive forces should have tried to avoid, with proposals adjusted both to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity and self-determination.

It is already too late to avoid it. Perhaps it is too late to find a reasonable solution to stop the war and limit its consequences.

If the latter is chosen, the open paths are those of the agreed self-determination referendum (as in the case of Montenegro), those of co-sovereignty agreements (for example, for the use of joint facilities or spaces in Crimea) or those of autonomy territorial, inadequately foreseen in Minsk and de facto boycotted by Ukraine, as well as by the vast majority of Western countries, with the exception of Germany and, perhaps, France. This limits the potential of the latter solution, except perhaps in some regions of Ukraine other than Donbass. The guarantee of the political, cultural and linguistic rights of all the parties in conflict would be, in any case, essential to reach an agreement that allows the state of war to be overcome.

The historical indeterminacy of international law, especially in its application to the right of self-determination, has in any case reached a real point of collapse, not to say bankruptcy, which threatens a resolution of the existing contradictions through a long war. and cruel. Contrary to what most Western analysts maintain, the responsibility for this collapse is shared by all parties. The search for a new architecture for international law, especially on issues related to self-determination, must be resolved at the negotiating table and not on the battlefields.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/03/04/el-co ... more-26765

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An American General’s Chilling Warning for NATO
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 2, 2023
Christopher Maffei

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Ukrainian Fatalities Have Reached the Sum Total of American Combat Deaths in World War II

The proxy War between the United States and Russia is quickly becoming one of the highest-intensity conflicts in history— where the two belligerents, armed to the TEETH with hydrogen-tipped weapons are locked in an existential conflict for dominance on the central Asian land mass.

(Both) fighting a proxy war (right below) the nuclear threshold.

In January, American General Christopher Cavoli was in Sweeden speaking about the Russian combat operations on the Don. In rare candor and with a chilling warning, Cavoli said,

(paraphrasing) “The scale of this war is out of proportion with all of our thinking, but it is real,” Continuing, “And we must contend with it” he said.

Meaning, NATO command is not prepared for the sheer volume of fire between the flanks. American forces will need to be evacuated if the Russians move to the west and off the open steppe. Defeat is a foregone conclusion and for Cavoli, there will be no time to — “contend with it”

To put this into perspective, the Russians are delivering (approximately) 22 times the volume of fire than the totality of the Battle of Khe Sanh. And for the men serving between the Russian flanks there is no God.

Some estimates bring the mixed artillery rounds being expended between 60,000 and 80,000 rounds a day; just on the Russian side alone.

According to the head of Wagner, if you even put your hand out of the trench for more than 30 seconds. You’ll be hit with razor-sharp shrapnel. Sharp enough and fast enough to shred a human being into pieces instantly. 60 thousand mixed artillery rounds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

According to Scott Ritter, in just 12 months of fighting, there has been a conservative estimate of 280,000 Ukrainian infantry killed in action, and an unknown mix of foreign mercenaries. In fact, the Wagner Group alone has reported 120,000 Ukrainian infantry killed in action. To put this into perspective, there were (approximately) 292,000 American combat deaths in the 4 years of fighting in World War II.

(Stop) — and think about that…

…In Just 12 months of fighting, Ukrainian fatalities have reached the sum total of American combat deaths in World War II.

Given this catastrophic attritional rate on the Caspian steppe, American forces are not moving one inch into the Dombass — and for good reason. If the 101st Airborne were to engage the Russians in this region with the current Ukrainian losses, this Airborne unit would be wiped out in 20 days — if not sooner.

And if the 3rd Armored Brigade, currently in Poland were to join in the fight they would not even last a month. Most likely they would be combat-ineffective in a fortnight and then withdrawn.

If these forces are ineffective why are they there?

Very simply, they are a tripwire for the release of nuclear weapons. If you see the use of nuclear weapons in Poland. Soon after, America will cease to exist.

This God Forsaken War needs to come to an end as soon as possible.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... -for-nato/

Ukraine: The NATO Tragi-Farce Deepens
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 2, 2023
Gordon Hahn

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We in the West like to troll Russia with the argument that Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine failed to achieve its goals. Oddly, one of the claimed goals in making that argument is that rather than stopping NATO expansion, Putin’s invasion has led to NATO’s further expansion, military-political consolidation, and military strengthening. This is odd, because Western, particularly US policy, has been built on the premise that Putin feigns fear of NATO expansion in order to engage in his own expansion. The reality, of course, is quite different. NATO is struggling to include not just Ukraine but also Finland and Sweden into the alliance, but because of NATO member Turkey’s resistance driven by the prospective new members’ support for Kurdish rebels this expansion is also going rather poorly.

And let’s turn the original argument around. Western policy supposedly has been aimed at creating a sovereign, democratic, and economically free and prosperous Ukraine. How has that policy fared? In failing to prevent, in fact by provoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine going nearly two decades back, the US and its allies have not achieved any of its goals. Rather than stopping the expansion of NATO and establishing a neutral Ukraine, we cultivated a violent putsch in Kiev, hid the facts of the 20 February 2014 neofascist snipers’ terrorist attack, supported the ultranationalist-oligarchic Maidan regime’s war on the Donbass population, did nothing to forward the Minsk peace process for Kiev or Donbass, built up the Ukrainian army on Russia’s borders to be the second most powerful in Europe, and rejected Putin’s 2021 proposals to save Minsk and reorganize the security architecture surrounding Ukraine and in Europe-western Eurasia.

Moreover, the alliance is splitting along several seams – Turkish, Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian – where resistance to the West’s and NATO’s massive support for Ukraine is high. The US attack on Nord Stream threatens to break a core partnership in the alliance: America-Germany.

Also, NATO GenSec Stoltenberg has acknowledged that NATO weapons stockpiles are nearly exhausted and that Ukraine is using many times more the amount of ammunition than NATO countries produce.

If we throw Ukraine’s current condition into the calculus of pluses and minuses of Western policy, the results appear as catastrophic, most notably for Kiev and those in the region poised against Moscow. Russian forces are deeper into Ukraine than ever before. Moscow has annexed more Ukrainian territory than before. Ukraine has become more authoritarian and corrupt with each year of Western anti-Russian rhetoric and policies and certainly during the war. The war has bolstered the neofascist element in the Ukrainian polity. Economically, Ukraine is not only not prosperous, but its economy contracted by a third in the first year of the war the West’s policies helped bring about. Large parts of what remains of the country lies in ruins, and the area covered by such destruction is about to expand probably up to the Dnepr river. In other words, American, Western, and NATO policies have led to precisely the opposite results from they claim to have sought.

Geostrategically, the war has driven Russia further into the arms of China, accelerated Sino-Russian efforts to forge an alternative political, economic, and financial order to the Western architecture, and heightened Sino-Western trade and military tensions.

In sum, Americans and everyone else in the West should ask themselves whether or not their countries’ national security would have been better served by not expanding NATO, expansion attempting to do so to Ukraine, and insead negotiating a security agreement with Russia that addressed every state’s security concerns.

Worse still, no matter how counterproductive Western policy is proven to be, Western leaders automatically double down on their failures, escalating an already unforgivably dangerous, pre-apocalyptical military-political and socioeconomic situation in Europe and globally. The newest double-down is the NATO declaration that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance after Kiev’s military defeat of Russia. That declaration guarantees that Moscow will drive the war harder and arrange a post-war order in which Ukraine cannot become a NATO member. That might require destroying or occupying what remains of Ukraine in the event of a Russian victory.

Moscow is making its own contribution to the escalatory cycle in the form of the large-scale counteroffensive operation. The West will follow suit, then Moscow will respond, and so it will go on and on until it has gone too far. Humankind is full of fools, and the fools often make its history.The fundamental flaw the fools have multiplied is a complete failure to understand Putin and Russia. Prolongation of this failure has consistently led to the worsening of Russian-Western relations and escalation of tensions and distrust. Western policies bring about the very policies the Kremlin would never have taken but for those very same Western policies, most notably NATO expansion, creating a never-ending cycle of deterioration in relations. Moscow had no need or even interest in annexing Crimea to save its Black Sea Fleet naval base until the West cultivated the anti-Russian Maidan coup. Annexation was then portrayed by the West as part of Moscow’s plans all along, and the failure of Western policy is said to be an unwillingness to bring Ukraine into NATO. The policy continues, and Western apparatchiks mouth the lie that Russia is not opposed to NATO expansion; it just wants to expand and recreate the Russian Empire or the USSR.

Kiev then declared an anti-terrorist operation in Donbass against a handful of pro-Moscow rebels merely repeating the Maidan coup for anti-Maidan purposes. Moscow’s support for the rebels, backed overwhelmingly by the local population, is portrayed in the West as a pre-planned separatist policy and invasion of Donbas, part of Moscow’s imperial expansion goal. The battlefield stalement and Minsk accords were then used by the West to build up Ukraine’s armed forces, which Russian intelligence easily could observe, instead of attempting to secure the peace by forcing Kiev to fulfill its obligations under Minsk. The US never engaged the Minsk process, and its organizers and interested parties, with the exception of Moscow, faked their engagement. Zelensky has followed similar admissions by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and for French President Francois Hollande to this effect. As the Ukrainian paper Ukrainskaya Pravda noted: “Zelenskyy remarked that he treated Minsk agreements only as the official avenue for negotiations where it was possible to ‘solve at least some problems’, so he started using it for prisoner of war swaps.” Zelenskyy acknowledged: “(C)oncerning Minsk agreements in general, I told Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel that we cannot fulfill them in this way.” At the Normandy meeting that included Vladimir Putin in 2019, Zelenskyy announced his intention not to fulfill the agreements. He said to all the participants of the meeting, that “the agreement, as it stands, cannot be fulfilled” (www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/02/9/7388717/). Clearly without Washington’s and NATO’s proactive support of Minsk, the peace process was doomed to fail. Former Israeli PM Bennet says this was precisely the intent, revealing that he had all but secures a truce in March 22, but the US stepped in to block it (https://contra.substack.com/p/us-led-we ... ce-deal-in and https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1623 ... 18048.html).

Putin responds to the emerging threat in the west with coercive diplomacy, mounting troops near Ukraine in 2021 and proposing a new agreement on Ukrainian and European security without NATO expansion, but the West rejects the proposals and never really takes them seriously. They are merely a ploy to cover Russian expansionism, you see. Russia invades, and the West sees only Russian expansionism. NATO expansionism is no threat. Putin feigns fear, Washington and Brussels contend, before world history’s most powerful military alliance, as they continue to build up Ukraine’s military into a powerful fist and Ukraine as an inevitable NATO member, as NATO summits never fail to declare.

The most tragic element is that there is no end in sight for Ukraine, only more escalation, without even a hint of the potential for a ceasefire, no less peace negotiations. Kiev is caught between the West and Russia. Ukrainians are caught between a corrupt regime born in blood, voracious oligarchs, and violent neofascists.

The next phase of the Ukraine war is here. Gains during Russia’s counteroffensive in Ukraine will ‘reconfirm’ or be used to reconfirm the myth of Russian expansionism, as NATO continues to prosecute the war rather than negotiate—all in an effort to further its own expansion to Ukraine and beyond.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... e-deepens/

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Attempts to play up Ukraine crisis opposed
By MO JINGXI | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2023-03-02 23:39

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A general view of the venue for the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in New Delhi, India, March 2, 2023. [Photo/Agencies]

Foreign Minister Qin Gang expressed opposition to attempts to play up the Ukraine crisis, disrupt peace talks or impose sanctions to exert pressure when he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday.

The pair held talks on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting in New Delhi, India.

Qin said that China is supportive of all efforts that are conducive to promoting peace talks and will continue to play a constructive role.

Lavrov said he appreciated China's objective and fair position, adding that Russia is always open to negotiations and dialogue.

Speaking of the China-Russia relationship, Qin said that it has maintained sound and stable development and established a paradigm for a new type of relations between major countries. The relationship has also played an important role in boosting unity and cooperation among emerging markets and developing countries, he said.

Qin called on the two countries to maintain exchanges at all levels and further strengthen communication and coordination between their diplomatic departments.

Lavrov said Russia is willing to work with China to implement the consensus reached by their heads of state, maintain high-level exchanges and undertake good planning for cooperation in various fields.

When meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Qin said China and Australia should press ahead with communication at all levels, after the two countries resumed dialogue mechanisms in areas such as diplomacy and trade.

He called for more efforts to cherish and take good care of the positive momentum of a bilateral relationship that is improving.

The two sides should deal appropriately with their differences and address each other's reasonable concerns, Qin said.

A good Australia-China relationship is in line with the common interests of both sides, Wong said, welcoming Chinese companies to invest in Australia.

Saying that China is a key force in promoting world peace and stability, she expected China to play an important role in solving the Ukraine crisis.

Qin also held bilateral meetings respectively with India's External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b1d2f.html

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Military Neutral Austria Could Mediate Between Russia-Ukraine

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Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen and outgoing Czech President Milos Zeman. Mar. 2, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@CT24zive

Published 2 March 2023 (11 hours 13 minutes ago)

Zeman said that the European Union (EU) must stand united and avoid division.


Outgoing Czech President Milos Zeman met with his Austrian counterpart, Alexander Van der Bellen, at Prague Castle on Thursday, where Zeman said Austria's neutral status could be useful in mediating the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

"I told Mr. [Austrian] President that, in a certain context, Austrian neutrality can enable the country to play a mediating role in the case of Ukraine and Russia," the outgoing president said.

Zeman said that it is important for the European Union (EU) to remain united and not allow itself to be divided. According to the Czech leader, both he and Van der Bellen share similar views on the situation in Ukraine.

Van der Bellen said neutrality does not mean indifference and praised the Czech Republic's support for Ukraine as respectable.


On Thursday, 2 March 2023, in the presence of the President of the Republic of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen, President of the Republic of Czechia Miloš Zeman presented the Medal of Merit 1st Class to Günter Geyer, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Vienna Insurance Group.

The Austrian President arrived in Prague on Wednesday on an official visit.

Zeman's second term as Czech president expires on March 8. President-elect Petr Pavlo is expected to be sworn in as the new president one day later.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Mil ... -0018.html

NATO Aircraft Supply to Kiev Is NATO’s War Against Russia

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A country is a participant in hostilities if it supplies weapons and trains personnel to use them, said Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev. Mar. 2, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@NATOJFCBS

Published 2 March 2023

The U.S., NATO and the EU are participants in the terrorist acts of the Ukrainian regime and "direct accomplices of terrorists," said Dmitry Medvedev.

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev warned on Thursday that NATO's delivery of aircraft to Ukraine would mean the alliance's direct entry into the war against Russia.

Medvedev said that "the direct entry of Atlanticists into the war against Russia" will trigger consequences, as "all persons who make decisions on the supply (repair) of such equipment or weapons, along with foreign mercenaries and military instructors" will become "legitimate military targets."

The Russian diplomat said that a country can be recognized as a participant in hostilities if, in addition to supplying weapons, it trains personnel to use them.

In this regard, Medvedev said that the Ukrainian military is receiving training from Canada and Germany on the use of Leaopards.


U.S., NATO and the EU are participants in the terrorist acts of the Ukrainian regime and "direct accomplices of terrorists," the Deputy Chairman said, referring to the recent events in the Bryansk region.

Ukrainian saboteurs have infiltrated the Klimovsky district, killing two people and injuring a 10-year-old boy, Bryansk Oblast Governor Alexander Bogomaz said today.

The attack was considered a terrorist act by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said the situation in the region had been brought under control. Armed Ukrainian nationalists who entered the region were hit by a massive artillery attack, the FSB said.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/NAT ... -0013.html

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Foreign Minister Lavrov: Russia will not trust Western partners

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Lavrov recalled that Russia is trying to stop a war that the West started against it by using the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder, using the Ukrainian people,” Lavrov said. | Photo: Sputnik Novosti
Posted 3 March 2023

The foreign minister pointed out that "everything that is happening now is to turn Europe into a minor player for the US."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that Moscow will not trust the West's energy policies while saying it will not allow other Russian gas pipelines to blow up.

The foreign minister noted that “the war that we tried to stop and that was launched against us with the use of the Ukrainian people, of course, influenced Russian policy, including energy policy. To explain in a few words what changed, is that we stopped trusting any partner in the West."

In this sense, Lavrov expressed during the Raisina Dialogue forum, held in the Indian capital, New Delhi, that "we will not trust any 'partner' from the West again, we will not allow gas pipelines to blow up again."


At the same time, the Russian diplomat pointed out that the West rejected an investigation into these events while stressing that "everything that is happening now is to turn Europe into a minor player for the US."

He stressed that Moscow has warned about these Western actions for more than ten years and stressed that the aggressions take place near its borders "in territories where the Russians have lived for centuries."

Lavrov affirmed that a "war against everything Russian" is being carried out in Ukraine, referring to kyiv's cancellation of using the Russian language, while denouncing that this type of issue has not been addressed at the conference.

Accordingly, he questioned: "Have they asked the US, NATO, if they know what they are doing?", and stressed that "if the West sees it as an existential threat, so do we."

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/rusia-mo ... -0003.html

Google translator

*****

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad


Armed Forces of Ukraine lost a battalion of soldiers in Artyomovsk due to friendly fire: details and the 125th Territorial Defense Brigade - lost about 600 people killed and wounded.

According to the Military Chronicle, most of the irretrievable losses in killed and wounded were recorded in the units of the 61st Infantry and 57th Motorized Infantry Brigades, which defended the northern suburbs of Artyomovsk in the area of ​​​​Grigorovka, Kalinovka and Orekhovo-Vasilevka.

According to preliminary data, during the last day of February and the first three days of March, when trying to retreat from their previously occupied positions, the units of these formations were unable to correct and coordinate the fire of M777 howitzers of 155 mm caliber of the 43rd artillery brigade in Clock Yar. Due to confusion in movements and unstable radio communications, the units several times fell under the crossfire of Ukrainian and Russian artillery.

Units of the 8th Operational Regiment were sent to the line of clashes to clarify the situation and direct the artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, however, when approaching their destination, the column came under artillery attack from Giacint-S and D-20 guns of 152 mm caliber and was destroyed. According to preliminary data, the total losses of units could be 560-590 people, which is equal to the number of a full-fledged military battalion armed with dozens of pieces of equipment.

Presumably, one of the reasons for the death of servicemen of the units of the 61st Infantry Brigade, the 8th Operational Regiment, the 57th Motorized Infantry Brigade and the 125th Territorial Defense Brigade could be the lack of a “friend or foe” identification system. According to incoming information, as one of the reasons for the death of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine due to confusion during regrouping and maneuvers, the brigade command is considering a version with the operation of Russian electronic warfare systems.

***

forwarded from
💀REVERSE SIDE OF THE MEDAL💀
CNN, citing its sources in the Ukrainian General Staff, reports that on February 28, 2023, the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine amounted to:

🙉killed, who died from wounds, diseases 259,085 people;

🙈wounded, crippled 246,904;

🙊deserted, as well as missing - 83,952;

***

Colonelcassad
1:58

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The position of Georgian mercenaries in the center of Bakhmut

Today, a video with members of the "Georgian Foreign Legion" in Bakhmut appeared on the Web. On it, a group of at least six people crosses the road and descends into a shelter equipped in the basement of a capital house.

Judging by the characteristic facade caught in the frame, the position of the mercenaries is located in the building of the tax inspectorate on Vasily Pershin Street in the central part of the city. The position of the sun and shadows indicate that the photo was taken at approximately 8:15 am local time.

Coordinates: On the recording, the operator with pathos claims that his unit will “clean Bakhmut”48.586776, 37.999208

and stay with it to the end. But the situation of the Ukrainian troops in the city is becoming more and more deplorable: in an attempt to contain the detachments of the Wagner PMC, the Armed Forces of Ukraine even blew up the remaining crossings across the Bakhmutka River, leaving their own forces in the eastern part of the settlement to fend for themselves.

Due to the withdrawal of Russian troops to the two remaining supply routes, the enemy will soon lose their last escape routes. Therefore, Georgian tiktokers will either be surrounded or, contrary to their own loud statements, abandon their positions and escape from Bakhmut.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator


*****

About the upcoming spring military campaign
March 4, 12:23 p.m

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About the upcoming spring military campaign

The less time remains before the announced and pre-advertised spring offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the more questions arise about what kind of know-how Zaluzhny and his headquarters are going to use to achieve the announced ambitious goal - inflicting a strategic defeat on the Russian army.
Undoubtedly, the group, which is now undergoing further formation and combat coordination in the rear areas of Ukraine and at the training grounds of Western countries, is going to be powerful. This is at least a third of the entire ground grouping available to the Armed Forces of Ukraine - about thirty infantry, airborne, airborne assault and mountain assault brigades. At least six tank brigades. At least six artillery brigades. As well as parts of the "special forces" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the "National Guard". The total strength of the strike force can reach 140-160 thousand people. It consists of at least 400 tanks, at least 350 guns, up to 100 MLRS, of which at least 30 high-precision systems "Hymars", "Mars" and their other Western counterparts. It is obvious that under this offensive, the Armed Forces of Ukraine received a sufficient amount of ammunition, spare parts and fuel and lubricants.

According to the rules of military science, these forces will most likely be divided into two strike groups, each of which will have its own task. One blow will be the main one, and the second will be an auxiliary and distracting one. At the same time, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be ready to transfer forces from any direction to where success is most manifested, as was the case with the September offensive near Kharkov, which began as an auxiliary, but as it developed, it became the main one.

What will the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine bet on in the upcoming offensive?
Of course, it will try to achieve tactical surprise in the choice of strike sites and decisive superiority - not less than seven to one in these areas.

The second task that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will try to achieve in the very first hours of the offensive is to defeat Russian headquarters, combat control systems, communications, as well as destroy ammunition depots and fuel and lubricants at the maximum depth achievable for their weapons - up to 80 km, causing paralysis combat control and chaos in the rear. For this, high-precision MLRS, as well as kamikaze drones, the deliveries of which to the Armed Forces of Ukraine are now in full swing, will be involved. The success of solving this problem directly depends on how much intelligence of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, based on the technical capabilities of American intelligence and intelligence of NATO countries, will be able to open the military infrastructure of the RF Armed Forces in the offensive zone. Now the Americans and NATO have thrown all their efforts into identifying such objects. NATO intelligence activity along our borders, has reached its maximum and it would be correct to consider that the entire military infrastructure of the RF Armed Forces in the front line has been opened and marked on the staff maps of Ukrainians. Experts believe that the recent decrease in strikes by high-precision systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russian headquarters and control centers is due not so much to the fact that the Ukrainians cannot detect them, but to the fact that they are not specifically attacking them now in order to reach them at the start of the offensive. maximum surprise and maximum damage.

The third task that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will try to solve to ensure the success of the offensive is the task of isolating the areas where the Ukrainian troops will advance. The goal is to prevent the transfer of reserves, the supply of fuel and lubricants, ammunition to these areas and the organized withdrawal of troops. These tasks have been practiced by the artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in different sectors of our defense over the past weeks with varying degrees of success.
At the same time, it is quite obvious that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will try to use our own know-how against us - an artillery offensive, which will create the maximum concentration of artillery in the direction of strikes. But, inferior to us in the number of artillery, the Armed Forces of Ukraine rely on the high accuracy of Western systems and the use of the latest means of controlling artillery fire.

In general, one of the main stakes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the upcoming offensive is the hope for the “digitization” of new groups and the conduct of a network-centric war, which should give the Ukrainians the main superiority over the enemy. By providing an advantage in reconnaissance, detection of the enemy, the speed of striking him and the accuracy of defeat. Over the past few months, the brigades assigned to the rear to complete and form strike groups have been receiving the latest American digital combat control systems and learning how to use them.

The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine considers its top priority to break through the first line of defense as quickly as possible, where, according to Ukrainian generals and their NATO advisers, the most battle-hardened and experienced Russian units are stationed. Inflicting maximum damage on them, as well as preventing their organized retreat to the second line of defense, where there are poorly trained regiments, which do not have enough military equipment and heavy weapons, formed from “mobilized” soldiers, who, in the event of a breakthrough in their positions by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, will hardly whether they will be able to offer serious resistance if units of the “first line” cannot withdraw here. Therefore, most likely, the offensive will not be conducted according to the usual pattern of this war - the slow "gnawing" of the defense, but according to American standards - maximum fire superiority and ramming strikes on,

American advisers are rushing the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the offensive as much as possible, while there is still a critical imbalance in the RF Armed Forces between well-equipped equipment, weapons and trained personnel, units, and a large number of "fortified" regiments, many of which do not have not only their own artillery and tanks, but even vehicles for their normal supply. Whose command staff has no combat experience and mainly consists of the same "reservists", many of whom did not serve in the army and are graduates of military departments of universities. The combat value of such regiments is conditional and, in defense against a well-trained and equipped enemy, they have almost no chance.

Undoubtedly, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is preparing for the offensive and an ace in the hole. Experts believe that this may well be the massive use of strike drones, and especially kamikaze drones, with the help of which the Ukrainian command will try to inflict maximum damage on Russian artillery and military equipment in positions, hunt for rear transport columns and moving troops on the roads. It is also impossible to exclude a massive UAV attack on objects in Russia to a depth of 800-1000 km. We have been observing attempts to probe our air defense system over the past weeks.

Strengths of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the future offensive:
- Experienced operational-tactical command. The battalion commanders and brigade commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are experienced military leaders who have gone through at least a year of the war, and many have been fighting since 2014-15.
- A well-organized vertical of combat control, based on closed communication systems, digital information exchange systems, combat control. military internet.
- Well-trained, having vast combat experience, the personnel of artillery units, their mass transfer to high-precision NATO artillery systems.
- Intelligence integrated with NATO and the United States, which allows you to quickly receive information about the enemy and just as quickly implement it in digital format.

But, in addition to strengths, there are also weaknesses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which will not be easy for the command to compensate for:
- Low quality of Ukrainian infantry. The motivation of the majority of Ukrainians mobilized in recent months is extremely low. The number of people among them with service experience is approaching zero. Most, for one and a half - two months of training, receive only initial military training.
- A huge shortage of officers. Especially the junior level - up to and including the company. There are practically no regular officers at this level. Basically, these are mobilized graduates of military departments or veteran sergeants appointed to officer positions.
- The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine does not have much experience in offensive battles, not counting the September offensive, which would be more correctly called the pursuit of the retreating enemy. There is also no sufficient experience in assaulting and breaking through organized defenses, not counting urban battles and counterattacks.
- The Armed Forces of Ukraine are still seriously inferior to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in terms of the number of tanks and artillery. For tanks - at least four times, for artillery - five times.
- The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are completely superior to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in combat aviation, high-precision missile weapons. Maintains superiority in strike UAVs and kamikaze drones.
- The overall superiority in the number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine over the size of the Russian grouping decreased from 3 to 1 in September to 1.3 by February.
- The Russian command has serious reserves at its disposal - at least 80 thousand people, which, of course, will use them in the event of a threat.

Therefore, despite the huge propaganda of the “victory” of the coming offensive, the Ukrainian military leadership does not have complete confidence in its success. A number of critical success and failure factors are in the zone of uncertainty. So far, the combat grouping has not reached the required combat parameters. Part of the equipment and weapons continue to arrive, the supply of ammunition is in full swing, but they are still not enough to meet all the needs of a large-scale offensive. The deliveries of heavy Leopard tanks are being delayed, on which a special stake is being placed in the future offensive. Ukraine has not yet received medium-range (up to 500 km) tactical missiles. The level of training of the personnel of the newly formed brigades is assessed as low. And, most likely, some of these uncertainties will remain at least until mid-April.

A separate problem is the answer to the question - will the Armed Forces of Ukraine be able to achieve tactical surprise in the beginning of the offensive. From this directly depends on its further course. Russian intelligence also conducts continuous monitoring and collection of information about the enemy, and underestimating its capabilities can be very costly for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Russian military command has gained a lot of combat experience and will try not to repeat its past mistakes.

The spring military campaign in Ukraine will be the most important stage of the current “hot phase” of the Russian-American war, as a result of which it will become completely clear whether the United States and its allies will be able to stop the Russian advance and inflict a sensitive military defeat on Russia, or whether they will have to move on to the “plan "B" - look for ways to save the existing Ukrainian regime and start peace talks with Russia. The stakes for both sides are maximum!

https://t.me/ramzayiegokomanda/1898 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8201067.html

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

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

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 04, 2023 11:10 pm

Bakhmut, Strategic Or Not, Is Falling

'Western' media can not decide if Bakhmut is a strategic city or has little strategic value. They claim both is the case.

Bakhmut is of course of strategic value. It is covering the crossing of three major train lines and four major roads (M-03, M-32, T-13-02, T-05-13). As such it is the linchpin of the whole Donbas region. Besides that it also has some valuable mineral mines.

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That is why the Ukrainian government has send ten thousands of its troops to fight and die for that city.

People who claim otherwise are simply coping.

Some examples:

Russian forces are closing in on the strategic city of Bakhmut, giving Ukraine a tough choice to make - CNBC - Feb 9, 2023
Bakhmut has been intensely fought over by Russian and Ukrainian forces for months, with Moscow viewing its capture as a strategic goal and a way to cut Ukrainian supply lines in Donetsk.
Ukraine clings to Bakhmut, Blinken tells Lavrov US to back Kyiv all the way - Reuters - Mar 2, 2023
Ukraine says the city has limited strategic value but it is exhausting Russia's invasion force in what has become the bloodiest battle of the war.
Ukraine may soon lose Bakhmut as Russian troops seek to claim 1st major 'victory' - India Today - Mar 2, 2023
Russia says seizing Bakhmut would open the way to fully controlling the rest of the strategic Donbas industrial region bordering Russia, one of the main objectives of its invasion a year ago on February 24, reported Reuters.
Bakhmut: Fighting in the street but Russia not in control - deputy mayor - BBC - Mar 4, 2023
Taking the city would be a rare battlefield success in recent months for Russia. But despite that, the city's strategic value has been questioned. Some experts say any Russian victory could be pyrrhic - that is, not worth the cost.
Russia close to encircling Ukraine’s Bakhmut after months of fighting - CNBC - Mar 4, 2023
Ukraine says the city has little strategic value and the huge casualties Russia has suffered trying to take Bakhmut could shape the course of the conflict.
Ukrainian Forces Open to Attacks on 'Three Sides' As Bakhmut End Nears—U.K. - Newsweek - Mar 4, 2023
This fixing operation had caused the massive attrition of Russian forces and kept them focused on an area with little strategic value.
Ukraine is reinforcing Bakhmut with its elite troops as Russian forces make advances, UK defense ministry says - Business Insider - Mar 4, 2023
Ukrainian soldiers shelter in the woods along a road outside of the strategic city of Bakhmut
Ukraine military said to be considering strategic retreat from Donetsk mining town Bakhmut - AP - Mar 3, 2023


This DW piece, originally written in Russian, is probably the best on the issue:

Bakhmut: What will be the outcome of the battle? - DW - Mar 3, 2023

Bakhmut is of great strategic importance to both the Ukrainian and the Russian forces, says Marina Miron, a research fellow at the Centre for Military Ethics at King's College London. Miron believes that, if Russian troops capture the city, they will advance further, perhaps toward Kramatorsk.
"They would control important roads, cutting off the Ukrainian armed forces and making the defense much harder for them," says Miron. She warns that this would also undermine the morale of the Ukrainian troops, and could lead to Western partners losing confidence in the capabilities of the Ukrainian army.

Ralph Thiele, a retired German colonel who has served on the personal staff of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, agrees. "The Ukrainian side is basically compelled — also by its Western partners — to deliver successes. There has to be some sort of constant public justification for the huge amount of support being given to Ukraine," says Thiele.

Mike Martin, a researcher at King's College London, says Russia is persisting in its efforts to capture Bakhmut because it corresponds to Putin's stated war aim of, in his words, "liberating the Donbas." Martin explains: "If you look at the way the roads and the rail networks are arranged, there are two bigger settlements to the west of Bakhmut, but still in the Donbas: Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. And in order to take those bigger cities, which he needs to do to complete his strategic goal, he needs to take Bakhmut first."


The Ukrainians in Bakhmut and elsewhere are outgunned 10 to 1:

The Ukraine war has become a ferocious battle dominated by artillery and Ukrainian forces are operating at a huge disadvantage: Russia has numerical superiority of 10 heavy guns to every one at the disposal of Kyiv. Furthermore, Ukraine is running low on ammunition and requires urgent supplies of shells, Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government has warned.
...
According to data from the European Commission to which EL PAÍS has had access, Russia fires between 40,000 and 50,000 artillery shells per day, compared to 5,000-6,000 Ukrainian forces expend. The Estonian government, which has been one of largest contributors to Kyiv’s war effort, puts the average use of artillery at between 20,000 and 60,000 Russian shells per day, and 2,000 to 7,000 Ukrainian rounds, according to a document sent to EU Member States by Tallinn, to which this newspaper has had access. These numbers equate to between 600,000 and 1.8 million Russian shells fired per month, compared to between 60,000 and 210,000 by Ukrainian artillery.


Over the last six weeks the Russian counter-battery campaign destroyed some additional 500 Ukrainian howitzers and multiple rocket launchers. The Russian Lancet suicide drones (videos) have done a lot of that work. Russia has thereby increased its own artillery advantage even more.

As artillery is the major killer in any modern war this also means that casualties on both sides will follow a similar ratio as the number of guns and rounds fired by each side.

For the last several weeks the daily 'clobber report' by the Russian Defense Ministry reported some 350-400 Ukrainian soldiers killed per day along the whole frontline. On Thursday that number increased to 640, stayed at 640 in Friday's report and increased to 880 in today's report. 450 of those were reported in the Bakhmut area.

BBC cooperates with other organization to count every announcement of a dead soldier in the Russian local media. Since the start of the war it has identified a total of 16,000:

Throughout 2022, Russian sources typically reported about 250–300 deaths each week, doubling in January and continuing to grow again in February.
Russian source report death per week at a lower rate than Ukrainian death per day. The ratio is again about 10 Ukrainians for 1 Russian. That number of Russian dead has doubled in January and further increased in February says the BBC. But the 10 to 1 ratio between Ukrainian and Russian dead will still have been the same.

I have said for a while that Bakhmut was in operational encirclement. Russian artillery could reach its last roads in and out. Since three days ago Bakhmut is in tactical encirclement. Russian direct fire, i.e. tank guns and hand held anti-tank missiles, can now cover all of Bakhmut's supply routes. They will shot at any car that attempts to drive there. Its one reason why the reported deaths have harshly increased.

Should the Ukraine decide to order its soldiers to stay in Bakhmut the city will be physically encircled. All roads will be blocked not only by fire but by heavily armed Russian checkpoints. The Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut, several thousands still seem to be there, will then be left with only two options: surrender or die.

Posted by b on March 4, 2023 at 16:49 UTC | Permalink

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On the causes of the war in Ukraine
March 4, 9:46 am

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Jeffrey Sachs on the causes of the war in Ukraine.

— What exactly can you say about the background against which this conflict arose?

“It reflects the growing tension between the United States and Russia that has been going on for a quarter of a century. On this path, indeed, many gross mistakes were made.

What specific opportunities do you think were missed?

- A key aspect of the situation, which is now being actively discussed, but still not fully understood by politicians and the public, is the vision of the strategic leaders of the United States of the situation in the world that has developed after 1991. In particular, they were convinced that the world was unipolar and that the United States could do almost anything. Including deploying its military forces where and when they want, making and withdrawing from treaties when Washington wants it, and without any serious consequences for itself. In the mid-1990s, the American leadership, even at the first stage of NATO expansion, had a rather heated debate, during which many smart people, including Bill Perry, our secretary of defense under Clinton, considered this decision a terrible mistake. Many others thought the same. And George Kennan

Clinton decided to continue expanding the alliance. Since that first stage was in Central Europe, I doubt that it was decisive, although it certainly complicated the situation. And then the war began in Serbia and its bombing by NATO forces. This was also, in my opinion, a mistake. We do not know much due to secrecy. Insiders told me a lot. I don’t know if this is true or not, because I didn’t read the archives, but I still think that it was a big mistake. Then 9/11 happened. President Putin offered support to the US in the fight against terrorism from the very beginning, but the war in Iraq has clearly dealt a serious blow to the possibilities of US-Russian cooperation.

Bush went through seven more waves of NATO expansion, raising tensions because the three Baltic states, plus Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Slovakia were involved, and the blow was very, very hard. In 2008, Bush made the utterly terrible decision to push for NATO expansion to include Ukraine and Georgia. In essence, this put us not just on the path of absolute hardening of relations with Russia, but on the path of war with her.

This military conflict began nine years ago, with the very active involvement of the United States in the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Perhaps we will only know about it in full measure when, decades later, the archives are opened to us. But even now enough is known to draw a conclusion about the cause of the Ukrainian conflict.

– I don’t quite understand you when you talk about the events of 2008, because Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine only in 2022, fourteen years later, and Ukraine has not come close to joining NATO.

- In 2008, at the summit in Bucharest, the alliance announced that it would expand at the expense of Ukraine and Georgia. The meeting was very controversial as most of the Europeans objected, but the United States pushed through the decision. And it led, in my opinion, to the war in Georgia. I think this was Russia's signal to Tbilisi: don't even think about joining NATO. It was also a signal for Kyiv.
Ukraine was already in a state of struggle, in which Washington was also actively involved, when in a divided country its east and west, pro- and anti-NATO forces, and so on, fought furiously among themselves. Even when Viktor Yushchenko became president in 2005, he called on Ukraine to join NATO. Strong tensions formed which led to 2008. Then Yushchenko was defeated, and Yanukovych came along, saying that Ukraine needed neutrality. And I believe that this was taken as an insult by American politicians, because they were maniacally striving to expand the alliance. When protests against Yanukovych erupted at the end of 2013, the United States seized the opportunity and showed itself very actively, and rather, so to speak, straightforwardly - they paid big money to those who

Do you consider the events of 2014 a coup?

Of course it was a coup. It was an unconstitutional power grab when in February 2014 very aggressive, heavily armed groups stormed government buildings.

Let's go back to 2008. I understand what happened at the Bucharest summit. I mean, in fourteen years Ukraine has not come close to actually joining NATO.

- This is wrong. It's not like that, Isaac. At all. The fact is that after the overthrow of Yanukovych, a number of subsequent governments, both in Kyiv and in Washington, actively armed the country, modernized its army and poured many billions of dollars worth of weapons into it. this is what allowed Ukraine to resist the Russian operation last February.

— [Do you mean the weapons that arrived] after the start of the Russian military defense?

- No no no. Since 2014. It is very important.

- That is, after Russia seized the Crimea?

- Perhaps you and your colleagues should better understand the events around the Maidan. It was the overthrow of the government that replaced the government that called for neutrality ...

- Neutrality?

Yes, the Yanukovych government called for neutrality. (Yanukovych wanted a closer alliance with Russia. It was recently reported that Putin planned to use Yanukovych to install a puppet regime after the end of the 2022 sting operation.)

- It's clear.

- And this is the main point. We are told every day that the first anniversary of the military conflict has now come. But even NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who has been one of the most vocal hardliners in the standoff, says the actual hostilities are now in their ninth year. It is a fact. This military conflict began in February 2014. Stoltenberg says it started with Russia's takeover of Crimea. I think the clock needs to be turned back about a month, at least. It all started with the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, in which the United States played a very significant role.

https://inosmi.ru/20230304/saks-261106552.html - zinc
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/ ... r-politics - original source

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8200860.html

Like Serbian missiles ...
March 4, 15:03

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Like Serbian missiles ...

The outgoing week was marked by a sensation: in the Russian segment of Telegram, rumors spread that Serbia was supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime. For several days in a row, the authors of major channels published "evidence" of the arrival of shells in Ukraine, and a flurry of angry comments from indignant Russian patriots fell upon the Serbian leadership.

It all started on February 27, when a video was published of 3,500 Serbian missiles for the Grad MLRS in a warehouse in Bratislava, which were allegedly intended for Nezalezhnaya. The video showed documentation, according to which a Canadian company purchased Serbian shells through a Turkish intermediary. Moreover, if you carefully consider the export permit, you can see an inscription in Serbian, which says: under the terms of the contract, they are intended exclusively for the use of the Turkish defense complex.

Footage from the warehouse quickly spread across the network. Of course, with caustic comments about the "traitor-brothers" supplying weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Representatives of the Serbian arms factory were forced to deny the rumors: Krušik's official statement said that the company had nothing to do with the sale of weapons to the end consumer from Ukraine and was at the center of a scandal due to the unprofessionalism of journalists.

However, a large-scale campaign against the Serbian authorities has already begun on the network. In pursuit of a sensation, information was disseminated from all telegram guns ( https://t.me/balkanossiper/5641) that the “Minister of Defense Vukovich” allegedly confirmed the supplies to Ukraine, and Serbia made them under pressure from the EU. At the same time, none of the authors was embarrassed that there was no Minister Vukovich in Serbia. The head of the defense department is called Milos Vucevic, and he did not make such statements.

The non-existent minister is far from the only blunder of hype lovers. Literally the next day after the release of the video from Bratislava, “irrefutable evidence” appeared on the network that Serbian ammunition had already been delivered to Ukraine. The arrival of Krušik's products in Nezalezhnaya "confirmed" the first image that popped up in the English-language search engine when "rocket" was requested. Moreover, the photo taken by Madeleine Kelly was already used by both the German and Spanish press when designing their news materials in a completely different context.

As for the published documents, it was not only Krušik representatives who raised doubts about their authenticity. Upon closer examination ( https://t.me/balkanossiper/5671 ) the “export permit” revealed that it was issued by the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications, although permits for the export of weapons in Serbia are issued by a special government commission. In addition, the document contains a code that completely corresponds to the export of flour to Montenegro.

The Turkish intermediary represented by Arca Savunma Sanayi Ticaret in Serbia also raises many questions. At the legal address of the representative office in Belgrade, nothing was heard about her, and the person to whom she is registered died back in 2021.

Thus, in pursuit of hype, telegram "experts" forgot about the main rule of a journalist - to check the sources and reliability of the information published.

(c) "Balkan Gossip Girl"

https://t.me/rt_special/3131 - zinc

In general, the story is more like the story of the "delivery of tanks from Morocco to Ukraine", which turned out to be a story about how they actually stole from Morocco tanks and delivered to Ukraine.

This, of course, does not mean that NATO does not purchase Serbian weapons from third countries for clandestine deliveries to Ukraine. But in this case, too many points point to manipulation and falsification.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8201396.html

Google Translator

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WHAT DOES THE WORLD THINK ABOUT THE WAR IN UKRAINE?
3 Mar 2023 , 4:31 pm

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The hands of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel (Photo: AP)

Without a doubt, the war in Ukraine has been a turning point in world history, and a year later, the world has been further adrift. In contrast to the opinion of the United States and the European Union (EU), the citizens of many non-Western countries believe that the post-Cold War era is over and envision a multipolar world.

These are the main findings of a new survey carried out in several countries. The study revealed that there is a wide gap between the West and the "rest" when it comes to the outcomes they want for the war and the different interpretations of why the United States and Europe support Ukraine.

The survey was carried out between December 2022 and January 2023 in nine EU countries and Great Britain, and in China, India, Turkey, Russia and the United States (the CITRUS countries, to use the abbreviation -in English- of the Europe project in a Changing World from Oxford University).

Stop the war or win the war: While the new consensus among European governments is that only a Ukrainian victory will stop the conflict, a significant number of European citizens still want the war to end as soon as possible.

By contrast, citizens of non-Western countries have a clear preference for the war to end now, even if it means Ukraine has to cede territory. In China, a portion of those surveyed (42%) agree that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine must end as soon as possible, even if it means Kiev ceding control of parts of its territory to Russia. This desire to end the war soon is even stronger in Türkiye (48%) and India (54%).

The non-Western public opinion studied differs from Western ones not only in what outcomes they want for the war, but in what they think about why the US and Europe are helping Ukraine. For example, for the vast majority of Chinese and Turks, Western support for Ukraine is motivated by reasons other than defending Ukraine's territorial integrity or its democracy.

https://misionverdad.com/que-opina-el-m ... de-ucrania

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Medvedev Defines the Red Line for Direct War with NATO
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 3, 2023

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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky meet Ukrainian troops being trained on Challenger 2 tanks at Lulworth in Dorset

Training Ukrainians on Western weapons qualifies, said Dmitry Medvedev after the Bryansk attack
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Canadian and German troops teaching Ukrainians how to use Leopard tanks already qualifies as participation in the conflict, but sending fighter jets to Poland would mean “direct entry,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.

Medvedev, who is also deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, warned the US and its allies that they can be treated as parties to the conflict “if, in addition to supplying weapons, they train personnel to operate them,” citing legal precedents from the early 20th century.

Tank training on EU territory already applies, Medvedev noted on Telegram, but if that expands to fighter jets based somewhere in Poland, “that would be direct entry of the Atlanticists into war against Russia, with all the consequences that entails.”

Everyone who made the decision to deliver those weapons or repair them, along with foreign mercenaries and military trainers, ought to be considered legitimate military targets.

According to Medvedev, only fear of this has so far restrained the “infantile” West from giving airplanes and long-range weapons to Kiev, though he predicted their desire to destroy Russia would prevail before long.

While the US, NATO and the EU talk about the “freedom-loving people of Ukraine,” Thursday’s attack on Russia’s Bryansk Region shows that they are supporting “Nazi bastards, terrorist scum who attack civilians,” Medvedev said.

“These are your proteges, Mr. Sunak, Macron, Scholz and Biden!” he wrote, addressing the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, and US. “And our attitude towards you is now the same as towards them. Your countries are now participants in the terrorist acts of the Ukrainian regime, and you are direct accomplices of terrorists.”

Though the West considered him a “liberal” during his 2008-2012 presidency, Medvedev has been blunt and outspoken about the military operation in Ukraine since it was launched in February 2022. Just last month, he warned the US that its talk about “strategic defeat” means Russia now sees the conflict as existential.

A group of Ukrainian soldiers crossed the border into Russia on Thursday morning, attacking two villages and shooting up a car with civilians inside. Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the “terrorist attack” and vowed to punish the perpetrators.

RT

Dmitry Medvedev

Western analysts have heartily admitted that when NATO specialists teach Ukranazis how to use their military equipment, it can be seen as NATO’s direct involvement in a military conflict on the side of the Ukrainian regime.

It has been understood since the 1920s that a country can be recognized as a participant in hostilities if in addition to supplying weapons it trains its personnel to use them (the Briand – Kellogg Pact of 1928, the Budapest Resolution to the Pact of 1934).

This is what is happening today: Canadian and German instructors on EU territory are already teaching Ukrainian killers how to handle Leopards.

If we imagine that the NATO planes delivered in the future will be serviced by their military in the territory of some impudent Poland (the only possibility, taking into account the deplorable state of defense industry in Little Russia), it would be a direct entry of Atlantists into the war against Russia with all the ensuing consequences. And all those who make decisions on the supply (repair) of such equipment or means of destruction, along with foreign mercenaries and military instructors, will have to be regarded as legitimate military targets.

Apparently, this is the only thing that keeps the Western infantiles from handing over the planes and means of destruction of increased range to the Kiev junkies. Although not for long. The temptation to crush Russia is too great.

Also – today’s events have shown who the US, NATO and the EU really support. It’s not the “freedom-loving people of Ukraine” who don’t want to return to the “Muscovite sovok”. They are just Nazi bastards, terrorist scum who attack civilians while waving a stinking zhovto-Blakit rag. Let them now be exonerated in London, Paris, Berlin and Washington.

These are your proteges, Messrs. Sunak, Macron, Scholz and Biden! And our attitude towards you is now the same as towards them. Now your countries are participants in the terrorist acts of the Ukrainian regime, and you are direct accomplices of terrorists.


https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... with-nato/

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G20 foreign ministers’ meeting ends without a joint communique because of disagreements regarding Ukraine war

Both China and Russia expressed concerns over western countries’ attempts to compromise the real objective of the G20 by using the forum to push their geopolitical agenda

March 04, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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The G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi on Thursday, March 2, failed to release a joint statement due to the disagreements over the war in Ukraine, after representatives of both Russia and China objected to the draft.

As per Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar, both Russia and China had strong objections to the two paragraphs of the draft statement borrowed from last year’s Bali conference, which demanded the unconditional withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory. Jaishankar instead released a ‘Chair’s Summary and Outcome Document’ as an alternative to the joint statement.

Jaishankar also noted that on most issues related to the Global South, such as multilateralism, climate change, and food and energy security, there was broad consensus among the delegates.

After the meeting, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov announced that those present at the G20 meeting had agreed to bring the African Union into the grouping on the lines of the European Union, which is already a full member.

The meeting was attended by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with the foreign ministers of the world’s largest 20 economies.

Accusing western delegates of pushing the Ukrainian issue and ignoring the actual mandate of the G20, Lavrov said that “the West has sacrificed to its ambitions in Ukrainian affairs all areas of work that should constitute the core of the G20’s activities.”

Blinken, however, asserted that Russia’s war could not go unchallenged. He accused Russia of attacking the core principles of the UN charter by waging an “unjustified war against Ukraine” and hampering the process of the G20 meeting.

China reiterated its position that there was a need for a dialogue-based political solution to the war in Ukraine. However, its foreign ministry criticized attempts by the US to use the G20 forum for its own ends. It also suggested that the G20 was not the the appropriate forum for discussions regarding the war in Ukraine, noting that “the G20 is the premier forum for international economic cooperation.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/04/ ... raine-war/

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kraine war a triple-plundering of people of the U.S.
March 4, 2023 Press TV

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The file photo shows U.S. Army M1A1 Abrams tanks attending NATO enhanced Forward Presence battle group military exercise Crystal Arrow 2021 in Adazi, Latvia. The U.S. announced on January 25 that it will send 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
PressTV

The majority of people of the United States, especially the working class and oppressed communities, are being “triply plundered” by the Ukraine war, American political analyst and anti-war activist Bill Dores has said.

“First we have our taxes – funds that should be spent on human needs – spent on weapons. Then there is the inflation caused by printing money for the Pentagon. And then there is the price of food, energy and everything else pushed still higher by the shortages caused by war and sanctions,” the analyst explained.

Dores, a writer for Struggle-La Lucha and longtime antiwar activist, made the remarks in an interview with the Press TV website Thursday while commenting on U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement that U.S. aid to Ukraine is a “direct investment” in Washington’s interests.

McConnell said that U.S. national security is tied to stability and security in Europe and preventing Russian forces from advancing in the continent.

“As my fellow leading Republicans and I have explained, it is not an act of charity for the United States and our NATO allies to help supply the Ukrainian people’s self-defense,” the former Senate Majority leader said. “It is a direct investment in our own core national interests.”

McConnell pointed out that the United States has largely been sending older weapons from its stockpile to Ukraine.

He urged the Biden administration to act more resolutely in ensuring that its military assistance to Ukraine and investments happen at the “speed of relevance.”

‘Both U.S. parties serve U.S. corporate war machine’

“Senator McConnell apparently feels the tens of billions of our tax dollars the Biden administration has poured into Ukraine is not enough. His remarks underscore how both major U.S. parties serve the corporate war machine,” said Dores.

“The Republican Senate leader is not lying though when he calls that money an ‘investment.’ That is exactly how the bankers, financial managers and corporate bosses making billions off this war see it. For them, the bloodbath in Ukraine is a gold mine. That’s what McConnell means when he speaks of ‘core national interests,'” the activist explained.

He added, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the paid corporate shills in U.S. Congress the same thing when he addressed them last November: ‘Your money is not charity, it’s an investment.'”

‘An investment that won’t benefit the majority of people in the U.S.’

Dores said, “It is not an investment that will benefit the majority of people of the United States, especially the working class and oppressed communities.”

“But this ‘direct investment’ is already paying off big time for U.S. and British energy monopolies, arms corporations and the banks and asset managers that control them. ‘U.S. oil producers reap $200 billion windfall from Ukraine war price surge,’ the Financial Times wrote in November,” he added.

“‘ExxonMobil reached record profits amid high gas prices, war in Ukraine,’ PBS reported in January. ‘How the Ukraine war is fueling massive profits for energy firms and arms dealers,’ read a February headline in the Times of London. The war in Ukraine rescued the U.S. energy industry from the price collapse of 2020,” he said.

“BlackRock, the world’s largest investment house, is already raking in war profits through its arms and energy holdings. And in December, UPI reported, ‘Zelensky, BlackRock CEO agree to coordinate Ukraine rebuilding investment,'” the analyst said.

“Ukraine could be a ‘beacon about the power of capitalism,’ BlackRock CEO Larry Fink bragged in Davos last month.”

Why is the U.S. ruling class targeting Iran, Venezuela, Russia

“This profit bonanza is not a windfall or accident,” said Dores. “In 1991, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, Washington embarked on a global drive to recapture control of the world’s energy supply. The first target was Iraq. Libya and Syria were next, along with sanctions and covert operations against Iran and Venezuela. Russia was the ultimate target.”

“These countries are very different, but they have committed a common crime in the eyes of the U.S. corporate ruling class. They have large energy reserves and they don’t pay tribute to Washington and Wall Street,” he explained.

“Cutting Europe off from Soviet/Russian energy supplies has been a prime U.S. objective since the 1980s, when the Reagan regime tried to sabotage the Trans-Siberian Pipeline. It was an object of the U.S.-backed 2014 coup in Kiev and eight years of U.S. military investment in Ukraine,” he noted.

“It is why the U.S. encouraged the Kiev regime’s bloody eight-year war against the people of Donetsk and Lugansk. Washington has pushed NATO expansion precisely to build a wall between West Europe and Russia. ”

Russia began its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 with a declared aim of “demilitarizing” Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics. Back in 2014, the two republics, which are predominantly Russian-speaking, broke away from Ukraine, prompting Kiev to launch a bloody war against both regions. The years-long conflict has killed more than 14,000 people, mostly in the Donbas.

Since the onset of the conflict between the two countries, the United States and its European allies have unleashed an array of unprecedented sanctions against Russia and poured numerous batches of advanced weapons into Ukraine to help its military fend off the Russian troops, despite repeated warnings by the Kremlin that such measures will only prolong the war.

The elephant in the room: The Nord Stream explosion

“On September 23 of last year, explosives planted by U.S. Navy divers blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines deep in the Baltic Sea. Stopping the pipelines, which carry Russian natural gas to Germany, has been a declared objective of the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. The revelation by acclaimed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that the sabotage was a U.S. military operation has been suppressed in the U.S. corporate media,” said Dores.

“It gives the lie to Mitch McConnell’s claim that Russia aims to ‘destabilize Europe, invading and killing at will.’ Russia has neither the need, desire or capacity to do that. For the U.S. military-financial state, however, confrontation with Russia is a means to bring Europe back under its thumb,” he noted.

“In a February 26 interview with the TV channel Rossiya 1, Vladimir Putin said that the U.S. seeks to maintain a unipolar world that revolves around its interests. He gave the example of the U.S. forcing Australia to cancel a deal to buy French submarines in favor of those made by U.S. contractors General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls. So much for allies,” the peace activist said.

“Indeed. Washington seeks to wreck any avenues of economic life on this planet that don’t pass through Wall Street. It sees war as the only means to restore its obsolescent position at the center of the world economy,” he observed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia is opposed to the emergence of a unipolar world that revolves around Washington’s interests.

Putin said his country is striving to create a multipolar world rather than one that is centered around the U.S.

Some of Washington’s allies also see confrontation with Russia as a unifying cause, eclipsing any differences between them and the U.S., Putin noted.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... f-the-u-s/

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
Military expert Boris Rozhin on the situation in the Artemovsk direction on March 04, 2023, especially for the Voenkor Kotenok Z @voenkorKotenok channel :

1. At the moment, the boiler has not yet been formed in the Artemovsk region. The enemy still has the opportunity to exit the city. The videos confirm that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are carrying out a controlled withdrawal of some units.

2. At positions in the area of ​​​​n.p. Chasov Yar is building up the grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: additional forces are being transferred from the Slavic-Kramatorsk agglomeration. At the moment, these forces are being used to deter the attacks of the PMC "Wagner" in the direction of the highway through Khromovo and for counterattacks in the direction of Kleshcheevka and near the Chasov Yar - Krasnoye - Bakhmut road.

3. The obvious plan of the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is a gradual controlled withdrawal of troops from Artemovsk with intermediate lines in the western quarters of the city and in the area of ​​the AZOM plant. The success of these plans depends on how effectively the enemy reserves can counterattack our advancing formations and maintain at least partial control of the roads and terrain west of Bakhmut in order to be able to withdraw personnel if it is not possible to withdraw equipment.

4. The primers and the terrain were badly screwed up - part of the equipment can only withdraw along one highway, which the enemy has left. She is under fire. According to Ukrainian sources, you can drive there at night.

5. Our troops are striving to establish tighter fire control over the road and to strengthen fire control over the area west of Bakhmut in order to prevent the withdrawal of some units. The enemy relies on holding the defense in the city for as long as possible by units of various "Volkssturm", mercenaries and other scum. They will try to pull the most useful units for future operations out of the city (UAV units, MTR units, etc.). Volkssturm and mercenaries can be sacrificed by exchanging them for a while.

6. Our troops have not entered Khromovo yet. The enemy retains the ability to defend in Khromovo and hold the neck of a potential Artyomovsk cauldron, while maintaining supplies. Here they are playing a completely dangerous game, because with our breakthrough in Khromovo, all who remain from it to the east will fall into a bag and are unlikely to be able to retreat.

7. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have the option of deblocking strikes at the expense of reserves in the area of ​​the settlement. Yar's watch and mechanized units, up to at least two tank companies and artillery, which can be transferred from Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. But the enemy is not yet ready to fully invest in deblocking operations, because the situation for the Armed Forces of Ukraine north of the Seversky Donets in the direction of Torsky is deteriorating. They have to keep part of their forces to cover sectors of the front in the area of ​​Krasny Liman and Yampol, where fighting will resume soon enough.
The enemy seeks to dose forces at Artyomovsk, but if the crisis develops faster than the Ukrainian command expects, then he will have to make more efforts for operations against Wagner to the west of the city.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

Post by blindpig » Sun Mar 05, 2023 3:19 pm

decisive phase
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 03/05/2023

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On Wednesday, March 1, the day both Russia and Ukraine traditionally consider the beginning of spring, Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said the country had overcome "the most difficult winter in its history." Ukraine seems to be referring on this occasion to the country's independence stage, something that contrasts with its habitual tendency to forget, for example, that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was part of the USSR in order to give the country even greater relevance than the he had in victory in World War II. Otherwise, and insisting on the example of the Great Patriotic War under the German occupation in conditions of extreme harshness,

As the United States already pointed out after the fall of Kherson, when it stated that a great development of the war was not expected in the autumn months, the mud season, and winter, the combats have been located in specific points, with a large part of the country suffering the consequences of the war -both the missile attacks on critical infrastructures, the blackouts or the economic crisis linked to the war-, but far from the front line. The most difficult situation both for the civilian population and for the two armies in combat continues to be that of Donbass, especially in the Artyomovsk area, where the slow but steady advance of Russian troops has practically closed the operational siege. This was announced on Friday by the owner of Wagner, Evgeni Prigozhin, who stated that Artyomovsk is practically under siege. The fighting continues in a battle whose casualty figures are unknown, but in which the duration and intensity make it clear that they must necessarily be high. It is no coincidence that the battle has been compared to the trench fights of World War I.

With other less active fronts or with artillery duels without great territorial advances, the battle for Artyomovsk is being followed in real time both by the media related to the parties to the conflict and by the intelligence services of the countries that sponsor, arm and finance this war. The configuration of the front, the destruction of its infrastructures and the doubts about what future will be given to the industrial cities of Donbass have made Artyomovsk lose all the strategic and even tactical value that it could have had in a different context. bridge in the north, it will not be able to be used as a springboard for an offensive from several directions to the most important area of ​​northern Donetsk, Slavyansk-Kramatorsk,

In recent months, the Ukrainian government has consistently used the argument that Russia is sacrificing huge numbers of soldiers in pursuit of this hardly strategic goal. "Russia does not count the dead," both Volodymyr Zelensky and Mikhailo Podoliak have stated, an expression that has been incorporated into Ukrainian argumentation and has been repeated over and over again by the Western press. However, as denounced even by some groups that have participated and are participating in the defense of Artyomovsk-Bajmut for Ukraine, which decommunizedthe name of the city to recover the nomenclature of the times of the Russian Empire-, that is also the performance of Ukraine in this battle. With the focus on this small section of the front lines, the symbolism of this long and cruel battle has moved beyond strategic aspects to become a way to inflict damage on the opposing side.

When the Russian advance around the city began to revive after months of constant fighting without the possibility of movement, Evgeni Prigozhin commented that he would prefer Ukraine not to withdraw its troops but to continue sending reserves to the Artyomovsk slaughterhouse ., a way to undermine the combat capacity of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in view of future offensives. That also seems to be the Ukrainian tactic in this battle in particular and on the Donbass front in general. Fighting to the end allows Russian troops to be forced to concentrate on a battle that, after the fighting at Popasnaya, Severodonetsk or Lisichansk, they might not have expected to drag on for months. Aware of the shortage of personnel that Russia has suffered throughout its campaign, with the dependence of Wagner's troops and the People's Republics on the priority Donbass front, the Ukrainian authorities have tried to capitalize on the Artyomovsk position, enormously fortified as a front city since the winter of 2015, to reduce the combat capacity of the group of Russian troops.

The tactic of fighting for each city until its final destruction has been repeated in Donbass since the beginning of the Russian intervention. This is how Ukraine decided to fight for Mariupol, completely besieged and without any possibility of supplying aid to the troops that had been surrounded. The attempt to drag out a little more battles already lost also denotes a way of acting that not only seeks to "make more expensive" Russian local victories based on increasing casualties but at the cost of guaranteeing that cities and their main economic assets cannot be rebuilt. or require expensive work that makes it unfeasible. This phenomenon is especially visible in the case of the cities of Donbass and specifically in its industrial centers, where Ukrainian troops have taken refuge in numerous battles,European future .

Weeks ago the situation in Artyomovsk worsened severely. This can be verified by observing different indicators. On February 12, the Ukrainian authorities prohibited the access of civilians, including volunteers, for the delivery of humanitarian aid, which since then has to be managed with the participation of the Armed Forces from Konstantinovka, a nearby city that may have already been further fortified than Artyomovsk. In these weeks, there have also been complaints from Ukrainian soldiers sent to the area and whose average life expectancy upon arrival was, according to Western media, four hours. It seems clear that Ukraine has not used in Artyomovsk - and neither has the Russian Federation - its most combat-ready operational reserves, reserved for priority sections of the front.

In recent days, Ukraine has once again insisted on the need to receive more weapons so that the city "is not only a fortress that can withstand the Russian Army, but the Russian Army has to leave completely." Adding the demand for “more guns and ammunition”, Kiril Budanov, head of Ukraine's military intelligence, compared the battle to that of Saratoga, again trying to equate the current war with that of US independence.

Perhaps the clearest argument to conclude that the situation in Artyomovsk is already in its final phase -which will not necessarily be imminent- is the change in the informational attitude. On February 12, The New York Times warned of the Russian advance "claiming the capture of a town on the outskirts of the strategic city." The following week, in its daily report on the war, British intelligence claimed that Russia was likely to announce the city's capture "out of the realities on the ground." Two weeks later, neither that announcement has been made nor has Russia claimed progress that could not be verified by means of graphic evidence. On March 3, The New York Times, following the path followed by Ukraine in the case of Soledar, which also began as a necessary defense of a strategic location to end up being an unimportant location, already spoke of the continuation of the defense of Artyomovsk "despite the fact that it has strategic value limited". In its report of March 4, British intelligence found that the city is under increasing Russian pressure and that two of the main access bridges have been destroyed. "Ukrainian-controlled supply routes to the city are increasingly limited," admitted yesterday British intelligence, a staunch defender of Ukraine and unlikely to admit that Kiev's troops are in a compromising situation.

In its daily report of March 3, the Institute for the Study of War, whose analysis usually coincides with the British intelligence account, was already beginning to speak of the possibility of a limited and orderly withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the most committed. And in an interview with the German outlet Bild , Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said that "nothing would happen" if Russia captured Artyomovsk, as it would only be "a small victory." The specter of an “orderly withdrawal” from the city begins to haunt Ukraine, the same one that Ukrainian troops reached, in many cases on foot and through the fields, fleeing the siege of Debaltsevo eight years ago now.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/03/05/fase- ... more-26773

Google Translator

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Why and how to end the war in Ukraine
Originally published: Hood Communist on March 2, 2023 by Jacqueline Luqman (more by Hood Communist) | (Posted Mar 04, 2023)

What I think we need to be clear on is that the U.S., the EU, and NATO are directly responsible for lighting the embers of war in Ukraine back in 2014. From late 2013 until February 2014, the Obama/Biden administration sent weapons, money, and encouragement to anti-democratic right-wing elements in Ukraine to execute “regime change” and overthrow the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.

The coup government, whose president was chosen by the U.S., legitimized Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and fascists such as the Right Sector and the Azov battalions. But large segments of Ukrainian society opposed this government, especially the predominantly Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens in the Eastern portions of the nation. They exercised their self-determination to be independent of the fascist coup government in Kyiv by holding referendums to secede from Ukraine. In response, the coup government declared those people—Ukrainian citizens—“terrorists” and unleashed a bombardment on the Eastern regions of the country, the Donbass, with a military that had at that point been augmented by neo-Nazi militias.

If you recall, this crime the U.S.-backed Ukrainian coup government committed in attacking its own citizens was the very same pretext the U.S. used for their attack on Syria—the claim that President Assad gassed his own citizens—which of course, we now know, was a lie. But the Ukrainian government bombing its own citizens with the full backing of the U.S. was just fine.

The only thing that stopped an all-out war with Russia—who the people in the Eastern region of Ukraine were calling on to come to their aid—was the signing of the Minsk Accords. The second set of agreements, MINSK II, was signed by the president of Ukraine, the Chancellor of Germany, the President of France, the President of Russia, and by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which also mediated the talks and agreements. Minsk II included a commitment to a ceasefire between the Kyiv government and the forces in the Eastern Region of Ukraine and a commitment by the Kyiv government to grant relative autonomy to that region.

Russia abided by the accords and did not engage militarily in Ukraine since the accords were signed in 2014, but Kyiv did not stop its bombardment of the Donbass regions. Despite this, Russia stayed out until Joe Biden decided that his administration would finish what he and his then-boss Barack Obama started.

What did they start? The plan to use Ukraine to bog Russia down in a war that would ultimately weaken them—sort of like the U.S. did during the original Cold War by helping to dismantle the Soviet Union. It worked once, the empire thought, why not do it again?

If you recall, State Department, Pentagon, and White House spokespeople were on the news for weeks before Russia engaged militarily in Ukraine with claims that Putin was amassing troops on the border of Ukraine, with formations getting larger and larger every day.

What they weren’t telling you was that the U.S. and NATO were carrying out military exercises—massive military exercises—in the countries that border Russia for months if not years before then and were even doing military exercises at the same time that the U.S. was claiming Russia was planning an invasion of Ukraine. An invasion, by the way, that the U.S. State Department controlled media outlets told you that Vladimir Putin just woke up one morning and decided to do without any provocation whatsoever, which was a blatant lie.

And we need to understand that the joint US/NATO military exercises with and in countries bordering Russia are part of the decades-long policy of expanding NATO to include the countries that were formerly members of the Warsaw Pact—the Soviet Union federation of socialist countries that was the Eastern European counter to NATO. This policy of NATO expansion to encircle Russia was formalized by Bill Clinton in 1999, and the ongoing expansion of NATO has been a legitimate security concern for Russia since then—especially as multiple U.S. presidents have promised that NATO would not expand closer to Russia’s borders, but they all reneged.

I would say that the real invasion of Ukraine took place then THEN with the invasion of the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination into Ukraine began in 2014 when the Obama/Biden administration supported the coup and then supported the fascist Kyiv coup government’s military bombardment of their own people to force them back under Kyiv’s and Washington’s control. The Obama/Biden administration used the the guise of the promise to make Ukraine a member of NATO, something that Russia would, of course, oppose since it would mean the complete encirclement on the western border of Russia by NATO forces.

Therefore, when the U.S. began claiming Putin was planning to invade Ukraine, they were merely carrying out plans laid out decades ago. But they were also withholding another piece of critical information from the population of this country and much of the west: that Russian officials were actively trying to negotiate to avoid a military conflict.

A February 24, 2022 article from the Yale MacMillan Center details the scuttled negotiations to completely avoid the conflict in Ukraine, and they note that:

“More than anything else, it was the refusal of Ukraine to implement the provisions of Minsk 2—especially the provision that would give the predominantly Russian-speaking regions a special constitutional status—that caused Russia to threaten military action against Ukraine. Time after time in recent weeks, Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov made it clear in meetings and press conferences that the key to resolving the situation in and around Ukraine was the full implementation of Minsk 2.”

If that’s all it would have taken to avoid this conflict, why wasn’t this one demand adhered to? A demand that Ukraine agreed to when they signed the Minsk II agreements?

Well, we learn from the former Chancellor of Germany Angele Merkel, one of the signatories of the agreements, that the leaders who signed the Minsk Accords, with the exception of Russia, never had any intention of adhering to the agreements. She said signing the agreement was just a ploy, “… an attempt to give Ukraine time. Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today. Ukraine in 2014-2015 and Ukraine today are not the same.”

Since Merkel made her comments, former French president Francoise Hollande confirmed them, saying, “Since 2014, Ukraine has strengthened its military posture. Indeed, the Ukrainian army was completely different from that of 2014. It was better trained and equipped. It is the merit of the Minsk agreements to have given the Ukrainian army this opportunity.”

Every other country except for Russia that signed the MINSK II agreement never intended to adhere to them. They wanted to use that time of a negotiated peace that Russia fully complied with to arm Ukraine to fight a war with Russia on behalf of the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination instead.

And to be clear: this is not a “pro-Russia” position. My comments should not be misconstrued as being in support of military action. They are instead an assessment of the dynamics of the situation that must be considered if you really want to know the why of this conflict.

So, if you want to know why this war in Ukraine must end, it is because the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination has been engaged in this kind of geopolitical manipulation, coup plotting, regime change operations, economy destabilization, collective punishment of peoples through sanctions, and legitimizing and arming fascists and using them to stoke wars for decades. It just so happens that most people are paying attention to it now because Ukraine is in the crosshairs.

Because we have to be clear, what is happening in Ukraine is of the utmost importance because this has been the modus operandi of the US/EU/NATO Axis of domination around the world and, if they are not stopped, they will continue and more people will suffer their bloodthirsty warmongering even if there is never a nuclear exchange. Is nuclear war a concern? Of course it is. But that is not the only concern, nor should it be. Because let’s say this conflict ends within a year with no nuclear war. What then? Is all well because the war in Ukraine would have ended with no nuclear conflagration? No, it is not.

This is the part of these discussions about this proxy war in Ukraine that I would love for people to understand. We must not simply be anti-war. We must not simply be against this war. We MUST be anti-imperialists, and commit to anti-capitalism, because capitalism is the foundation of imperialism, which so many wars are waged in the name of.

To that end, we must decenter Ukraine, specifically, as the singular focus of our attention and understand that the why this war needs to end. And the how this war needs to end must be focused squarely on ending the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination that started this and all modern imperialist wars!

The Black Alliance for Peace—the organization I am a member of—states that NATO is a criminal military structure whose only purpose is providing the military/material basis for the maintenance and extension of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination (white power). As a structure of white colonial power, NATO was essential in supporting colonial powers in Africa, including the Portuguese in their military struggles to maintain their colonial holdings in Africa during the initial wave of anti-colonial struggles on the continent. The Obama/Biden administration also used NATO for their attack on Libya in 2011, resulting in the destruction of the most prosperous and revolutionary state on the continent.

Troops trained by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) have been involved in nine coups d’etat in the thirteen years that AFRICOM has operated on the continent. Ukraine is connected to these actions because what was done in Ukraine was done in these places and in others.

And the attempt to expand NATO into Ukraine is just one aspect of a larger U.S. imperialist strategy of Full Spectrum Dominance. A strategy, by the way, that the U.S. is able to implement without much pushback these days because much of the American public sees these conflicts in different places around the world as disconnected. But they are all the same U.S. hegemony trying to impose its control over the whole earth.

So once this conflict in Ukraine ends, will people join in the fight against the destruction of revolutionary, leftist, socialist, and communist governments and countries in the Global South, Africa, Asia, the Americas by the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination? Or are people comfortable telling those of us who have been fighting against this all of our lives that we need to wait until you’re satisfied that you made inroads with some of the very right-wing forces that care nothing for all the other victims of this evil hegemon everywhere else in the world that is not named Ukraine?

And for those whose response to the need to build a broad coalition with people who, on any and every other day of the week, would take away our rights if they had the power to do so, and uphold capitalism and private property over people-centered human rights as a political ideology, once this conflict ends and nuclear war is once again avoided: what will be your response when those people refuse to rage against imperialism, against capitalist dictatorship, against racist police terrorism, against the stripping of human rights of queer and trans adults and even children?

Certainly, if there is a nuclear war, we all die. Why is that not an argument for organizing with the people—and there are plenty of organizations to choose from—who have been in this fight for decades who do not believe that we can win by denying humanity, dignity, and human rights to all people or that we can wait until later to address those fundamental principles? Why not build a broad working-class, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, international coalition with people who do not de-prioritize the struggle for human rights for all people in favor of just focusing on ending one war, because we understand that ending capitalism and imperialism is critical to ending all imperialist wars and protecting and affirming all life? Human rights and dignity for all people cannot be realized under capitalism, so the fight for people-centered human rights cannot be divorced from the fight to end imperialist wars.

Yes, this conflict in Ukraine must end. And the how is what we in the Black Alliance for Peace believe can be achieved by:

An Immediate Ceasefire

Providing Humanitarian aid and resettlement of all refugees and displaced persons in Ukraine and the Donbass Region

The Ceasing of all shipments of NATO weapons to Ukraine and negotiating Ukrainian NATO neutrality. UKRAINE MUST NEVER BECOME A MEMBER OF NATO. I will never not remind people that the late Rep. John Conyers introduced an amendment to the defense spending bill in 2015 that would have made it illegal to send weapons to the Azov Battalion and other neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. The neo-Nazi threat in Ukraine was recognized then by U.S. lawmakers, but the Pentagon removed the amendment.

Expulsion of all foreign white supremacist and neo-Nazi forces from Ukraine. Because if we’re going to fight to end the war in Ukraine and do and say nothing about the neo-Nazis that the U.S. legitimized to destabilize the country, we are merely saving people from one catastrophe—the war—only to have them subjected to another existential threat—violent neo-Nazis with a particular hatred for Russians—to be faced later.

That NATO, a structure for advancing the interests of white supremacy and the U.S. empire, be dismantled.

That the U.S. government renounce its commitment to the doctrine of global “Full Spectrum Dominance.”

And if that doesn’t happen, what do we do?

We must commit ourselves to genuine and principled anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle against imperialist war wherever in the world it manifests.

We must engage in solidarity with people around the world who are fighting against the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination.

We must commit to destroying this capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal, settler-colonial system in this country that wages war on marginalized people domestically and abroad and commit to building a new system that is focused on people-centered human rights for everyone.

We must grow an anti-imperialist movement on the shared principles of upholding and defending all and everyone’s humanity, with the understanding that any right-wing elements that engage with us must adhere to our shared principles. We must not abandon our shared principles of unity and solidarity to appease the right wing that is not interested in the struggle for human rights.

Anything short of this is a win for the empire that has already done so well at dividing our focus.

https://mronline.org/2023/03/04/why-and ... n-ukraine/

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From the War Gonzo Telegram account:

Front-line summary for the morning of 03/05/2023⚡️

On the Donetsk front, Russian troops, supported by artillery, resumed offensive operations on Pobeda in order to cut an important section of the road. In parallel, they continued to storm the positions of the Ukrainian garrison in Maryinka. A little to the north, they attacked the fortified area of ​​the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Krasnogorovka. Another attack on Nevelskoye. From the Vodyany side, Russian troops advanced to Pervomaisky. And from Experienced they conducted offensive operations on the North. With the support of artillery - an attack on the fortified area of ​​the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Avdiivka from Spartak. And to the north - an attempt to break through to the H-20 highway near Kamenka and Novokalinov. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation fired at Novomikhailovka, Vesely and Berdychi. The Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked Oleksandrivka, Donetsk, Yasinovataya and Mayorsk. (Fig. 1)

South of Bakhmut, Ukrainian artillery hit Ozaryanovka, Kurdyumovka, and Kleshcheevka. The Russian, in turn, in addition to the city itself, worked along Predtechin, Stupochki and Ivanovsky. In the direction of the last of these settlements, the Wagner PMC conducted offensive operations. "Orchestra" push through the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut, and also conduct assault operations in the north-eastern part from Podgorodny. They also attack near Khromovoy and Bogdanovka. With the support of artillery, the Wagner PMC advances near Dubovo-Vasilyevka and Orekhovo-Vasilyevka. To the north-west of Soledar, after shelling, the "musicians" attacked near Vasyutovka. And to the east of this settlement, they tried to break through to Vesely. Russian artillery hit Zheleznyansky, Fedorovka and Rozdolovka. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were attacking the Disputed. (Fig. 2)

In the Luhansk direction, after a massive blow, Russian troops again attacked Belogorovka. They also conducted offensive operations on Torskoye and Terny. Artillery of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation struck at Kolodyazy, Nevsky, Makeevka, Kupyansk and Dvurechnaya. AFU fired at Dibrova and Kremennaya. (Fig. 3)

https://t.me/s/wargonzo

Google Translator

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From the Slavyngard Telegram account:

Slavyangrad
Biden does not believe in Ukraine's victory

U.S. President Biden, unlike Baltic politicians, does not believe in the reality of Russia's military defeat. He even pressed the leaders of the Baltic states, who often call for a Russian defeat. This was reported by The Wall Street Journal.

📝 "Biden expressed doubts about the reality of Russia's defeat on the battlefield and put pressure on Baltic leaders who call for Russia's defeat," the piece said.

👔 It notes that Biden's attitude to diplomacy with Russia frightens Ukraine's allies.

***

Slavyangrad
Cracks in the foundation - a rift between Germany and Poland could undermine a united Western front of aid to Kiev

Although NATO has now concentrated all its forces on supplying Ukraine with arms and equipment, there is more and more controversy among the members of the Zelensky fan club - how long will they have to pay for this military banquet from their own pockets and who will be the new center of Europe in the end? As Bloomberg reports, the disputes between Warsaw and Berlin are dragging on and risk severely undermining the collective West's efforts to help Ukraine.

While Zelensky urges the West to hurry up and give the Ukrainian Armed Forces all the equipment they have, Germany and Poland, one of Kiev's main military sponsors, are sorting things out. Old grudges, fueled by the political moment - the Poles are waiting for the elections soon, and therefore the number of loud statements is growing every day. Warsaw accuses Berlin of delaying deliveries of equipment - after Scholz's wave-off, Poland was in a hurry to ship its tanks the fastest, along with accusing the Germans of a lack of spare parts for the machines. "We have been urging the German side for so long to join the tank coalition and not only deliver tanks but also spare parts," Andrzej Duda said. For his part, German Defense Minister Pistorius reported on the sad state of the Polish Leopard 2A4 fleet.

Historical complexes have also resurfaced - as Prime Minister Morawiecki said earlier in an interview, the idea of exacting compensation from Germany for World War II is being discussed by the Polish government in all seriousness. On top of that, the Polish defense minister accused the FRG of supplying Russia with money because of years of energy cooperation. In response, accusations were heard from the German side: "Does the minister know how many billions of zlotys Poland annually transfers to Moscow in exchange for Russian energy carriers?" the German ambassador Thomas Bagger asked the Poles.

***

Slavyangrad
"Putin wanted to hang me": Saakashvili said he was being held in a Georgian prison on Putin's personal order to prevent him from helping Zelensky defeat Russia.

"[Are you in prison by order of Putin? Putin said he would hang me by the balls, and he and Medvedev said I should be presented in court. The first accusations were made when I became governor of Odessa and stopped the Russian expansion there. Today Georgia is owned by a Russian oligarch and run by a medieval feudal lord

For Zelensky, whom I consider a modern Churchill, [fighting for me] is an important topic. I am chairman of his reform council; my office is next door to his office. Through my imprisonment, Putin sends a signal to Zelensky: what awaits him if he does not obey.

For Georgia, my assassination would mean the end of democracy and sovereignty. Sometimes I think the government wants to start a civil war. They think that's how they can keep their power.

[Former President of Georgia] Ivanishvili is connected to Russia by an umbilical cord. He likes the Russian political system. At the same time, he and his puppets accuse the West of sending me to overthrow them, which is complete nonsense. Ivanishvili does not like the big wave of sympathy for me in the West. He is handing Georgia over to Putin quietly and silently. But the attention around me has derailed that plan.

They don't want me to go back to Ukraine and help Zelensky. Putin said he would torture me and poison me. My death would cause a lot of chaos in Georgia.

When I left Kiev I weighed 120 kilograms, today I weigh 65 kilograms. I have terrible pain all over my body. I am completely bedridden, often losing consciousness. Many people wonder how I still live. Because my brain is damaged according to the MRI scan. Most of my symptoms are caused by heavy metal poisoning. No lab in Georgia can treat that. The Polish government set up a clinic to treat me, but I would like to be treated at Charité in Berlin, where Navalny was treated."

***

Slavyangrad
🇺🇸🇭🇺Americans Have Final Word in European War’: Hungary’s Orban Hits Back at Western Elites

Amid ongoing Western efforts to draw his nation into a proxy war between NATO and Russia, the Prime Minister of Hungary promised his country’s leadership is “strong enough to keep the war away from our country.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had pointed words for those pushing Hungary to join the Western proxy war against Russia this week.
“There are some who want to force Hungary into the war, and they are not picky about the means with which to achieve that goal,” Orban told a Swiss outlet this week, a summary published on his website indicates.

But “Hungary’s leadership is strong enough to keep the war away from our country,” he reiterated.
Still, it’s an enduring challenge, the Hungarian head of state noted, because his countrymen are the people “most affected by the EU sanctions introduced against Russia.”

And it’s not just the Western-imposed sanctions against Russia which are taking their toll on the country. As videos posted to social media show, Hungarian men living in the Transcarpathia region have been forcibly drafted at gunpoint and forced to serve as Ukrainian soldiers.

“Ukraine is our neighbor where Hungarians live as well,” Orban reportedly stated. “They are being conscripted and are dying by the hundreds on the front.”
Unfortunately, at this point, the matter seems to be out of their hands.

“Europe has retired from the debate,” Orban lamented. “In the decisions adopted in Brussels, I recognize American interests more frequently than European ones.”
“In a war that is taking place in Europe the Americans have the final word,” he added.

The prime minister agreed with the journalist’s assumption that the deeper causes of Europe’s weakness should be sought in the European Union, because “it is destroying the nation states without replacing them with anything workable.”

Asked by the interviewer whether “the deeper reason for Europe's weakness is to be found in the European Union” because “it breaks up nation-states without putting anything workable in their place,” Orban responded in the affirmative.
“I see it that way too,” he agreed, adding “the European Union wants an ever closer union.” But since “we don't agree on the goal,” and only “on the way” to get there, any such unity is a fool’s errand, the prime minister suggested.

As for the ultimate direction of the ongoing Western proxy war against Russia, Orban insisted that “no one can win it.”

“There is a nuclear power with a population of 140 million up against the Ukrainians, while there is the whole of NATO up against the Russians,” he stated.

“This is what makes things so dangerous,” according to Hungary’s prime minister, who claims the conflict has transformed into “a stalemate which can easily escalate into a world war.”

Illustrating his knowledge of the Russian perspective towards the conflict, Orban recounted his February 2022 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he spoke with in Moscow two weeks prior to the initiation of the special military operation

“Putin has a problem – this is what he told me – with the American missile bases already created in Romania and Poland, and with NATO’s potential expansion towards Ukraine and Georgia in order to station armaments there,” Orban explained.

“Additionally, the Americans terminated important disarmament treaties,” he explained, noting: “This is why Putin could no longer have a good night’s sleep.”

https://sputniknews.com/20230305/americ ... 28398.html

https://t.me/s/Slavyangrad
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 06, 2023 1:30 pm

Civil infrastructures in times of war
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 03/06/2023

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Since last summer, when the water supply to the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal was interrupted, in a repetition of what happened in Crimea, the situation of the water supply in the city of Donetsk has been one of the major problems for the population and also for the Russian authorities, who have been forced to start, in the middle of the war, a whole series of complex works to alleviate a problem that did not exist just months before. Supply cuts and gambling with the Donetsk water filtration station had been one of the pressure weapons Ukraine had used throughout the Minsk years and places like Lugansk had suffered supply problems, but the main city of Donbass had stayed out of long-running troubles.

The catastrophic conditions of lack of drinking water, an element without which life is not possible, left Russia with two options to avoid a humanitarian disaster: a temporary solution based on supplying the canal with local water sources or a more definitive solution. to supply the Seversky Donets-Donbass with water from the Don River, a large-caliber work that would take months. The third option, advancing into the north of the Donetsk region to dominate the area from which the water supply to the canal can be controlled, implied a dependence on the military situation that made this wait unfeasible, especially considering the growing skepticism of the population before the possibility of solving the problem in the short term. Ultimately, Russia has opted for a combination of the two most viable options and, little by little, It has opened new local water supply routes, which despite not definitively solving the problem have managed to alleviate the extreme situation, pending a definitive solution in the form of a new canal that carries water directly from the Don River. When completed, the work will mean a new link between Donbass and mainland Russia and large cities like Donetsk will no longer depend on areas under Ukrainian control for something as important as their water supply.

Original Article: Komsomolskaya Pravda

As early as April this year, the first water from the pipeline that is being built by experts of the Military Construction Complex of the Russian Ministry of Defense and will connect the Rostov region with Donbass will begin to reach the population of the region. . The progress of the construction of the hydraulic structure to a great extent has been inspected this week by the Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Timur Ivanov as part of his working visit to the troops of the Southern Military District.

“Currently, military builders are building a water intake node on the Don River, pumping stations for water transfer, reinforcements for the coastal zone, transformer substations and high-voltage lines are being installed. Timur Ivanov flew by helicopter over the construction zones and visited a series of important hydraulic infrastructures in which he verified, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, the progress of the work. “I ask you not to stop the high pace of progress that you have achieved. We all understand how important the task of supplying the population of Donbass with water as soon as possible is,” insisted the deputy minister.

The opening of the pipeline will be able to fill the channel of the Seversky Donets, from which drinking water will flow to all the towns of Donbass. Previously, military builders had already built and opened a number of hydraulic infrastructures, including the Chernovsky pipelines in the Debaltsevo area, in Volnovaja, Rovenka, Dokuchaevsk and a line from the Janzhenkovsky reservoir to the Seversky Donets canal.

The new infrastructure will cross the Rostov region and the Donetsk People's Republic to the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal. The capacity of the pipeline will be up to 300,000 cubic meters per day. The project foresees the construction of two sections of pipes of 200 kilometers each, the construction of pumping stations, electrical substations, infrastructures in which up to 10,000 cubic meters of water can be stored.

During construction, military engineers have adjusted the solutions taking into account the periodic flooding of the Don and the swampy nature of the river's floodplain. Additional dams and breakwaters have been quickly reinforced for protection. On the route, 63 crossings will be installed and water barriers will follow the pipes. Additional passages with a length of one and a half kilometers will have to be drilled in particularly difficult areas under the railway tracks and on one of the tributaries of the Don River.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/03/06/26779/#more-26779

Google Translator

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SO LONG, PARDNER — WHEN MILITARY STRATEGY REVOLUTIONIZES POLITICAL STRATEGY ON THE UKRAINIAN BATTLEFIELD, INSIDE THE NATO ALLIANCE

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By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

In the history of the wars of the world, it almost never happens that the military strategy of a fighting state directs and revolutionizes the political strategy, and not the other way round — as aspiring politicians, military officers and policemen are taught by the venerable Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz to believe.

But it is happening in Europe now, on the Ukrainian battlefield, and in the war of the US and NATO alliance against Russia.

So long, Sun; so long, Carl; so long, Pardner!

For Russia it would never have turned out this way if President Boris Yeltsin had decided to run for a third term, ruling as medically incapable as President Joseph Biden, but deferring the succession until after Mikhail Khodorkovsky had sold the Yukos oil company to the US, and the other Russian oligarchs created by Yeltsin had followed suit. Heart, brain, and liver disease stopped the Yeltsin part of that. The Vladimir Putin succession plan then failed to deliver what had been intended.

What has remained of the plan of the destruction of Russia from those days is what there is today.

The oligarchs survive but, according to the terms of the US and NATO sanctions war, they cannot have their assets and freedom of movement back unless they overthrow Putin, change the regime in the Kremlin, and destroy the capability of the Russian military to defend the country.

The defensive strategy in response is obvious. Not only must the capacity of Ukrainian forces and their NATO weapons be destroyed at the front, and their remainder driven to a territorial line west of the Dnieper River, between Kiev and Lvov, out of range of Russian Crimea, Zaphorozhye, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk. Also, each of the NATO weapons must be defeated and destroyed which the US sends to the battlefield, and the airborne and ground systems for directing them at their Russian targets neutralized. .

If this Russian strategy succeeds, the implication for Europe – and the rest of the world (Taiwan) – will be plain. The US cannot defend NATO and NATO cannot defend its member states with a military capability that has been defeated. Article Five of the NATO treaty will become a dead letter. If and when that happens, the all-for-one-one-for-all principle of security in Europe which Article 5 promises will be replaced, first by the principle of every one for himself, and then for the principle of reciprocal security and non-aggression; that was the proposal of the Russian treaties of December 17, 2021.

The political strategy of the US and NATO for Russia, having failed with Yeltsin’s replacement of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, and then with Putin’s replacement of Yeltsin in 2000, now depends on the survival of the oligarch system inside Russia. This too is under attack — not from the Kremlin, but from the US and European sanctions war which has paralyzed the oligarchs and their networks in the west, and suspended their capital export schemes.

For the Russian oligarchs to hope to resume their business as usual in the post-war period, as they say they want, the war on the Ukrainian battlefield should be short and the terms of armistice and settlement suspensive, equivocal, inconsequential – like the Minsk accords of 2014-15. Ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-French President Francois Hollande have acknowledged why that is impossible for the Russian president, the General Staff, and the Russian people to accept.

The alternative Russian political strategy is the redirection of trade, capital, transport, and financial logistics to the east and south – principally China and India, but also Iran, Turkey, the Arab world, and in time, the African one. For this political strategy to succeed, the success of the military strategy in Europe is a parallel requirement, a pre-condition almost. And so, in the practical logic of politics, for Russian military strategy to succeed on its terms, the Russian oligarchy must be transformed. This is happening.

As the Russian military strategy succeeds on the battlefield, the political will of the European people must also be transformed. This too is happening. Not every battle on every front can be explained at once, though.

Listen to the discussion of Russian tactics in the Donbass, the General Staff strategy for the Ukraine, and the political divisions widening inside the NATO states.

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Playback: https://tntradiolive.podbean.com/

Article 5 of the NATO Treaty isn’t exactly Alexander Dumas’s four musketeers leaping into swashbuckle and swordplay, or William Shakespeare’s excuse for the Etruscan nobleman’s attack on his friend’s wife in the Rape of Lucrece.

Read the NATO treaty words carefully: it is plain that each of the NATO states keeps the right to self-defence on its own terms; that individually and collectively the reaction to an attack on one of the treaty states would be considered according to the war power laws and constitutions of each state – this is what the “deems necessary” clause means.

Also, the reaction of the NATO states is subject to Article 51 of the United Nations (UN) Charter and to the requirement that the UN Security Council must agree on “measures to restore and maintain international peace and security.”

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Source: https://www.nato.int/

Article 51 of the UN Charter allows self-defence until the Security Council acts, but disallows unilateral action without Security Council approval, or in defiance of it.

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Source: https://www.un.org/

To preserve the threat of US and NATO power behind Article 5, behind the propaganda, there has been a US-directed, German, French and British attempt to slow down and stop Russian military victory on the battlefield by conceding some Ukrainian territory in exchange for the rearmament of Ukraine as a NATO member state. This is the lunch-with-Zelensky scheme – the “peace talks for arms” proposal discussed by Biden with the Ukrainian president in Kiev on February 20, and in the earlier luncheons in Paris with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Emmanuel Macron on February 3, then with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and King Charles III on February 9. Read the details in the Murdoch press leak of February 24.

Two days later, when Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns announced on television there are no negotiations, he was lying.

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Left: Zelensky at Prime Minister Sunak’s front door on February 9; source: https://www.independent.co.uk
Right: King Charles III receives Zelensky at Buckingham Place.

From the Ukrainian point of view, any negotiated concession of these terms is a sell-out. From the NATO point of view, public discussion of the terms is a threat to the willingness of European voters to continue paying the bill for the war. This is also a threat to vote out of office the politicians who have been taxing the voters for the money.

Across most of Europe – outside Russia, that is – most governments are nervous coalitions suffering from steadily deteriorating poll ratings. The tax they are imposing to pay for the war is not a popular one. Just how unpopular becomes clearer when the size of the tax is compared from one European and NATO member state to the others.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IFW) is a think tank paid for by the German state. On that tab, it has assigned itself the regular report it calls the “Ukraine Support Tracker”. The IFW calls itself “an independent foundation…[to] provide impartial, open-ended advice to German, European, and international policy makers as well as institutions, trade bodies, and businesses.”. In practice, the IFJ isn’t independent, impartial, open-ended, European, or international – it is the mouthpiece for Gemran warfighting policy against Russia, and it makes no pretence of this on its home page, organizational chart, and publications. From time to time the research data crack open to reveal the opposite of the propaganda line.

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One of the charts the IFW has just published calculates the share of the defence budgets of each of the Russia warfighting states – the NATO members and other allies – which is being spent on military trainers and advisers, weapons, and other military aid to the Ukraine. For the complete dataset and latest report, click to read this and this.

SHARE OF COUNTRY DEFENCE BUDGET TRANSFERRED TO UKRAINE AS MILITARY AID
(in percent)

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Source: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/

In the broadcast, the percentage differences between the big-paying and the low-paying states are discussed, together with the economic and commercial factors driving the social tax to pay for the war and subsidize profiteering by the gas, oil and coal exporters (Norway and Australia, for example); by the aerospace and arms manufacturing states (UK, US, Germany and France); even by the one diamond trading state in the alliance, Belgium. For the Belgian tradeoff between money for the Ukraine battlefield and sanctions relief for the Antwerp diamond trade, read this.

(Inside NATO there is no windfall profit taxation for those companies whose profits are booming from the war.)

The success of the propaganda war in convincing the European peoples that the Ukraine war tax they are paying is a worthwhile outlay for their security, and that they will also be better off domestically under US and NATO protection, is now one year old. Spanish opinion polling reveals that this success will continue so long as no Spaniard is contracted or conscripted to fight on the battlefield, and no one comes home dead.

This view reflects itself in the very low proportion of Spanish voters who identify the war against Russia to be a problem affecting them directly and personally. This percentage has been statistically unchanged over many months between 1% and 3%. This would change dramatically, however, if Spanish soldiers, technicians and trainers accompanying the anti-aircraft missile systems and Leopard tanks promised by the Madrid government for delivery are killed in the Ukraine.

In the meantime the Spaniards are not indifferent. One in four reports being “very worried” about the war, and another 49% acknowledge they are “quite worried”.

SPANISH OPINION TOWARDS THE WAR, JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023

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The poll results for January 2023 above have been repeated with statistically insignifiant change in February 2023. Source: https://www.cis.es/
There has also been almost no change of Spanish opinion since the July 2022 poll: https://www.cis.es/

At the same time, over the first year of the war Spanish voters have dramatically changed their opinion of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) which won the April and November 2019 elections with more than 28% of the vote, leading the conservative People’s Party (PP) at 16.7% and 20.8%. The PP has now doubled its rating to 32%, the PSOE has dropped to 26%; click for more details.

There has been a similar loss of confidence in the socialist government of Portugal. The Socialist Party (PS) won the election of January 2022 with 41.5%. It has now lost 11 points and is in equal running with the conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD). Portuguese voter disgruntlement has turned to support of the rising Chega (“Enough”) group.

There are no regular Portuguese polls on priority issues comparable to those in Spain. However, European Union polling last June revealed that Portuguese voters were already apprehensive that they would suffer direct economic losses and decline in personal living standards in consequence of the war. “Almost 50% of people in Portugal think maintaining standards of living should take precedence over the defence of democracy and freedom… These numbers clearly show that Portuguese people are already feeling the impact of the war on their standards of living.”

Direct country polling evidence like this reveals growing disunity and division between the European states. Only by concealing or misrepresenting these polls can European Union or NATO funded think tanks make the opposite appear to be true. Click for more evidence of think-tank trickery.

The broadcast concluded with a discussion of President Zelensky’s call for US troops to fight in Europe after Article 5 is triggered. “The US is never going to give up on the NATO member states,” Zelensky said on March 2. “If it happens so that Ukraine, due to various opinions and weakening – depleting – of assistance, loses, Russia is going to enter Baltic states, NATO member states, and then the US will have to send their sons and daughters, exactly the same way as we are sending, their sons and daughters to war. And they will have to fight, because it’s NATO that we’re talking about. And they will be dying, God forbid, because it’s a horrible thing. I wish peace and Ukrainian support to the United States.”.

This is how Zelensky attacks the Biden, Scholz, Macron and Sunak proposals for concessions which have been in negotiation through February. Zelensky is claiming that if the Biden Administration presses territorial losses for the Ukraine now, US troops will have to fight to preserve the Baltic territories. It’s desperation talk.


Listen to the way in which Boston lawyer Joseph Welch, engaged to represent the US Army, responded on June 9, 1954, at a hearing of a US Senate committee run by Senator Joseph McCarthy. “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” Welch said. “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you lost your sense of decency?”

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June 9, 1954 – US Senate committee hearing, Joseph Welch (left) to Senator Joseph McCarthy (right): https://www.youtube.com/ and https://www.senate.gov/

Listen also to the full interview between George Eliason and Russia’s Deputy Permament Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky.
https://tntradiolive.podbean.com/e/amba ... arch-2023/

https://johnhelmer.net/so-long-pardner- ... more-87627

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Ukraine: Erdoğan Does Not Want to Lose the Status of a Mediator
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 5, 2023
Alexandr Svaranc

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Any conflict and fighting will eventually end in peace, on conditions which will depend on the outcome and the balance of forces on the battlefield. From the very beginning of the Russian SMO in Ukraine, Turkey began to assume the role of an active mediator in the peaceful settlement of the conflict, the cessation of human casualties and destruction.

In fact, on February 27, 2022, Turkey has been initiating Russian-Ukrainian negotiations to resolve the conflict, Istanbul has become a meeting place for diplomacy and discussions on various topics related to the SMO and its consequences (including the issue of prisoner exchange, unblocking sea communications for the export of Ukrainian grain, defining the boundaries of compromises, etc.). The intensity of the negotiation process continued until May 2022, and then there was a decline due to the disposition on the battlefield and changes in the approaches of the aforementioned Ukraine.

It must be admitted that, thanks to the position of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on maintaining friendly relations with the authorities of both Russia and Ukraine, refusing total participation in anti-Russian sanctions, as well as the personal experience of the negotiator, Turkey has taken the place of the main mediator in the Russian-Ukrainian dialogue. At the same time, Ankara managed to overtake countries such as Israel and Belarus in this sphere.

An important achievement of the Turkish side on the negotiating platform was the signing in July 2022 of an agreement between Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN on the export of grain from the remaining Ukrainian ports via the Black Sea to foreign markets, as well as repeated POW exchanges.

It is clear that the diplomatic way of resolving the Russian-Ukrainian contradictions has lost its relevance at this stage due to the radical attitude of the Kiev regime, which relies on military-technical and political assistance from the United States and NATO countries. During a briefing on February 24 this year, timed to the anniversary of the conflict, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky defined for himself the “formula of peace” by returning to the Russian-Ukrainian border in 1991 and withdrawing Russian troops from the liberated territories. The Russian side, represented by its President Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly noted that “there is no way to return to the previous system.”

The world has changed after February 24, 2022, and Russia agrees to a peaceful settlement of the conflict only on the condition that Ukraine and the West cease hostilities, guarantee the safety of residents of Donbass and localize the threat to the security of the Russian Federation.

It seems that all these approaches of Moscow and Kiev are well-known, there have been no special changes in the position of the parties, positional and offensive fighting continues along the entire front line. Nevertheless, a new element in the resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation was China’s statement on the need for a political settlement of the present conflict and the establishment of a fair peace while preserving the sovereignty of the two countries. This declaration was followed by a visit to Moscow by the head of the Commission on Foreign Affairs of the CPC Central Committee Wang Yi, and subsequent negotiations of this Chinese high-ranking official with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As a result, Beijing presented a 12-point Chinese plan for the settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. There is no need to annotate this Chinese declaration, which contains both constructive and contradictory approaches to the parties to the conflict. In particular, what Beijing means by preserving the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine as of February 2023, or how the “termination of unilateral sanctions” should be understood (if sanctions on the same military supplies should be imposed on Ukraine, then this is one approach; if we are talking about the cessation of hostilities and the peace process, what is the point of sanctions against Russia at all then?).

Naturally, the Chinese peace plan is still being discussed as a kind of project or declaration of intent. However, the fact that China has started talking about a peaceful solution to the crisis, taking into account its weight on the world stage, already makes almost all world actors think and understand the importance of ending collective pressure on Russia with the return of the “cold War mentality.” China in its plan has clearly defined the need to exclude: a) the security of one country at the expense of the security of other countries; b) the expansion of military blocs (in this case, NATO); and c) the formation of camp-on-camp confrontations.

Such diplomatic activity of China cannot leave aside Turkey. In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in February this year, Turkey was forced to temporarily suspend its activity in the foreign sphere. Nevertheless, President Erdoğan does not intend to abandon active diplomacy on the Russian-Ukrainian track, which was expressed in the recent telephone talks between the Turkish leader and the heads of Ukraine and Russia after the visit of the Chinese guest to Moscow.

However, Turkey has not yet presented its detailed plan for establishing a “fair peace” between Russia and Ukraine. Unlike the Chinese 12-point project, there has as yet not been a Turkish counterpart. The whole problem is that in Moscow and Kiev, the parties perceive the theses of a “fair peace” differently, in fact, “red lines” have already formed, which the leaders cannot bypass. As a result, the fighting continues, and the losses and destruction keep piling up.

Turkey cannot, as a member of NATO, declare the cessation of NATO’s advance to the East. Turkey has repeatedly stated its commitment to the territorial integrity of Ukraine (including the Crimea). Turkey, one way or another, supplies the Armed Forces of Ukraine with its Bayraktar UAVs, Karpi APCs and other means. All these factors cannot sit well with Russia. Meanwhile, Erdoğan keeps his distance from participating in all anti-Russian sanctions, approves trade with Russia, offers to respect and not isolate Russia, accepts new profitable energy projects from Russia (for example, the gas hub). The latter does not sit well with Ukraine and its Western allies led by the United States.

The Russian-Ukrainian negotiation process has already passed several stages, starting in 2014 with the Minsk format. Alas, the negotiations in Minsk were not crowned with success because of the position of Kiev and the United States, which led to the SMO. In the spring of 2022, in the midst of hostilities, thanks to the initiatives of President Erdoğan, the Istanbul format of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations was outlined, but after May of the same year, this process, having not formed in the logic of formal diplomacy, lost some momentum and initiative. Today, the 4th point of the Chinese settlement plan invites the parties to start peace talks, naturally, in China. Beijing, following the recommendations of the father of Chinese reforms Deng Xiaoping (“stay in the shadows and do not stand out”), rarely comes up with such high-profile political initiatives in the international arena. In fact, the PRC offers the Beijing format of negotiations instead of the discredited Minsk format, which was used by the West as a time of peaceful respite before a new war.

Russia does not choose the former or the latter mediator, but Moscow has the right to assess the potential of partners in the peaceful resolution of the ongoing conflict with respect for the interests and security of the Russian side based on the actual proposals and positions of world players. Russia develops pragmatic diplomacy, accepts compromises where and when they are justified and meet national and universal interests (including the export of Ukrainian grain, the exchange of prisoners of war, humanitarian assistance to civilians in the conflict zone). At the same time, Russia cannot make concessions in matters of national security and protection of the rights of the Russian population to please anyone’s interests.

Since the Chinese plan has so far been rejected (or not accepted) by Washington and Kiev, Ankara still has chances to develop diplomatic activity in the Russian-Ukrainian negotiation processes. Recep Erdoğan is well versed in the intricacies of international diplomacy, and the traditional flexibility of Turkish politics creates conditions for increasing Turkey’s role in such situations. And yet, the outcome of the peace continues to depend on the developments on the battlefield.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... -mediator/

Top Biden Officials Address Pro-War Rally Led by Ukrainian Nazi Supporters
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 4, 2023
Alexander Rubinstein

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USAID’s Samantha Power joined EU and US officials rallied at the Lincoln Memorial at a pro-war demonstration organized by a clique of Ukrainian activists that have described themselves as “true Banderites” and “Right Sektor’s Washington DC branch.”

High-ranking Biden foreign policy officials including USAID Administrator Samantha Power and Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried observed the first anniversary of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. There, on February 25, 2023, they rallied alongside a band of Beltway-based Ukrainian activists dedicated to honoring and fundraising for ultra-nationalists and war criminals. The demonstrators demanded that the US send F-16 fighter jets to Kiev and “punish Russia” by any means necessary.

Power’s USAID promoted the event with a media advisory that redirected visitors to the rally’s principal organizer, an NGO called US Ukrainian Activists. This was one of two Ukrainian diaspora groups that organized the rally which have openly supported far-right elements in Ukraine since the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014.

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US Ukrainian Activists was founded by Nadiya Shaporynska, an avowed supporter of neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist militias like the Azov Battalion, whom she has branded “heroic defenders of Ukraine.” Shaporynska’s fundraising efforts on behalf of extremists groups which were at one point blacklisted by the US Department of Defense have been prolific and very public.

In a video tweeted by Power the day before the rally, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, is seen giving the USAID Administrator a tour of a local Ukrainian institution. Markarova points to a portrait of a woman on a wall and informs Power she is “Nadiya [Shaporynska], a tireless activist here in DC.”


Power and Sahporynska would become officially acquainted the following day, as pro-proxy war demonstrators descended on Washington DC’s National Mall.

Top Biden foreign policy officials join defenders of Nazis at Lincoln Memorial

The rally would have been unremarkable if it were not for it being the anniversary of the invasion and for the big names on the speaker roster.

Power was joined by Karen Donfried, the Biden Administration’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Donfried spent close to 20 years working at the American and German government-funded German Marshall Fund think tank, departing as its president to work at the White House in 2021. Other notable speakers included Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova; District of Columbia Secretary of State Kimberly Bassett; Mark Ordan, chair of the Board of Directors at the US Chamber of Commerce, and the European Union’s Ambassador to the United States, Stavros Lambrinidis.

Appearing on stage alongside these officials was Paul Grod, president of the Ukrainian World Congress. Grod has made a career out of defending the legacy of Nazi collaborators, having once petitioned the Canadian government to officially recognize the genocidal Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, as ‘designated resistance fighters.” This designation would have funneled Canadian tax dollars directly into the pension accounts of Nazi collaborators.

In 2010, Grod honored the legacy of the Waffen SS Galicia, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists as heroes who fought “for the freedom of their ancestral Ukrainian homeland.” These groups were driving forces behind the genocide in Eastern Europe during World War Two.

Grod’s Ukrainian World Congress hosted the February 25 pro-proxy war rally through its affiliate the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. His group has declared Stepan Bandera, the Nazi collaborator whose forces slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war, as “the undisputed symbol of Ukraine’s lengthy and tragic struggle for independence.”

Following a series of speeches denouncing Russia and demanding more arms shipments from Washington, demonstrators embarked from the Lincoln Memorial, chanting “Russia is a terrorist state” as they made their way to the White House. Next, the marchers swarmed the Russian Ambassador’s residence in Washington DC to bark indignant condemnations at its facade.

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Shaporynska mutters “Thank you USA for supporting Ukraine” into a megaphone as she leads the crowd to the White House.
Leading the march after emceeing the rally was Nadiya Shaporynska, the founder of the US Ukrainian Activists NGO and one of America’s leading fundraisers for neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist militias back in her native Ukraine.

DC pro-proxy war rally led by enthusiastic promoter of Nazi battalions

In 2014, after the US helped install a nationalist pro-NATO government in Kiev, Shaporynska helped found a pressure group called United Help for Ukraine. Among the organization’s first moves was a protest outside the offices of the now-shuttered RT America newsroom. The following year, Shaporynska founded US Ukrainian Activists, which hosted the February 25 pro-proxy war rally in DC alongside United Help for Ukraine.

Shaporynska’s Facebook posts over the years reveal her enthusiastic support and fundraising for avowedly fascist Ukrainian militias including Right Sektor and its leader Dymtro Yarosh; the Azov Battalion, the Aidar Battalion, and former Donbas Battalion commander Semen Semenchenko.

In September 2022, Shaporynska held a protest outside of the White House with the wives of Azov fighters that had been captured by Russia. Around the same time, Shaporynska and her US Ukrainian Activists NGO were openly fundraising for the fascist militia, whom they called “heroic defenders of Ukraine.”

Shaporynska and her activist colleagues were raising money for the Azov Battalion when it was under the leadership of Andriy Biletsky, who outlined the group’s mission as follows: “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”

Under the auspices of United Help for Ukraine, Shaporynska helped organize a charity concert for the Azov and Aidar Battalions. That same year, Shaporynska and her colleagues posted photographs while clad in the colors of the neo-Nazi Ukrainian Right Sektor movement. They wrote that they were the “Washington DC Right Sector Branch” and that they “support” its leader Dmytro Yarosh.

Yarosh led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine through an armed struggle. He is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

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Right Sektor’s red and black motif is a direct reference to the color guard of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B).

Yet Azov and Right Sektor aren’t the only group of fascists and war criminals with Shaporynska and company’s full support.

Months after the pro-Azov event, Shaporynska threw yet another “charity concert” with the Georgian warlord Mamuka Mamulashvili, who now commands the Georgian National Legion foreign mercenary group. Mamulashvili was listed as US Ukraine Activists’ guest of honor.

In April 2022, Mamulashvili vowed to execute Russian prisoners of war, a war crime which his militia has committed on video in Ukraine. The warlord would meet with Shaporynska again in 2017 during one of his many junkets to Washington’s Capitol Hill.

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Nadiya Shaporynska and Mamuka Mamulashvili in 2017.

The activists behind US Ukrainian Activists and United Help for Ukraine have made no apparent effort to conceal their full-fledged support for Ukraine’s most extremist factions. United Help for Ukraine has even described its co-founder, Tanya Aldave, as a “true banderite,” – in other words, an admirer of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Bandera. Today, Aldave’s Linkedin bio lists her as an attorney for the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

These avowedly nationalist activists appear constantly in photos posted to social media alongside Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, indicating a close working relationship. And as the February 25 pro-proxy war rally revealed, they have also forged an alliance with top level Biden administration foreign policy hands like Samantha Power.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... upporters/

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Von Der Leyen To Reject US Inflation Reduction Act Before Biden

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (L) and U.S. President Joe Biden (R). | Photo: Twitter/ @FREEtheWordsnow

Published 5 March 2023 (21 hours 9 minutes ago)

The European Commission President explained that such an act is discriminatory since it encourages European companies to move to the U.S. to benefit from billionaire subsidies.

On Wednesday, the European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen will meet U.S. President Joe Biden to discuss issues of common interest, including support for Ukraine, the relations with China, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), with which the United States seeks to subsidize its production of environmentally friendly technologies with about US$370 billion.

The IRA has exacerbated tensions between the U.S. and the EC, which considers that this agreement is discriminatory and contrary to the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as it encourages European companies to move to the U.S. to benefit from the subsidies.

Recently, Brussels had begun negotiations with Washington to sign an agreement that would encourage the exchange of raw materials between European and U.S. companies, as the United States agreed with Mexico and Canada some time ago. Although EC authorities and the U.S. government acknowledged progress in the negotiation, they have not yet reached an agreement.

Amidst this situation, the EC decided to work on its plan to improve the supply of raw materials and increase the production of environmentally friendly technology in Europe.


This plan, which is likely to be approved in mid-March, also seeks to reform the energy market to lower electricity costs and counteract the energy crisis in this region.

Besides voicing the EC discontent with the IRA, Von der Leyen will discuss with Biden the need to increase support for Ukraine in the face of the "growing challenges" stemming from China, a country which the U.S. accuses of seeking to provide arms to Russia.

China denied having expressed such a willingness. However, the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, assured that his organization is monitoring this situation since Beijing would cross a "red line" if it provided arms to Moscow.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Von ... -0008.html

The Euro-worms are squirming under their 'partner's' boot but will only find their backbone when the writing is on the wall.

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Recognized.

Wagner in Artemovsk told a fiery story)

The other day a fighter came to our positions to shoot a cigarette. He was no different from the Wagnerites, he treated himself, lit a cigarette ... And then the enemy rolled over. Everyone rushed to repel the attack, and the guest also grabbed the machine gun, pointing it at the “enemies”. Managed to destroy seven attackers.

After the fever of the battle, they sat down to fill the magazines with cartridges, and then our hero suddenly realized that he had entered the wrong trench. And he repulsed the attack not of the "orcs-Muscovites", but of his brothers. The fighter of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was praised and even promised to be presented for an award for such performance. And sent to the rest of the prisoners.

***

Colonelcassad
The Pentagon said that Artemovsk has no operational or strategic importance. Only symbolic. Previously, Mariupol, Popasnaya, Severodonetsk, Lisichansk, Soledar had no operational and strategic significance ...
The main thing is that for this very symbolic significance, the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are utilized in non-symbolic quantities.

***

Colonelcassad
🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦 About bridgelayers and their role in the upcoming offensive of the Armed Forces

Recently, US President Joe Biden signed a decree on the provision of a new military assistance package, which, in addition to additional shells for the HIMARS MLRS and other weapons, included AVLB bridgelayers based on M60 tanks .

🔻What are they needed for?

Bridgelayers are designed to quickly build metal assault bridges over obstacles (anti-tank ditches, scarps and counterscarps, canals, streams, rivers, ravines) . Usually they are equipped with the same armor protection as the tanks on the basis of which the equipment is made.

The pontoon-bridge equipment is placed on top of the caterpillar chassis. The main task of the crews of such vehicles is to pave the way for the main battle tanks, wheeled military equipment and other vehicles. For the first time

, this type of weaponry was transferred to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the White House . This is due to the planned shipment of Abrams tanks to Ukraine: AVLB will allow heavy "Americans" to cross obstacles.

🔻How effective are they?

The Ukrainian command is preparing a counterattack on Russian positions. At the moment, new assault and mechanized brigades are being trained at the training grounds.

The transfer of American and German Biber bridgelayers (they began to be delivered last year) will allow us to quickly resolve the issue of the movement of heavy tracked and wheeled armored vehicles both during the attack on Svatovo and Kremennaya , and in the Zaporozhye direction .

The Lugansk region has a rather difficult terrain (rivers, ravines and other obstacles) , and Zaporozhye is pitted with trenches, numerous strongholds and ditches through which Western tanks like Abrams or Leopard will not pass.

So far, none of the previously transferred pontoons have been spotted on the battlefield. But on the eve of the offensive, they should be expected to be transferred to the main strike area.

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***

Colonelcassad
Special operation, March 5th. The main thing from RIA Novosti :

◎ Shoigu listened to the reports of the group commanders on the situation in the special operation zone and action plans;

◎ Russian air defense shot down a Ukrainian Mi-8, 12 drones and six MLRS shells in a day, the Russian Defense Ministry said;

◎ In the Zaporozhye region, the Russian Armed Forces hit the command post of the Ukrainian nationalist regiment "Azov" (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in the Russian Federation), the Defense Ministry added;

◎ Two Ukrainian pilots arrived in the US to evaluate their combat aircraft control skills, NBC reported;

◎ Ukrainian troops fired HIMARS at the center of Volnovakha in the DPR when a rally was held there to mark the anniversary of the death of Sparta commander Volodymyr Zhoga, local authorities said;

◎ The West is ready to give security guarantees to Ukraine after the end of the conflict, but the time has not yet come for this, Scholz said;

◎ A number of EU and NATO countries sent $60 billion worth of lethal weapons to Ukraine, which made them parties to the conflict, the speaker of the Hungarian parliament said;

◎ Ukrainian troops are forming a strike force for an offensive in the south to reach the coast of the Sea of ​​Azov, Rogov said;

◎ Minister of Energy of Ukraine called the situation around the Zaporizhzhya NPP "dead end";

◎ A number of the best-trained units of the Ukrainian troops have been defeated in the Artemivsk area in recent months, writes the Wall Street Journal.

***

forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
Military expert Boris Rozhin on the situation in the Artyomovsky direction on the evening of March 05, 2023, especially for the Voenkor Kotenok Z channel @voenkorKotenok :

1. Khromovo, Bogdanovka and Krasnoe are still under the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The enemy is trying to counterattack at Red.

2. We have not yet reached the plane at the southwestern entrance to the city.

3. The enemy continues the process of gradual withdrawal to the western part of the city.

4. More than 40% of the city has already been liberated or is in the process of being cleared.

5. The withdrawal of a number of units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine through Khromovo to Chasov Yar continues.

6. There is no boiler at the moment, but the operational environment already exists in fact - during the day on the road through Khromovo and in the fields, various equipment and clusters of outgoing infantry are affected.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 06, 2023 11:54 pm

Why Bakhmut Is Falling

Just two days ago I reported that Bakhmut is falling. The Ukrainian soldiers there are outgunned 1 to 10 and die under artillery fire with little chance to shot back. More reports from the front have since come in. They support my dire view.

The German pro-Ukrainian news outlet Bild reported this morning that there were misgivings in the Ukrainian war leadership:

President Volodymyr Zelensky and Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi have conflicting views on how the military should handle the situation in Bakhmut, according to unnamed sources within the Ukrainian political leadership cited in a report by Bild.

Bild writes that Zaluzhnyi was deliberating a tactical withdrawal from Bakhmut weeks ago over concern for the wellbeing of his troops.

The Ukrainian government told Bild that remaining in Bakhmut was the right decision due to the serious damage it inflicted on Russian military personnel and equipment. However, according to other sources cited by the publication, the situation is at risk of becoming untenable.

"The vast majority of soldiers in Bakhmut do not understand why the city is being held," a Ukrainian military analyst told Bild on condition of anonymity.


Just hours after that item came out Zelensky's office issued a press release denying any such trouble (machine translation):

On Monday, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a regular meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff.
The commanders of the operational and strategic troop groups reported on the situation on the main front lines.

The members of the Staff considered the situation in Bakhmut in particular. Assessing the course of the defense operation, the President asked Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhnyi and Commander of the operational and strategic grouping of troops "Khortytsia" Oleksandr Syrskyi about further actions in the Bakhmut direction. They spoke in favor of continuing the defense operation and further strengthening our positions in Bakhmut.[/i]

I do not believe that Zaluzhnyi and Sirskyi gave such advice. The situation for the Ukrainians in Bakhmut (Ru: Artyomovsk) is hopeless and they certainly know it. Losses would be less if the troops would pull back to the next defense line on the higher grounds west of Bakhmut.

Image
Source: Live US map

The current situation is a mess:

Image
Source: Live US map

To move out of Bakhmut or to move supplies in one has to cross a 10 kilometer long corridor which is only 6 kilometer wide and completely covered by Russian artillery and ground fire. The results of attempts to run that gauntlet can be read in the Russian Defense Ministry's daily report:

In Donetsk direction, the active action of the 'Yug' Group of Forces and artillery operation have resulted in the elimination of up to 225 Ukrainian personnel, five infantry fighting vehicles, nine armoured fighting vehicles, five pickups, four motor vehicles, one Uragan MLRS, and one D-30 howitzer.
One ordnance depot of 55th Artillery Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), and one U.S.-manufactured AN/TPQ-37 counterbattery warfare radar have been destroyed near Dachnoye and Chasov Yar (Donetsk People's Republic) respectively.

Losing 23 transport vehicles in a day, plus the people in them, is quite severe. It has stopped to freeze in Bakhmut and the fields are now too muddy to drive over them. Here is video of some pickups which tried and got messed up by artillery fire. All roads out are under direct Russian fire. The best way to move in or out is thereby probably a long walk through the muddy fields.

Another map of Bakhmut:

Image
Source: Military Land

The above map is two days old. It shows 9 Ukrainian brigade equivalents in the area. I do not know how reliable the information about those units positions is. The overview map from the same source shows a total of 13 brigade equivalents in the same area.

Image
Source: Military Land

A full brigade has about 3,000 to 3,500 men. So there are probably 30,000 to 40,000 Ukrainian troops involved. However all these brigades have had losses. Some even had extreme losses and are now only at 30% of their original size.

In Saturday's summary Military Land authors wrote about Bakhmut:

A road bridge was blown up in Khromove settlement, west of Bakhmut. The only remaining road from/to Bakhmut is through the fields and Ivanivske. (source)
Given the situation in the area of Bakhmut and reports on the ground, it’s safe to assume that Russian forces captured the remaining part of northern outskirts and the area north of Tavr Meat Plant.
The situation in Zabakhmutka (eastern part of Bakhmut) is currently covered by the fog of war. There is a possibility that Ukrainian defenders retreated from the area.


Here is another map based on Russian sources.

Image
Source: Rybar

Yesterday the Kyiv Independent reported from near the frontline about the bad situation for the Ukrainian troops fighting there:

Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut: ‘Our troops are not being protected’

Russia’s relentless assault on Bakhmut is sacrificing waves and waves of unprepared men being sent to their deaths.
But multiple defenders of this embattled city in Donetsk Oblast feel that they are in a similar boat, according to interviews with more than a dozen soldiers currently fighting in or around Bakhmut.

During their brief visits to the nearby town of Kostiantynivka, Ukrainian infantrymen told the Kyiv Independent of unprepared, poorly-trained battalions being thrown into the front line meat grinder to survive as best they could with little support from armored vehicles, mortars, artillery, drones and tactical information.

“We don’t get any support,” says a soldier named Serhiy, who has been fighting on the front lines in Bakhmut, sitting down with his friend, also named Serhiy, for a conversation in a small cafe in the Kostiantynivka market. Both men are in their 40s but one of them is a bit older than the other.


The soldiers lack about everything that would support their defense:

They say that Russian artillery, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers are often allowed to strike Ukrainian positions for hours or days without being shut down by Ukrainian heavy weapons. Some complained of poor coordination and situational awareness, allowing this to happen or making it even worse.
Mortarmen spoke of extreme ammunition scarcity and having to use weapons dating back to World War II. Drones that are supposed to provide critical reconnaissance information are also scarce and are being lost at very high rates in some parts of the battlefield.

All this leads to terrifying casualties of both dead and wounded. "The battalion came in in the middle of December… between all the different platoons, there were 500 of us," says Borys, a combat medic from Odesa Oblast fighting around Bakhmut. "A month ago, there were literally 150 of us."

“When you go out to the position, it’s not even a 50/50 chance that you’ll come out of there (alive),” says the older Serhiy. “It’s more like 30/70.”


The soldiers describe the Russian operation as small reconnaissance followed by artillery fire. This is repeated again and again until it has reached the desired result. The very reasonable application of this tactic is why I disregard claims of 'waves or Russian cannon fodder storming forward' or of 'high Russian losses'. They are obviously nonsense:

The older Serhiy says that the enemy likes to send a team of three or four expendable foot soldiers to attack and make the Ukrainians expose themselves by shooting at them. At that point, the more elite forces zero in on the defenders’ position.
Once they begin exchanging fire, the Ukrainians are struck with heavier weapons like Russian mortars and rockets from Grad multiple launch rocket systems or BMP infantry fighting vehicles and BTR armored personnel carriers with machine guns.

“They get the positions where we are, establish the coordinates, then they hit us from seven to nine kilometers out with mortars,” as well as from closer by with grenade launchers, says the older Serhiy. “They wait for the house to fall so we have to jump out. The building catches fire and then they try to finish us off.”

“Their birds come out and they chase us with fire,” adds the younger Serhiy, referring to Russian UAVs, like quadcopters and Orlan-10 fixed wing drones that spot distant heavy weapons. “They hit accurately.”

As Russians destroy more and more buildings, Ukrainians keep losing more places where they can reliably take cover. Borys the medic says people have been lost when their entrenched positions collapsed from heavy Russian fire, suffocating them.

“I’ll put it like this, we should get our people out because if we don’t take off, then in the next few weeks, it’s going to be bad,” says Oleksandr. A mortarman named Illia agrees that Bakhmut is “practically encircled.”


For lack of ammunition there is no Ukrainian counter artillery fire. Infantry fighting vehicles are held back from the front. The little trained Territorial Brigades are send in at night to be killed the next morning:

Multiple soldiers say Bakhmut troops are barely given enough time to learn to shoot a rifle – sometimes their training is just 2 weeks, before they’re dropped into the hottest parts of the most intense current battle of the war. They would have preferred for troops to get a minimum of two or three months of training before being deployed to such a hot spot.
“Two weeks’ live training and they’re sent here. You can’t do that,” says the older Serhiy. “Or it’s a person who once served in the army, how long ago was that? Obviously they forgot everything.”

“We were promised that we wouldn’t be sent to the zero line right away, that at first we’d be sent to the second or third line,” he continues. “And then we came here in the middle of the night and they immediately sent us to Bakhmut.”
...
According to both soldiers named Serhiy, most brigades are insufficiently trained and lack the experience for an environment as brutal as Bakhmut. People are taken at night to a place they’d never seen before and the battle starts in the morning.

“This is why positions are abandoned, people are there for the first time,” says the younger Serhiy. “I went to a position three times and was given six people who hadn’t fought at all before. We had a few dead and wounded that had to be evacuated… Our people are not being protected.”

Oleksandr confirms that while some battalions fighting in Bakhmut are well-trained and ready, most of them aren’t and many were thrown in at night without much preparation. “Yes, that’s true, my battalion was not prepared,” he says. After five months without a single break from the fighting, only half of Oleksandr’s battalion is left, he says.
“They shouldn’t have rushed to throw everyone in there,” says the younger Serhiy. “Better to abandon those positions, who cares? It’s better to properly train people.”


The Kyiv Independent reporter did not ask, or did not report, what opinion the soldiers hold about Zelensky's pep talk and die-hard slogans.

I don't think that they will thank him for the experiences they have gained. They will rather use them to explain their disgust to him.

Posted by b on March 6, 2023 at 17:51 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/03/w ... .html#more

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Ukraine conflict ‘Caused by European Love of War, Hegemony,’ says Malaysia’s Ex-Leader
MARCH 5, 2023

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Composite image of Ukrainian president Zelensky at podium and Malaysia's former PM Mahathir Mohamad. Image: Geopolitical Economy Report.

Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, said “the present war between Ukraine and Russia is caused by the Europeans’ love of war, of hegemony, of dominance.” He warned that this conflict “can be interpreted as the start of the Third World War.”

The longest-serving prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, has stated that “the present war between Ukraine and Russia is caused by the Europeans’ love of war, of hegemony, of dominance.”

Mahathir argued that the conflict “can be interpreted as the start of the Third World War.”

Moreover, Western sanctions against Russia have meant “the world has to endure shortages of supplies,” he said.

Mahathir added that the United States is responsible for irresponsible “provocation” in East Asia, by giving weapons to Taiwan and by sending top US official Nancy Pelosi to the island to support separatist forces.

Mahathir led Malaysia from 1981 to 2003 and then again from 2018 to 2020.

He made these comments in a Twitter thread on February 24:


Mahathir has been a longtime critic of Western neoliberal economics and the “Washington consensus.” He has emphasized that imperialism is rooted in capitalism.

The former Malaysian leader has also accused the United States of trying to provoke a war with China over Taiwan.

President Maduro: ‘The War in Ukraine Is Part of the Labor Pains of a World That Will Emerge,’ a Geopolitical and Historical Analysis


The full remarks of Mahathir Mohamad were as follows:

I hesitate to write this article. I may be accused of apologising for the Russians. I am not. I think the present war between Ukraine and Russia is caused by the Europeans’ love of War, of hegemony, of dominance.

Russia was the partner of the Western Europeans (including U.S. and Canada) in the war against Germany. The moment Germany was defeated, the west declared that Russia, their partner, was their new enemy.

So they must prepare for war against Russia. And NATO was set up to form a military alliance against Russia. Russia then set up the Warsaw Pact. And a Cold war ensued. And the world had to choose between the west and the east.

After the Russians disbanded the Warsaw Pact and allowed the countries of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to leave the bloc, NATO did not disband.

Instead the countries freed from Russian hegemony were urged to join NATO as enemies of Russia. The pressure against the weakened Russia was heightened.

As the former socialist republics join NATO and the threat against Russia heightened, Russia rebuilt its military capabilities and confronted the powerful western alliance. Tension increased as NATO forces carried out exercises close to Russia.

Provoked, Russia pre-empted with the invasion of Ukraine. That invasion can be interpreted as the start of the Third World War. There is talk of using nuclear weapons. Already the world has to endure shortages of supplies due to sanctions against Russia and Russian retaliation.

There is also provocation in the Far East. A visit by a high U.S. official to Taiwan caused an increase of tension between China and Taiwan. Both are arming and the U.S. has sold a lot of weapons to Taiwan, while China became more belligerent.

Even Malaysia is experiencing shortages and inflation. It is important that the country prepares contingency plans to deal with what may be the beginning of a Third World War.


https://orinocotribune.com/ukraine-conf ... ex-leader/

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Russia denounces Ukrainian bombing in Kursk

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At the same time, Ukrainian troops fired three 155-mm caliber shells into the Kuibyshevsky district of Donetsk. | Photo: Ria Novosti

On the territory of 16 households, 23 residents live. There are no victims among the civilian population, nor serious destruction, according to information from local authorities.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled a village on Monday in the Khomutovsky district in the Kursk region, a border region between the two nations, according to the local governor.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are shelling the border area in the Khomutovsky district. Power supply facilities were damaged, as a result of which the village of Iskra was left without power.

This was announced by the governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoit. He added that as soon as the situation allows, electrical engineers will start emergency repairs.


The governor said that "According to my information, the Khomutovsky district is being shelled. The village of Iskra is de-energized."

"On the territory of 16 homes, 23 residents live. There are no casualties among the civilian population, nor serious destruction. As soon as the security forces allow it, electrical engineers will go out to carry out repairs," local authorities reported.

At the same time, Ukrainian troops fired three 155-mm caliber shells at the Kuibyshevsky district of Donetsk, the Donetsk representative office at the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of War Crimes Affairs of Ukraine reported. (JCCC) .

"Fire was recorded from the side of the armed formations of Ukraine in the direction: 13:30 (coincides with Moscow time) - the settlement of Karlovka - the city of Donetsk (Kuibyshevsky district): 3 caliber shells were fired 155mm", they reported.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/rusia-uc ... -0010.html

Google Translagtor

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Biggest threat from Ukraine War: Last nuclear agreement suspended
War rarely stays within the boundaries set or desired for it. That makes returning to arms control crucial for the survival of humanity

March 05, 2023 by Prabir Purkayastha

Image
Image used for representational purposes only. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The Ukraine war has completed one year. Unfortunately, one consequence of this war is that the New START or New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the last remaining arms control agreement on nuclear weapons and missiles, has gone into limbo. On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Russia has “suspended” participation in the New START II version, though it will observe limits set on nuclear missiles and warheads until the agreement expires in 2026. Russia placing New START in suspended animation is a response to the United States and its allies converting the Ukraine war into a NATO war against Russia.

Earlier, the United States walked out of the two other arms control treaties, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019. Capping the number of launchers and warheads, coupled with the ABM Treaty, meant both countries would refrain from building missile shields and reduce warheads.

The ABM Treaty was a counterpart to SALT or the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty—they were negotiated together, while START and New START are the latter’s successors. ABM was the first arms control treaty the United States jettisoned after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Why was ABM the counterpart to the SALT negotiations? The reason goes back to the nuclear missile race and the logic of mutually assured destruction (MAD) at its heart. The understanding was that any side that struck first in a nuclear war would be able to take out most of the other side’s nuclear weapons. The question was could the country striking first survive the weak response of the other country, most of whose missile infrastructure would have been taken out, with its political and military leadership? This led both the United States and the Soviets to build a huge number of warheads and missile launchers so that even if 95% of their nuclear missiles were taken out, the remaining few would still be enough to destroy their opponent.

At its height, the United States and the Soviet Union had 64,000 warheads in all, which has dropped to the maximum permitted under New START, to 1,550 each, or 3,100 in total. New START also limits launchers on each side to 700. This inventory does not take into account the other nuclear powers like China, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, India and Pakistan, all of which have nuclear weapons but much smaller inventories.

The argument was that an architecture in which nuclear missiles and warheads could be reduced demanded that no anti-ballistic missiles should be deployed. Otherwise, a missile shield could take out most missiles launched after a country has been attacked first—and has, therefore, lost most of its missiles. Without the ABM Treaty, the logic of MAD would mean a spiraling nuclear weapons race, as happened earlier.

Though the George Bush administration abandoned the ABM treaty in 2002, no ABM shields were constructed except two permitted under the defunct ABM Treaty. Therefore, there was no need to increase warheads to defeat anti-ballistic missiles.

While the United States abandoned the ABM Treaty in 2002, the first potential anti-ballistic missile deployment took place in Romania and Poland in 2010. The US AEGIS Ashore systems deployed in these countries have the ability to fire either cruise missiles or anti-ballistic missiles, destabilizing a fragile arms control regime based on not creating anti-ballistic missile shields.

The second arms control treaty that fell after the ABM Treaty was the INF agreement, which banned land-based missiles with a range between 1,000 to 5,500 kilometers. This agreement was signed by former United States president Ronald Reagan and former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. Its objective was to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons in Europe.

Though former United States president Donald Trump talked about China while withdrawing from the INF Treaty, Russia perceived that with NATO’s frontline moving to its borders, INF missiles would also reach the Russian border. Intermediate-range Nuclear Missiles in Poland and Romania, and the possibility of such cruise missiles in Ukraine in the future, were perceived as a direct threat to Russia. With the United States leaving the ABM Treaty and installing AEGIS batteries capable of firing cruise and anti-ballistic missiles close to Russia’s borders, the entire disarmament architecture painstakingly created during the Cold War with the Soviet Union no longer exists.

I am not dealing with the origins of the Ukraine war, but only its implications for the nuclear arms control architecture and treaties. Clearly, this war is also a war between Russia and NATO. The military support of NATO to Ukraine over the last year, including direct transfers of military hardware, funds, and the cost of NATO support, is now more than $66 billion, Russia’s entire military budget for the year. And as we now know, NATO’s total stock of shells, artillery and other weapons is slowly being destroyed in the Ukraine war.

While we take for granted the NATO support for Ukraine, interestingly, The Washington Post has reported that NATO has also provided direct battlefield support. The Post wrote on 9 February: “Ukrainian officials said they require coordinates provided or confirmed by the United States and its allies for the vast majority of strikes using its advanced US-provided rocket systems, a previously undisclosed practice that reveals a deeper and more operationally active role for the Pentagon in the war.” As the article details, Ukraine’s role is only to press the button. All else is being controlled by the United States. NATO is a full partner of Ukraine’s forces in this war, helping it choose where to strike and what to hit and even providing coordinates to the missile systems.

It is in this context that we must see Ukraine’s attempted drone strike against the Engels Airbase in Russia, 600 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Engels airbase stores nuclear weapons, and if NATO indeed provides coordinates for all strikes against Russia, did it also provide logistical support to the Ukrainian drone attempting to hit a nuclear weapons store in Russia? In other words, did NATO actually control the drone or give the coordinates of the Engels airbase?

This is important to Russia’s announcement on New START. Russia has said it will observe all limits on weapons and launchers set in New START but is suspending the agreement till it expires. It means it is suspending all inspections of its nuclear facilities, also a part of the New START agreement.

Inspecting each other’s nuclear facilities is key to the agreement, preventing the two from hiding warheads and their locations. If NATO is involved with targeting Russian facilities, including nuclear ones within Russia, then inspections of its facilities increase the risk of a successful attack on it. Putin said as much in his annual address on 21 February: “We know that the West is directly linked to the attempts of Kyiv regime to attack our strategic aviation basis. The NATO specialist helped in directing unmanned aircraft to attack these facilities. And they want to inspect our facilities? Today this is just nonsense.”

Ukraine earlier attacked the Zaprozhiya Nuclear Plant held by Russia in the Zaprozhiya Oblast. Though this is extremely dangerous, as it can easily lead to a Fukushima-like disaster and spread radioactive material around a very large area, these attacks continued for some time without any response from the International Atomic Energy Agency or Ukraine’s NATO allies. The problem with war—any war—is it rarely stays within the boundaries set by either side. Attacking nuclear plants and stockpiles adds significantly to the risk of the war in Ukraine today.

Return to arms control is a must, not simply for peace in Europe, but for the survival of humanity. It is stupid or completely blinkered to think war can continue between NATO and Russia without the possibility of spinning out of control. To this, we must add the almost critical status of the disarmament architecture, with even the last agreement standing—the New START—now at risk. Stepping back from the nuclear precipice will not be easy. Even if we can start to repair the nuclear disarmament architecture, we need peace between Russia and NATO and the Ukraine war to stop.

Abandoning two nuclear disarmament agreements, and putting the last remaining one in suspended animation, is a civilizational threat. The tragedy is we do not have statesmen like Jawaharlal Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Josip Broz Tito or Sukarno, who, having led independence struggles in their countries, had gained the stature to broker peace between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the emerging multi-polar world, leaders of non-combatant countries are unwilling to stand up for peace, worried their narrow national interests may be hurt if they stick their necks out.

There is no collective like the Non-Aligned Movement that could act as an independent body to play such a role either. Instead, we have to wait for good sense to dawn on the combatant countries that a war between nuclear powers, even if thinly cloaked as only weapons and logistic support, can spin out of control at any moment. This is perhaps the most dangerous moment in our history after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The fact that it is not being perceived as such is the real tragedy.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/05/ ... suspended/

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Image
The Canadian Coast Guard in the Arctic Ocean

The Arctic is the next frontier in the new cold war
Originally published: Geopolitical Economy Report on March 1, 2023 by Renate Bridenthal (more by Geopolitical Economy Report) | (Posted Mar 04, 2023)

The Arctic had once been a largely peaceful zone, harboring cooperative international scientific research. But today, it is swiftly becoming one of militarized power politics.

Heavily armed nations surround the melting Arctic Ocean, with its unstable environment of eroding shorelines, accessible natural resources, and contested maritime passages.

This February, the U.S. launched little publicized, month-long military exercises in the Arctic, hosted by Finland and Norway.

The Pentagon’s European Command described the exercises—named Arctic Forge 23, Defense Exercise North, and Joint Viking—as a way “to demonstrate readiness by deploying a combat-credible force to enhance power in NATO’s northern flank”.

The exercises bring together more than 10,000 military personnel from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, and Norway.

Actual hostilities could have potentially broken out earlier in February, when the U.S. military shot down an unidentified object over Alaska, soon after a U.S. fighter jet brought down an alleged Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic.

The balloon over Alaska turned out to belong to a U.S. hobby club, but a sense of menace was maintained.

One way people become aware of impending conflicts is through the entertainment industry, which is important in the process of manufacturing consent.

Right now, a Danish series called “Borgen—Power & Glory” is doing just that, revealing the growing importance of the Arctic as a “geopolitical hotspot in world politics.”

Borgen addresses the topic of natural resources in the Arctic, which roils up contention between the United States, Russia and China.

The series centers on Greenland, a Danish possession with an independence movement that gains strength from the discovery of a vital resource. In the drama, that is oil. In reality, it is rare earth elements.

In the drama, this creates tension for the Danish government, caught up in a great power struggle between the U.S., China, and Russia. In reality, Greenland is only one part of a looming conflict in the Arctic, not only about resources, but also about passage through the ocean, which has become more navigable due to accelerated climate change.

The sinister presentation of China’s representative in Borgen creates the fear of China’s actual presence in the Arctic. It has a uranium and rare earths mining joint venture with Australia in southern Greenland, which allows two Chinese firms to lead in processing and marketing the materials. China is also exploring zinc, iron and oil deposits in Greenland.

Not only has this activity raised concerns about competitive access to rare earths, but, in the case of Greenland, it has raised security issues for Denmark, a member of NATO.

As a result, Denmark has revised its security policy, in what Foreign Policy magazine described as a new “geopolitical battlefield”.

Echoing U.S. security concerns, Denmark has increased its military budget with a so-called “Arctic capacity package” to enhance surveillance with drones, satellites, and radar.

Greenland is relatively autonomous from Denmark and shares a seat with the kingdom at the Arctic Council, but it does have an independence movement that could fulfill its goal with the wealth offered by the mines.

This would cost Denmark its seat in the Arctic Council, and, with it, the presence of another NATO member.

The Arctic Council, established in 1996, defines itself as “the leading intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States, Arctic Indigenous peoples and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues”.

Thus, a bid by China to build an airport in Greenland was prevented by the Danish government. This was despite the fact that Greenland’s fishing industry was open to the marketing opportunity it presented, and to the eventual promise of independence.

China, however, having its own concerns over foreign intervention in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, is unwilling to interfere politically in Greenland.

Furthermore, intervention from the U.S. was likely—as dramatized in Borgen—given the U.S. air base at Thule, which is home to the U.S. Space Force and a global network of missile warning sensors.

A successful independence movement in Greenland would cause Denmark to lose its status as an Arctic State, as well as potentially threaten Washington’s continued use of the base.

Climate change impacts the geopolitics of the Arctic
Besides the question of Greenland, the navigability of the Arctic Ocean, due to its thawing, has created several geopolitical issues. It now greatly shortens China’s trade route with Europe and offers a backup to the Malacca Straits, which U.S. warships could blockade in case of a conflict.

Indeed, in 2012, a Chinese icebreaker made full transit through the Arctic to Iceland. And in 2023, China tested its third trip, proving its trading capability and enhancing scientific cooperation between the two countries.

While China is not itself an Arctic state, it has laid out its claims in international terms in its Arctic Policy of 2018: “The Arctic situation now goes beyond its original inter-Arctic States or regional nature, having a vital bearing on the interests of States outside the region… with global implications and international impacts.”

Beijing claims “rights in respect of scientific research, navigation, overflight, fishing, laying of submarine cables and pipelines in the high seas and other relevant sea areas in the Arctic Ocean, and rights to resource exploration and exploitation in the Area.”

It further claims that, geographically, China’s climate system and ecological environment are affected by Arctic events, and therefore deserves to be consulted in matters of security and global governance.

More assertively, China expects to play a major role in expanding the network of shipping routes in the Arctic in the form of a Polar Silk Road “to facilitate connectivity and sustainable economic and social development of the Arctic.”

These ambitions have alarmed Western countries, despite China’s disclaimers of intent: respect, cooperation, win-win result, and sustainability.

On the other hand, even some Western military observers validate China’s interest in and contribution to resource development and scientific cooperation in the Arctic. They assuage fears of China’s use of the right of passage through Arctic waters.

Furthermore, China has yet to invest in any Russian Arctic port, and no joint naval exercises have been held in Russian Arctic waters.

Finally, China’s position as an accredited observer to the Arctic Council constrains any political challenges it may mount. As a 2022 academic article published by the U.S. Air Force put it: “China Is Not a Peer Competitor in the Arctic.”

China-Russia partnership
The growing closeness of China and Russia, nevertheless, raises new questions about a shifting balance of power in the region.

Russia’s northern border occupies over half the shoreline on the ocean, which gives it claims to offshore resources like oil. The North Sea Route, hugging the length of Russia’s northern border, offers a shipping lane for Chinese trade with Europe.

Historically, Russia has seen the route as within its sphere of influence and has not accepted China’s term of a Polar Silk Road.

The Ukraine war, however, has made Russia more dependent on China. Their partnership may change the balance of power in the region.

As of 2021, Russia chaired the Arctic Council for a two-year term stint. But the Arctic Chiefs of Defense meetings and the Arctic Security Forces Roundtable have excluded Russia since a democratic referendum with more than 90% approval led to the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Claiming to perceive a threat, NATO has revived an old Cold War expression, referring to the “northern flank” for this area, and exploring its potentially conflictual relationship with Russia in that context.

For Moscow, defense of its northern border is a prime security issue. But with the revival of Cold War tensions, the U.S. and NATO consider Russia’s militarization to be a threat, and they are remilitarizing as well.

As Vijay Prashad has shown, NATO’s so-called “Centre of Excellence—Cold Weather Operations“, based in Norway, brings Western allies together for biannual military exercises in the Arctic.

Should Finland and Sweden join NATO, Russia would be confronted with a phalanx of opponents on the Arctic Council and be encircled north and west by hostile forces.

Consequently, the stability of the Arctic region is now endangered.

The Arctic: A treasure trove of natural resources
In addition to its geostrategic location, the Arctic is crucial for its natural resources.

90 percent of Russia’s current gas production and 60 percent of its oil production take place in the Arctic. The region has a staggering 60 percent of Russia’s gas and oil reserves.

The Russian Arctic also has large deposits of coal, petroleum, and natural gas, as well as diamonds, gold, nickel, cobalt, copper, palladium, platinum, zinc, and rare earth metals.

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In addition, Russia aspires to make the region more hospitable, even tourist friendly. It plans to build new cities, as well as harbors, airports, and IT equipment.

These plans include ways of preventing the negative impacts of this development on climate change, to which the Arctic is highly vulnerable.

Finally, the Northern Sea Route, made passable by the Russian fleet of 40 icebreakers, including four nuclear-powered ones and a new series planned, is a bone of contention in maritime law.

Russia considers this a national waterway. But if foreign ships are to pass through for trade, it would have to become an international route, possibly open to hostile warships as well.

The conflict in Eastern Europe, on Russia’s western border, has increased Moscow’s fear of encirclement, including in its north.

U.S. and NATO threaten to upset the balance in the Arctic
Denmark, with its autonomous region Greenland, as well as Norway jockey for position in the Arctic. As members of NATO, they have participated in maneuvers they consider a form of deterrence.

Should Finland and Sweden also join NATO, Russia’s northern border would face a militarized front including Canada, the United States, and Iceland.

A delicate balance to avoid war has so far been maintained within the Arctic Council. However, this equilibrium is increasingly being challenged by a heightened diplomatic and military presence of the U.S. in the Arctic, which has created the position of “Ambassador-At-Large for the Arctic Region,” and is developing Army Arctic Special Operations Forces.

A stated mission of these U.S. Special Forces is to leverage the specialized Arctic knowledge of Indigenous peoples for military purposes and to prevent their “vulnerability to other influences.”

Given the malign neglect suffered by Alaskan and Canadian Inuit people and by Sami people in the other Arctic nation-states, this is a real concern.

A 2021 U.S. Army document announced that Washington must “regain Arctic dominance” and “win” in the region.

The chief of staff paper anticipated northern routes from which troops could be deployed from Alaska to points around the globe. It also recognized the importance of Arctic resources, like rare minerals needed for components of aircraft engines and advanced weapons.

A new NATO Arctic Command expects to establish a formal Arctic Security Forum that includes the U.S.-led military alliance.

While civilian observers acknowledge Russia’s right to defend its northern border, and urge case-by-case management of disagreements to maintain stability, the U.S. military recommends serious strategizing in the Arctic Council with its NATO allies, which may soon include Sweden and Finland.

Not only is the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s coast contested in maritime law but so too are the Northwest Passage in the western Arctic, adjoining Canada, Greenland, and Alaska.

In this case, Canada agrees with Russia that maintaining national control is a matter of sovereign right.

Other states with heavy commercial maritime traffic, however, such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea, claim international right of passage under the UN Convention on Law of the Sea.

China could also claim this right, regarding the Northern Sea Route, though it would conflict with Russian interests.

The rights of Indigenous peoples in the Arctic
The heightened tension over the Northwest Passage has led the Canadian government to court its Inuit population, whose settlement area encompasses most of the Northwest Passage routes.

The land claims agreement of 1993, however, does not give the Indigenous people authority over marine areas, only consultation.

This agreement was successfully employed in the Inuit statement supporting Canada’s rebuttal to former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who bluntly denounced Ottawa’s claim over the Northwest Passage as “illegitimate.”

Environmental issues and the lives of Indigenous peoples gain attention in this political whirlpool, but mainly rhetorically.

The damage wrought by the fossil fuel industry and more recently by new technologies of “green” mining continue to push First Nations further off their lands, imperiling their natural foods.

But they are assuming a stronger political voice in the upcoming rivalries between their respective nation-states.

Both the Inuit peoples of the western Arctic and the Sami of the eastern Arctic have developed circumpolar organizations that participate in the governance of the Arctic.

The states that colonized them and in which they are now minorities are taking a greater interest in maintaining their loyalty and in acquiring their knowledge of Arctic conditions in case of conflicts.

The Inuit of the western region of the U.S., Canada, and Greenland total an estimated 180.000 population.

16,500 are in Alaska, organized into the Alaska Federation of Nations. The resolutions of its October 2022 annual meeting reflect resentment of many hardships: the decline in stock of fisheries threatening native food security; a drug epidemic of fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine; a high incidence of domestic violence, sexual violence, and missing and murdered people; waste and contaminants left by the military and other governmental agencies; ongoing seizure of native lands; and insufficient access to education and business.

Especially poignant is a resolution “imploring the state of Alaska to end its practice of requiring tribal waivers of sovereign immunity as a condition for receiving grant funds.”

The more than 70,000 Inuit in Canada are largely urbanized, due to a long history of forced assimilation. With high unemployment, low wages and substandard housing, they have significant food insecurity, a high rate of imprisonment, and youth suicide.

In the 1970s, an organization of Inuit was formed to protect their individual and cultural rights, as well as land claims. It is part of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which connects with Inuit in Alaska and Greenland, and has connections with the United Nations.

The Sami are a historically nomadic herding people who once roamed freely and are now divided with approximately 20,000 in Sweden, 50,000 in Norway, 8,000 in Finland and 2,000 in Russia.

In all of these states, they suffer from ongoing land grabs, which interfere with reindeer grazing routes; discrimination; and violent racism. The deliberate killing of reindeer herds have plagued the Sami in Sweden, despite government attempts at reconciliation and some funding.

The Sami in Finland similarly suffer loss of land, inhibition of reindeer herding, and lack of power over access to resources on their remaining land. Finland now touts cultural tourism of the Sami.

The Sami in Norway have organized against infrastructure projects that threaten even more land loss, to little avail.

The Sami in Russia, the smallest group, reestablished contact with the others in 1991. Their urban conditions are not better than that of the Sami elsewhere, but their reindeer herding has a unique problem.

They had been organized into cooperatives which now have difficulty readjusting to new conditions of ongoing industrialization. As elsewhere, this development continues to usurp their pasture lands. In addition, tourist fishing has reduced their food supply.

Like the Inuit, the Sami have a circumpolar organization for common interests, a Sami Council consisting of three Parliaments representing the indigenous peoples of Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The Russian Sami are represented by NGOs.

The war in Ukraine has created a split among the Sami. In April 2022, the Council suspended formal relations with the Russian group, which supported the Russian Federation, portending the incursion of sub-Arctic politics into the polar region.

The relatively peaceful days of the Arctic are over. Its warming is turning up the geopolitical heat in the polar region, bringing to mind an old adage: “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.”

https://mronline.org/2023/03/04/the-arc ... -cold-war/

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
🔹Chronicle of the special military operation
for March 6, 2023

🔻Border territories of the Russian Federation:

▪️Ukrainian formations fired at the village of Belevitsa in the Bryansk region : two residential buildings were damaged.
➖Russian air defense systems also intercepted two enemy drones in the Pogarsky region .

▪️The Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked power supply facilities in the Khomutovsky district of the Kursk region : the village of Iskra was de-energized .

▪️In the Belgorod region, Russian air defense systems shot down three enemy missiles in Novy Oskol : residential buildings and power lines were damaged by shell fragments. One civilian was injured.
➖Ukrainian formations fired at the border village of Murom . Residential buildings, a grocery store and a gas supply line were hit.

🔻Starobelsk direction:

▪️The situation has not changed significantly: artillery duels and positional battles continue along the line of contact.

🔻Soledar direction

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▪️The Ukrainian command is carrying out a partial evacuation of the garrison from Bakhmut . Russian artillery conducts aimed fire at units withdrawn from the city.
➖The enemy is conducting counterattacks at the Bogdanovka-Krasnoye line and the Konstantinovka-Bakhmut highway to preserve the corridor in case of a full-fledged withdrawal of troops.

▪️Fierce fighting continues in Bakhmut : assault detachments of the PMC "Wagner" completely cleared the area of ​​​​the meat processing plant and went to the local autodrome.
➖Simultaneously, Russian troops advance from Shchedraya Street from the south at Zabakhmutovka .
➖On the southern outskirts of the city, the "Wagnerites" increased the zone of control on Shchedraya and Karla Marksa streets, moving north along Independence Street.

▪️To the southwest, Russian forces are fighting on the outskirts of Krasnoe.

🔻Donetsk direction

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▪️In the Toretsk section , the Ukrainian command deployed additional forces to the area of ​​Toretsk and New York .

▪️In the Avdeevsky sector, the enemy is preparing for a counteroffensive in the direction of Novobakhmutovka .

▪️Fighting continues in Maryinka : Russian servicemen were able to advance along Kashtanova Street and clear residential buildings behind School No. 2.
➖To the south, units of the RF Armed Forces resumed the assault on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near the village of Pobeda . After the advance of the Russian troops, the enemy transferred additional equipment and was able to regain control over the lost territories.
➖The military personnel of the RF Armed Forces advanced east of Pobeda and northeast of Novomikhailovka , expanding the bridgehead for further offensive.

▪️In the Ugledar sector, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is pulling up reserves to the front line and preparing for a counterattack in the area of ​​dachas southeast of the city.

▪️Ukrainian formations continue to shell the settlements of the Donetsk agglomeration : residential buildings and civilian facilities in Yasinovataya , Gorlovka and Donetsk were also under attack . At least three people were injured.

🔻Southern front. Kherson direction:

▪️Artillery duels continue along the entire line of contact, with Russian forces hitting concentrations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Kherson , Chernobaevka , and Antonovka .

In turn, the enemy fired on the left bank of the Kherson region : civilian objects in Novaya Kakhovka , Gornostaevka and Cairo were damaged .

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***

forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
Military expert Boris Rozhin on the situation in the Artemovsk direction on the evening of March 06, 2023, specially for the Voenkor Kotenok Z @voenkorKotenok channel :

1. The grouping of the Armed Forces in Artemovsk is on the verge of operational encirclement. Roads are inaccessible during the day. The enemy carries out a partial withdrawal of troops along the route through the settlement. Khromovo dirt roads or just fields.

2. Muds already have a strong effect on the movement of equipment. Facts of getting stuck, abandoning equipment and destroying cars and columns to the west of Artyomovsk are noted.

3. Khromovo, Krasnoye and Dubovo-Vasilyevka are still controlled by the enemy. It is still too early to say that a cauldron has been formed. In the same way, this also applies to Bogdanovka, where we have not yet visited.

4. There is no monument to the plane yet, we have reached it. Zabakhmutka has not yet been taken all, pieces in the south and north are still controlled by the enemy. Promotion there is gradual, areas are being cleaned - the city is gradually passing under our control in the eastern part.

Today there was a video with a monument to Tankers, which was installed in 1971 in honor of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. The Wagner flag has already been hung there.

5. Prigozhin again reports supply problems, this story continues with the Ministry of Defense. It is not clear when and how it will end, however, progress is being made one way or another.

6. The losses of the enemy are significant. Officially, they are not going to leave, judging by the statements. But this can be a cover, because we see that it is the withdrawal of equipment from the city that is being carried out. After some time, the removal of equipment from there will not be possible. Obviously, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are taking measures to minimize losses in the material part.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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