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

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 10, 2022 1:02 pm

Russia announces its withdrawal from the city of Kherson
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 10/11/2022

Image

In the next few hours, Ukraine will recover the city of Kherson, the only Ukrainian regional capital beyond Donbass until now under Russian control. Yesterday, with a speech riddled with contradictions, the Defense Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergey Shoigu, gave the order to withdraw Russian troops from the right bank of the Dnieper to General Surovikin. With his words, Shoigu, not long ago one of the main candidates to succeed Vladimir Putin in the presidency at the end of his mandate, wanted to highlight that Russia has already evacuated 115,000 residents of the right bank, in what is the main success of the Russian performance in recent weeks. The minister also tried to combine a speech in which he stated that the front in the Kherson area has been stabilized with the idea that its defense is not possible. Until that moment, official Russian communications had stated that Russia continued to defeat every Ukrainian attempt to penetrate its lines. Just minutes after the confirmation of what was already an open secret, Ukraine raised its flag in a first area of ​​Snigirovka, where the Ukrainian attacks were supposedly being repelled.

The latest events cannot be considered a surprise but rather the logical conclusion to a series of problems that date back months. Last February, the Russian advance in the southern zone was rapid. At that time, in an accumulation of defections and decisions aware of the need to leave areas where the Ukrainian Armed Forces were in inferiority against a Russian Army whose shortcomings had not been revealed, Ukraine correctly chose to prioritize the defense of his capital. While Ukraine succeeded in halting the Russian advance on the suburbs of kyiv and preventing the city from being besieged, thus thwarting Russian plans to force the Ukrainian government to agree to a deal on Moscow's terms, Russian troops were rapidly advancing towards Mariupol and towards Kherson.

However, the success in preventing the siege of kyiv gave Ukraine credibility with its partners, who would quickly begin the flow of military and financial assistance, and a certain strength in negotiations even in the toughest moments. In the period between the first and second meetings between the Russian and Ukrainian representatives, one of the Ukrainian negotiators was killed by the SBU in a shootout. While military intelligence claimed that he had died a hero, the SBU called him a traitor to Ukraine. But despite the military defeats in the south and the evident difficulties in the capital, the kyiv government was able to maintain unity and the refusal to make territorial concessions. With the Ukrainian refusal to accept the terms proposed by Moscow, involving Russian withdrawal from all areas of Ukraine beyond Donbass and Crimea, Russia was forced to modify its plans and recalibrate its objectives. If at any time it was, thespecial military operation had already turned into an open war.

In the six months since, Russia, which has futilely clung to the rhetoric and naive goals of the special military operation,It has tried to maintain a front in which its troops have been overextended and in which they have not been able to advance or, what has been more serious, to consolidate a serious defense capable of responding to Ukrainian attacks. Ukraine, which withstood the first Russian onslaught with its own weapons and its own soldiers and was able to use the negotiation process to delay any Russian advance on cities like Nikolaev, managed to buy enough time to start receiving large amounts of of armament. In March, without military victories to boast of, he presented as successes of his troops the capture of positions in the kyiv and Chernigov regions abandoned by Russian troops,

In September, after a first offensive on Kherson that ended with hospitals in Nikolaev overwhelmed by Ukrainian soldiers, kyiv achieved its greatest military success on the battlefield with the victory over Russian troops in Kharkov. While in Moscow, outside of reality, the reconstruction of the Saur Mogila monument in the DPR was celebrated with fireworks, the Ukrainian troops expelled the Russians from Balakleya and forced a hasty withdrawal from such important towns as Kupiansk and Izium.

Behind Oskol's back, logistics complicated the defense of the area. This was how the rapid abandonment of an area in which the representative of United Russia had personally affirmed to the population that Russia had come to stay forever was explained. This precedent made the defense of Kherson unlikely, behind a much more important river, the Dnieper. The changes made in these weeks, fundamentally the appointment of General Surovikin as head of the troops and the start of attacks against critical infrastructure in Ukraine, have bought time to, according to information on the ground, relatively stabilize the Lugansk front. Ukraine has not managed to repeat the Kharkov lightning offensive there and the Russian and Republican troops have managed, for the time being,

On the Kherson front, the last few weeks have shown a change in Russian tactics, which has started from accepting reality beyond a discourse of strength that has long since failed to correspond to reality. In his first public appearance since his appointment, General Surovikin made clear the plight of troops on the right bank of the Dnieper River, whose bridges have been bombed by Ukraine for months, further complicating already difficult logistics. Surovikin did not rule out making "difficult decisions". Russia began the evacuation of the population from the right bank of the Dnieper and later from part of the left bank, at risk of being flooded in the event of an explosion of the Kajovka reservoir. There was already talk of the only two possibilities: the evacuation of the population to ensure the defense of the city of Kherson without risking thousands of lives or withdrawal. This new defeat occurs again when there is no good news in any part of the front. Since July, Russia has been trying to attack, so far without success, the city of Artyomovsk and the Seversk-Soledar line. The great destruction is known, but not the number of casualties that is accumulating in this failed frontal assault strategy. The retreat from Kherson sheds light on the hasty and disastrous Pavlovka-Ugledar offensive, which, as Alexander Khodakovsky foretold, could not succeed without a larger operation in Ugledar. It is likely that Russia sought a victory, however temporary,

Yesterday's speech by Minister Shoigu, together with the transfer of the Kherson regional administration to Genichesk, the city in the Kherson region closest to Crimea, confirmed the Russian withdrawal. A withdrawal that will not be easy and in which there have already been victims. Moscow-appointed deputy governor of Kherson, Kiril Stremousov, died yesterday in a traffic accident in the outskirts of Genichesk, the last city on mainland Ukraine before the move to Crimea.

In recent days, as a Russian withdrawal from Kherson has become more likely, several media have mentioned the existence of negotiations between Russia and the United States and have linked the visit to kyiv of Andrew Sullivan, US national security adviser, to the restart of diplomacy. This speech raised the recovery of Kherson as a prerequisite. From there, with the Dnieper as a border, a ceasefire could be consolidated in a situation in which Ukraine would not give up the southern territories, would continue to receive weapons from its partners and electricity from the Energodar nuclear power plant, under Russian control. . Russia, which yesterday expressed its willingness to negotiate with Ukraine "taking into account the realities on the ground", would be forced to reach an agreement with serious reminiscences of the Minsk agreement, signed by Ukraine at its weakest point. As then, it is unlikely that an agreement under these conditions could be respected. Russia is now in its most vulnerable position, while Ukraine publicly and repeatedly reaffirms that its negotiation demands have not changed and will only accept Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territories along the borders inherited from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Ukraine refuses even to believe in the Russian withdrawal and continues to speak of a Russian ploy to invite the Armed Forces of Ukraine into a death trap in the city of Kherson. Nothing indicates that this will be the case, quite the opposite: Russia seems to have accepted the impossible of defending those positions and chooses to withdraw instead of condemning Kherson to a scenario similar to that of Mariupol. In the months in which it has enjoyed control over the area, the Russian Federation has failed to expand the security zone, exposing Kherson and the bridges linking the city with the Left Bank to Ukrainian artillery, nor has it managed to consolidate a viable defense in the city and surrounding areas.

In addition to the political risks involved in withdrawing from a city that Moscow proclaimed Russian two months ago, the withdrawal entails significant military dangers. Once Kherson is controlled, which Ukraine will receive without a large part of the pro-Russian population, which fled weeks ago, kyiv will have the ability to allocate its reserves to other areas of the front. The direction towards Melitopol or Berdyansk, trying to split the Russian territory in two in the south, could be the most dangerous for Russia, which will have to determine which is the front line that it considers politically and militarily capable of defending.

Until now, Russia has explained its military failures based on three ideas: the numerical superiority of kyiv; foreign support, which has made Moscow try to present the conflict as a confrontation against the whole of NATO and not against Ukraine, and the alleged large presence of foreign mercenaries (especially Poles). To this he has always added, generally without evidence, that Ukraine is suffering an enormous number of casualties, a strategy that is nothing more than the repetition of the Ukrainian discourse when it was its troops that were in retreat. In defeat, Russia has persistently found an explanation. However, so far, it has not always been able to find a solution.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/11/10/rusia ... more-25909

Google Translator

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

The Pullout From Kherson

The Russian command decided to remove its troops in the Kherson region from the left bank of the Dnieper.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu did not look happy when he gave the order. He knows that another such setback will cost him his job.

Image

This move looks bad.

That alone will have consequences. The Ukrainians, the Biden administration and the European supporter of Ukraine will be emboldened by this. The support in Russia for the war will shrink. Some people in Russia will start to call for President Putin's head. There is no danger though that they will get it.

This move is operationally sound.

From the military point of view there is little chance to withstand a serious attack in the region as the resupply across the Dnieper river is very difficult and can not be guaranteed. Moreover the possible breach of the Dnieper river dams would make any resupply impossible for at least a week or even longer. That would be enough time for the Ukrainians to slaughter whatever number of Russian troops were left behind.

Strategically the move is bad.

It closes for now the possibility of moving into Nikolaev (Mykolaiv) and further towards Odessa. This could have and should have been done earlier. But the Russian commanded did not commit sufficient forces for that fight. There were also sound reason for not doing that. Now it is too late to criticize those decisions.

It is quite possible that, behind the scene, a deal has been made over this. If one was made we are unlikely to learn of it anytime soon.

The priorities now should be to get the soldiers and equipment out of the area. It will require intense air defense coverage to prevent the close down of ferry points by Ukrainian artillery. There is no reason to make it easy for the Ukraine to regain the area. Until the evacuation is done any significant Ukrainian move into the area should be responded to with effective artillery fire.

Soon the Ukrainian army will start to move troops prepared for an attack in Kherson to other front lines. Russia must likewise move its troops to reinforce its positions elsewhere.

Morale requires that the next Russian move has to be big push with strategic significance. The concept of deep battle and deep operations should be reapplied. Historically it has nearly always worked to Russia's advantage.

But the big push does not need to be solely militarily. A further significant damage of Ukraine's economy via its electricity network is an additional option. To severely interdict its supply lines from the west is another one.

We need to look at the big picture.

The world is moving away from a unilateral 'western' led model towards a new multilateral future. By waging war in Ukraine Russia initiated and accelerated this historic change. In sight of that the pullback from Kherson is just a minor tactical loss. It can and likely will be rectified by moves happening elsewhere.

Posted by b on November 10, 2022 at 10:42 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/11/t ... l#comments

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

Russian Kherson Withdrawal: Trap? Or Necessary Chess Move?

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 9, 2022



Russia’s Ministry of Defense has announced the withdrawal of Russian forces from Kherson city to the east bank of the Dnieper River.

This was alluded to 3 weeks ago by General Sergey Surovikin and for the purpose of weathering Ukraine’s all-or-nothing offensive while preserving Russian manpower and equipment.

While Russian forces have successfully defended the city until now, even the slightest possibility of Ukrainian forces overwhelming Russian troops on the wrong side of the river would result in a defeat of historic proportions.

Russia has now eliminated that possibility.

Meanwhile, Russian forces continue dismantling Ukraine’s national power grid, its air defense network, and what remains of its overstretched forces.

Ukraine fights for today’s headlines, Russia is fighting to win the long war.

References:

The New Atlas – Russian General Surovikin Speaks, Kherson Battle Looms, Drone/Missiles Strikes Continue (October 19, 2022): https://youtu.be/dH-0e4WA8Pc?t=760

RT – Russia to pull troops out of frontline city of Kherson – MOD: https://www.rt.com/russia/565869-russ

Al Jazeera – Ukrainian official says talk of Russian withdrawal from Kherson is premature (scroll down): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/livebl

Mikhailo Podolyak (Twitter) – reaction to Russian MOD announcement: https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... hess-move/

Ukraine War: No End in View
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 9, 2022
M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Image

The US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s meetings with Ukrainian leaders, including President Vladimir Zelensky, in Kiev has created a lot of confusion and misperceptions. One one side, the White House maintains that the trip aimed “to underscore the United States’ steadfast support to Ukraine and its people.” The readout stated that Sullivan also affirmed “the continued provision of economic and humanitarian assistance, as well as ongoing efforts with partners to hold Russia accountable for its aggression.”

However, unnamed US officials gave the spin that Sullivan’s real mission was to “nudge” Zelensky to negotiate with Moscow and urge that “Kyiv must show its willingness to end the war reasonably and peacefully.” Politico later reported that Zelensky indeed heeded Sullivan’s “soft nudging”. The US media also reported that the US officials have been nudging the Ukrainians for sometime.

The Washington Post reported last week that the Biden administration privately encouraged Ukrainian officials to show they are willing to engage in dialogue with Russia, in an acknowledgment of the growing frustration in the US and some of its allies at the cost and duration of the war. But, apparently, the Ukrainians pushed back.

Sullivan also added some spice to the media speculation by claiming on Monday that the US has channels to communicate with Russia at senior levels. The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported, citing unnamed US and Western officials, that Sullivan had allegedly held a series of confidential meetings recently with Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov and Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev on the conflict in Ukraine. (Moscow has not reacted to these reports.)

The heart of the matter is that Sullivan has been on a PR exercise in the run-up to the midterms in the US (November 8) in a concerted strategy aimed at countering the growing criticism among the Democrats and Republicans that the Biden Administration is avoiding the diplomatic track to try to end the war in Ukraine. In fact, all indications are that the Biden Administration is preparing for the long haul in Ukraine.

Stars and Stripes reported on Wednesday that a three-star general will lead a new Army headquarters in Germany called the Security Assistance Group Ukraine, or SAGU, that will include about 300 US service members responsible for coordinating security assistance for Ukraine. On Sunday, The New York Times had reported that Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto Jr., head of the First US Army headquarters at Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois, was a leading candidate for the new job.

The SAGU will be based out of US Army Europe and Africa headquarters in Wiesbaden. Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, told reporters the new command will “ensure we are postured to continue supporting Ukraine over the long term.” She added the US remains “committed to Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

It is improbable that Moscow has fallen for Sullivan’s dissimulation. There is reason to believe that Sullivan who is a thoroughbred neocon from the Clinton clan would only have urged Zelensky to expedite the planned Ukrainian offensive on Kherson, which has been in the limelight. The Biden Administration is badly in need of a success story from Ukraine as the newly-elected Congress convenes in January with a likely Republican Party majority in the House of Representatives.

No doubt, the Russians are taking the Ukrainian offensive in Kherson seriously. In a stunning announcement in Moscow on Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered a troop pullout from the western side of the Dnieper River in the Kherson Region. The fact that the Kremlin is risking criticism from the Russian public opinion for ordering such a retreat (from a region that is actually an integral part of Russia) underscores the gravity of the Ukrainian military threat. Zelensky is forcing Moscow to literally eat its words about the “demilitarisation” of Ukraine!

Zelensky continues to be in a belligerent mood. On Monday, Zelensky did make a peace offer but with five conditions for a settlement:

*Restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity;
*Russia respecting UN Charter on sovereignty and territorial integrity;
*Russia paying off all war reparations;
*Punishing each war criminal; and,
*Guarantees that such an invasion and atrocities will not happen again.

The only “concession” Zelensky made is that he didn’t mention his earlier precondition that President Vladimir Putin should relinquish office before any negotiations.

There is no end in view for the war in Ukraine. By the way, although the midterm elections are typically the point in a US presidential cycle where one expects to see top Cabinet members begin to turn over, there is no sign of that happening to Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Austin, 69, being a critical voice in the Ukraine conflict, who mobilised billions of dollars worth of military aid from around the world for Kiev, Biden anticipates that the war effort may only become more entrenched and this is not the time to change up the top ranks of the Pentagon.

Image

Indeed, the ground situation shows that the ongoing Russian operations in the areas of Ugledar and Bakhmut in Donetsk have run into strong resistance from Ukrainian forces, contrary to the Russian narrative Kiev’s military is a demoralised lot.

In particular, the advance of the Russians around Ugledar got stuck in the village of Pavlovka, located on the important crossroads, and in a fierce battle three days ago, reportedly, hundreds of Russian soldiers were killed. Putin’s decision to retreat in Kherson is probably meant to avoid a similar fate, as the Russians are experiencing logistical difficulties to supply their forces on the western side of Dnieper river.

Of course, this seamy picture is not the whole picture insofar as the phase of regrouping and resupplying following the Russian mobilisation is still a work in progress and the ongoing fighting in Donbass and Kherson is at the tactical level and does not involve any large movements of troops.

Equally, the intensive Russian strikes on Ukrainian depots, command centres and artillery and air-defence systems plus the destruction of Ukraine’s military-industrial facilities and energy system are yet to impact Kiev’s capacity to wage the war.

To be sure, the situation on the front lines in Kherson region remains extremely tense. The Ukrainian forces are on the prowl probing the Russian defence line incessantly to break through to capture the city of Kherson. A large-scale offensive by the Ukrainian forces on Kherson is to be expected any day. So far, Russian are holding their positions, repelling the ongoing Ukrainian attacks and fortifying their defences.

From Kherson, Ukrainian artillery can threaten Crimea. In the prognosis of Moscow’s close ally, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, “Challenging times are ahead of us. Next winter will be even harsher than this one because we’re facing the Battle of Stalingrad, the decisive battle in the conflict in Ukraine, the battle for Kherson.” He predicted that both sides are likely to deploy thousands of tanks, aircraft and artillery pieces in the struggle for the key city.

Vucic said, “The West thinks it’ll be able to ruin Russia that way, while Russia believes it’ll be able to defend what it secured at the start of the war and bring it to an end.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... d-in-view/

Short shelf life, huh?

The Ukrainian Conflict and the Nuclear Threat
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 9, 2022
Oleg Pavlov

Image

In the last few months the USA and its European allies (or de facto satellites), and US-controlled media, have been persistently and even obsessively speculating about Russia’s alleged plans to use tactical nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.

One of the most recent of these provocations was a story published in Britain’s Daily Mail, which claimed that Russian has already chose the target for a nuclear strike. The article cites a recent conversation between the Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. The French President was made nervous by statements made by Vladimir Putin, which he saw as a threat aimed at Ukraine.

Although in actual fact the Russian President’s words mean quite the opposite: as he has said on more than one occasion, and not only to Emmanuel Macron, the USA is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons, and that in doing so it set a precedent. Russia has also stressed a number of times that there are no political or military reasons why it should use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The circumstances in which Russian could use nuclear weapons are comprehensively listed in a document issued on June 20, 2020, the Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence. That document clearly states that Russia considers nuclear weapons “exclusively as a means of deterrence, their use being an extreme and compelled measure”. It also states that in the event of a military conflict, Russia’s policy provides for the termination of military actions on conditions that are acceptable for the Russian Federation.

The West has sought to relate the above passages to the war in Ukraine, taking no account either of the very limited circumstances in which Russia could use nuclear weapons or of the undertaking made by Russia and the other nuclear powers in the UN Security Council in a special statement issued on January 3, 2022. In that statement, issued before the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the five members of the UN Security Council stressed that they “consider the avoidance of war between Nuclear-Weapon States and the reduction of strategic risks as our foremost responsibilities”. The statement goes on to stress that “nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war”. In the document the signatories expressly declare that none of their nuclear weapons are targeted at each other or at any other State.

That could hardly be expressed any more clearly. The Russian government has also issued statements affirming this principle, as has the Chinese government, not least during the visit by the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to China, so why, one may ask, is the West persistently and stubbornly promoting nuclear scare stories.

The answer to that question may not be quite as simple as it might appear at first sight. Firstly, no-one in the West has forgotten the speech made by the Ukrainian President, Volodymir Zelensky, in the 58th Munich Security Conference, in which he directly stated that if the guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum did not agree to consultations and Ukraine was not offered any security guarantees, then Ukraine would have every right “to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all package decisions of 1994 have been put under question”. In other words, on February 20 this year, before the beginning of Russia’s special military operation, Ukraine raised the issue of relinquishing its nuclear-free status. It is therefore understandable that Russia was concerned that Ukraine might engage in secret operations to restore its nuclear potential in some way, possibly by making a so-called dirty nuclear bomb which could be used in a false flag operation as a pretext for accusing Russia of breaching its commitment in the UN Security Council statement issued on January 3.

Secondly, while they vary in content, the continuous scare stories about Russia’s alleged plans to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine serve as a cover enabling politicians and the media to probe Moscow’s intentions in relation to the conflict in Ukraine. Russia is continually being forced to deny baseless and far-fetched accusations on its alleged plans to use weapons of mass destruction, and the fact that Moscow is always having to justify itself gives other countries the mistaken impression that it is hiding something and has something up its sleeve. Ironically, it is widely known that after the end of the Second World War the Western powers, especially Britain, drew up detailed potential plans to attack the USSR using nuclear weapons (the now declassified Dropshot and Unthinkable plans).

And now, the unfounded rumors about Russia’s plans to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine are being used as a smokescreen to enable the further modernization of the USA’s nuclear arsenal in Europe and to threaten Russia. Moreover, the media furor is being used to distract attention from the USA’s plans to base nuclear weapons in Russia’s neighbors, including Poland and the NATO membership candidates Finland and Sweden.

Thirdly, well aware that nuclear weapons are a form of deterrent, the USA and its satellited are (or were until recently) genuinely concerned that their aggressive stance against Moscow, including in relation to the Ukrainian conflict (such as by supplying Ukraine with heavy weaponry, including long-range rocket systems, Western-made tanks and fighter aircraft) might be seen by the Russian government as threatening Russia’s security and justifying the use of nuclear weapons. In the last few months, the Russian government has offered many assurances that there is no question of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and as a result the West has concluded that the risk of Russian using weapons of mass destruction in any event is low, as is clear from the decision to base the US 101st Airborne Division in Romania, from where it could potentially be sent to Ukraine.

In response to the alleged risks of Russia using nuclear weapons, the US is working with Ukraine to deploy a force of submarines equipped with nuclear rockets, as well as aircraft carriers, both in the Mediterranean sea and in the waters off the British coast (at present well away from Russia, but still within the striking range of US nuclear rockets). This demonstration of US military force has clearly gone to the heads of Kiev’s politicians, who, emboldened by America’s unlimited military support, are puffing themselves up like male grouse in mating season and repeating their quite unrealistic call for the “total liberation” of Ukraine and its return to its 1991 borders. Volodymir Zelensky and his government have grouped around the slogan of “no negotiations with Moscow” and by cementing this position in law, they have forced themselves into a dead end.

Naturally, Volodymir Zelensky and his team need all the weapons and support from the West that they can get, and they are getting extremely wealthy in the process. He needs to draw out the conflict as long as possible, and is playing games with human lives and human suffering. But these speculations and the stories about Russia’s alleged plans to use nuclear weapons are the last think the people of Russia or Ukraine -especially the people of Ukraine, who are risking a winter without light or heating because of the unrealistic policies of their president and his Western allies.

Moscow’s message remains the same as in the past – we do not need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine and we are open to negotiation. Is it necessary to add anything to that?

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... ar-threat/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 10, 2022 11:41 pm

Russia’s Kherson Withdrawal is a Pyrrhic Ukrainian Victory
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 9, 2022
Scott Ritter, Sputnik

Image

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has ordered the withdrawal of Russian troops from parts of Kherson to form defensive positions on the left bank of the Dnepr River, after commander of all Russian forces in Ukraine Sergei Surovikin warned of Kiev’s plans to launch a massive missile attack on a local dam and indiscriminate strikes on civilians.

Speaking with Sputnik, Scott Ritter, a military analyst and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, has explained why the decision to relocate Russian troops to the left bank of the Dnepr River shouldn’t be viewed as a “Russian defeat,” but rather as a “pyrrhic Ukrainian victory.”

Sputnik: What are the main reasons for the Russian withdrawal from parts of Kherson? Is this a reasonable move, given circumstances such as the approaching winter?

Scott Ritter: I think the decision was made regardless of the weather. This is a decision that seemed to focus on preserving the lives of thousands of Russian soldiers over holding on to territory which has no intrinsic value in the short term. I think it was a just decision, one that was made based upon purely military objectives. I think the decision had been made because it was too difficult to reliably supply the Russian troops stationed on the right bank of the river in the vicinity of Kherson with the materiel necessary to ensure their victory over attacking Ukrainian forces and that ultimately these lives could be saved by going back to the left bank, securing their defensive positions and then holding off the Ukrainians, until such time Russia was able to accumulate sufficient offensive military power necessary to retake Kherson, reoccupy the right bank and possibly advance further into Ukraine.

Sputnik: What does Ukraine win and lose by occupying the right bank?

Ritter: First and foremost, this will be a very big political victory for Ukraine. There should be no doubt about this. Ukraine will be capturing or recapturing from their perspective the only major administrative center that had been captured by the Russians in their special military operation. The recapture of Kherson has been a strategic objective of the Zelensky government and the Ukrainian military from the start of their major counter-offensive in September. And if they are able to put troops in Kherson, raise the Ukrainian flag over the administrative buildings of Kherson, this will be seen as an extraordinarily important political victory for them, one which will be able to be used to argue for continued military and financial support from NATO, from the United States and from other nations.

But it’s a political victory only because unless the Ukrainian occupation of Kherson occured in partnership with a larger peace agreement that guaranteed them possession of Kherson in perpetuity, this is, I believe, simply a temporary state of affairs that ultimately, once Russia is able to assemble the totality of the 300,000 men that were mobilized and then carry out combat operations reflective of this new military capacity, that Russia will recapture Kherson, reoccupy the right bank of the Dnepr River and as I said before, have the possibility of advancing further into Ukraine up to and including the capture of the city of Odessa.

Sputnik: In his report to the defense minister, commander of Russian forces in Ukraine Surovikin pointed out that Ukraine’s losses are 7-8 times greater than Russia’s. Can Ukraine really continue to rely on rapid advances?

Ritter: This is ultimately the military math that must be considered by everybody who is assessing the situation. The fact of the matter is, Ukraine cannot continue to operate under conditions where it’s suffering seven to eight times casualties as their Russian opponents and expect to emerge from this conflict victorious. The casualty rate is too high. It’s unsustainable, and ultimately, if it continues, will lead to the strategic defeat of Ukraine.

This is why the Kherson operation must be viewed not as a Russians defeat, but as a pyrrhic Ukrainian victory, that means that Ukraine may have achieved a political victory, but the military cost that they take was too high, unsustainable and ultimately will lead to the defeat of Ukraine.

Sputnik: What does this move say about the Russian strategy? Is Moscow playing the long game in Ukraine? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a strategy?

Ritter: First and foremost, this should demonstrate to the Russian mothers, wives and daughters that the Russian government takes the lives of their loved ones, the men who have been sent into combat very seriously and is not willing to sacrifice them needlessly. That’s an extraordinarily important statement being made by the Russian government, where they are willing to accept short-term embarassment in exchange for preserving the lives of Russia’s most precious asset, which is its human resources, in this case, the men who wear the uniform of the Russian army.

It also shows that Russia is in no hurry to get this conflict over with, that Russia is willing to consolidate its defenses in order to preserve life potentially extending the conflict, but in a manner which allows Russia to gain the advantage at a time and place that’s more beneficial to Russia, so that not only will Russia ultimately achieve the military victory it seeks, but it will do so without needlessly sacrificing thousands of Russian military lives.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... n-victory/

(Edited to correct for 'irregardless'....proves Ritter is 'reglar american'. My old man used to say that, made me smile.)

***********

War in Ukraine. Summary 11/10/2022
November 10, 20:37

Image

War in Ukraine. Summary 11/10/2022

1. Kherson.
On the right bank, the withdrawal of troops from their current positions continues. Part of the forces has already been withdrawn to the left bank.
The enemy occupied more than 10 settlements by evening, including Snigirevka. In the area of ​​Aleksandrovka, a demining group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was destroyed.
The departure of civilians from Kherson continues, but the city itself is not yet controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as Beryslav. Establishing full control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is likely to take several days.
The RF Armed Forces are equipping additional positions on the left bank. Antonovsky bridge, most likely, will be undermined in the next 1-2 days.

2. Donetsk direction.
In Avdiivka, Vodyany, Pervomaisky - no significant changes.
The battles for the fortified areas in Opytny continue.
The enemy continues shelling the Donetsk-Gorlovka agglomeration.

3. Ugledar direction.
Our troops took Pavlovka. There is a cleanup going on. The enemy is trying to counterattack and regain control over Pavlovka.
Fighting continues near Novomikhailovka.
Whether there will be a further attack on Ugledar itself is still unclear.

4. Artemovsk.
Fights continue for Experienced and in the direction of Kurdyumovka. There are small shifts in our favor.
There are also battles on the outskirts of Artemovsk itself.
You can not wait until the capture of the Experienced assault on the city.

5. Soledar.
After the capture of Bakhmutsky, our troops increase pressure on the enemy in Soledar itself.
To the north of the city, the battles for Belogorovka continue, according to various estimates, our troops control 40-50% of the village. The enemy stubbornly resists.

6. Matchmaking.
In general, the situation has not undergone significant changes. All enemy attacks were repulsed with losses for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Armed Forces of Ukraine could not break through to the Svatovo-Kremennaya highway. However, there are signs of preparations for new attacks in the direction of the track, so intense fighting will clearly continue here.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/69887 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7965752.html

Google Translator

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

THE ELECTRICITY IS OUT IN ODESSA BUT THE LIGHTS ARE UNDIMMED

Image

By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

The news from Odessa, the third city of the Ukraine and its leading port, is there is almost no news.

This has strategic significance. It means there is no Russian plan for a battle for Odessa, no artillery, missile, air, or naval attack on the city. The Odessans know this, and they appreciate it privately.

Instead, sources say different things to different callers. “There is a fear of being misunderstood, misinterpreted, or overheard,” says one source. “Everyone I talk to is very guarded recently on phone calls. Everyone says some template words. It’s difficult to have a good frank and free conversation. They will say all the Zelensky-friendly or Putin-hostile things to a US or British reporter. When they speak in Russian though, there is ambiguity, caution, double meaning.”

The only talkative source from inside the city is DTEK, the national electric utility owned by Rinat Akhmetov, which is issuing daily bulletins and customer notices advising power outages and blackout schedules. https://dtek.com/en/

The Odessa Journal, the English language publication of the city, has not been publishing local news, deciding instead to republish national media bulletins originating in Kiev. A search of Strana.ua, vilified in Kiev as pro-Russian, reveals almost no Odessa-source coverage.

A city source, a well-informed journalist, says off the record there is “no need” because there is an understanding among the city residents there will be no Russian attack on the city itself, and the city residents and administration are confident this is the Kremlin’s intention. “Right now we think Odessa is protected because of the grain corridor”, and the terms of agreement between Russia, Turkey, the United Nations, and Kiev.

Politically, the source adds, the city is split down the middle: the evidence is clear in the public reaction to attempts by anti-Russian groups to attack the statue of Catherine II (lead images) in the old city centre and force its demolition or removal.

The digital vote in favour, announced in the Kiev and western media, was fabricated, the source says. “Registration to vote was very strange. It was impossible for many people to vote. In reality, 50% of the population are in favour of removal; 50% are in favour of the statue remaining. There has been a big intrigue, and there are some very aggressive members of the city council using the situation for their own PR. Right now, the statue is covered so as not to be damaged [lead image, right]. In the current situation people just want to do something.”

The city council headed by Gennady Trukhanov — narrowly elected mayor in 2020 — is scheduled to meet and vote its decision on November 30. But there is a compromise formula in negotiation, the source reveals, between the pro-Russian and anti-Russian factions, in order to bridge the deep division in the city at large.

In the meantime, protection of civility between the factions, like the black cover over the Catherine statue, has been agreed. No news from Odessa means this is the news.

Since the Russian strikes against the power infrastructure countrywide on October 22, the loss of power in Odessa has been significant. Six autotransformer and substation control points were targeted that day.

A DTEK official for the Odessa network acknowledged that “rolling power outages” were likely in the city until next March. “The use of shutdown schedules is becoming our daily routine,” Dmitry Grigoriev of DTEK announced. “Therefore we are trying to take simple steps for our clients to understand what is happening.” That was on November 3.

Two days before, DTEK had told Odessa consumers that “updated schedules of rolling power outages have been introduced. Also, people are asked to save electricity during the hours when there is light in order to avoid emergency shutdowns…. To find out when there will be no light in your house, you need to enter your data on the company’s website…You need to specify the name of the street, the house number, after that you will find out your group and the time of possible absence of light. If the time is not determined at your address, there will probably be no disconnection in your house… there may be a small time error within 30 to 40 minutes for reconnecting the power supply between groups… Due to terrorist attacks by Russians on infrastructure, people were urged to save electricity as much as possible, turn on energy-intensive devices alternately and reduce electricity consumption as much as possible in the morning from 06:00 to 11:00 and in the evening from 17:00 to 23:00.”

Through Grigoriev’s press conference, DTEK has warned that 12-hour blackouts have become possible. “Outages are planned for no more than four hours in a row, but several times a day. There is no need to apply shutdown schedules yet, but you need to be ready for them. In Odessa, they are only planning restrictions three times a day… Currently, a lot of work has been done by DTEK employees to adjust schedules to make them socially fair. Thus, electricity will be supplied at least by the hour, but absolutely to everyone. Depending on the day, blackouts will occur at different times of the day. The schedule provides for intervals with disconnection of 4 hours, but there may be force majeure, because the equipment also fails, [Grigoriev] noted. ‘Today, there are already agreements with Ukrenergo, according to which DTEK will be informed during the day how much electricity will need to be given the next day. Thus, it will be clear how much the graph needs to be applied. But this is provided that there will be no new destruction.’”

Image
Left: Odessa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov; right, DTEK Odessa chief, Dmitry Grigoriev. Follow the daily country coverage at the Strana.ua telegram channel and in English.

Since Grigoriev on November 3, the only explosion several city sources have mentioned by telephone, or the social media reported, occurred on November 6. That was when an anti-ship mine, probably of Ukrainian origin but reported in Kiev to be Russian, washed ashore, and was then detonated by a local bomb squad. The only source for another recent explosion inside Odessa is Boris Rozhin’s Colonel Cassad website and Telegram channel; his report of this was dated October 16.

Image
Source: Strana.ua

The regional Ukrainian military command also issued a fresh advisory to Odessans: “We remind you that the mine danger is one of the risks to which you expose yourself by neglecting the restrictions of visiting the coastal zone during martial law. The radius of the debris damage of such a projectile can reach 100 meters. And a mine can detonate involuntarily in the immediate vicinity of water.”

The bellwether for Odessans of what happens next is the Catherine statue. Strana.ua has reported that the electronic vote for demolition was 3,914.

On November 5, after announcing this result of the poll, Mayor Trukhanov appeared to confirm the vote of the “majority [sic] of Odessa citizens… For my part, I have already appealed to the relevant committee of the City Council with a request to hold a meeting and prepare an appropriate draft decision.” Suspicion of vote rigging has been widely published in the local Telegram channels. There commentaries acknowledge the pressure Trukhanov is under from Kiev. “Earlier, the Analytical Centre of the Kiev Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine on countering hybrid threats stated that the Mayor of Odessa Gennady Trukhanov shows insufficient hatred for Russia.” Following that warning Trukhanov, who has opposed demolishing the statue until now, changed his public line.

There is a compromise, according to the journalist source. This is for the official Ukrainian application for UNESCO protection of the city centre to include the Catherine statue, as well as all other monuments inside the geographical boundary of the site which has been designated. President Vladimir Zelensky made the application in a speech to the UNESCO Executive Board on October 11.

“The city centre has to be protected by UNESCO,” according to the source. “This means the square [Catherine Square, with the Catherine statue] should be protected by UNESCO. We have a lot of heritage so what about the other statues? The statue of the Duc de Richelieu, for example. France did bad things in [Crimea], and Richelieu was French; he was the founder of the city, and he was an officer in the Russian imperial army. The statue of the duke was the first statue in the city. So we ask where is the logic of this outcome [removing Catherine, not Richelieu]?”

Richelieu was governor of Odessa from 1803 to 1814. He then returned to France where he was prime minister twice, the second term ending in 1821; he died the next year. His statue was unveiled in Odessa in 1828. The Catherine statue was first erected, with those of other city founders, in 1893. It was dismantled in 1920; then re-erected in 2007.

Image
Left: the first inauguration of the 1893 Catherine statue. Right: the 1828 statue of the Duc de Richelieu on Primorsky Bulvar.

“The people who are shouting to get rid of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union” the source said — “it’s not because they are such patriots. They forget this city was founded in the Russian Empire. We also have a lot of heritage from the Soviet times, ” the source adds. “You need to remove a third of the city – the statues of [Isaac] Babel and [Anna] Akhmatova. We don’t support this kind of nationalist stuff. This is a sad truth.”

http://johnhelmer.net/the-electricity-i ... more-70144

***********

Let’s Be Clear: If WW3 Happens It Will Be The Result Of Choices Made By The US Empire

Image

The commander of the US nuclear arsenal has stated unequivocally that the war in Ukraine is just a warmup exercise for a much larger conflict that’s already in the mail.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports:

The commander that oversees US nuclear forces delivered an ominous warning at a naval conference last week by calling the war in Ukraine a “warmup” for the “big one” that is to come.



“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of US 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.”



Richard’s warning came after the US released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which reaffirms that the US doctrine allows for the first use of nuclear weapons. The review says that the purpose of the US nuclear arsenal is to “deter strategic attacks, assure allies and partners, and achieve US objectives if deterrence fails.”


Not only does Richard appear to believe that a hot war between major world powers is a foregone conclusion, he has also previously stated that a nuclear war with Russia or China is now “a very real possibility.”


Again, this is not some armchair warrior opining from his desk at a corporate newspaper or DC think tank, this is the head of STRATCOM. Richard would be personally overseeing the very warfare he is talking about.

What I find most striking about remarks like these is how passive they always make it sound. Richard talks about “The Big One” like other people talk about California earthquakes, as though a hot war with China would be some kind of natural disaster that just happened out of nowhere.

This type of rhetoric is becoming more and more common. Describing an Atomic Age world war as something that would happen to the US empire, rather than the direct result of concrete A-or-B decisions made by the empire, is becoming its own genre of foreign policy punditry.

This passive, oopsy-poopsy narrative overlay that’s placed atop the US empire’s militarism is nothing new. Back in 2017 Fair.org’s Adam Johnson documented the way western media are always describing the United States as “stumbling” into wars and getting “sucked in” to military interventions, like a cheating spouse making up bad excuses after getting caught:

This framing serves to flatter two sensibilities: one right and one vaguely left. It satisfies the right-wing nationalist idea that America only goes to war because it’s compelled to by forces outside of its own control; the reluctant warrior, the gentle giant who will only attack when provoked to do so. But it also plays to a nominally liberal, hipster notion that the US military is actually incompetent and boobish, and is generally bad at war-making.

This is expressed most clearly in the idea that the US is “drawn into” war despite its otherwise unwarlike intentions. “Will US Be Drawn Further Into Syrian Civil War?” asked Fox News (4/7/17). “How America Could Stumble Into War With Iran,” disclosed The Atlantic (2/9/17), “What It Would Take to Pull the US Into a War in Asia,” speculated Quartz (4/29/17). “Trump could easily get us sucked into Afghanistan again,” Slate predicted (5/11/17). The US is “stumbling into a wider war” in Syria, the New York Times editorial board (5/2/15) warned. “A Flexing Contest in Syria May Trap the US in an Endless Conflict,” Vice News (6/19/17) added.

Image

So let’s get real clear about this here and now: if there is a hot war between the US and a major power, it will not be because that war was “stumbled into”. It will not be like an earthquake or other natural disaster. It will not be something that happens to or is inflicted upon the US empire while it just passively stands there in Bambi-eyed innocence.

It will be the result of specific choices made by the managers of empire. It will be the result of the US choosing escalation over de-escalation, brinkmanship over detente — not just once but over and over again, while declining off-ramp after off-ramp. It will be the result of real material decisions made by real material people who live in real material houses while collecting real material paychecks to make the choices they are making.

Another thing that strikes me about comments like those made by Charles Richard is how freakish and insane it is that everyone doesn’t respond to them with, “Okay, well, then let’s change all of the things we are doing, because that’s the worst thing that can possibly happen.”

And make no mistake: that absolutely is an option. The option to turn away from the collision course with potentially the most horrific war of all time is available right now, and it will remain available for some time into the future. This isn’t 1939 when war is already upon us; if anything it’s more like the early 20th century precursors to World War I and all the stupid aggressions and entanglements which ultimately gave rise to both world wars.

One of the many ways our cultural fascination with World War II has made us stupid and crazy is that it has caused us to forget that it was the worst single event in human history. Even if a hot war with Russia and/or China didn’t go nuclear, it would still unleash unspeakable horrors upon this Earth which would reverberate throughout our collective consciousness for generations.

That horror should be turned away from. And the time to start turning is now.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/11/07 ... us-empire/

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

From Cassad's Telegram account:

***

Colonelcassad
Special operation, 10 November. The main thing from RIA Novosti:

▪️The Ministry of Defense announced the implementation of the maneuver of the Russian group of troops to prepared positions on the left bank of the Dnieper in accordance with the plan.

▪️The acting governor of the Kherson region, Saldo, said that the entire territory of the region would definitely be part of Russia.

▪️Pavlovka in the DPR, where fighting has been going on in recent days, is 90% liberated from Ukrainian troops, Pushilin said.

▪️Putin instructed to bring the standards for providing the army with material resources in line with the needs that arise during the special operation.

▪️The President also instructed to form a mechanism for the rapid exchange of information between the military and arms manufacturers.

▪️The State Duma adopted a law on the status of a veteran for volunteers participating in a special operation.

▪️Erdogan said that Ankara's mediation efforts on Ukraine are continuing, there are no specific deadlines now.

▪️The United States has announced a new $400 million military aid package to Ukraine that includes Avenger air defense systems and munitions, including for HIMARS.

***

Forwarded from
Ostashko! Important
🇵🇱🇷🇺🇺🇦Polish General Benek on the situation in Kherson: Russians are luring Ukrainians into a trap

Polish General Mieczysław Benek does not believe in the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson. He announced this in an interview with Gazeta.pl .

“We are dealing with a simulated retreat,” he said, adding that the whole thing looked “very suspicious . ”

The general believes that a possible scenario is a partial retreat and the abandonment of "traps" - mines and hidden firing positions.

“The question is whether they will fall for this trick ,” Benek said.

(I must admit, I find the way Russia has 'advertised' this withdrawal odd as it just begs for a concentration of artillery 'arrivals' on the river crossing. )

***

Colonelcassad

Image

The situation in the Starobelsk direction as of November 10,

2022 at 11:00 a.m. More than a dozen unsuccessful attempts to storm the Svatovo - Kremennaya line cost the Armed Forces huge losses. Brigadier General Perets

, commander of the Liman OTG of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, conducts a personal inspection of the forward positions to assess the situation and the group’s ability to attack in the north of the LPR. Yesterday Pepper arrived in the area of ​​the village of Nevskoe .

🔻In the Kupyansky sector, UAV crews of the 14th ombr of the Armed Forces of Ukraine use reconnaissance drones to track the activities of the RF Armed Forces in the area of ​​​​Olshany and Kislovka .

🔻In the Svatovsky area, combined units of the 22nd battalion of the 92nd OMB and the 233rd battalion of the 128th troop of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, with the support of artillery and aviation, attacked the positions of the RF Armed Forces in Kuzemovka . Russian troops repelled the attack.

▪️Due to the massive shelling of Ukrainian positions in the Peschanoe area , fire detachments of MANPADS are operating. And in the vicinity of Novoselovsky , a maneuver group of the RER of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was deployed.

🔻In the Limansky sector, assault detachments of the 66th Ombre and 25th Ombre of the Armed Forces of Ukraine conducted reconnaissance in combat in the direction of Krasnopopovka . The movement of the Ukrainian formations was revealed by the UAV operators and a blow was dealt to the advancing group.

🔻In the Lisichansky sector, several detachments of the 80th Airborne Brigade and armored vehicles of the 81st Airmobile Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were deployed to the Serebryanka - Belogorovka line.

🔻In total, over the past day, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost 13 people killed and 26 wounded, one tank, four armored combat vehicles, one infantry fighting vehicle and three pickup trucks were destroyed.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 11, 2022 1:16 pm

After Kherson
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 11/11/2022

Image

In a context of pessimism or concern caused by the events in Kherson, which in addition to the military consequences mean that tens of thousands of people who have crossed to the left bank of the Dnipro River are now refugees, Russia announced yesterday the capture of the town of Pavlovka. Although this advance cannot compensate for the territorial losses in the western part of the front, any advance is a positive sign if it manages to consolidate. This was not the case last June, when the troops, exposed to Ukrainian artillery, were forced to fall back to save their lives. As explained by the founder of the Vostok battalion, Alexander Khodakovsky, at the beginning of this local offensive, its success really depends on the destruction of the advantageous Ukrainian positions in Ugledar.

Although there are still two places on the front where the Russian troops are trying to maintain a certain offensive character, Pavlovka-Ugledar and Artyomovsk, the main task right now, abandoned and on the right bank of the Dnieper, is to continue preparing what should be the new line of defense of Russian troops on the left bank, territory that protects Crimea. A few days ago, Russian media referred to the construction of defenses around the city of Mariupol, far from the front and less exposed to attacks and offensives than other points, mainly Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south and the north of Lugansk in the part easternmost front.

This construction of the defense is also one of the main topics covered by the Russian media, in which different experts seek to analyze what happened, foresee what may happen from now on, and give some insights into the current process.

Original Article: Vzglyad

As it has become known, over the last month, Russian troops have erected three defense structures on the left bank of the Dnieper River. As military analyst Yuri Podoliaka explained to Vzglyad , analyzing the situation in the Kherson area and the retreat to the other side of the Dnieper, it is to be expected that the opponent will go from trying to break the front in Kherson to doing so in Zaporozhie.

“The main defense node on the left bank of the Dnieper is the city of Novaya Kakhovka, since this town is located next to the Kakhovkaya power plant. It will become a point of penetration for both sides. That is, this point will be the place that the enemy will definitely try to enter,” he predicted. The same can be said for the Antonovsky Bridge over the Dnieper, which connects Antonovka, a southern suburb of Kherson, with the city of Tsiurupinsk on the left bank. "Actually, these positions are the key to maintain," Podoliaka insisted.

"According to what I know, there are three lines of defense: concrete structures have been created over the last month," added the expert, who believes that after the consolidation of Russian troops on the left bank, there will be no active attempts by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to break into that area, which “will be a passive direction”.

“The Ukrainian Army is trying to transfer its shock units to the Zaporozhye area to attack Melitopol, although I doubt if they will be successful. There are no logistical problems there, the situation is different from that of Kherson”, he added. According to Podoliaka, the massive actions will be directed to the north. As he had previously explained on RuTube , on Thursday the situation in the northern part of the front - in the Svatovo and Ugledar area - was stable.

“Kherson has been abandoned. Now it all depends on how much the opponent wants to capitalize on it. The Armed Forces of Ukraine will do the same as us - organize defense, because it is difficult to attack across the Dnieper. They will have the exact same logistical problems,” he explained. “Attacking across the Dnieper and advancing on Crimea is suicidal. As for Kherson, right now, according to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, it is Russian territory. So some measures will have to be taken to get the city back,” Podoliaka believes. “But for the moment, taking into account the existing circumstances, the main thing is to focus on Donbass. That is, finish the operation to release the RPD. Then deal with the Kharkov area and only then aspire to recover the right bank of the Dnieper”, concluded Podoliaka.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/11/11/25916/#more-25916

Google Translator

********

Si tacuisses, ...

Russian retreat from Kherson city sets stage for more hard combat
Washington Post - Nov 10, 2022

U.S. Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday night that 20,000 to 30,000 Russian forces remained on the western bank of the river and that it would take time for them to withdraw. But he, too, saw “initial indicators” that the retreat was underway, he said.
“This won’t take them a day or two,” Milley said, speaking at an event at the Economic Club of New York. “This is going to take them days and maybe even weeks to pull those forces south of that river.”

---
The Ministry of Defense reported on the completion of the withdrawal of troops from Kherson
Kommersant (machine translation) - Nov 11, 2022

The Ministry of Defense reported that at 5:00 Moscow time, the transfer of Russian troops to the left bank of the Dnieper was completed. As the agency clarifies, not a single piece of military equipment and weapons was left on the right bank.
The department reports that the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried at night to disrupt the transportation of civilians and the transfer of troops to the left bank of the Dnieper. River crossings were hit five times by HIMARS rockets.

“All Russian military personnel crossed over, no losses of personnel, weapons, equipment and materiel of the Russian group were allowed,” the Ministry of Defense said.


Posted by b on November 11, 2022 at 10:29 UTC | Permalink

***********

Antonovsky bridge all
November 11, 11:38

Image

Destroyed spans of the Antonovsky bridge in Kherson.

Image

Image


The TV tower in Kherson was also destroyed.

Image

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7967301.html

Google Translator

*********

Image
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan shake hands during their meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, November 4, 2022

The U.S. faces increasing resistance from Europe over escalating the Ukraine conflict
Originally published: Morning Star Online on November 2022 by Morning Star Online Staff (more by Morning Star Online) | (Posted Nov 10, 2022)

THE People’s Assembly demonstration this weekend was a welcome return to the mass politics of the streets and a valuable first challenge to the austerity programme that the Tories are carefully constructing.

We must guard the flame of revolt–the convergence of anti-war sentiment and outright rejection of austerity–that drove the extraordinary 2017 election result and the mass movement associated with it.

We are in a different situation today. The crisis, revealed by the 2008 financial crash, has no long-term resolution and the war in Ukraine is reaching a stalemate.

These are grim times.

Civilians have been evacuated from the Ukrainian city of Kherson where a battle threatens to rain down further unnecessary destruction, but which will not change the military situation very much.

Much of the vacuous hyperbole about the runaway success of the Ukrainian advance has given way to a more realistic understanding that there is no likely resolution of the conflict on the terms which the Kiev government still demands.

The bulk of the Ukrainian regions now incorporated into Russia will not be returned to Ukrainian sovereignty except by negotiation and as a concession by Russia.

If the war cannot end by military victory, it can only end by negotiation and compromise. Amid the brain-dead bipartisan posturing that characterises British parliamentary politics–with anti-war voices silenced by an extraordinary Keir Starmer diktat–there is, nevertheless, a stirring of realistic thinking.

When Liz Truss took office earlier this month her defence minister said defence spending would be doubling annually to £100 billion ($107bn) compared with the present level of £48bn.

In his first act, Rishi Sunak refused to confirm the rise in defence spending.

This is a subtle repudiation of U.S. pressure for European states to ramp up military spending. It may be forced on the government by the extent of its financial crisis but it is a telling move nevertheless.

We are in a very contradictory situation with Britain insulated from shifts in European politics, a difference sharply illustrated by the narrow decision by the TUC to endorse increased defence spending.

In Italy 100,000 people have taken to the streets in a demonstration for peace. Inevitably it was shot through with contradictory tendencies that reveal the diversity of anti-Nato thinking that exists in every part of the Italian political spectrum.

Notably, Enrico Letta, the leader of the Partito Democratico, came under intense criticism for his two-faced policy which saw him on a peace demonstration but committed to ramping up arms exports to Ukraine.

In recent weeks enormous manifestations of anti-Nato and anti-EU opinion have taken place in Paris and Prague, while many similar protests in German cities have made clear a popular rejection of the energy prices that Germans are being encouraged to pay while Nato’s war is fought to the last Ukrainian.

To point out that these extremely heterodox demonstrations have included and in some cases were in initiated by nationalist and right-wing elements is simply to illustrate that there are real contradictions between the U.S. strategy and the interests of sections of European capital and that universal public support for never-ending war is absent.

Words are cheap but the statistics illustrating the difference between rhetoric and reality in the military aid given to Ukraine are telling. The U.S. has spent over $25bn, many times the amount the rest of Nato states combined. It is a U.S. enterprise to which European states have surrendered much of their independence of action.

Who, but the U.S. foreign policy establishment and the arms dealers, wants this war on our continent?

https://mronline.org/2022/11/10/the-u-s ... -conflict/

Image

Getting closer
Originally published: New Left Review - Sidecar on November 7, 2022 by Wolfgang Streeck (more by New Left Review - Sidecar) | (Posted Nov 10, 2022)

On 17 October, Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz invoked his constitutional privilege under Article 65 of the Grundgesetz to ‘determine the guidelines’ of his government’s policy. Chancellors do this rarely, if at all; the political wisdom is three strikes and you’re out. At stake was the lifespan of Germany’s last three nuclear power plants. As a result of Merkel’s post-Fukushima turn, intended to pull the Greens into a coalition with her party, these are scheduled by law to go out of service by the end of 2022. Afraid of nuclear accidents and nuclear waste, and also of their well-to-do middle-class voters, the Greens, now governing together with SPD and FDP, refused to give up their trophy. The FDP, on the other hand, demanded that given the current energy crisis, all three plants—accounting for about six percent of the domestic German electricity supply—be kept in operation as long as needed, meaning indefinitely. To end the fighting, Scholz issued an order to the ministries involved, formally declaring it government policy that the plants continue until mid-April next year, par ordre du mufti, as German political jargon puts it. Both parties knuckled under, saving the coalition for the time being.

The Greens—recently called ‘the most hypocritical, aloof, mendacious, incompetent and, measured by the damage they cause, the most dangerous party we currently have in the Bundestag’ by the indestructible Sahra Wagenknecht—are rather more afraid of nuclear power than nuclear arms. Anesthetized by the rapidly rising number of Green fellow-travellers in the media and mesmerized by fantasies of Biden delivering Putin to The Hague to stand trial in the international criminal court, the German public refuses to consider the damage nuclear escalation in Ukraine would cause, and what it would mean for the future of Europa and, for that matter, Germany (a place many German Greens do not consider particularly worth protecting anyway). With few exceptions, German political elites, as well as their agitprop mainstream press, know or pretend to know nothing about either the current state of nuclear arms technology or the role assigned to the German military in the nuclear strategy and tactics of the United States.

As post-Zeitenwende Germany increasingly declares itself ready to be the leading nation of Europe, its domestic politics becomes more than ever a matter of European interest. Most Germans conceive of nuclear warfare as an intercontinental battle between Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) and the United States, with ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads crossing the Atlantic or, as the case may be, the Pacific. Europe may or may not get hit, but since the world would anyway go under, there is no need really to think about any of this. Perhaps afraid of being accused of Wehrkraftzersetzung—subversion of military strength, punishable with the death penalty in the Second World War—none of the suddenly numerous German ‘defence experts’ seems willing to confirm that what Biden calls Armageddon is a future that may become a present only following a protracted phase of ‘tactical’ rather than ‘strategic’ nuclear warfare in Europe, and indeed on Ukrainian battlefields.

One weapon of choice here is an American nuclear bomb called B61, designed to be dropped from fighter planes on military concentrations on the ground. Although all of them have sworn to devote themselves ‘to the well-being of the German people [and] protect them from harm’, no member of the German government will talk about what kind of fallout the use of a B61 in Ukraine may produce; where the winds will likely carry it; how long the area around a nuked battlefield will remain uninhabitable; and how many disabled children will be born nearby and afar over how many years, all so the Crimean peninsula can remain or become again Ukrainian. What is clear is that compared to nuclear warfare, even of the localized kind, the 1986 nuclear accident in Chernobyl (which hastened the rise of the Greens in Germany) would appear utterly negligible in its effects. It is notable that the Greens have up to now refrained from calling for precautions to protect the population of Germany and Europe against nuclear contamination—assembling stocks of Geiger counters or iodine tablets, for example—which one might think would recommend itself after the experience with Covid-19. Keeping sleeping dogs asleep obviously takes precedence over public health or, for that matter, the protection of the environment.

Not that ‘the West’ is not preparing for nuclear war. In mid-October, NATO staged a military exercise called ‘Steadfast Noon’, described by the Frankfurter Allgemeine as an ‘annual nuclear arms drill’. The exercise involved sixty fighter planes from fourteen countries and took place over Belgium, the North Sea and the UK. ‘Facing Russian threats to use nuclear arms’, the FAZ explained, ‘the Alliance actively and providently released information about the exercise to avoid misunderstandings in Moscow, but also to demonstrate its operational readiness’. At the centre of the event were the five countries—Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey (!)—that have a ‘nuclear participation agreement’ with the U.S., which provides for some of their fighter planes to carry American B61s to targets designated by the United States. Around one hundred B61s are allegedly stored in Europe, guarded by U.S. troops. The German air force maintains a fleet of Tornado bombers devoted to ‘nuclear participation’. The planes are said to be outdated, however, and during the coalition negotiations it was a non-negotiable demand of the incoming foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, that the Tornados be replaced as soon as possible with thirty-five American F35 stealth bombers. These are now being ordered and will likely be delivered in about five years, at a price of 8 billion euros, to the dismay of the French who had hoped to be cut into the deal. Maintenance and repairs are estimated to cost two or three times that during the lifetime of the planes.

It is important to note precisely what ‘Steadfast Noon’ is about. Pilots learn to shoot down the enemy’s interceptor planes and, when close enough to the target, perform a complicated manoeuvre, the so-called ‘shoulder throw’. Approaching at a very low height, with one bomb each attached to their underside, planes suddenly reverse direction by flying a forward loop, releasing the bomb at the apex of their climb. The bomb thereby continues in the original direction of the plane, until it falls in a ballistic curve eradicating whatever it is supposed to eradicate at the end of its trajectory. At that time the plane will already be on its supersonic way home, having avoided the wave caused by the nuclear explosion. Ending on a feel-good note for its readers, the FAZ revealed that ‘strategic B-52 long-range bombers’ from the United States, ‘designed for nuclear missiles that can be dropped from great altitudes’, also participated in the exercise.

Those disposed to undertake a close reading of the public pronouncements of the governing coalition of the willing can recognize traces of debates going on behind the scenes, over how best to prevent the Great Unwashed getting in the way of what may be coming to them. On 21 September, one of the chief editors of FAZ, Berthold Kohler, a hardliner if there ever was one, noted that even among Western governments ‘the unthinkable is no longer considered impossible’. Rather than allowing themselves to be blackmailed, however, Western ‘statesmen’ have to muster ‘more courage… if the Ukrainians insist on liberating their entire country’, an insistence that we have no right to argue with. Any ‘arrangement with Russia at the expense of the Ukrainians’ would amount to ‘appeasement’ and ‘betray the West’s values and interests’, the two happily converging. To reassure those of his readers who would nevertheless rather live for their families than die for Sevastopol—and who had hitherto been told that the entity called ‘Putin’ is a genocidal madman entirely impervious to rational argument—Kohler reports that in Moscow there is sufficient fear of ‘the nuclear Armageddon in which Russia and its leaders would burn as well’ for the West to support to the hilt the Zelensky view of the Ukrainian national interest.

It was, however, only a few days later that one of Kohler’s staff writers, Nikolas Busse, plainly announced that ‘the nuclear risk is growing’, pointing out that ‘the Russian military has a big arsenal of smaller, so-called tactical nuclear arms suitable for the battlefield’. The White House, according to Busse, ‘has through direct channels warned Russia of severe consequences’ should it use them. Whether the American attempt ‘to raise Putin’s potential costs’ would have the desired effect was, however, uncertain. ‘Germany’, the article continues, ‘under the presumed protection of Biden’s strategy, has allowed itself an astonishingly frivolous debate over the delivery of battle tanks to Ukraine’, referring to tanks that would enable the Ukrainian army to enter Russian territory, overstepping what is apparently the Ukrainians’ assigned role in the American proxy war with Russia and likely provoking a nuclear response: ‘More than ever one should not expect the United States to risk its head for solo adventures (Alleingänge) of its allies. No American president will put the nuclear fate of his nation into European hands’ (unlike, one cannot avoid noting, European presidents putting their nations’ fate in American hands).

Busse’s article marked the outer limit of what the German political establishment was willing to let the more literate sections of German society know about debates with the country’s allies and what Germany may have to put up with if the war is allowed to continue. But that limit is changing rapidly. Hardly a week had gone by when Kohler, expressing the same doubts regarding the United States’ willingness to sacrifice New York for Berlin, explicitly called for Germany to acquire nuclear bombs of its own, something that has been completely and seemingly permanently outside the bounds of admissible political thought in Germany. While German nuclear capacity, according to Kohler, was to offer insurance against the unpredictability of American domestic politics and global strategy, it would also be a precondition of German leadership in Europe independent from France and closer in line with the worldview of Eastern European countries such as Poland.

Frankfurt, Goethe once noted of his hometown, ‘is full of oddities’. The same can be said today of Berlin, and indeed Germany as a whole. Bizarre things are happening, with public consideration of them tightly managed by an alliance of the centrist parties and the media, and supported to an amazing extent by self-imposed censorship in civil society. Before one’s eyes, an apparently democratically governed mid-sized regional power is being turned, and is actively turning itself, into a transatlantic dependency of the Great American War Machines, from NATO to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon to the NSA, and the CIA to the National Security Council. When on 26 September the two Nord Stream pipelines were hit by a massive underwater attack, the powers that be tried for a few days to convince the German public that the perpetrator could only have been ‘Putin’, intending to demonstrate to the Germans that there would be no return to the good old gas days. It soon became clear, however, that this strained the credulity of even the most credulous of German Untertanen. Why should what is called ‘Putin’ have voluntarily deprived himself of the possibility, small as it might be, of luring Germany back into energy dependency, as soon as the Germans became unable to pay the staggering price of American Liquid Natural Gas? And why would he not have blown up the pipelines in Russian rather than international waters, the latter more heavily policed than any other maritime landscape except, perhaps, the Persian Gulf? Why risk a squadron of Russian shock troops, which would undoubtedly have been sizeable, being caught red-handed, triggering a direct confrontation with several NATO member states under Article 5?

Lacking even a remotely credible ‘narrative’—the new word in elevated jargon for a story manufactured for a purpose—the matter was effectively dropped, after no more than a week. Two days after the explosion, a lone reporter for a local newspaper based at the entry to the Baltic Sea observed the USS Kearsarge, an ‘amphibious assault ship’ capable of transporting up to 2,000 soldiers, exit the Baltic west-bound, accompanied by two landing boats; a photograph of two of the three mighty ships made its way onto the internet. Nobody in German politics or the national media took any notice, certainly not publicly. By mid-October, Sweden, currently applying for NATO membership, announced that it will keep the results of its investigation of the event to itself; the security rating of its findings was too high ‘to share with other states like Germany’. Shortly thereafter, Denmark also withdrew from the joint investigation.

As for Germany, on 7 October the government had to answer a question from a Die Linke Bundestag member on what it knew of the causes and perpetrators of the pipeline attacks. Beyond stating that it considered them ‘acts of sabotage’, the government claimed to have no information, adding that it would likely not have any in the future either. Moreover, ‘after careful consideration, the Federal Government has come to the conclusion that further information cannot be given for reasons of public interest’ (in German, aus Gründen des Staatswohls, literally: for reasons of the welfare of the state, a concept apparently modelled on another neologism, Tierwohl, animal welfare, which in recent German legalese refers to what breeders of chickens and pigs must allow their animals so that their farming practices can count as ‘sustainable’). This, the answer continues, was because ‘the requested information is subject to the restrictions of the “Third-Party-Rule”, which concerns the internal exchange of information by the intelligence services’ and therefore ‘affects secrecy interests that require protection in such a way that the Staatswohl outweighs the parliamentary right to information, so that the right of MPs to ask questions must exceptionally take second place to the secrecy interest of the Federal Government’. To this writer’s knowledge, there has been no mention whatsoever of this exchange in the Staatswohl-oriented media.

There have been further ominous events of this kind. In an accelerated procedure lasting only two days, the Bundestag, using language supplied by the Ministry of Justice held by the supposedly liberal FDP, amended Section 130 of the Criminal Code, which makes it a crime to ‘approve, deny or diminish (verharmlosen)’ the Holocaust. On 20 October, an hour before midnight, a new paragraph was passed, hidden in an omnibus bill dealing with the technicalities of creating central registers, which adds ‘war crimes’ (Kriegsverbrechen) to what must not be approved, denied or diminished. The coalition and the CDU/CSU voted for the amendment, Die Linke and AfD against. There was no public debate. According to the government, the amendment was needed for the transposition into German law of a European Union directive to fight racism. With two minor exceptions, the press failed to report on what is nothing other than a legal coup d’état. (Two weeks later the FAZ protested that using Section 130 for the purpose was disrespectful of the unique nature of the Holocaust.)

It may not be long before the Federal Prosecutor starts legal proceedings against someone for comparing Russian war crimes in Ukraine to American war crimes in Iraq, thereby ‘diminishing’ the former (or the latter?). Similarly, the Federal Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution may soon begin to place ‘diminishers’ of ‘war crimes’ under observation, including surveillance of their telephone and email communication. Even more important for a country where almost everybody on the morning after the Machtübernahme greeted their neighbour with Heil Hitler rather than Guten Tag, will be what in the United States is called a ‘chilling effect’. Which journalist or academic having to feed a family or wishing to advance their career will risk being ‘observed’ by inland security as a potential ‘diminisher’ of Russian war crimes?

In other respects as well, the corridor of the sayable is rapidly, and frighteningly, narrowing. As with the destruction of the pipelines, the strongest taboos relate to the role of the United States, both in the history of the conflict and in the present. In admissible public speech, the Ukrainian war—which is expected to be termed ‘Putin’s war of aggression’ (Angriffskrieg) by all loyal citizens—becomes entirely de-contextualized: it has no history outside of the ‘narrative’ of a decade-long brooding of a mad dictator in the Kremlin over how to best wipe out the Ukrainian people, facilitated by the stupidity, combined with greed, of the Germans falling for his cheap gas. As this writer found out when an interview he had given to the online edition of a centre-right German weekly, Cicero, was cut without consultation, among what is not to be mentioned in polite German society are the American rejection of Gorbachev’s ‘Common European Home’, the subversion within the United States of Clinton’s project of a ‘Partnership for Peace’, and the rebuff as late as 2010 of Putin’s proposal of a European free trade zone ‘from Lisbon to Vladivostok’. Equally unmentionable is the fact that by the mid-1990s at the latest, the United States had decided that the border of post-communist Europe should be identical to the western border of post-communist Russia, which would also be the eastern border of NATO, to the west of which there were to be no restrictions whatsoever on the stationing of troops and weapons systems. The same holds for the extensive American strategic debates on ‘extending Russia’, as documented in publicly accessible working papers of the RAND Corporation.

More examples of the publicly unsayable include the historically unprecedented arms build-up on the part of the United States during the ‘war on terror’, accompanied by the unilateral termination of all remaining arms control agreements with the Soviet Union of old; the unrelenting American pressure on Germany to replace Russian natural gas with American liquid natural gas after the invention of fracking, culminating in the American decision long before the war to close down Nord stream 2, one way or other; the peace negotiations that preceded the war, including the Minsk agreements between Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine, negotiated by among others the then German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, which fell apart under pressure from the Obama administration and its special envoy for U.S.-Ukrainian relations, the then Vice President Joe Biden, coinciding with a radicalization of Ukrainian nationalism (today Steinmeier keeps publicly confessing and repenting for his past sins as a peacenik, in language that effectively bars him from considering any future European security regime which does not include regime change in Russia); and not least the connection between Biden’s European and South East Asian strategies, especially the American preparations for war with China.

A glimpse of the latter was provided when Admiral Michael Gilday, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, in a hearing before Congress on 20 October, let it be known that the United States had to be prepared ‘for a 2022 window or potentially a 2023 window’ for war over Taiwan with China. For all its obsession with the United States, the fact that it is common transatlantic knowledge that the Ukrainian war is at bottom a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia completely escapes the official German public. Voices of the likes of Niall Ferguson or Jeffrey Sachs urgently warning against nuclear brinkmanship go unnoticed; the former in an article in Bloomberg, entitled ‘How Cold War II Could Turn into World War III’, an article that no Staatswohl-minded German publisher would have accepted.

In the Germany of today, any attempt to place the Ukrainian war in the context of the reorganization of the global state system after the end of the Soviet Union and the American project of a ‘New World Order’ (the elder Bush) is suspicious. Those who do run the risk of being branded as Putinversteher and invited on one of the daily talk shows on public television—for ‘false balance’ in the eyes of the militants—to face an armada of right-thinking neo-warriors shouting at them. Early in the war, on 28 April, Jürgen Habermas, court philosopher of the Greens, published a long article in Süddeutsche Zeitung, under the long title ‘Shrill tone, moral blackmail: On the battle of opinions between former pacifists, a shocked public and a cautious Chancellor following the attack on Ukraine’. In it, he took issue with the exalted moralism of the neo-bellicists among his followers, cautiously expressing support for what at the time appeared to be reluctance on the part of the Bundeskanzler for headlong involvement in the Ukrainian war. For this Habermas was fervently attacked from within what he must have thought was his camp, and has remained silent since.

Those who might have hoped for Habermas’ still potentially influential voice to help increasingly desperate efforts to prevent German policy becoming forever fixated on a Ukrainian Endsieg, cost what it may, are left with the leader of the SPD parliamentary party, Rolf Mützenich, a former university docent of international relations. Mützenich has become a hate figure of the new war coalition inside and outside the government, which tries to brand him as a relic from before the Zeitenwende when people still believed that peace might be possible without the military destruction of whatever evil empire may get in the way of the ‘West’. In a recent article on the thirtieth anniversary of Willy Brandt’s death, hidden away in a social-democratic newsletter, Mützenich warned of an impending ‘end of the nuclear taboo’ and argued that ‘diplomacy must not be limited by ideological rigour or moral teaching. We must recognize that men like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mohammed bin Salman, Bashar al-Assad and the many others will be influencing the fortunes of their countries, their neighbourhoods and the world for longer than we would like’. It will be interesting to see how long his supporters, many of them young newly elected SPD MPs, will manage to keep him in his position.

What is nothing short of astonishing is how many hawks have come out of their nests in recent months in Germany. Some figure as ‘experts’ on Eastern Europe, international politics and the military, who believe it to be their Western duty to help the public deny the approaching reality of nuclear explosions on European territory; others are ordinary citizens who suddenly enjoy following tank battles on the internet and rooting for ‘our’ side. Some of the most warlike used to belong to the left, widely defined; today they are more or less aligned with the Green party and in this emblematically represented by Baerbock, now the foreign minister. A strange combination of Joan of Arc and Hillary Clinton, Baerbock is one of the many so-called ‘young global leaders’ cultivated by the World Economic Forum. What is most characteristic of her version of leftism is its affinity to the United States, by far the most violence-prone state in the contemporary world. To understand this, it may help to remember that those of her generation have never experienced war, and neither have their parents; indeed, it is safe to assume that its male members avoided the draft as conscientious objectors until it was suspended, not least under their electoral pressure. Moreover, no previous generation has grown up as much under the influence of American soft power, from pop music to movies and fashion to a succession of social movements and cultural fads, all of which were promptly and eagerly copied in Germany, filling the gap caused by the absence of any original cultural contribution from this remarkably epigonal age cohort (an absence that is euphemistically called cosmopolitanism).

Looking deeper, as one must, cultural Americanism, including its idealistic expansionism, promises a libertarian individualism which in Europe, unlike the United States, is felt to be incompatible with nationalism, the latter happening to be the anathema of the Green left. This leaves as the only remaining possibility for collective identification a generalized ‘Westernism’ misunderstood as a ‘values’-based universalism, which is in fact a scaled-up Americanism immune to contamination by the reality of American society. Westernism, abstracted from the particular needs, interests and commitments of everyday life, is inevitably moralistic; it can live only in Feindschaft with differently moral, and in its eyes therefore immoral, non-Westernism, which it cannot let live and ultimately must let die. Not least, by adopting Westernism, this kind of new left can for once hope to be not just on the right but also on the winning side, American military power promising them that this time, finally, they may not be fighting for a lost cause.

Moreover, Westernism amounts to the internationalization, under robust American leadership, of the culture wars being fought at home, inspired by role models in the United States (although there the war may be about to be lost at least domestically). In the Westernized mind, Putin and Xi, Trump and Truss, Bolsonaro and Meloni, Orbán and Kaczyński are all the same, all ‘fascists’. With historical meaning restored to the uprooted individualized life in late-capitalist anomie, there is once more a chance to fight and even die for, if nothing else, then for the common ‘values’ of humanity—an opportunity for heroism that seemed forever lost in the narrow horizons and the hedged parochialism enshrined in the complex institutions of postwar and postcolonial Western Europe. What makes such idealism even more attractive is that the fighting and dying can be delegated to proxies, people today, soon perhaps algorithms. For the time being, nothing more is asked of you than advocating your government sending heavy arms to the Ukrainians—whose ardent nationalism would until a few months ago have seemed nothing short of repulsive to Green cosmopolitans—while celebrating their willingness to put their lives on the line, for the cause not just of regaining Crimea for their country but also of Westernism itself.

Of course, in order to make ordinary people rally to the cause, effective ‘narratives’ must be devised to convince them that pacifism is either treason or a mental illness. People must also be made to believe that unlike what the defeatists say in order to undermine Western morale, nuclear war is not a threat: either the Russian madman will turn out to be not mad enough to follow up on his delusions, or if he doesn’t the damage will remain local, limited to a country whose people, as their president reassures us on television every night, are not afraid of dying for both their fatherland and, as von der Leyen puts it, for ‘the European family’—which, when the time is ripe, will invite them in, all expenses paid.

https://mronline.org/2022/11/10/getting-closer/

**********

Biden nods to compromise in Ukraine
Biden has spoken twice about “compromise” by Kiev, which is a major shift from the US stance that Russian forces should get out of Ukraine

November 11, 2022 by M.K. Bhadrakumar

Image
Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) with leaders of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhya at the ceremony annexing the four regions as part of Russian Federation, Moscow, September 30, 2022.

The midterm elections in the US witnessed tight races as Senate and House control hangs in the balance. But that didn’t discourage President Joe Biden from holding a press conference on Wednesday to claim that the “giant red wave” didn’t happen.

Biden said. “Democrats had a strong night. And we lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic President’s first midterm election in the last 40 years. And we had the best midterms for governors since 1986.”

Biden, however, eschewed triumphalist rhetoric and committed “to continue to work across the aisle… (although) it’s not always easy.”

For the world capitals, Biden’s remarks relating to Ukraine were the most keenly awaited segment. Succinctly put, Biden was far from emphatic that Republicans in control of the House now would be cooperative.

He said: “I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues. The American people have made clear, I think, that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well. In the area of foreign policy, I hope we’ll continue this bipartisan approach of confronting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.”

When asked whether US military aid to Ukraine will continue uninterrupted, Biden merely replied, “That is my expectation.” He contended that the US hasn’t given Ukraine “a black check” and only equipped Kiev to have “the rational ability to defend themselves.”

Biden had an impressive record as senator in coalition building in the Congress. But today, his bid for a second term as president comes in the way. If he chooses to be a candidate in 2024, that would leave Republicans with no choice but oppose him viscerally – personally and politically.

Biden had some interesting comments on the announcement in Moscow earlier on Wednesday regarding Russian troop withdrawal in Kherson city. Biden said the Russian move was on expected lines and the interesting part is that Moscow waited till the midterms got over.

Biden avoided giving a direct answer when asked whether the Russian evacuation would give Kiev the leverage to begin peace negotiations with Moscow. But he didn’t refute such a line of thinking, either. Instead, Biden added that “at a minimum, it (evacuation) will lead to time for everyone to recalibrate their positions over the winter period. And it remains to be seen whether or not there’ll be a judgment made as to whether or not Ukraine is prepared to compromise with Russia.”

Biden said that on the sidelines of the G20 summit at Bali (November 15-16), there there might be consultations with world leaders, although Putin himself was not going to be there. Indeed, some sort of diplomatic messaging is going on. In fact, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Tass on Thursday that “It was decided that Russia will be represented by (foreign minister) Sergey Lavrov at the G20 summit.”

Biden took a second question on Kherson developments to say furthermore that the Russian evacuation will not only help the sides to “lick their wounds” but “decide whether — what they’re going to do over the winter, and decide whether or not they’re going to compromise.”

Notably, Biden has spoken twice about “compromise” (read territorial concessions) by Kiev, which is a major shift from the US stance that the Russian forces should get out of Ukraine. Biden concluded: “That’s – that’s what’s going to happen, whether or not. I don’t know what they’re going to do. And – but I do know one thing: We’re not going to tell them what they have to do.”

Taken together, Biden’s remarks are consistent with the “scoop” by NBC News on Wednesday, citing informed sources, that during the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s unannounced visit to Kiev last week, he studied Ukraine’s readiness for a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

The NBC channel reported that Sullivan was exploring options for ending the conflict and the chance of starting negotiations and raised the need for a diplomatic settlement during meetings with Ukrainian authorities. It said some US and Western officials increasingly believe that neither Kiev nor Moscow can achieve all of their goals, and the winter slowdown in hostilities could provide a window of opportunity to start negotiations.

Interestingly, Kremlin-funded RT promptly picked up the NBC report and highlighted it. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova also chipped in commenting, “We are still open to negotiations, we have never refused them, we are ready to conduct them – taking, of course, into account the realities being established at the moment.”

The Russian authorities continue to maintain that the evacuation of their forces in Kherson stems purely out of security considerations. The onus has been put on the recommendation by Army General Sergey Surovikin, the commander of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. The general claimed in a televised speech that the evacuation from Kherson creates stronger defensive lines for the troops and will save the lives of soldiers and civilians.

Suffice to say, Lavrov’s presence in Bali will be of pivotal importance. Presumably, he will have contacts with Western counterparts. Indeed, Biden’s remarks about territorial compromise signal a sea change in the calculus.

Also, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while opening a discussion with the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday about the possibility of peace between Ukraine and Russia, confirmed that there is indeed “a window of opportunity for negotiation” moving forward.

The general urged, “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it. Seize the moment.” To be sure, he spoke with an eye on the Russian military command.

The backdrop is that the Democrats’ loss of control of the House of Representatives makes it difficult for them to freely promote the foreign policy line of the Biden administration, including assistance to Ukraine. Henceforth, Biden will have to negotiate decisions on Ukraine with the Republicans. This is one thing.

Second, the cascading economic crisis in Europe holds explosive potential for political turmoil, especially if there is another refugee flow from Ukraine in the harsh winter conditions, which is a real possibility.

The blowback from sanctions against Russia has lethally wounded Europe, and bluster aside, there is really no replacement for the inexpensive, reliable, abundant Russian energy supplies via pipelines.

All this is becoming hugely consequential for Western unity. The recent visit of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to China shows that dissent is brewing.

Above all, the massive Russian mobilization threatens to give a knockout blow to the Ukrainian military, but there is no appetite among Europeans for a confrontation with Russia.

The UK, Washington’s steadfast ally in Ukraine, also is under immense pressure to disengage and concentrate on the domestic crisis as the new government tackles a funding hole of the order of £50bn in the budget.

Going ahead, the notions of regime change in Moscow that Biden had once espoused publicly and the neocon project to “cancel” Russia has hit the wall and crumpled. That said, the US can draw comfort that the Russian pullout from the west of Dnieper implies that Moscow is not intending to make any move on Nikolaev, leave alone Odessa – at least, in the near term.

On the other hand, if the Ukrainian forces surge and occupy Kherson and threaten Crimea, it will pose a big challenge for the Biden administration. From Biden’s remarks, the is confident that it has enough leverage in Kiev to ensure that there is no escalation.

For the present, it is premature to estimate that Moscow only took the bitter decision to abandon Kherson city, which was founded by a decree of Catherine the Great and is etched deeply in the Russian collective consciousness, with a reasonable certainty that Washington will restrain Kiev from “hot pursuit” of the retreating Russian army to the eastern banks of the Dnieper river.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/11/11/ ... n-ukraine/

Washington will not restrain Ukraine from 'hot pursuit', if anything Washington would egg on such stupidity. To imagine such displays ignorance of the situation on the ground and calls into question other assumptions in this piece...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 12, 2022 1:04 pm

The sad night
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 11/12/2022

Image

Yesterday morning, claiming no casualties or loss of equipment - something that Ukraine denies - Russia announced that all its troops had withdrawn to the left bank of the Dnieper River after dropping everything captured since February 24 in the right bank, including the city of Kherson, the only Ukrainian regional capital still under its control. Hours later, and without large masses receiving them, the Ukrainian troops entered Kherson and raised the blue and yellow flag where the Russian tricolor was withdrawn a few days ago. Beyond the pessimism and the doses of reality that the passage has meant for the Russian population, that of southern Ukraine and the pro-Russian population of Kherson, the situation implies a qualitative change on the front.

Original Article: DonRF

The night of shame is over. What it means is not yet clear. But the negotiating partners are also silent, so nothing about deaths or prisoners can be believed 100 percent. We have to wait. They handed over a Russian city. A regional capital. The capital of a Federation territory. And it's embarrassing. Without exaggerating about deaths and regardless of casualties, whether there have been or not. The shame is that the process began inside, it is our shame, general, Russian. For a whole series of objective reasons and excuses, those who decided have names and surnames, but there is a common one. It is the State that loses the wars. In its whole.

Humiliation does not require revenge, it requires analysis. Why has it happened, what has gone wrong, what parts of the body are sick, what nonsense has been done and what has not been done wrong. Military and political analysis is needed. Not everything is clear and it would not hurt if the Sharii or Rotislav Ishchenko, with his hysteria, disappeared. Or Kherson will be forgotten very soon. The light of the moon is forgotten with the rays of dawn. Right now, we are full of some kind of substance that we want to get rid of and we don't know how. The trend is that there will be no agreement and they will continue laughing: “The US authorities have deprived the Russian economy of the status of a market economy due to the growing influence of the State over it, said the Ministry of Commerce. The decision, according to the Ministry,unfair import operations ”.

But you can't go back either. Regrouping of Crimea and the DPR/RPL is hardly possible. In the first place, because no one would understand it, just as Kherson has not been understood and it would have consequences. They are simply the laws of nature, which does not tolerate a vacuum. Second, it is considerably more difficult to order such armies to retreat. They will follow. So a long and difficult conflict remains.

Very long and hard, be it external or internal if the government cannot manage it by itself. And you have to be prepared for that. They will write to me saying that the Russians don't care. A lot of people don't care, just like the Syrians, Ukrainians, or Afghans they spit on. Then they spat, but with blood. It's time to understand two simple maxims of smart people: we are what we are and everything is done within our capabilities, military and management. There's no more.

Personally, I will continue to do what I have done so far: write and collect the stories of those who are in the trenches and in the cellars, who I wish to save their lives. About the rest, it is better to forget about illusions. That is all. There is no vile agreement, there is no betrayal, there is the State and its instruments. It is so, there is nothing else. And there won't be for a long time. The embarrassment of others has become a tradition since March. What would it be without her? On the other hand, with rare exceptions, I have not seen opponents explaining what has happened in the last eight years. Neither before nor now. I can give you some advice: we are all adults who must think for ourselves, not through the media. They don't care about us, they have their own goals. And the times to come will be tough.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/11/12/la-no ... more-25924

Google translator

*********

War in Ukraine. Summary 11/11/2022
November 11, 22:06

Image

War in Ukraine. Summary 11/11/2022

1. Kherson.

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation left the right bank early this morning and completely retreated to the left bank to pre-prepared positions. The last units withdrew from Kherson along the barge bridge, which was blown up.
The Antonovsky bridge and the bridge in the area of ​​the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station were blown up. The enemy occupied Berislav and Kherson during the day. The front now passes along the Dnieper.
We can expect enemy activity in the direction of the Kinburn Spit and reprisals against the civilian population in the occupied territories.

2. Donetsk direction.

Our troops today took Experienced and advanced a little in Pervomaisky.
The battles for Vodiane continue. In general, the offensive plan is quite transparent: take Pervomaiskoye and Vodyanoye and turn to Thin, the capture of which will allow establishing fire control over the Orlovka-Avdiivka road, which will create a direct threat to the operational encirclement of the Avdiivka grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The enemy will certainly transfer reserves here to stabilize the front.
Maiorsk was liberated near Gorlovaya.

3. Artemovsk direction.

Fights on the outskirts of the city and for fortified areas on the outskirts of Experienced. Fights for fortified areas in the Kurdyumovka area also continue. The pace of progress is low.

4. Soledar.

In the city itself without significant changes.
Ours are fixed in Bakhmutskoye and continue fighting for Belogorovka, which is controlled by about half.
In the area of ​​​​Disputable and other Belogorovka - no change.

5. Matchmaking.

Enemy attacks in the direction of the Svatovo-Kremennaya highway did not bring him much success. The front here is still standing still, although the enemy continues to try to maintain the initiative with constant attacks, regardless of losses.
The fighting in the area of ​​Torskoy and Terna did not bring any special changes.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/69998 - zinc

I remind you once again that the round-the-clock broadcast of hostilities in Ukraine has been going on in the Telegram channel since February 23 https://t.me/boris_rozhin
The main publications on the topic of hostilities go there, and not in LiveJournal - whining about the fact that some aspects of the NWO are not written in LiveJournal is meaningless. Those who are interested in following the course of hostilities - subscribe to the channel and read as much as they see fit - more than 100 materials are published per day on various aspects of hostilities + a large number of photos and videos. You can even sit and read all day.

Who is not interested, do not subscribe, do not read and whine in the LiveJournal comments that the damned world does not want to satisfy their Wishlist. No changes in approaches to publications on the subject of SVO are expected. I hope I explained everything clearly.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7968860.html

Google Translator

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

Famous Ukrainian Nazi Visits U.S.: Azov Regiment Photographer Traveling From DC to NYC
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 11, 2022
Moss Robeson

Image

Three days before the last of Ukraine’s defenders in Mariupol surrendered in May, one of them tweeted, “NAZI!!!!” Dmytro “Orest” Kozatsky, a 26-year old fighter from the notorious Azov Regiment holed up in the Azovstal steel plant, where he became the head of its press service, tweeted this in response to a Dutch blogger pointing out that Kozatsky deleted posts from 2018–20 showing off a swastika-inspired pizza that he made, a coded neo-Nazi t-shirt in his wardrobe, and an ankle tattoo of a double-armed swastika worn by some German concentration camp guards.

Kozatsky’s pictures from inside Azovstal have made him one of the most famous members of the far-right Azov movement. Before surrendering, facing the unknown in Russian captivity, Kozatsky uploaded his photos to the internet, and made a short film, “Last day at Azovstal.” The Guardian, among other outlets, published his work, while meekly conceding that the Azov Regiment “retains some far-right affiliations.” While in Russia, Kozatsky won several photography awards for his Azovstal series, “The Light Will Win.” He was released and returned to Ukraine in September. Currently, Kozatsky is visiting the United States, while more of his online neo-Nazi activity comes to light.

On Twitter, the Azov press spokesperson has “liked” many horrendous posts, including an image of a symbol associated with the Nazi SS which largely administered the Holocaust. The Totenkopf was captioned: “Your face when you read news about gypsies.” That year, in 2018, the U.S. Helsinki Commission warned, “attacks on Roma in Ukraine have escalated dramatically.” Earlier that spring, Kozatsky liked an image of the KKK and another tweet that said “Heil Hitler!” on the Nazi dictator’s birthday. In January 2019, Kozatsky liked an image of Amon Göth, an Austrian Nazi who commanded the Plaszow concentration camp and was portrayed in Schindler’s List as the main antagonist of the film. In March 2020, not long after the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in his country, Kozatsky liked an image of Ukrainian graffiti that said “Death to Yids” with an SS symbol. Two days before he surrendered in Mariupol, someone on Twitter mocked Kozatsky for his ankle tattoos: “I’m not a nazi.” He responded, “I want to disappoint you and tell you that the swastika is not only Nazi. Here is your homework, young investigator…” There are plenty of more examples of him being a Nazi on the internet.

Image

As seen above, Dmytro Kozatsky obviously gets a big kick out of the neo-Nazi code 1488, and he appears to be fond of the white supremacist Ukrainian brands SvaStone and “White Print.” According to Reporting Radicalism, a website created by the US-funded Freedom House in Ukraine, “The brand name SvaStone alludes to the swastika. Its logo is a stylized swastika… The logo and name are exclusively used as a brand that targets far-right consumers.” White Print is more obscure and overtly neo-Nazi. This Azov-associated brand, which apparently operates exclusively on the Russian social media network VK, made Kozatsky’s 1488 tshirt, and perhaps another featuring a sun cross swastika. Kozatsky expressed interest in another one of their shirts glorifying the “Galicia Division” — the Ukrainian Waffen-SS unit — in addition to the shirt he already has emblazoned with the Nazi formation’s Ukrainian emblem.

This past week, Blue Star Press published Relentless Courage, a hardcover book including a collection of images of the war in Ukraine “from some of the most respected photojournalists of our time.” This included over twenty five “world-renowned” photojournalists, and Dmytro Kozatsky, whose iconic self-portrait (standing in a beam of light in Azovstal) made the front cover. The book also includes essays from the Ukrainian Ambassador to the US, a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, and a famous Ukrainian novelist. To promote Relentless Courage before its release, the Ambassador appeared on MSNBC last week alongside Kozatsky and Carol Guzy, a four time Pulitzer Prize-winner whose work is also featured in the book. MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell conducted a softball interview, especially with Kozatsky, and described the book as “remarkable” at least three times.



“I’m not a hero, I’m just taking pictures of heroes,” Kozatsky told an audience of Ukrainian American children last weekend at Westland Middle School in Bethesda, Maryland. The Taras Shevchenko School of Ukrainian Studies of Greater Washington holds classes at Westland Middle School every Saturday. Oleh Vretsona, who is the director and/or history teacher of the Saturday school, recently made a donation to Azov’s charity wing. The history curriculum apparently glorifies Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and starts with teaching students that Ukraine is one of the oldest civilizations on earth, a myth that lends itself to the notion of Ukrainian Aryans.

Irena Chalupa, who teaches literature to middle and upper grade students, photographed the event, and likely played a role in arranging it. According to her LinkedIn account, Chalupa is a senior correspondent for the US-funded Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty (RFE-RL). Before she joined RFE-RL, in the 1980s, Chalupa worked in the Munich headquarters building of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), “the largest and most important umbrella for former Nazi collaborators in the world.” Also in Munich, she read poetry at the 1986 funeral of ABN leader Yaroslav Stetsko, who led the clandestine OUN-B, or “Banderite” faction of the far-right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Stetsko, among other things, proclaimed the Banderites’ explicitly pro-Nazi “restoration of Ukrainian statehood” on June 30, 1941 in German-occupied western Ukraine. Roman Zvarych, once a leading member of the ABN and OUN-B in the United States, and allegedly a secretary to Stetsko, used to be the chief manager of the Azov Civic Corps. Reportedly, Zvarych “was supposed to be the interlocutor between the Ukrainian far-right and their foreign sponsors.”

Chalupa apparently met her husband, Askold Krushelnycky, in the ABN. Krushelnycky, who comes from a notable British Banderite family, has embedded with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan (1980s), and the Azov Battalion in Mariupol (2014). Writing for the Atlantic Council, Krushelnycky made no mention of Azov’s politics. Chalupa has formerly served as the director of the Ukrainian language service of Radio Liberty, and an editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert blog. For years she has been a producer of the notorious “counter-disinformation” outlet Stop Fake, which has been criticized for whitewashing (and being linked with) neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Chalupa and Krushelnycky have both guest hosted its English language videos. Perhaps they can explain to Westland Middle School why they shouldn’t care about welcoming a famous Ukrainian neo-Nazi on to the property, although the school made the news in 2016 for swastikas drawn in one of the boys’ bathrooms.

On Friday morning, Dmytro Kozatsky will be joining the self-described “first motorcade rally in the USA to support Ukraine,” starting at the National Mall in Washington D.C., and stopping in Baltimore and Philadelphia on the way to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. The caravan is supposed to be led by a car with the customized license plate, “HIMARS,” for Lockheed Martin’s “High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.” It is said that there will be an “afterparty.”

On Sunday, Kozatsky is scheduled to participate in a Q&A session at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) Theatre in Manhattan that evening. The venue markets itself as “the cultural center of New York’s artistically-vibrant Chelsea neighborhood.” The Q&A will follow a screening of Freedom on Fire as part of Doc NYC, “America’s Largest Documentary Festival.” Also participating will be Evgeny Afineevsky, the Israel-American director of the film, who has admitted that he deliberately downplayed the Ukrainian far-right in his Oscar-nominated prequel Winter on Fire. For his latest movie, he reportedly enlisted Azov press spokesperson Dmytro Kozatsky as the “protagonist & film cinematographer.” Afineevsky is apparently concerned about the rise of neo-Nazis in the United States, just not Ukraine. But if Kozatsky isn’t a Nazi, then who is?!

Image
Kozatsky with his Galician SS tshirt, 1488 tshirt, ankle tattoos, and swastika pizza

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... dc-to-nyc/

Western Leaders, Populations Call for Halting Money Flow to Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 11, 2022
Ekaterina Blinova

Image

On November 10, Hungary blocked €18 billion in EU financial aid to Ukraine, triggering a wave of criticism from the bloc’s leadership. Budapest said that it has had enough of joint EU borrowing initiatives. Meanwhile, protesters in Italy and other EU nations have called for arms to stop being sent to Ukraine and for lifting anti-Russia sanctions.

“I’m not surprised the Hungarians and the Italians and others will go their own way. They have every right to do that,” Joe Siracusa, US politics expert and professor of history and diplomacy at Curtin University, Australia, told Sputnik. “There’s going to be more of it. And I think every nation in Europe is going to do what they think they have to do to survive the winter and to get on with life. I mean, they’re not committed to a life and death blueprint. Europe’s not going down the rabbit hole because somebody wants to support [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky. And I think Zelensky really expects this to happen.”

The European Commission (EC) proposed an $18 billion aid package for Ukraine on November 9 that was expected to come into effect in 2023 to help cover Ukraine’s budget needs. That assistance was meant to come in the form of highly concessional loans, disbursed in regular installments.

Ukraine is running a budget deficit of up to $5 billion per month, as per the nation’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, with the country’s defense spending jumping five-fold to $17 billion for the first seven months of 2022.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy admitted last month that the country’s real GDP fell by as much as 40% in the second quarter of 2022. The full year contraction of Ukraine’s economic output is expected to reach 35%, according to the World Bank. To cap it off, Ukraine’s financial officials forecast that inflation could hit 40% at the beginning of 2023, morphing into nothing short of hyperinflation. Kiev does not have money to cope with the financial crunch, but instead of joining Russia at the negotiating table, it urges its Western backers to give it more.

The EC’s latest generous offer came as US officials continued chastising their European allies last month for not delivering enough to Kiev. According to the US press, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on multiple occasions called upon her international peers to ramp up both the speed and amount of money going to Ukraine. In addition to that, Yellen reportedly raised the issue at a private meeting with European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis and European Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni at the International Monetary Fund.

Eventually, Brussels agreed to fork out, but Hungary upset the EC’s bid on Wednesday: the money cannot go to Kiev without the full backing of all 27 EU countries because of the bloc’s budget rules. “We will certainly not support any kind of joint EU borrowing in this field,” Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó told a Hungarian newspaper. Budapest justifies its decision by the fact that it has already spent hundreds of millions of euros to support health, education, and cultural institutions in Ukraine. In addition to that, Hungary earlier supported the EU’s joint borrowing during the COVID pandemic, “and that was more than enough,” Szijjártó underscored.

Brussels, Berlin, and other European capitals subjected Budapest to criticism, while some mainstream media outlets pinned the blame on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who, according to them, has repeatedly neglected EU norms and wooed Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past.

Protest Movement Growing in EU, Sentiment Changing in US

Image
Protesters hold a banner that reads “who sows misery reaps anger” during a demonstration in Nantes, western France

Still, the problem is that it’s not just Hungarian politicians who are opposing the bloc’s continuous financial and military aid to Ukraine and sweeping sanctions on Russia at a time when inflation and recession are engulfing the Old Continent.


During the past weekend in Rome, an estimated 100,000 Italians took to the streets, calling on the government to stop sending weapons to Ukraine. The rally was reportedly organized by trade unions, numerous Catholic associations, and peace groups.

On November 9, Greek workers in Athens conducted a day-long strike backed by unions, such as the General Confederation of Greek Workers and ADEDY, protesting against soaring inflation and skyrocketing energy prices, which rose dramatically after the EU joined Washington’s energy embargo against Russia.

Earlier, in September, around 70,000 people protested in Prague, Czech Republic, urging their government to maintain direct gas contracts with Russia in order to overcome the unfolding energy crisis.

The European Parliament acknowledged in October that almost 50% of Greeks and 43% of Italians said they want anti-Russia sanctions to be lifted. At the same time, a survey by Eupinions, an independent platform for European public opinion, indicated that less than 40% of Italians approve of Rome supplying weapons to Kiev.

[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1590277637976764416[/youtube]

The backlash is not limited to Europe, as US Republican lawmakers who are projected to take control of the House in January 2023 have clearly signaled their dissatisfaction with the growing burden of spending on Ukraine. On October 18, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made it clear that the House GOP won’t give a “blank check” to Kiev if Republicans win the lower chamber in November.

“Republicans will win the House of Representatives,” said Siracusa. “They’re in control of the purse. If you don’t control the House, and all you need is 218 votes, you don’t need a red wave, you don’t need a 30, 40 seat majority. All you need is one vote. And they got 218. And they can make sure that the House of Representatives, where all money bills originate, will not give Ukraine another penny. Winning the House is more important than winning the Senate. It’s in the House of Representatives that the Constitution guarantees that money will originate – money bills. So the House is very, very important. And Congressman Kevin McCarthy is going to be very, very important after this. But I think the mood in America has changed. There is no doubt in my mind, there is going to be a Republican victory in the House.”

According to the US mainstream press, this stance is shared by many Republicans from the Make America Great Again (MAGA) camp. For their part, American Democratic progressives, who are also expected to maintain and, probably, expand their presence in the US Congress, recently voiced their opposition to Washington’s military involvement in Ukraine and called on US President Joe Biden to broker peace between Kiev and Moscow. Despite their flip-flopping with a letter addressing the president on the matter, the US press admitted that anti-war sentiments persist among the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC).

“I think the Republicans were hesitating before the election,” Siracusa said. “There’s only so much you can give to another nation before you empty out your own arsenal. And it was quite clear if there had been a big Republican victory, Marjorie Greene’s comment about there would be no more money for Ukraine, in fact she had a wonderful comment, she said that as far as she is concerned and a number of Republicans are concerned, Ukraine is not an ally and Russia is not an enemy. And that’s kind of where it’s headed.”

Moreover, a September survey by Data for Progress on behalf of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft indicated that roughly 60% of Americans would support the US engaging in diplomatic efforts “as soon as possible” to end the Ukraine standoff, even if that means Kiev having to make concessions to Russia.

West Cannot Fund Ukraine Indefinitely

One should admit that the US, UK, EU, and their close allies have committed a lot in terms of military, financial, and humanitarian aid for the Kiev regime, which says that all the money received so far has been burned through.

According to the Germany-based Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the US, EU, and several other countries committed a total of €93.73 billion ($93.62 billion) to Ukraine between January and October 2022, with the US being the most generous giver.

In addition to sending weapons and money to Kiev, the EU is also carrying the burden of accommodating Ukrainian refugees. The number of Ukrainian refugees taken in by the US is miniscule, amounting to only around 0.02% of the US population. Washington has taken fewer Ukrainian refugees (100,000) than Poland (1,365,810), Germany (1,003,029), the Czech Republic (427,696), Italy (159,968), Turkey (145,000), Spain (140,391), and the UK (122,900), according to the UN data.

The cost of housing Ukrainians in Europe is considerable, especially amid swirling inflation and the accompanying economic slowdown. According to the Kiel Institute, for some nations the cost of housing Ukrainian refugees has exceeded their overall aid to Ukraine. For instance, Estonia is spending more than 1.2% of its GDP on aid to Kiev and housing Ukrainian refugees. Latvia and Poland’s cumulative aid also exceeds 1% of their GDP.

Meanwhile, Eurozone inflation hit a new historic high of 10.7% in October, according to preliminary data, with Brussels already admitting that the bloc is heading to a recession at the end of this year.

It raises the question whether European governments will halt their help to Ukraine, as Biden’s State Department is continuing to pressure them into exhaustive spending regardless of the bloc’s economic difficulties. Speaking to a US broadcaster in the aftermath of Election Day, Zelensky warned against reducing Washington’s aid to Kiev, insisting that it’s the only way to keep Europeans sending money to Ukraine. Still, it’s unclear where exactly the money goes, with millions of dollars and euros vanishing in the fog of the conflict.

Siracusa does not rule out that the US will be the first to suspend the money flow to Kiev, which even the Biden administration does not consider grateful enough.

“I think at the end of the day, Americans will call a halt to it,” said Siracusa. “And I think a number of Ukrainians will exhibit some resentment to the aid given to them, because they’ll say it wasn’t enough. I think Zelensky wanted the Americans to pick up their monthly public service and army salaries. He wanted $5 billion from the American people, heard him say it, to keep Ukraine going. What country is going to pay for soldiers and public servants endlessly? The idea of the United States Treasury printing money, $5 billion a month, to pay for Ukrainian civil service or public service, that’s nuts, that’s unrealistic thinking.”

“The Republicans want to make it very clear, they want to get this problem settled, get on to other important issues like climate change and arms control and the rest of it. I think there are people in the American Congress right now who want to reset it. They want to recalibrate,” the professor concluded.


https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... o-ukraine/

These Russians(and others) who think that having the Republicans in power in the US will somehow stop or at least 'put the brakes 'on US support of Ukraine display ignorance of the nature of US imperialism and wishful thinking. If the hard-headed moron Trump was forced to acquiesce to the imperial program after two years of being pummeled in the press and the House of Representatives for being a 'Putinista' do ya think the viciously pragmatic McConnell is going to 'go there'? Fat chance. He's got other fish to fry, like Joe Biden. US imperial designs are not swayed by mere elections, that should be clear by now.

However, the Europeans are another story and if the current batch of quislings are turned out of office things could get interesting in NATOland.

Russia’s De-militarization of Ukraine Continues – US Sending Decades-Old Arms to Kiev
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 11, 2022



Update on Russian military operations in and around Ukraine for November 11, 2022.

– Russia completes withdrawal from Kherson city to east bank of the Dnieper River;

– Ukraine has lost its last major opportunity to corner and destroy/capture large numbers of Russian forces/equipment; – Russia continues stated process of de-militarizing Ukraine;

– US aid to Ukraine becomes increasingly unrealistic – Hawk missiles designed in the 1960s and unused for 2 decades are being “refurbished” for a lack of better options;

– “Avenger” systems to be sent in small numbers (4) which are essentially Stinger missiles attached to a Hummer – after training for Ukrainian operators is completed;

– Dwindling amounts of basic ammunition continue to be sent to Ukraine, prolonging the conflict, but not in quantities to even allow Ukraine to hold what it has;

– As Russian forces withdrew from Kherson city, they advanced elsewhere in southern and northern Donbass.

References:

US Department of Defense – $400 Million in Additional Assistance for Ukraine (November 10, 2022): https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases

US DoD – Sabrina Singh, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary, Holds a Press Briefing Nov. 10, 2022: https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcri

CSIS – Missile Defense Project, Pantsir S-1: https://missilethreat.csis.org/defsys

CSIS – Can the United States Do More for Ukrainian Air Defense?: https://www.csis.org/analysis/can-uni

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... s-to-kiev/

Canada’s Nazi Monument Problem
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 11, 2022
Taylor C. Noakes

Image
Ukrainian Nazi Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 with Roman Shukhevych (sitting, second from left), 1942. A monument in Edmonton, Canada, commemorates Shukhevych, who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands in genocidal campaigns during the Holocaust era.

A journalist in Edmonton is the most recent Canadian to be charged with vandalizing a Nazi monument. How Canada came to be home to so many monuments dedicated to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators is rooted in some dark chapters in the country’s history.


On October 14, 2022 the Edmonton Police Service filed a mischief under $5,000 charge against journalist Duncan Kinney, claiming he spray-painted the words “actual Nazi” on a bust of Roman Shukhevych, a World War II–era Ukrainian ultranationalist and Nazi collaborator. The charge relates to an August 2021 incident in which the monument, located on the grounds of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in North Edmonton, was found to have been vandalized.

Kinney is an independent journalist and the editor and primary contributor to the Progress Report, a media project of Progress Alberta that includes a weekly podcast, a newsletter, and regular investigative reporting. Kinney has reported on the Shukhevych monument, including the vandalism against it, several times in recent years.

This is not the first time the Shukhevych monument has been vandalized with graffiti pointing out that the man was a Nazi collaborator: in December of 2019 it was tagged with the words “Nazi scum.” Kinney reported in 2020 that representatives of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex and the League of Ukrainian Canadians’ Edmonton Branch had contacted Progress Alberta to indicate their belief the Edmonton police were investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, though this was not confirmed at the time.

In a statement issued on October 31, 2022, Kinney explained that he was arrested by a constable from the Edmonton police’s Hate Crimes and Violent Extremism Unit, accompanied by three other offices.

The Shukhevych monument is not alone among commemorations to World War II Ukrainian collaborators in Canada. The monument is located near a cenotaph in Edmonton’s St. Michael’s Cemetery which is dedicated to the veterans of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as the Galicia Division, a volunteer division composed of Ukrainian nationalists. That monument was vandalized in 2021 with the words “Nazi Monument 14th Waffen SS.” Jewish and Polish groups in Canada have been calling for the monuments’ removal for decades and, in the wake of recent incidents, have renewed their demands.

Canada’s Ukrainian Monuments to Nazis Problem

Shukhevych was the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Stepan Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). During World War II Shukhevych commanded various military units composed of Ukrainian ultranationalists serving in the German army. He was one of those responsible for a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out to against the Polish population of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, in pursuit of the goal of creating an ethnically homogenous Ukraine. The death toll from that campaign is estimated to range from sixty thousand to one hundred thousand.

The historical consensus is that Shukhevych was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands, including Poles, Jews, Belarusians, Russians, and even other Ukrainians (particularly communist partisans allied to the Red Army). In his role as a Nazi collaborator and leader of the UPA, Shukhevych was directly responsible for the Holocaust in Ukraine. According to historian John-Paul Himka, through the winter of 1943–44 Shukhevych’s UPA forces lured Ukrainian Jews from their refuges in the forests of Western Ukraine to be murdered.

The St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville, Ontario is home to a memorial to the 1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army. The Ukrainian National Army was created by the Nazis with some of the personnel who had fought with the 14th Waffen SS Division. When the Oakville monument was defaced with the words “Nazi war monument” in 2020, Halton Regional Police initially opened a hate crime investigation. The same cemetery also has a separate monument to the UPA.

Shukhevych was also listed — along with other Nazi collaborators, assorted fascist groups, and war criminals — on a list of hundreds of individuals who were supposed to be commemorated at Ottawa’s as yet incomplete $7.5 million “Memorial to the Victims of Communism.” The Edmonton branch of the League of Ukrainian Canadians has purchased several “virtual bricks” in tribute to Shukhevych as part of a “buy-a-brick” campaign meant to help finance the construction of the memorial.

Photos of Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera can be found in Ukrainian cultural and community centers across Canada. They are considered heroes amongst Ukrainian ultranationalists today, both in Ukraine and among the Ukrainian diaspora community. Shukhevych and Bandera feature prominently in commemorative demonstrations, such as the “Embroidery Marches” which have been held in L’viv and Kyiv.

The marches earned condemnation from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, in no small part for the overt displays of Nazi symbols. The resurrection of Bandera and Shukhevych, in the form of monuments, place names, and the renaming of streets and stadiums, has caused diplomatic crises between Ukraine and Poland and Israel.

Rooting Out Communists With Fascists

How there came to be so many monuments dedicated to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators in Canada is rooted in some dark chapters in Canadian history. After Russia, Canada has the world’s second-largest Ukrainian diaspora community, with approximately 1.36 million Canadians claiming full or partial Ukrainian descent, roughly 4 percent of the national population. Initial waves of Ukrainian immigration began in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Ukrainians, among other Central and Eastern European ethnic groups, were incentivized to settle and farm the prairies of Western Canada, which had at the time been recently cleared of their indigenous inhabitants by force.

As with many cultural minority communities who were trying to establish their roots in Canada, particularly around the turn of the twentieth century, Ukrainians faced discrimination and, as a consequence, formed fraternal and benevolent organizations. Some of these groups evolved into more overtly socialist organizations, including the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party of Canada, which was shut down and had its leadership arrested by the Canadian government in 1918.

Because Ukrainians were considered by the Canadian government to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time of World War I, about eight thousand Ukrainian Canadians were forced into slave labor and interned in concentration camps. In some cases, this forced labor continued into 1920, nearly two years after the war had ended. Roughly eighty thousand Ukrainians were required to register as “enemy aliens” during the same time. Though many were paroled circa 1916–17, Ukrainians were then rearrested after the Russian Revolution, part of a Red Scare in Canada at the time.

After World War II, Canada received another wave of Ukrainian immigration. This wave included displaced persons found in Germany and Allied prisoner-of-war camps at the conclusion of the conflict. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, rumors that high-ranking Nazis and Nazi collaborators had found refuge in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia began to circulate. This prompted investigations by the respective governments.

In 1985, a commission of inquiry was called by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, headed by the justice Jules Deschênes. The inquiry was set up in the wake of the publication of None Is Too Many, a landmark historical examination of Canada’s antisemitic immigration policies. These policies, still in effect even after World War II, prevented European Jews from immigrating to Canada (partly due to misguided concerns that Jews would bring communism to Canada). Canadian authorities simultaneously allowed known or suspected Nazi collaborators to immigrate because they could be considered “reliably anti-Communist.”

Ukrainian Ultranationalist Lobbyists

The Deschênes Commission was severely constrained. Its scope was limited and it failed to consult Soviet and Eastern European archives — a failing that was largely due to pressure from Eastern European diaspora groups, who insisted without evidence that any Soviet or Eastern Bloc documentation would be unreliable.

The commission also suppressed and censored other documentary evidence and failed to consult the findings of the Nuremberg Trials and other historical precedents. The Mulroney government also pressured the ostensibly independent commission to conclude quickly, irrespective of what it discovered. In the end, the commission’s findings — it concluded that the number of suspected war criminals in Canada had been greatly exaggerated — was dubious.

The inquiry stirred up considerable animosity between Canada’s Jewish community and its postwar Eastern European émigré communities. The latter claimed that allegations of Canada harboring war criminals or collaborators were nothing but Soviet attempts to destabilize Canadian society. Similar statements have been made by representatives of Canada’s Ukrainian community over the course of the last few years, as the issue of these monuments and concerns over the wartime record of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s maternal grandfather (who edited a pro-Nazi newspaper) have been raised by Russian diplomatic officials.

In March of 2022, Freeland was photographed holding a scarf with the black and red colors of the UPA, which was embroidered with the slogan “Slava Ukraini, Heroyam Slava”(Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes), their wartime slogan. The image, along with the slogan, appeared on Freeland’s twitter account only to be deleted shortly thereafter. When the Canadian Press reached out to Freeland’s office for comment, they received a response from the president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

According to journalist and researcher Moss Robeson, Canada’s two primary Ukrainian organizations — the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and the League of Ukrainian Canadians — are strongly influenced by followers and admirers of Stepan Bandera. As reported by Robeson, former UCC president Paul Grod “requested Canadian recognition of the OUN and UPA as ‘designated resistance fighters,’ proposing that Canadian taxpayers should pay pensions for its veterans.” Furthermore, he “vehemently and categorically deni(ed) Ukrainian nationalist involvement in the Holocaust.” Grod sat on the board of Tribute to Liberty, which raised funds and lobbied the government for the construction of the Victims of Communism memorial in Ottawa.

Ultimately, additional research carried out by Canadian Jewish groups determined that more than two thousand members of the Galicia Division settled in Canada after the war, at the request of the British government. This was in addition to another thousand or so collaborators from the Baltic states who had served the SS in a similar capacity. Despite the evidence, no additional actions were taken by the Canadian government to investigate.

When Defacing Nazi Monuments Is a “Hate Crime”

Though the Shukhevych monument in Edmonton is the private property of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex, the complex was partially funded, in the early 1970s, by the government of Alberta to the tune of $75,000 in grant money. In 2020, the complex received a $35,000 grant from the federal government for a security system to protect it from “hate crimes.” Most of the other applicants to the grant program included mosques and synagogues.

A Public Security Canada spokesperson stated that the complex had “sufficiently demonstrated in their application that their community and project site was at-risk of hate-motivated crime to qualify for funding under the Program.” It did not, however, provide any further details concerning what hate crimes had been directed at Edmonton’s Ukrainian community or its youth center.

Coverage of the incident has largely focused on the possibility of a journalist committing an act of vandalism to then report on it, and the possible ethical breach such an alleged action would entail. That there is a monument to a Nazi collaborator and war criminal responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands was not the primary focus of much of the coverage. Kinney is a particularly vocal critic of the Edmonton Police Service, to the extent that they refuse to recognize him as a journalist.

Not everyone is concerned about the alleged ethical breach: the Canadian Anti-Hate Network tweeted: “Duncan Kinney has been charged with accurately labelling a Nazi statue and being super cool. We have no idea if it was him. If we ever find out who actually did it, we’ll buy them lunch. The stunt was an amazing public service.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... t-problem/

*****

From cassad's telegram account:

***

Colonelcassad

Image

Nikolaev-Kherson direction
situation as of 13.00 November 11, 2022

🔻The Russian Ministry of Defense officially announced the completion of the withdrawal of the group of troops of the Russian Armed Forces from the right bank of the Dnieper: the last equipment and personnel completed the transfer at 5 am. According to military correspondent Alexander Sladkov , over 20 thousand personnel and 3.5 thousand pieces of equipment were withdrawn.

▪️The Russian Defense Ministry says that not a single piece of military equipment and weapons was left on the right bank of the Dnieper. Apparently, reports from the field were submitted this way, because there are enough personnel with captured equipment. Another question is that this equipment could be out of order for a long time , and its evacuation seemed inappropriate.

▪️Thanks to the competent actions of air defense systems and engineering units, it was possible to slow down the advance of enemy troops and protect their own units during the march and crossing.

The troops to the last assisted in the evacuation of civilians. The crossings were hit by 5 massive strikes with HIMARS rockets, Russian air defense shot down 28 shells, and 5 more were deflected from targets by means of electronic warfare.

▪️Two tanks, two self-propelled artillery mounts, three armored combat vehicles, and more than twenty Ukrainian servicemen were blown up in the minefields . Loitering ammunition "Lancet" and MLRS fire destroyed three 155-mm towed howitzers M777, two infantry fighting vehicles and three enemy pickup trucks.

▪️Russian artillery and air strikes and the use of minefields stopped Ukrainian units 30-40 km from the area of ​​crossings across the Dnieper. We plotted this radius on the map and noted which settlements are already under the control of Ukrainian troops.

▪️Throughout the withdrawal operation, a wide network of informers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Security Service of Ukraine, in a hurry to get "pardon", transmitted data on the routes of transfer and the location of Russian military personnel.

***

Colonelcassad
The Kremlin about the abandonment of Kherson.

1. Kherson region remains a subject of the Russian Federation. There is no change in her status.
2. The Russian Federation has no regrets about accepting it into its composition.
3. The position of Ukraine makes it impossible to achieve the goals of the NMD by peaceful means.
4. NWO in Ukraine will continue. The NWO may end once its stated objectives have been achieved.

***

forwarded from
Witnesses of Bayraktar
We spent that night on the Antonovsky bridge. We met our soldiers, who fulfilled their task with honor on the right bank of the Dnieper.

Paratroopers covered the withdrawal of troops. Their column was the last to leave along the Antonovskrma bridge. Yes it is. Despite several months of work by the American Hymars, caterpillar vehicles could move across the bridge until the last moment.

The Ukrainians did not let us work in peace. They worked with the Hymars on the panton crossing. We were "lucky" to be at the epicenter of the air defense struggle against MLRS missiles. American missiles plowed the ground, and anti-aircraft missiles cut off branches overhead. Everyone is alive, only a little crushed the door on our car.

By midnight, we felt that the Ukrainians were coming closer and closer to Kherson. They pulled up the cannon artillery and began to shell the right bank of the Dnieper. It was only necessary for our air defense to hit a couple of points in the sky and immediately the shelling stopped.

The engineers rolled up the pantons, got the boats out of the water and drove off to the rear.

We met the last column of paratroopers and rode away. Closer to dawn, the land was in debt, and our car jumped. It was the engineers who put an end to the fate of the Antonovsky Bridge.

Now you have to fight on the left bank. Nothing is finished, nothing is lost. We are working on.

Alexander Kharchenko, Sergey Shilov, Evgeny Maslennikov

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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

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

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Sun Nov 13, 2022 3:10 pm

Across the Antonovsky Bridge
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 11/13/2022

Image

Original Article: Alexander Kots / Komsomolskaya Pravda

The first explosion, which shook the windows, was heard on Thursday around 10 p.m. With all the lights off, he blew up the patio. A point of fire rose above the horizon and flew over us towards the Antonovsky bridge. There was a flash of light followed by a deafening crash. Again a point of light rose into the sky and again there was another explosion about three kilometers from where we were. "They are destroying the crossing," said a colleague. “It seems that the withdrawal is complete.”

Russia was withdrawing the last of its troops. Of course, it is impossible to remove an entire pool in one day. The withdrawal of troops had been taking place at night for several days. The equipment was removed by ferry and the infantry retreated on foot across the Antonovsky Bridge. The paratroopers, who covered this withdrawal maneuver, remained in their positions. They diverted the enemy's fire towards themselves so that the main part of the troops stationed on the right bank of the Dnieper could secretly advance to the left bank of the river.

Friday night was the time for the departure of the troops from the rear. At that time, it seems that Ukraine began to guess things. At three in the morning, I stopped shaking from the constant explosions in the Antonovsky Bridge area. The wooden house did not stop doing it, which continued to rumble. Missiles flew toward the intersection from various directions. Some of them were intercepted by our air defense, I could hear the characteristic sound.

At five in the morning, a powerful detonation knocked me out of bed. The second got me on my feet. “Either the dam or the bridge has exploded”, was the first thing that came to my mind.

I arrived at the intersection at dawn, expecting to find a lunar landscape littered with the skeletons of burned vehicles. I drove to the ferry landing point on the normal road. There was nothing there. It could be seen that the troops had left the area in three different ways. Heavy equipment, by ferry and trucks, by the pontoon built under the bridge along the piers. At some point, he was hit by HIMARS fire and a Kamaz was frozen on him. The rest of the armored vehicles circulated on the Antonovsky bridge itself.

I walked among the remains of anti-tank mines. In the period of a few months, the site has been hit by more than 140 US missiles costing $1.5 million each. Russian troops covered it with heavy metal sheets, on which it was possible to drive through the damaged part. About two hundred meters later, the bridge breaks. Further on there are two stretches, after which the right bank can be seen. Looks like the enemy hadn't gotten there yet.

I did not find a single trace of burned vehicles, which means that the withdrawal of troops in this area took place without loss. Part of the units withdrawn across the bridge are on their way to regain combat capacity, while the rest have already taken up their positions on the new defense lines.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/11/13/por-e ... more-25935

Google Translator

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

Endless War, Endless Crisis, Fascist Hell: The Chasm the Ukraine Conflict Has Created for NATO Countries
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 12, 2022
Rainer Shea

Image

Capitalism was always going to devour itself when it became faced with its own collapse.

The U.S. ruling class has opened up a chasm for the people within the country, as well as within the wider NATO bloc. It’s brought about a combination of international, economic, health, and climatic crises that are going to end in political nightmare. And it’s rendered the populace unaware of how to avert what’s coming, or how to bring themselves out of the abhorrent conditions they’re already living under. For as long as this revolutionary knowledge remains out of reach, they’ll continue being shuffled along towards their dark fate. This is the fate that our socioeconomic system has always had planned for them. Capitalism was always going to devour itself when it became faced with its own collapse.

The people are acutely aware that the situation is dire. With the prices that won’t stop rising, the wages that aren’t keeping up to the effect that workers have collectively gotten a pay cut in recent months, the police who resemble an army more every year, the deterioration of infrastructure, and every other piece of evidence that our social order is breaking down, it’s impossible to believe otherwise. This consciousness of a perilous systemic sickness is shared by the elites, who see how profoundly capitalism has deteriorated and seek a route towards preserving their power. They’re troubled not just by the potential for revolt, but by the accelerating disappearance of the America-centered global order that they depend on for the continued health of their capital. There’s a reason why the United States, the core of imperialism, has been most aggressive out of all the imperialist countries in imposing neoliberal austerity onto its people: the imperial spoils have been drying up for decades, and growing amounts of the empire’s own population need to be sacrificed to compensate for this loss.

The bigger this deficit gets, the more desperate the empire is to reverse the flow of history.

To carry out some masterstroke in geopolitics that destroys China as a superpower, and ends the threat to neo-colonial extraction posed by the Belt and Road Initiative. The events that would need to occur for this to happen, which include the destabilization of Russia, the ousting of Assad within the crucial Eurasian trade node of Syria, and Ukraine-style coups throughout the central Asian countries, are nothing more than fantasies. Washington has shown itself to be too far along in its decline to be able to inflict those kinds of damage. It hasn’t even been able to subdue Syria. When Biden establishes “red lines” for China at the G20 summit, he’s doing so not from a place of dominance, but from a place of desperation. The decoupling and trade protectionism that the U.S. has carried out in regards to China are measures that further render Washington, and its closest allies, hermetic global anomalies.

The USA, Canada, Britain, and some countries in Europe and Scandinavia are the main powers to still not have China as their biggest trading partner. Almost every other country has switched to the PRC as their economic anchor. Without its former trading hegemony, and soon to lose its currency hegemony as well, the U.S. is naturally abandoning its old semblance of respect for international law. In a trend that began over a decade prior to the global trade shift, Washington has been vastly expanding its global secret wars. Since the “War on Terror” began, it’s carried out operations in dozens of countries, opening up new occupation fronts like AFRICOM and training local paramilitaries. All of this has come about through its own legislature’s authorization, not through the sanction of any international body.

The world no longer has reason to lend the USA the respect afforded by diplomatic and economic cooperation, and consequently no longer has reason to fear the USA’s hand on the level it used to.

By the middle of the century, the empire may not be able to coerce any country through means other than brute force. Without success for its psyops across the Global South, Washington lacks the strength for another wave of counterrevolutionary coups. It can only find support for its war against Russia from the other imperialist powers, which themselves increasingly have a rational incentive to break from the costly sanctions. Without its global economic grip, which will finally break in full if the dollar gets abandoned as the global reserve currency, Washington can no longer exercise the “soft” power that let it become the largest empire in history. Washington has become an increasingly rogue state.

The nature of imperialist warfare in the 21st century, therefore, can only be one of maintaining a stubborn grip on all the places which imperialism is still able to reach. Assad hasn’t been defeated, but the occupying U.S. troops still aren’t able to be kicked out of the country. They’re still stealing oil from Syria, and still using sanctions to frustrate the rebuilding effort. This isn’t victory, anymore than the twenty years of vainly trying to fight off the Taliban were victory or anymore than the parallel drawn-out Ukrainian counterinsurgency will be. But it lets the empire continue to exist, if in a contracted form where it can no longer maintain a pampered labor aristocracy in the core. And however far this contraction goes, as long as revolution in the core doesn’t happen, the ruling class can remain in power.

If our society’s decline were to advance to the point where the United States resembles post-Gaddafi Libya, in which slave markets have emerged out of a failed state, the elites would still be able to rule. Even if only in a crude sense, where vast swaths of the population are living in anarchic destitution while the wealthy’s enclaves are the only functioning locales. Neoliberalism, which has in effect been an engineered collapse of society, is the preparation for that scenario.

What’s required for such a project, where the system holds on even after it’s ceased to be “capitalism” as we’ve known it and reverts to a new feudalism, is the importing of imperialism’s methods for neo-colonial rule. This process has already been in motion for over a generation, since the bourgeoisie imposed neoliberalism onto not just the peripheral countries but the core ones as well.

With the rise in inequality has come police militarization, mass surveillance, a war against whistleblowers, detentions of “terrorism suspects” without trial, online censorship of information that goes against imperialism’s narratives, towers that monitor everyone outdoors within several miles, border militarization, covert incorporation of intelligence into the media, corporate encroachment upon electoral systems, and other developments that are analogous to the destruction of democracy which occurred throughout much of the Global South during the Cold War.

Mercenaries that act as domestic police forces are a recent addition to the list. The difference between this and the past bourgeois dictatorships is that these means for repression have modern technology’s advantage. They have the internet’s all-encompassing surveillance opportunities, and artificial intelligence systems that enable a surgical monitoring and ideological management of each individual.

Yet these measures are only sufficient for as long as the imperialist bloc remains united. The restoration of inter-imperial unity brought by the Ukraine conflict is only temporary, a new emergence of division within NATO is coming. This will happen whether through the political extinction of the European leaders who go along with the sanctions, or through the breakout of civil conflict across the eurozone. These places will ultimately have to break from the empire in order to have hope for avoiding becoming failed states. Which they already have become, in terms of their failure to provide essentials to their people. As this breakdown unfolds, the empire will implement the next step in its campaign for keeping control: the “Syrianization” of Europe, and then of the imperial center as well.

Syria is only one example that can be used to illustrate what Europe’s future looks like.

In every country and region that’s embraced the multipolar order, the U.S. has tried to frustrate the transition away from imperial control. It’s done so through the dual strategy of destabilization and militarization. Washington’s meddling in Africa, Latin America, and southeast Asia has come along with military occupations wherever possible within these sections of the globe. It can’t restore the U.S.-led order, but it can prevent imperialism’s challengers from accessing the disputed markets. Even if these markets have been rendered nonexistent by the destruction of a functioning state.

This is the purpose of the paramilitary training facet within Washington’s secret wars: to cultivate terrorist organizations like Ethiopia’s TPLF, which exist to sow chaos so that the BRI’s implementation can be delayed. The new generation of Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and the Afghan Uyghur terror groups that seek to make their violence spill over into the Xinjiang border, are other examples. Washington’s hope is that the famines these countries are experiencing, exacerbated by U.S. sanctions, will provide the conditions for a full dynamiting of their state structures. When a state can no longer be controlled, it must be destroyed. From this campaign to sow chaos is emerging a band of the globe that’s engaged in anarchic warfare, stretching from civil conflict-ridden Myanmar, to violently divided Libya, to gang violence-plagued Central America.

All of these places remain unstable due to imperialism’s meddling, and they can only become functional if imperialism’s hand grows too decrepit to inflict harm. Which can’t happen until revolution comes in the imperial center itself. Washington’s latest operation to occupy Haiti, which is predicated on stopping the country’s chaos but is truly about propping up the current neo-colonial regime, shows imperialism still has the strength to force colonialism’s victims into continued subordination. If Washington’s hand becomes utterly ineffectual by mid-century, it will be because revolution has come to its own borders. Not because imperialism has stopped fighting to perpetuate oppression, which it will never do. It’s applying a shock treatment to growing swaths of the globe, made more effective by the climate crisis, with the hopes of putting them all in northeastern Syria’s situation. This is a situation where the area is subject to U.S. occupation and looting, even if it technically exists in the borders of an anti-imperialist government. If the state can be destroyed in any location, imperialism can still gain a foothold there.

It was only logical that this treatment would be applied to Europe, as well as to the U.S. itself, when these places came under threat of falling from the grip of America’s ruling class. Destroying a state is a way of preempting the variables the ruling class fears, whether those variables are proletarian revolution or an attempt by foreign leaders to assert their own interests. Should Washington’s destabilization operations become fully applied to multiple European states, the humanitarian crisis that they’re experiencing from the Russia sanctions will be a sufficient spark for civil conflict.

Germany is the first candidate for this pacification measure. It’s the European state that’s experiencing so far the most substantial debate within its ruling class over whether committing to the Ukraine war is worthwhile. And even as it for now remains a solid vassal in Washington’s anti-Russian war machine, it’s opened up economic ties with China. As a consequence, even since before the war, Germany has been a target of the first stages in the Syrianization process. These are the calls from U.S. ambassadors for Germany to go against its own interests by abandoning the Nord Stream pipeline, and the implied coercive measures that intimidate Germany’s leaders into trying to balance their allegiances.

With this fall’s engineered explosion of the pipeline, the effort to pacify Germany has become more threatening, if indirectly. Industrial sabotage, preferably of the kind that can be blamed on the enemy or switftly made an afterthought in media discourse, is one of the many tools Washington is going to employ in its war against Europe. For as long as possible and wherever possible, this war will have to be covert. And the empire wishes this war weren’t necessary, as attacking its own allies signals the demise of its international order. But this war has started, and it will expand and intensify as multipolarity continues to rise.

The war’s next stage will be the application within Europe of Washington’s more direct tool for waging asymmetrical warfare, beyond economic attacks or orchestrated blasts: the use of paramilitary operatives.

In Ukraine, the U.K.—which has continued to be Washington’s most loyal European partner in waging war since it broke from the EU—is using terrorism as a propaganda weapon. Its intelligence centers are sending contractors to wage information warfare through a dual strategy of censorship and propaganda, the latter of which takes a form that depends on terror and war crimes. These contractors, informed by a psychological operations doctrine that takes direct example from the propaganda methods of ISIS, are working to shoot snuff films wherein Ukrainian forces torture Russian prisoners of war. Their aim is to to identify the demographics and sentiments of the Russian populations they target, so that they can demoralize these targets on a mass scale. Their method is to expose these Russians to the footage of the atrocities.

In practice, this can only rouse support for Russia’s mobilization, not discourage it. But provoking Russia has been Washington’s strategy for decades, ever since U.K. intelligence foresaw after the Soviet breakup that Russia and Ukraine had new potential for conflict. Functionally, the purpose of these operatives is to incentivize the terror carried out by the U.S. mercenaries, CIA-backed fascist militias, and regular armed forces members within Ukraine. When Ukraine becomes spent as a tool for trying to destabilize Eurasia, these fighters will largely be assigned to the war’s new front, the front in which its imperial destruction gets turned inwards.

Europe is on its way to becoming Syrianized, both through the proliferation of U.S. military installations and through the establishment of a U.S.-U.K. network for manufacturing chaos.

They’ll become émigrés to other European countries, and even to the U.S. as well, working to suppress the civil unrest which these places will be undergoing. The more the war accelerates the economy’s decline, the more their services will be needed. Already during this moment, where Europe is experiencing a combination of sanctions-created energy crisis and winter cold extremes exacerbated by climate collapse, civil conflict is becoming a serious possibility. The refugee influx from Washington’s wars has created the conditions for clashes between Europe’s far-right groups, and the immigrant communities which have been routinely rioting due to their disenfranchisement. The British intelligence operatives in Ukraine, who’ve gathered their counterinsurgency knowledge from their involvement with terrorist groups in both Syria and the U.K., will take advantage of this increasingly tumultuous social landscape. Europe is on its way to becoming Syrianized, both through the proliferation of U.S. military installations and through the establishment of a U.S.-U.K. network for manufacturing chaos.

This war has accelerated the decay of every member of the imperialist bloc. Whether the European countries remain U.S. vassal states, or opt for inter-imperialist warfare out of rational self-interest, their descent into failed state status is inevitable. Capitalism’s growing contradictions will, on their own, ensure the collapse of these societies. The same applies to capitalist Russia, though the Russian Federation will outlast the U.S. empire given the economic war’s current trends. The only way these countries will see an end to their crises is by all undergoing proletarian revolutions, allowing them to become politically and economically self-sufficient while militarily defending themselves from the imperialist remnants.

There’s a reason why there are societies around the globe, including in countries like Britain, dedicated to the study of the DPRK’s Juche model: because Juche’s military first, self-reliant strategy of anti-imperialism lets any given country fulfill these criteria for surviving imperialism’s onslaughts. Until the workers gain power in this way, or in an equivalent way to it, the crises plaguing our world will persist. This especially applies to Ukraine, which can’t adequately be denazified until the socioeconomic forces that produce fascism are eliminated. Operation Z is revolutionary in the current context, as it’s anti-imperialist. But it’s not ideal. Ukraine and the other former eastern bloc countries that have been descending into fascism can’t be healed until the Soviet Union gets restored.

The great obstacle to this vision for a wave of socialist revolutions across Europe and North America is that even as capitalism reduces the peoples in these countries to serfs, they’re more ensconced than ever in anti-communist, pro-imperialist propaganda. This is truest in the imperial center, as per the material interests of its ruling class. Not even in a loyal pro-American country like Poland are the people as willing to accept NATO propaganda as Americans are. They live in a self-reinforcing loop, where the same ideas get perpetually repeated.

Bringing somebody out of this indoctrination is possible, but until the information that disproves Washington’s narratives becomes easily visible to the average person, the people will remain locked into this circular thinking pattern. This is a pattern that’s wholly incompatible with the Juche idea, and with every other type of revolutionary thought. In the mind that’s internalized U.S. propaganda, the DPRK is a “hermit kingdom,” a sinister dictatorship with a system that’s even worse than our own neoliberal paradigm. China, Cuba, and former socialism are subjected to the equivalent characterizations. Capitalist Russia is portrayed through this same narrative framework, in which if a country opposes U.S. interests, it’s an unambiguous villain.

For socialism to come to the countries that are currently part of NATO, the full undoing of imperialist ideological conditioning among the masses won’t be able to come first. Only until the bourgeois state is replaced by workers’ democracy, and the cultural hegemony switches, can these ideas be defeated in a societally encompassing fashion. Until then, the most that revolutionaries can do is take every opportunity to provide anti-imperialist education through our platforms, and through our organizational study programs. The goal of a communist, as Lenin said, is to lift the people up to the level of an ideologically trained cadre member. But in the face of the ever more aggressive censorship and informational warfare which imperialism is carrying out, the amount of minds we can win over is limited. Ukraine is the testing ground for this counterrevolutionary effort. The U.K. contractors have been not just waging informational warfare, but working to facilitate sophisticated methods of censorship surrounding both the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts.

Our best route to victory is through mass struggle, where our revolutionary cadres gain the training to overthrow the state while helping guide the social movements. To prevail, this effort must overcome the counterrevolutionary force which pervades every aspect of our society. A force that the NATO war machine is tied into.

The ruling class isn’t concerned with how much chaos and crime proliferates throughout the capitalist world as the system consumes itself. In Ukraine, the breakdown of the state’s ability to enforce laws within many localities has actively served the reaction, allowing for CIA-backed Nazi militias to fill the power vacuums. In Britain, police are now being instructed to not apprehend people who shoplift food, not out of humanitarian concern but out of fear that punishing the victims of the inflation crisis will provoke unmanageable unrest. There are areas in which this spreading collapse of the rule of law advances counterrevolutionary terror, and areas in which it forces the petty bourgeoisie to start sacrificing valuable resources to those who need the food from their stores more. The prevailing phenomenon is that big capital remains unharmed, and actually benefits from the multiplying opportunities to profit from crises.

As monopoly capital continues to consolidate, now producing capitalists whose fortunes number in the hundreds of billions, the globe is being separated between “green zones” and “red zones.” The elites are establishing boundaries of demarcation between the still functional “green zone” locales that they inhabit, and the crumbling “red zone” facet of society that’s on its way to encompass every place other than the wealthy neighborhoods. Should these neighborhoods themselves become subject to the spreading chaos, whether through extreme weather events or uprisings or nuclear blasts, the elites have luxury rural shelters to retreat to. During the panicked initial stage of the pandemic, many of the rich temporarily relocated to these hideouts. When the next upset of that caliber appears, they’ll be even more ready to abandon their current hubs.

All of this makes for a picture of a socioeconomic order that’s in an intensifying state of flux. At this point, nothing is stable for the system the bourgeoisie preside over, and it’s going to keep getting more chaotic for the foreseeable future. The goal of the ruling class is to bring things to stasis, to a point where it no longer has to act from a place of reaction towards increasingly erratic variables. By the nature of capitalism, this is impossible. A system that depends on endless growth, and therefore on perpetual expansion into new markets, can’t remain stable when faced with the historical principle that empires fall.

There’s nothing that can return the system to the solid grip it held during eras like the mid-20th century Pax Americana peak, or the decades from the early 19th century when capitalism was still a revolutionary force. These greatest moments of strength for capital were themselves illusory in their sense of permanence, soon to be upset by the immutable forces of historical progress.

The semblances of stability that capitalism still holds onto, where the oil industry is making record profits from Europe’s resource isolation and the stock market continues to recover from the pandemic, are illusions as well. The current thriving of the resource, tech, and arms industries, as well as the unprecedented capital control of financial firms like BlackRock, comes at the expense of the hollowing out of the rest of the world. The economy is more top-heavy than ever, showering the elites with material excess while almost two-thirds of the population live paycheck to paycheck. The profits of capital’s industries depend on the exhaustion of natural resources to the effect that they’re growing more precious, on the proliferation of wars that are damaging all corners of the globe, and on the emergence of environmental and health crises.

The ruling class is functioning on top of a crumbling foundation. At some point, this foundation will give out.

When the next downturn in capitalism’s economic crisis cycle appears, the process towards collapse will be greatly accelerated. This “recession” won’t merely be a recession, but a combination of the worst aspects of the 2008 financial meltdown and the 1973 stagflation crisis. It will produce a potentially worse depression than the one from nine decades ago.

It’s in these conditions, where control slips ever more from the grasp of our ruling class, that the elites have become willing to risk atomic conflagration in the hope this will let them hold on to power. The ruling class sees nuclear war as acceptable for the same reason it sees climatic catastrophe as acceptable: destroying civilizations is already a normal thing for imperialism to do. If the U.K. were reduced to the poisoned, medieval wreckage that the nuclear apocalypse film Threads depicts it as becoming, the fate of Britain’s people wouldn’t mean anymore to the ruling class than the fate of Libya or Yemen’s people has. Human lives are dispensable to the elites, all that matters is maintaining their status. And if or when the core countries start experiencing the level of chaos that the imperialized countries have, the corporations will gain an opportunity to swoop in with fascist forces to fill the power vacuums. That’s what happens to Britain after the nuclear war in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta.

Even if a third world war doesn’t happen, the emergence of failed states across the imperialist bloc is the logical conclusion of the system’s contraction. Therefore, what’s been done to Ukraine is sure to incrementally be replicated in these places. The task of intelligence, particularly British and American intelligence, is to prevent a wave of revolutions in the NATO bloc.

Their strategy is to perpetually cultivate fascist paramilitaries to terrorize the people into submission, to create psyops that frustrate revolutionary education, to carry out intrigue within the revolutionary organizations, and to perpetrate false flags that render their opposition dysfunctional. NATO won’t reach its goal of destabilizing Eurasia, and the longer the war lasts, the more NATO itself will fall into disarray. So the hub of imperialist warfare, centralized in North America and extending to the British isles, aims to wage a war that prevents the hemisphere from going the way of Asia’s socialist bastion. The model of anti-imperialist stability that the Juche idea represents is the great enemy of this war. Our ruling class seeks to crush this model’s ideas by any means necessary.

To keep the next stage of history at bay, to stop this latest great phase of global warfare from producing revolutions like the previous ones did, the imperialist bloc must consume itself. With the shrinking of American power, the global imperialist power structure must be shunken along with it. Which entails all of the countries still within its range assuming the roles that used to be filled by the countries subordinate to them.

Eastern Europe must be converted into a neo-colony, a process underway (though not yet complete) with the EU’s imposing neoliberal shock policies onto Ukraine. The U.K., and all other European countries that can be kept loyal to Washington, must be converted into the kind of hollowed out military base that Ukraine has become. The Scandinavian countries must have their transition away from social democracy accelerated, transforming them into the kind of austerity-ridden imperialist hubs that Britain has been during the last fifty years. The U.S., and Canada by extension, must be made to resemble large peripheral countries like Brazil. Their governments must be cut down to only filling the roles of waging war, and of enforcing the law. Huge sections of their societies must be allowed to descend into anarchy as the state’s power wanes, then deprived of the ability to undergo revolution by intelligence-backed fascist terror groups.


The Ukraine war has advanced this process to its initial stage, in which fascism gains power before it wages war against the people in a collapsed social order. The militarization that NATO has been carrying out for the last decade or so has ushered in ultra-nationalist governments in several places. And the rise of a pro-Mussolini party in Italy has made for a scenario where NATO backs a new Italian fascism, as this party has shown allegiance towards the war effort. If Washington gets its way, a pro-NATO fascist regime will also come to power in Germany when its social collapse causes its liberal party to fall out. The re-armament that the war has brought to Germany sets the conditions for such a scenario.

Yet even if the war on Europe proves a success, the system’s decline won’t halt. A hermetic capitalism isn’t a capitalism that can survive. This is why Russia will outlast the U.S. empire: the sanctions have made it far more isolated, but at least it can depend on the support of a rising multipolar world. The U.S. empire can’t even depend on the support of its “backyard” of Latin America, or its “garden” of Europe. If communists in the imperialist countries navigate our situation correctly, we will triumph over the reaction. Imperialism has never been closer to its extinction. What we must understand is that it won’t stop fighting us until it’s been defeated.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... countries/

Shouldn't oughta slander Brazil like that, Shea.

Canadian Journalist Added to Ukrainian Hitlist
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 12, 2022
Deborah L. Armstrong

Image

Guy Boulianne of Quebec targeted by “Mirotvorets”

Not everyone looks forward to Mondays.

The end of the weekend. That alarm which always comes too early. The coffee which never seems like enough to prepare you for the piles of work awaiting you after your stressful commute.

But for one Canadian journalist, Monday came with a much more unpleasant surprise.

Imagine how Guy Boulianne felt when he woke up last Monday, November 7, to find that he had been added to a hitlist. Yes, you read that correctly. He was added to a kill list.

It’s no secret that Ukraine’s so-called “Center to Control Disinformation” operates a database which publicizes the private information of thousands of journalists worldwide. The site, called “Mirotvorets” (also spelled “Myrotvorets”), means “Peacemaker” in Ukrainian. In the fascist lexicon, “peace” is “made” by killing anyone not in lockstep with Ukraine’s goals of securing a pure ethno-state purged of all untermenschen such as the Roma people, LGBTQ and the most hated minorities of all — “Moskals,” a Ukrainian slur for Russians.

Why would a Canadian journalist, from Quebec, be targeted by a country more than 7,000 kilometers away from where he lives? Boulianne believes he was selected for “liquidation” because he has written about Faina Savenkova, a 14-year-old girl from Lugansk who has also been added to Mirotvorets.

“You know,” Boulianne wrote in an article published in French, “there is something very abnormal when I see a ‘thumbs down’ 👎at the bottom of an article I published which simply mentions the first children’s congress, entitled ‘Children for Peace!’, the main purpose of which was to draw public attention to the increased supply of high-powered weapons to Ukrainian military personnel, which is why the small inhabitants of Donbass are suffering.”

“After all,” he continued, “not only enemy soldiers die, but also children. When I see this ‘thumb down’ 👎under this article, it means to me that the individual who did it is completely against the protection of children in the Donbass!”


Young Faina Savenkova was added to this hitlist, which is open to anyone who wants to see it online, at the age of 12, after she appeared before a UN security council in a video-taped message, in which she tried to bring awareness about the plight of civilians in Eastern Ukraine to the international body of lawmakers.

Image
Faina Savenkova’s profile at Mirotvorets includes her street address and multiple screenshots of her writing.

Because she lives in the breakaway Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), now claimed as Russian territory, and because she does not support the fascist-friendly regime in Kiev, the teenager is considered a “Russian separatist” and now also a “Russian propagandist” — which makes her, under Ukrainian law, an “info-terrorist” worthy of death.

The Foundation to Battle Injustice, a Russian human rights organization, has investigated Mirotvorets and publicized its crimes against humanity. A number of the more than 4,000 journalists added to the blacklist have already been “liquidated.” People such as Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli, Ukrainian journalist Oles Buzyna, former Ukrainian MP Oleg Kalashnikov, and war correspondent Daria Dugina. All of them were added to the list and then murdered. Their profiles at Mirotvorets proudly confirm that fact in bold red letters: “Liquidated.”

Image
Italian Journalist Andrea Rocchelli listed as “liquidated” at “Mirotvorets”

Image
Daria Dugina, Russian war correspondent, is listed as “liquidated” on Mirotvorets site.

Mirotvorets is an open-source website and NGO which publicizes a running list of “enemies of Ukraine,” or, as the website itself declares, those “whose actions show signs of crimes against Ukraine’s national security, peace, human security and international law.” In other words, having opinions counter to Ukraine’s official narratives, or opposing the Nazi-worshipping regime in Kiev, qualifies as such a threat under Ukrainian law.

The website, which was first launched in December 2014 by Ukrainian politician and activist Georgy Tuka, has remained online all this time despite repeated requests from the UN, G7 ambassadors, the EU and various human rights groups to shut it down. In 2018, the German Foreign Office asked the Ukrainian government to take the website down. In response, the Security Service of Ukraine issued a statement that Mirotvorets had not violated Ukrainian law.

On May 7, 2016, the website published the personal data of 4,508 journalists and other members of the international media who had either worked or been given permission to work in the Donbass region, thereby having “cooperated with terrorists” under Ukrainian law. Mirotvorets published their phone numbers, e-mail addresses, cities and countries of residence, information which was obtained by hacking the database of the Donetsk People’s Republic’s Ministry of State Security.

According to Yulia Gorbunova, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, the implications of this list for press freedom are serious and the very existence of such a list puts lives at risk. Then-President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, called the leak of people’s private information a “big mistake.” Now he, too, is listed at Mirotvorets where he is described as “an accomplice of Russian terrorists and invaders” and accused of “participation in the propaganda activities of Russia (the aggressor country) against Ukraine” as well as “participation in information operations of Russia (aggressor country) aimed at destroying evidence of the crimes of the Russian aggressor and his accomplices against Ukraine.”

The Mirotvorets Center also advises law enforcement “to consider this publication on the website as a statement about the commission by this citizen of deliberate acts against the national security of Ukraine, peace, security of mankind, and international law and order, and other offences.”

So… Speak your mind, do some time.
Or, maybe they’ll just execute you. It costs less than prison.
Orwell must be spinning in his grave.

“Should I be worried and feel in danger?” Boulianne wondered. “You have to be aware that there is a very large Ukrainian-Canadian community. According to the 2016 census, 1,359,655 Canadians (or 3.8% of the population) are of Ukrainian origin.”


Image
A 1995, Toronto Star article reports that a Canadian mining company, INCO, utilized Ukrainian Nazi collaborators to crush leftist labour organizing in the early 1960s. Photo: The Canada Files

Boulianne quotes Aidan Jonah, who wrote the following at The Canada Files: “Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s former foreign minister and current deputy prime minister knows all about the glorification of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. Freeland is also deeply connected to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC), which glorify the fascist Ukrainian Nationals Union group and Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. The UCC considers fascist Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, the fascist political and military leader of the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN, as one of Ukraine’s greatest national heroes. They both honor Yaroslav Stetsko, Bandera’s right-hand man, who said in his 1941 autobiography: ‘I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the advisability of introducing the German methods of extermination of the Jews in Ukraine, preventing their assimilation and the like.’”

Image
The LUC’s youth organization commemorated an anniversary of Yaroslav Stetsko in 2012. Photo: The Canada Files

In 2014 and 2016, Boulianne writes, Freeland paraded and promoted the Toronto Ukrainian Festival , including the fundraising efforts of Right Sector Canada, a neo-Nazi group. Their goal was to buy military equipment for their fighters in Ukraine.

“If I were to suddenly disappear, you would know in which sector to begin your investigation,” the French-speaking journalist continued.

Image
A Right Sector Canada leader speaks to CBC News, in 2014. Photo: The Canada Files

[youtube]https://youtu.be/8y6P4nCjcws[/youtube]

Ultra-Nationalist group “Right Sector” fundraises in Toronto

It’s ironic to note that the database was previously illegal under Ukrainian law. On May 10, 2016, Mirotvorets published the private information of journalists including reporters from AFP, Al Jazeera, LeMonde, BBC, Reuters and Forbes. That provoked an outcry from the international legal community which opposed the publication of personal data. Valeria Lutkovskaya, Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, even released a statement that the database violates human rights and should be shut down. On may 13, 2016, there was an announcement that the website was closed. Six days later the database was back online and by May 20th, it had published an updated list of media members accredited for work in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). And Lutkovskaya was threatened with her resignation. Her term ended in 2017 and she was replaced.

Image
Photos: Guy Boulianne

Originally, the personal data of the “7500 terrorists, separatists and their accomplices” was collected by volunteers led by Georgy Tuka. By January 9, 2015, the website already had more than 9,000 entries. In fact, the first person named in the database was Eduard Matyukha, known as “the people’s mayor” in Gorlovka from 2014–2019. However, this “people’s mayor” turned out to be a Ukrainian spy, who was providing intelligence about Russian operations in the DPR directly to Kiev. Even his wife was unaware of his clandestine activities, according to one article. His addition to the list was nothing more than a psy-op, which, according to him, made him a hero in the two breakaway republics of Donbass.

Ukraine’s Advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Anton Gerashchenko is believed to have initiated Mirotvorets. Ironically, in 2019 Gerashchenko announced at a Free Speech Committee hearing, that he was named “journalist safety point person” by the Minister of Internal Affairs.
Tweet by Christopher Miller

This “safety,” however, only applies to journalists supportive of Ukraine’s fascist-loving government. Any journalists with independent minds need not apply. Indeed, on August 16, 2016, the BBC reported on a statement made by the Mirotvorets Center on Facebook: “As of today, the website Myrotvorets.center and all its mirrors are considered electronic mass media.” And, as Radio Svoboda reported in 2017, after surviving an alleged assassination attempt, Gerashchenko vowed that Mirotvorets will never be taken down. “The ‘Mirotvorets’ project, which is like a bone in the throat of all of you, will work regardless of whether I am alive or not. And you will not be able to destroy it under any circumstances,” the Verkhovna Rada deputy wrote on Facebook on January 22.

One month prior, in December of 2016, the Mirotvorets database already included more than 100,000 records of individuals from around the world. All of them, including children as young as 9 years old, are considered “enemies of Ukraine” who should be “liquidated.”

Boulianne wrote that the Mirotvorets site is registered in his home country, Canada. “The server appears as NATO HPWS/2.1, when parsing from April 6 to April 22, 2015, it returned the address psb4ukr.nato.int as a reverse domain name, i.e. a subdomain of the official site of the NATO military bloc, while the main NATO domain, nato.int, knows nothing about it. The PTR record provided in response to a reverse DNS query typically points to a location of the site in the domain name space. The PTR record is entered into the master DNS zone file when the domain system is configured. Thus, the creators of the site specifically imitated the link to NATO.”

And, as I reported last month, the site is protected by Cloudflare, a company based in California. In fact, it receives funding from the United States, approved by US Congress under HR7691, known as the “Additional Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022.” And despite appeals to the UN by human rights organizations such as the Schiller Institute, Mirotvorets remains.

Image


Mirotvorets’ WHOIS record shows that they are using CloudFlare. Photo: Deborah L. Armstrong

On August 7, 2016, a lawyer from Kharkov named Aleksey Romanov revealed the name of the owner of the site, Oksana Sergeevna Tinko, who wrote on Facebook, “Yes, I took over the domains, because if something happens I have vast experience both in dealing with complaints about domains and with the closure of domains, I know this process from all sides and if something happens I can take adequate measures. And in case of any naughty person, I am ready to take the first blow and give the Peacekeepers time to solve the problem with minimal losses for themselves.” The quote and her account are no longer available on Facebook. Romanov received death threats immediately after naming Tinko as the site’s owner, and he complained to the UN.

And still, Mirotvorets remains.

It seems as though no one on the planet has the power, or the guts, to shut down this kill list even though it violates the law of every civilized country in the world, and people exposed on the list continue to be murdered.

I asked Boulliane if he had spoken to any authorities in Canada. It was a rhetorical question, as you probably know if you’ve read this far.

“I haven’t asked and I won’t ask, because I don’t have time to waste,” he replied with a smiley face 😊. “I consider that what protects me the most is to make the case public.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... n-hitlist/

*********

Zelensky And Bush To Give Joint Pro-War Presentation

Image

War criminal George W Bush and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be appearing at an event next week at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, in partnership with US government-funded narrative management operations Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy. The goal of the presentation will reportedly be to address the completely fictional and imaginary concern that congressional Republicans won’t continue supporting US proxy war efforts in Ukraine.

CNN reports:

Former US President George W. Bush will hold a public conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky next week with the aim of underscoring the importance of the US continuing to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.

The event, which will take place in Dallas and be open to the public, comes amid questions about the willingness of the former president’s Republican Party to maintain support for Ukraine.

“Ukraine is the frontline in the struggle for freedom and democracy. It’s literally under attack as we speak, and it is vitally important that the United States provide the assistance, military and otherwise to help Ukraine defend itself,” David Kramer, the managing director for global policy at the George W. Bush Institute, told CNN. “President Bush believes in standing with Ukraine.”

The Struggle for Freedom event will take place on Wednesday, in partnership with the Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy, at the George W. Bush Presidential Center.



To be clear, there is absolutely no reality-based reason to believe Republicans will meaningfully shy away from full-scale support for arming and assisting the Ukrainian military. The proxy war has only an impotent minority of opposition in the party and every bill to fund it has passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Some “MAGA” Republicans have claimed that funding for the war would stop if the GOP won the midterm elections, but they were lying; there was never the slightest chance of that happening.

Bush, you may remember, drew headlines and laughter earlier this year with his Freudian confession in which he accused Vladimir Putin of launching “a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean, of Ukraine.” The fact that the president who launched a full-scale ground invasion which destabilized the entire region and led to the deaths of over a million people is now narrative managing for the US empire’s current aggressively propagandized intervention says everything about the nature of this war.

Also appearing with Bush will be the leader who’s slated to become the face of the US empire’s next proxy war, Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan. CNN writes:

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen will also take part in the event next week. She will deliver a recorded message, in which she is expected to underscore that the struggle for freedom is a global challenge.

And sure, why not. If you’re going to manufacture consent for proxy warfare against multiple powers as your empire flails around frantically scrambling to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world, you may as well save time and promote them all on the same ticket.


Many people who support the US proxy war in Ukraine now recognize that the Iraq war was a horrific disaster, but Ukraine isn’t the good war, it’s just the current war. Western propaganda means people always oppose the last war but not the war that’s currently being pushed by the propaganda of today. The US provoking and sustaining its Ukraine proxy war is no more ethical than its invading of Iraq; it just looks that way due to propaganda.

It is only by the copious amounts of propaganda our civilization is being hammered with that this is not immediately obvious to everyone. In the future (assuming we don’t annihilate ourselves first), the propaganda will have cleared from the air enough for people to look back with clarity on 2022 and realize that they were lied to, yet again.

It’s easy to oppose the last war. It’s hard to oppose current wars as the propaganda machine is shoving them down our throats. Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/11/12 ... sentation/

******

Zaporozhie Denounces Involvement of Mercenaries From 40 Countries on Kiev’s Side

Image
A large number of Georgian and many Chechen-speaking fighters. Nov. 12, 2022. | Photo: AP / Felipe Dana

Published 12 November 2022 (17 hours 48 minutes ago)

Most of the mercenaries, he noted, are Polish.

Mercenaries from 40 countries are fighting on the Kiev side in the Zaporozhie oblast, said Vladimir Rogov, a member of the regional administration.

"There is a large concentration of foreign fighters. The line of operations in Zaporozhie is where they are leaders in terms of presence. If recently we could talk about 34 countries where they came from, today it is already more than 40 countries," Rogov told Komsomolskaya Pravda radio station.

Most of the mercenaries, he noted, are Polish. "Polish mercenaries - representatives of legalized, in fact official, private military companies - (...) are estimated at more than 5,000 people," he said.


In addition, he noted, there are "a large number of Georgian and many Chechen-speaking fighters."

Earlier, Rogov had reported that Kiev reinforced its presence on the line of operations in Zaporozhie.

Currently, Russia controls more than 70% of Zaporozhie province, while the city of the same name remains under Kiev's control.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Zap ... -0004.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 14, 2022 1:24 pm

The Dnieper as a front line
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 11/14/2022

Image

Original Article: Vzglyad

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has completed the withdrawal of troops from the right bank to the left bank of the Dnieper River. As part of this operation, more than 30,000 troops, 5,000 units of weapons and equipment and other material have been withdrawn. In addition, all military equipment that needed repair has been moved to the left bank. In this way, the Dnieper River has become the line of contact. Especially important in this regard is the additional assistance previously announced by the Pentagon to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which plans to deliver 40 armored boats for use on the river. Moreover, it is not the first time that NATO countries have made this type of delivery.

“The planned delivery of armored river boats from the United States to Ukraine must be considered in all its seriousness. These types of forces are rapidly and constantly developing and regularly improve their technical part in the general direction: intelligence-management-communication,” military expert Ilia Kramnik wrote. Furthermore, the necessary conditions for a full-fledged river war are already created. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have the possibility to organize a protected boat base in the Nikolaev area, in Bugsky Liman or in Ochakovo,” the Bloknot Periskopa Telegram channel wrote . In this way, not only the reserves, but the entire lower Dnieper, including the adjacent estuaries, should be treated as a theater of military operations.

The boats can also be used to storm the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant, something local authorities and experts on the subject have repeatedly warned about. “In general, for the enemy, the formation of a river flotilla seems the most logical. The Dnieper has become the front line, so the enemy must have effective fighting forces, including armored boats," said Sergey Ischenko, a first-rank captain in the reserve.

With the help of these armored boats, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be able to use sabotage and reconnaissance groups on the left bank, something that has already been repeated in the area of ​​the Zaporozhye NPP. "The armored boats are also needed to force the river at any chosen location and capture a certain bridgehead," the expert added. In addition, with this material, the Ukrainian troops can prevent the Russians from crossing the Dnieper.

As for their location, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will probably concentrate them near the reserves. “There are numerous places in the Kajovsky and Kievsky reserves. In addition, there are a large number of islands and very comfortable moors to hide the boats, ”he explained.

If we talk about ways to combat them, then according to the interlocutor, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation should sink the boats with the help of helicopters. “Also, you have to think about moving armored boats of the Caspian flotilla to the Dnieper. They were transferred to the Sea of ​​Azov several times during periods of worsening relations with kyiv. They must perform exactly the same tasks that the Ukrainian Army wants to perform with the help of American boats, ”he insisted.

Russia has not created armored boats for a long time, since they were not needed. “However, the Buyan itself or the “river-sea” class were originally created for rivers and are powered to move in shallow water. So it would be advisable to take everything available to the Kinburn Peninsula. It's better than nothing," Ischenko said.

For his part, Maxim Klimov, a third-rank captain in the reserve, recalled that the Armed Forces of Ukraine already formed their “Dnieper flotilla” in the spring. “They have also mobilized civilian resources and adapted them to military needs. For our part, we have not done any of that,” Klimov explained. However, Klimov also pointed out that armored boats are vulnerable, so they can be hit by almost any weapon if the attack is sudden. According to the expert, combat helicopters may be the most effective weapon, although they already have enough tasks in hand. “Our experience also shows that to protect or attack something, the speed of decision-making is more important than shielding. Taking this into account, we must use detection and destruction methods effectively, linking them to a single system. Of course, we also need high-speed armored boats, as well as barges and multipurpose ferries," Klimov said.

However, it is also possible that the plans of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Pentagon for the Dnieper may not be put into practice. “It is not clear how they are going to send the boats: the southern part of the river is under fire control. Even if they take the boats down the Danube, this territory is within range of the Russian Black Sea fleet,” said Captain 1st Rank Vasily Dandikin. Referring to the use of armored boats, the expert also recalled that the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not need them so much for landings, but for artillery and missile attacks. “In any case, taking into account the alignment of forces on the Dnieper, it is necessary to seriously think about transferring the Buyan from the Caspian to the Dnieper. In addition, the FSB also has boats that can be used in this area if necessary”, he concluded.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/11/14/la-li ... more-25939

Google Translator

********

From Cassad's Telegram account:

***

Colonelcassad
Kherson direction

Image

situation by the end of November 13, 2022

🔻In the Primorsky sector, 2 and 4 battalions of the 28th Ombre of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were transferred to Chernobaevka , the crews of the 208th anti-aircraft missile brigade and 406th detachment to the area of ​​Tomina Balka and Stanislav , and the fire groups of MANPADS to Belozerka and Kamyshany .

▪️Major General Kovalchuk , Commander of the Kherson Combined Group of Forces, visited Kherson after the Ukrainian formations established control over it.

Together with him, employees of 83 CIPSO arrived to conduct propaganda against the backdrop of the withdrawal of the RF Armed Forces, as well as journalists from various Western media from the USA, Great Britain, Poland, and Romania.

🔻In the Berislav sector, units of the 17th brigade, 46th and 80th brigade, 60th brigade and 9th combined troop battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine regrouped along the Dnieper , taking up positions from Berislav to Kherson on the right bank of the river.

▪️On the opposite bank, whistle-blowers and pro-Ukrainian citizens of Kherson Oblast track the movement of the Russian army in Korsunk , Nova Kakhovka , Severnaya Kamyanka , Cairo , Gornostaevka , Zavodovka , Bolshaya Lepetikha , Zapovitny , Tavriysk , Shotovka , Ivanovka , Shiroky , Skadovsk , Aleshki .

🔻After the end of the regrouping and filtration measures among the residents of the Kherson region , with a high degree of probability , a significant part of the units will be redistributed to other areas.

Residents of the part of the Kherson region controlled by Ukraine report the formation of a strike group for an offensive on Melitopol . At the moment, it consists of eight consolidated battalion tactical groups .

It is the Zaporozhye direction after the capture of Kherson that becomes of paramount importance in the short term for the Ukrainian leadership.

Capture of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, cutting off the land supply route of the Crimea, blocking the grouping of the RF Armed Forces on the left bank of the Dnieper , regaining control over part of the Sea of ​​Azov and a likely strike on the flank of the Russian army in Donetsk - this is what the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be aimed at .

***

Colonelcassad

Image

Soledarsky direction
situation as of 15.00 on November 13 of the year

🔻In the Bakhmut sector, assault detachments of the Wagner PMC, supported by artillery, are advancing deep into Bakhmut ( Artyomovsk ) on the southeastern outskirts of the city.

▪️To curb the advance of the “musicians”, the engineering units of the 53rd mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are equipping additional strongholds in Bakhmut itself and on the southern outskirts.

▪️Calculations of barreled and self-propelled artillery are firing at Ivangrad , the environs of Experienced , Zaitsevo and Otradovka . By return fire, Russian troops killed at least 16 people, wounded more than 30 .

▪️A battalion of the 24th mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine arrived in the Pokrovsk area to replace the 93rd brigade in the Soledar direction. The personnel of the 24th Ombre is undergoing combat coordination and on November 15 will be transferred to Soledar .

❗️Russian troops established control over the village of Mayorsk in the Gorlovka region . The Ukrainian formations left their positions under pressure from the RF Armed Forces and intense artillery fire.

🔻In the Lisichansky sector, the assault detachments of the Wagner PMC, with the support of the 14th and 16th battalions of the territorial defense of the NM LPR, broke through the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Belogorovka and entered the village.

Currently, there are fierce battles, the cleansing of the surroundings is being carried out. The forces of the 54th brigade and 81st brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not expect an attack, some of the units retreated to reserve positions, waiting for reinforcements.

***

Colonelcassad
Vugledarsky section

Image

situation as of 14.00 November 13, 2022

🔻The divisions of the marine brigades of the Pacific Fleet and the DPR OBTF continue to clean up the northern outskirts of Pavlovka from the remnants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

▪️Artillery crews of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the position area in Ugledar , using heights, fire on Pavlovka and its environs, trying to hold back the advance of Russian troops. Target designation is provided by the calculations of the Fury and Valkyrie UAVs from Bogoyavlenka .

▪️Engineering and sapper groups of the 72nd mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, with artillery fire cover, set up minefields north of Pavlovka .

▪️The servicemen of the RF Armed Forces delivered a massive blow to the strongholds of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Ugledar from cannon artillery and TOSs, hitting several firing positions.

▪️There are no significant changes in other areas. Near Prechistovka and Novomikhailovka there are skirmishes and an exchange of artillery strikes.

***

Colonelcassad
Offensive in the Donetsk direction

Image

situation as of 11.00 November 13, 2022

🔻The fighters of the orb "Sparta" and the 1st Slavic brigade, with the support of the 238th artillery brigade, continue to clean up the outskirts of Experienced .

▪️To slow down the pace of advancement of Russian troops, the artillery of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is shelling the vicinity of the Donetsk agglomeration.

🔻In Pervomaisky , Vodyany and in the Nevelskoye area , fighters of the RF Armed Forces are slowly advancing through the Ukrainian fortified areas, gradually pushing the formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from settlements.

▪️On the offensive routes of the RF Armed Forces in Pervomaisky and Nevelskoye , engineering and sapper groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are laying minefields. Ammunition has been delivered to Karlovka and Pervomaiskoye .

▪️More than 20 seriously wounded soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were evacuated from the combat zone in Netailovo .

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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

Our policy of unilateral sanctions is completely misunderstood and not accepted
November 14, 15:06

Image

The chief executive of the French energy giant TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanne, said that the rest of the world, namely the countries of Asia and Africa, "does not share the view of the Western world on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine."

“I was amazed by the circumstance revealed to me. After the beginning of the conflict, I flew to India for negotiations on investments. And I was dumbfounded by the reaction of Indian interlocutors, and later negotiators in the Middle East, where I went next.
All of them, in contrast to us, the Europeans, who were shocked by the Russian aggression in Ukraine, said: “But how did you, the Europeans, allow this?”. I realized that our vision, our picture of this conflict, ours, I mean the Western world, Europeans and Americans, is not at all shared by the rest of the vast World.
Our policy of unilateral sanctions is completely misunderstood and unaccepted. This phenomenon must be taken into account. And don't kid yourself that only the Chinese support the Russians. They are supported by a much larger number of people "


Just if we assume that the whole world is the United States and its satellites, then the picture is formed. And if you understand that the whole world is not only and not so much the United States and its satellites, then the picture instantly crumbles. This is a matter of transformation thinking and moving away from the dogmas of the period of unrestricted American hegemonism.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7973191.html

On the issue of ensuring the activities of the troops
November 14, 12:56

Image

On the issue of ensuring the activities of the troops

Each type of weapons, equipment, supplies that the troops now have, which you see on TV, for which you and your friends chipped in, will either be destroyed over the next year, or will completely exhaust its resource.

There will be no exceptions. Remember this.

Our troops, both directly located on the line of contact and in the rear, are in conditions of an acute shortage of many of the most ordinary, but at the same time extremely necessary things.

The supply of troops and supply reports are still based on pre-existing norms.

So, according to norm No. 1, a summer suit (jacket and trousers) is issued 1 for 2 years, and in combat and rear conditions it serves from a month to three, the same with all other items of equipment and support.

A serviceman, a commander, from a unit to an association, should not worry about the availability of tools, equipment, equipment. Always and everywhere there should be a lot of everything. Uniform on oneself, a set at the point of temporary deployment, another one at the point of permanent deployment, bulletproof vests - 2, knives, pouches, shovels, saws, axes - without counting.

AND! Without idiotic all-pervading accounting and fear of punishment for the loss. The tent burned down - tomorrow there will be a new one. Wet and rotted sleeping bag - you do not freeze, and with pneumonia you fight off attacks, but you get two and a membrane cover.

In addition, bodies and mechanisms have finally been created that allow all this to be purchased not at the expense of our general voluntary donations in a separate and unsystematic manner, but at the expense of our taxes, which we pay for this, and would be ready to pay more if we see them normal administration without forums and exhibitions.

Let's support the army and the rear.

I want our fighters to finally start complaining about the lack of pistachio ice cream on the front line, and not about the presence of the absence of everything.

To paraphrase Vasil Bykov:

“Everything at the front was unlimited, everything was in abundance and plenty, except for people. From the rear, from the points of formation and training, replenishment went to the front - a few groups of well-fed, motivated and well-trained people.

Anticipating the question: what if they steal?

Where will they steal it? What if they steal it? It has already been paid for, revenues, profits, taxes, salaries have already been received, all this will not be taken out of the country, but will either be destroyed or used for business. Forget it.

What can and should be purchased and produced for the needs of the army?

A) Fortification and engineering structures:

1) entrenching tool (small sapper shovel per person, BSL - for two, pick (there are heavy soils) - for 5 people, ax - for 5 people, hammer, chisel, etc. - for 5.

2) gasoline-powered tools (saws - one per compartment, combat vehicle, car, electric generators - two per compartment, the entire range from 1 to 30 kW is urgently needed, motor pumps - 2 per platoon)

3) engineering equipment (tractors with mounted units, excavators of any size, bulldozers, cranes, manipulators of any carrying capacity) - at the rate of at least 1 piece of each type per kilometer of front.

4) reinforced concrete structures (coverings of bunkers, dugouts, dugouts, ready-made reinforced concrete bunkers, dugouts, dugouts) - based on the experience of Ukrainian strongholds. Thousands of bunkers, tens of thousands of individual reinforced concrete products.

5) Wooden products (finished profiled timber, plywood, osb-plate - hundreds of thousands of cubic meters). Stop watching how the infantry with axes cuts the liquid southern undergrowth into dugouts. First of all, to purchase and supply timber, boards, hardware of at least 400,000 m3 monthly, and secondly, to plant designers to develop finished products (dugouts, pillboxes, outbuildings, baths, kitchens). Load all house-building companies with the release of kits for equipping defense lines and personnel quarters.

6) Masknets, polyethylene films, rolled insulation, protective nets against dropped ammunition - hundreds of thousands of m2 per month.

7) Tanks, tanks for water and fuel.

8) Wood-burning stoves, heaters, gasoline and gas stoves, catalytic heaters - at least two per compartment, one per combat vehicle, vehicle.

B) Life

Tents, sleeping bags, footwear (tactical, rubber, EVA boots), clothes, thermal underwear, combat equipment (pouches, backpacks, unloading, plate carriers (body armor), catalytic and chemical heating pads (arms, legs, without unmasking) - from calculation of 2 million sets of each type by the end of the first half of 2023

Power banks - 30000 mA h per person

Multitools, knives, equipment repair tools - 1.2 items per person, 1.2 sets per vehicle C

) Tactical medicine

Bandages, tourniquets, tourniquets, hemostatic dressings, occlusive patches. It doesn't even need the medical industry. - 2 million first aid kits by the end of the first half of 2023

D) Nutrition

Dietary rations (normal varied tasty food, not dry rations) 1.5 kits per person per day;

Drinking water, juices, water - unlimited.

E) Communication

1.2-1.5 digital radio stations per person, combat vehicle, vehicle by the end of the first half of 2023;

1.1 GLONASS receiver per person, combat vehicle, vehicle by the end of the first half of 2023. There is a

separate issue of retrofitting the front edge and near rear with motor transport.

A car at the front does not live long, but our soldiers do not live and die without it.

A car at the front is: the delivery of ammunition, food, water, fuel, weapons, a platform for weapons, communications, reconnaissance equipment, this is alleviation of heavy physical labor and saving the lives of the wounded.

The front lacks vehicles of all sizes, from Niva to four-axle KAMAZ trucks.

1) Part of the machines is "eaten up" by logistics. Caravans of four-wheel drive KAMAZ trucks dragging along highways are a crime.

All these machines could be at the front. Their tasks, with the exception of the delivery of part of the ammunition and equipment, will be perfectly solved by logistics companies, which, with the start of the NMD, have lost significant markets for the transportation of imported and exported products. Let's support the logistics - we will give the front equipment!

2) Car factories are idle in the country. GAZ, UAZ, Ural, KAMAZ, AvtoVAZ. All loaded far from 100%. It is necessary to buy out all production for the tasks of the SVO.

Let's start with Niv, Patriots, Loafs, Sables - they are needed in every unit. Let's finally spit on the rules. It is not necessary for the commanders to beg KAMAZ for the delivery of ammunition, this can be done by its UAZ Pickup, attracting much less attention from enemy reconnaissance.

Sadko Next - in the maximum volume, even if it is not on supply, but the army needs a small four-wheel drive truck that will go everywhere and take everything out on itself.

Ural, KAMAZ. Only one KAMAZ has free capacities - more than 10,000 trucks a year, and the Ministry of Defense orders units of hundreds of armored vehicles. Let's buy the equipment, finalize and simplify the design documentation for armored vehicles based on the Urals and KAMAZ for its adaptation to civilian production, and finally give the army our mass MRAP. Believe me, the military will never understand that it is cheaper to get an armored car for 20 million than to pay 200 million for those killed with one mine in one tented Ural. These are different items of expenditure!

Large companies converting cars into ambulances, minibuses, mobile shops (Luidor, Samotlor-NN, etc.) should throw all their efforts into medical vehicles, possibly armored ones, field bath and laundry complexes, car kitchens, staff cars, etc.

Manufacturers of semi-trailers, dump bodies - it is possible and necessary to refocus on armoring trucks and the production of armored capsules (for example, dump trucks are actually welded from armored steels, typical Hardox-type steels have very high strength characteristics) they now have huge idle opportunities, shipbuilders who have huge free capacities for metal cutting and welding.

Summing up: everyone in his place should see and find problems both in himself and in his neighbors, find ways to solve them and force himself, those around him and the management to solve them.

https://telegra.ph/K-voprosu-obespechen ... ojsk-11-13 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7972786.html

Google translator

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

Russian political philosopher, analyst, and strategist Aleksandr Dugin berates Putin in letter published online
By Chris King • 12 November 2022 • 3:21

Without mentioning him by his name, Aleksandr Dugin clearly berated Vladimir Putin in a letter that was published on the Tsargrad website in Russia.


A letter published on the Russian Tsargrad website on Friday, November 11, was allegedly penned by Aleksandr Dugin. In his letter, Dugin basically, without mentioning the Russian President by name, clearly calls for the removal of Vladimir Putin.

The renowned Russian political philosopher, analyst, and strategist, is known for his views which have widely been characterised as being neo-fascist. His words pull no punches, and it must be remembered that Dugin’s daughter Darya was assassinated a few months ago by a car bomb in Moscow.

His rant came hot on the heels of Russia pulling its troops out of the Kherson region, a move which has obviously not gone down well with Dugin. Although he has no official ties to the Kremlin, has often been referred to in the past as ‘Putin’s brain’, with many claiming that he has a lot of influence. Others have rebuffed this so-called influence as being exaggerated.

Dugin’s letter translates into English roughly as: “A Russian city was commissioned, the capital of one of the regions of Russia – the same as Belgorod, Kursk, Donetsk, or Simferopol. If you don’t care, then you are not Russian”.

“Russians are now clenching their teeth in pain, weeping and suffering as if their hearts were torn out, their children, brothers, mothers, and wives, would be killed in front of their eyes. If you don’t hurt now, you’re nothing”.



“Power. She is responsible for this. What is the meaning of autocracy, and do we have it? We give the Ruler absolute fullness of power, and he saves us all – the people, the state, the people – at a critical moment. If for this he surrounds himself with evil spirits or spits on social justice, this is unpleasant, but if only he saved”.

“What if it doesn’t save? Then – the fate of the ‘king of the rains’ awaits him (see Frazer). Autocracy also has a downside. Completeness of power in case of success, but also the completeness of responsibility for failure. And how did you want it?”.

“How to get out of the situation? Immediately move from a sovereign dictatorship to a commissar, that is, introduce an ideology. The ruler almost did. But almost again. And Kherson was passed not almost, it was completely passed”.



“No claims to Surovikin. He is not a politician, he is responsible for the technical side of the front. Hit not on him. You know who you hit. And no PR will save here anymore. In a critical situation, political technologies do not work at all. History speaks today. And she utters terrible – for us – words”.

“This is not a betrayal, this is a step towards Armageddon. The conditions of the winning West, this civilization of Satan, will never be acceptable to Moscow. This means that tactical nuclear weapons and strategic nuclear weapons will remain (tactical and strategic nuclear weapons – approx. TsG). That is the end. And here is the most important thing”.

“Under the pressure of circumstances (and it’s very bad that it’s so terrible), we made a number of military-political corrections in the conduct of the NMD (why it’s so late is a separate question). But it hasn’t worked (so far). The last resource is ideology. Real, not the fake that the AP, scared to death by the uprising of reality, is trying to sell”.

https://euroweeklynews.com/2022/11/12/r ... ed-online/

Well, well, well, so much for Dugin being 'Putin's Brain'. Dugin is a far right theorist/'philosopher' often associated with monarchism and/or fascism, depending on the ax you're grinding. Whatever, he was never associated with the Russian government and statements such as these would have gotten him a free trip to Siberia in WWII.

*******

Ukraine Threatens War with Iran
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 13, 2022
Alex Rubinstein

Image

Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has called for attacks inside Iran as the country’s drones cause setbacks for the Ukrainian military.

On November 5, Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has advocated for military strikes on drone production sites located in Iran. President Zelensky echoed Podolyak’s belligerent rhetoric the following day, demanding Iran be “punished” for allegedly supplying drones to Russia.

Kiev adopted its hostile posture towards Tehran after claiming Russia deployed Iranian-supplied drones to strike Ukrainian civilian infrastructure throughout much of October.

In an interview with a Ukrainian news outlet on November 5, Podolyak argued that the response to Iran supplying Russia with drones should not be limited to sanctions or even a total trade embargo: “It seems to me that it should not be sanctions or even an embargo, yes a total embargo. It seems to me that it would be possible to carry out specific strikes on the production of drones, ballistic missiles, and so on.”

Iran’s government has responded to the allegations by Ukraine and its Western patrons by acknowledging that it supplied Russia’s military with drones prior to its military campaign in Ukraine. According to Tehran, Iran was willing to review evidence that its weapons were used to attack Ukrainian infrastructure targets. Russia, for its part, has officially denied using Iranian drones to attack Ukraine.

“We agreed with the foreign minister of Ukraine to provide us with any documents they have that Russia used Iranian drones in Ukraine,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian informed reporters gathered in Tehran earlier this November. But Amirabdhollahian said US and European interests ultimately pressured Ukrainian officials to reject direct engagement.

“We had such an appointment two weeks ago in a European country, a military and political delegation went to that European country, but unfortunately at the last minute the Ukrainian delegation did not attend due to pressure from the US and some European countries, in particular Germany,” Amirabhollahian explained.

With dialogue blocked between the two countries over the contentious topic, Kiev is now resorting to threats against Iran.

Russia’s military carried out attacks against Ukraine’s electrical grid in response to the October 8 Ukrainian truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge that links southern Russia to the territory of Crimea. According to Zelensky, Russian strikes have wiped out as much as 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy system.

The presence of Iranian drones appears to be causing serious headaches for the Ukrainian military, as both Zelensky and his top advisor Mykhailo Podolyak have lashed out at Iran in recent statements.

Podolyak not only called for airstrikes on Iranian military sites, he regurgitated well-worn Western and Israeli regime change talking points about Iran being a destabilizing force, arguing that without strikes on targets in Iran, the country will continue to arm “terrorist groups like Hezbollah” and the “terrorist Russian Federation.”

“This will continue unless the civilized world does not begin to punish — begin to punish here and now, and this is only possible if we destroy the provinces there. For example, Bandar, we destroy the same drone productions that today destroy the infrastructure — that is, genocides the sovereignty of the state of Ukraine.”

Podolyak has been ranked the third most influential Ukrainian by the Kiev-based Focus Magazine.



Zelensky threatens Iran

The day after Podolyak’s tirade, Zelensky pushed the Iran issue following talks with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

“Of course, increasing pressure on the Iranian regime was discussed today with Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen. Its complicity in Russian terror must be punished,” Zelensky proclaimed in a speech published on his website. “And we will bring this issue not only to the level of our traditional partners. The whole world will know that the Iranian regime helps Russia prolong this war, and therefore prolong the effect of those threats to the world provoked precisely by the Russian war. If it was not for the Iranian supply of weapons to the aggressor, we would be closer to peace now.”

Iran is responsible for the murders of Ukrainians. Country that oppresses its own people is now giving ru-monsters weapons for mass murders in the heart of Europe. That is what unfinished business and concessions to totalitarianism mean. The case when sanctions are not enough…

— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) October 17, 2022


“Absolutely everyone who helps Russia prolong this war must bear responsibility for the consequences of this war along with it,” Zelensky said, adding that “we understand” that Russia is preparing for more “mass attacks on our infrastructure” with “Iranian missiles.”

Though there is no record of any Iranian missile being used in an attack on Ukrainian infrastructure thus far, Zelensky declared, “We are preparing to respond.”

Just as Iranian-made drones appear to have given Russian forces a major boost on the battlefield, the US HIMARS artillery system has enabled significant Iranian gains, including the recapture of Kherson. However, no high ranking officials in Russian president Vladimir Putin’s office have similarly threatened the United States, or any of the other 40 countries that provided Ukraine with critical military assistance.

Iran sends 2400 kamikaze drones and IRGC instructors to destroy 🇺🇦 infrastructure. With that money Tehran develops its military industry. Shouldn’t countries for whom Iran is an existential threat send their Air Defense to Ukraine? Until Iranian drones flew towards them.

— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) October 13, 2022


This October 13, Podolyak fulminated against Israel for having not supplied Ukraine with advanced air defense systems, tweeting, “shouldn’t countries for whom Iran is an existential threat send their Air Defense to Ukraine?”

As The Grayzone reported this September, Zelensky has fantasized about transforming his country into a hyper-militarized “big Israel.” To that end, he and his top advisor have already begun threatening to expand their war to the frontiers of Iran.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... with-iran/

Jfc, 'big Israel'...That's some red meat for the anti-Semites if ever I saw.

Conversely, the countries sending weapons to Ukraine should be 'punished' too. Oh wait, they're doing that to themselves.

This is so delusional that one might give credence to the Russian rumors/propaganda that Zelensky's inner circle is a coke party. Coke junkies are like that...

America’s Neo-Nazi Bedfellows in Ukraine are the Latest in a Long Line of Odious Allies Washington Has Used against Russia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 13, 2022
Tony Cox

Image

From pogrom-mongers to Hitlerites to radical Islamists, the US has collaborated with repugnant partners for more than a century

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was furious when he found out in March 1945 that his supposed World War II ally, Washington, was negotiating with the German Nazis behind his back. In fact, by the accounts of some historians, American spy and future CIA director Allen Dulles essentially kicked off the Cold War when he held secret talks with Waffen SS General Karl Wolff as Hitler’s regime was nearing its collapse.

Stalin, US President Franklin Roosevelt, and UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill had agreed that they would accept only unconditional surrender from the Nazis because of the Hitler regime’s monstrous crimes. When the Dulles-Wolff talks came to light, FDR repeatedly and falsely told Stalin that no one was negotiating with the Germans. The Georgian generalissimo was unconvinced and suspected that his Western allies were maneuvering to contain the USSR and occupy territory that might otherwise fall to the Red Army.

The Soviets had reason to be suspicious. Some in Washington, including Dulles, viewed the USSR as America’s biggest long-term threat even as the countries worked together to defeat Germany.

Save the Nazis

As confirmed by documents that were finally declassified more than half a century later, US intelligence agencies were soon to hire upward of 1,000 Nazis as Cold War spies.

By then, America already had a history of finding common cause against Moscow with unseemly allies. As the Soviets remembered well, the US had invaded Russia in 1918 in a failed effort to help overthrow the Bolshevik government. At the time, Washington was allied with White Army counter-revolutionaries, some of whom had a nasty taste for pogroms and other murderous atrocities.

Even as then-President Woodrow Wilson moralized to world leaders about self-determination and opposing external aggression – principles that would be applied only according to US self-interest in the generations ahead – he sent American forces to intervene in the Russian Civil War. He was to set a precedent that has continued to play out to this day, from Germany to Central Asia to the current Ukraine crisis. The pattern was clear: Portray America as the virtuous champion of freedom while working with anyone — however abhorrent their deeds and views might be — as long as they share Washington’s burning desire to hurt Russia.

In 1945, Dulles got his way with Wolff, formerly Heinrich Himmler’s right-hand man. The general and his group of SS officers, which was called the Black Order, agreed to surrender northern Italy to Allied forces. The deal didn’t avail much for the US, coming just six days before the full German surrender, and it sowed seeds of distrust with the Soviets and other allies.

For his part, Wolff was spared the gallows, as the Nuremberg prosecutors mysteriously took him off their list of major war criminals and treated him as a “witness” to Nazi atrocities, rather than a perpetrator, according to historians. Dulles went so far as to send a rescue team to save Wolff when the general’s villa was surrounded by Italian partisans.

US intelligence agencies, the Pentagon and the FBI helped whitewash the records of the Nazis they wanted to employ after the war. In other cases, notorious war criminals were hidden from America’s allies. One such useful rogue was Klaus Barbie, who was known as the “Butcher of Lyon” when he was torturing Jews and resistance fighters as a Gestapo officer in Vichy France. He worked as a spy in occupied Germany for the US, and after the French demanded that he be extradited to stand trial as a war criminal, Washington whisked him away to Bolivia in 1951.

As a US investigation finally revealed in 1983, the Americans had lied to their French allies about Barbie’s whereabouts. The US Army paid to have Barbie and other anti-communist agents evacuated from Europe through a “rat line” operated by fascist Croatian priest Krunoslav Draganovic. “Officers of the US government were directly responsible for protecting a person wanted by the government of France on criminal charges and arranging his escape from the law,” US investigator Allan Ryan Jr. said.

In addition to directly employing many Nazis, the CIA reportedly paid millions of dollars to tap a large spy network run by Reinhard Gehlen, who was formerly Hitler’s chief intelligence officer on the Eastern Front. The German general was granted immunity from prosecution for his alleged war crimes and helped some of his Nazi cohorts flee Europe to avoid arrest.

The US government employed Nazis for more than just spying. Over 1,600, including scientists and engineers, were brought to the US under Operation Paperclip to help win the Cold War with their technical skills. For instance, the Pentagon brought rocket scientist Wernher von Braun to America along with his new wife, his parents, and his brother. Von Braun, whose team in Germany used slave labor to build V-2 rockets for Hitler, became a hero of the US space program and was the subject of a Disney movie and a Time magazine cover story.

Not all of the Nazi transplants fared so well. Dr. Konrad Schafer, who was brought to a Texas military base because of his experience in aviation medicine, was sent back to Germany because US military officials were unimpressed by his work. As author Eric Lichtblau wrote in his 2014 book ‘The Nazis Next Door’, the Americans were willing to overlook claims by Nuremberg prosecutors that Schafer had links to medical atrocities, but they couldn’t tolerate his lack of “scientific acumen.”

US vs. Jews

Nazis also found post-war work running some of the very same camps where Jews had been slaughtered under the Third Reich. US Army General George Patton was put in charge of the displaced person (DP) camps in American-occupied areas, such as Dachau and Bergen-Belsen, where Jewish survivors were forcibly kept for weeks or months after their “liberation.”

Some of the same guards who oversaw Hitler’s death camps and the same Nazi doctors who committed medical atrocities staffed DP facilities. Jews were still wearing their striped uniforms and being fed meager rations in the camps. When they turned to black-market dealing to obtain more food, German police were sent in to crack down at DP facilities in Stuttgart and Landsberg. Earl Harrison, an investigator sent by then-President Harry Truman, found that, “We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we don’t exterminate them.”

Patton was “incensed” by the critical report, Lichtblau told NPR in a November 2014 interview. “Harrison and his ilk believe that the displaced person is a human being, which he is not,” the US war hero wrote in his diary. “And this applies particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals.”

Like the Operation Paperclip scientists, many of the CIA’s Nazi spies were moved to the US. These newly minted Americans included the likes of Tscherim Soobzokov, a Circassian from Russia’s Krasnodar area who was nicknamed the Fuhrer of the North Caucasus, and Otto von Bolschwing, a top aide to Adolf Eichmann, who helped craft Nazi policy on dealing with Germany’s “Jewish problem.” Lichtblau quoted a CIA officer as writing, “We will pick up any man who will help us defeat the Soviets – any man, no matter what his Nazi record was.”

Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Nikolay Lebed, who had alleged links to the mass murders of Jews and Poles during the war, was brought to America in 1949. His background was no mystery. The US Army reportedly called him a “well known sadist,” and the CIA codenamed him “Devil.” But he was seen as too valuable as an anti-Soviet operative, so the CIA blocked his deportation when US immigration authorities decided to investigate a few years later. Lebed lived on under US protection, dying at the age of 89 in Pittsburgh.

Useful and not so enemies

The FBI, under director J. Edgar Hoover, also relied on a network of Nazi spies and informants and helped protect them from prosecution and deportation. Laszlo Agh admitted to an FBI agent about his involvement in Hungary’s Arrow Cross, a fascist group that murdered thousands of Jews and helped deport thousands of others. Agh allegedly tortured many of his victims, forcing some to eat their own feces or jump onto partially buried bayonets. Nevertheless, historians say, Hoover recruited Agh as an anti-communist informant, and when immigration officials finally got around to trying to prosecute and deport the Nazi collaborator for visa fraud, the FBI chief forbid his agent from testifying about what the Hungarian had confessed.

“In choosing to take the low moral ground, Hoover and the FBI betrayed the trust of Americans, living and dead,” wrote historian Richard Rashke, author of ‘Useful Enemies’. The agency’s “conspiracy of silence” in protecting war criminals made Americans “unwitting hypocrites in the eyes of the world,” he added. “How then must Americans judge the cadre of unelected, powerful men who welcomed some of those same murderers to America and helped them escape punishment in the name of national security?”

Hoover also defended Viorel Trifa, who helped lead Romania’s fascist Iron Guard and later became bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church in America. He became so politically connected that he once led prayers in Congress and met personally with then-Vice President Richard Nixon. Back in Romania, Trifa was sentenced to death in absentia for alleged war crimes. Hoover, who considered Trifa a “very desirable part of the landscape during the Cold War,” persuaded Nixon to cancel a meeting with one of the bishop’s accusers in 1955.

America’s Nazi migrants largely flew under the radar of public exposure until the 1970s, when activists began seeking to hold them accountable. In 1979, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) formed a new unit to investigate and prosecute hidden war criminals for deportation. However, the arms of the federal government that had been doing business with Hitler’s acolytes proved to be a hindrance to the DOJ initiative.

When Soobzokov was indicted for visa fraud in 1979, based on allegations that he had lied about his record as a Waffen SS officer, the CIA suddenly found a copy of a document showing that the Fuhrer of the North Caucasus had disclosed his Nazi past. It turns out that the spy agency had fired Soobzokov not due to his alleged wartime atrocities, but because he hadn’t been honest enough with his handlers. The agency did get him to admit to leading a death squad and executing a troublemaker, but his interviewer believed the Circassian spy was still holding back much of his story.

Author Howard Blum wrote that Soobzokov was a lieutenant in a mobile killing unit that participated in the murders of a staggering 1.4 million Jews on the Eastern Front. But the former SS officer publicly denied any involvement with the Nazis and sued Blum and his publisher, owned by the New York Times, for libel. With witnesses wavering in the wake of Soobzokov’s CIA-aided escape from prosecution – and the author’s documentary evidence being challenged as “Russian disinformation” – the Times chose to pay a $500,000 settlement. The truth only came to light in 2006, more than two decades after Soobzokov’s death, when the CIA declassified 27,000 pages of documents relating to war crimes.

Not all of America’s imported Nazis were brought in by the government. Many snuck in as refugees through a lax immigration system, including some with SS tattoos on their arms. US Representative Elizabeth Holtzman condemned immigration officials for “appalling laxity and superficiality” in trying to root out war criminals.

For example, Andrija Artukovic, a high official in Croatia’s fascist Ustasha government during the war, adopted a fake identity and entered the US on a tourist visa in 1948. Artukovic simply overstayed his visa and worked at a California company owned by his brother. Yugoslavia requested his extradition on war crimes charges in 1951, and US officials stalled for seven years before refusing to send back the illegal alien. By the time he was finally extradited on a new request in 1986, he was 86 years old, so even after he was convicted of mass killings and sentenced to death in Yugoslavia, he was allowed to die of natural causes.

Ukrainian-born Nazi collaborator Jakob Reimer worked as a senior SS guard at a concentration camp in Trawniki, Poland, and allegedly took part in ghetto liquidations. He obtained a US visa in 1952 and managed to avoid a deportation order until 2005, but he died, at age 76, before he could be removed from the US. When confronted in court over his wartime conduct, he reportedly said, “It is all forgotten. It is all over.”

From Nazis to Islamists

America’s pattern of championing virtuous ideals to the rest of the world while partnering with villainous allies against Moscow was on display again in 1979. That’s when the CIA began providing weapons and funding to Islamist rebels in Afghanistan even before Soviet forces invaded the country to prop up the communist government in Kabul.

Then-President Jimmy Carter attacked the USSR’s intervention in Kabul as a “blatant violation of accepted international rules of behavior,” but his administration eagerly and secretly armed jihadists who sought to overthrow Afghanistan’s pro-Soviet government. Ronald Reagan continued the policy after winning the 1980 presidential election.

Peaking at $630 million in 1987 and escalating in sophistication from antiquated rifles to Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, the aid was funneled primarily to radical fighters favored by Pakistan, rather than to the less ideological rebels who had been fighting the government prior to the Soviet invasion.

The Mujahideen fighters and America’s government shared essentially only one common goal: killing Russians. Once Soviet troops finished withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1989, the allies became enemies. Some of the rebels later formed the Taliban, which took over Afghanistan, committed atrocities against civilians and harbored the Al-Qaeda Islamists who allegedly carried out the deadliest terrorist attacks in US history – on September 11, 2001.

Al-Qaeda was also born out of the Afghan conflict. Group leader Osama bin Laden and many of his fighters formerly battled the Soviets with US-supplied arms. The group’s ironic origins gave rise to the nickname ‘Al-CIAeda’. But if there was a lesson learned from the deadly fallout, it apparently wasn’t heeded.

The US and its allies backed Islamist rebels again when they tried unsuccessfully to oust the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was backed by Russia. US officials claimed to support only “moderate” rebels, but intentionally or otherwise, American weapons wound up in the hands of jihadist groups such as the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham. According to the UN, the Syrian Civil War has killed more than 300,000 civilians. The war also turned millions of Syrians into refugees, giving rise to the European migrant crisis.

Latest US anti-Russian project

Even as Washington was ramping up aid to the Syrian rebels in 2014, President Barack Obama’s administration found time to help overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, led by Viktor Yanukovich. Although Yanukovich said he supported Ukraine eventually joining the European Union, he was viewed as too pro-Russian by the West.

The fact that neo-Nazi militias helped provide the muscle for the violent Euromaidan overthrow – and put down anti-coup demonstrators in the aftermath – was apparently an acceptable collaboration for Washington. When members of the far-right Svoboda Party took several leadership positions in the new government, US officials stood with them – literally, in the case of Senator John McCain, who shared a stage with Oleg Tyagnibok at Kiev’s Independence (Maidan) Square.

Obama’s administration offered no condemnation when at least 48 people were killed and hundreds injured in an attack on anti-Euromaidan protestors in Odessa. Most of the victims were burned to death by a far-right mob when they tried to take shelter in the city’s union hall. Others were shot or beaten when they tried to escape the burning building.

Ukraine’s fascist Right Sector group reacted by celebrating the massacre as “yet another bright page in our fatherland’s history.” Ukrainian MP Lesya Orobets, who had been praised by US media outlet Daily Beast as a “rising star” of the anti-Yanukovych opposition, also celebrated the killings, reportedly calling the Odessa incident a “liquidation” of pro-Russia enemies.

To this day, the perpetrators of the massacre haven’t been held accountable. The Council of Europe concluded in November 2020 that the Kiev government had failed to properly investigate and prosecute those responsible for the killings.

Ukraine has continued to embrace its World War II Nazi collaborators, including Stepan Bandera, who is venerated in public marches. Two years after the coup, one of the main avenues in Kiev was renamed Stepan Bandera Street. Lviv also boasts a Stepan Bandera Street. In the eyes of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, one of Yanukovich’s sins was his decision to revoke an earlier government declaration honoring Bandera as an official “Hero of Ukraine.”

Ironically, Bandera was considered too “extreme” even for the CIA, which instead chose to work with other Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) leaders, including Lebed and Yaroslav Stetsko. The latter’s writings became the ideological foundation of the Svoboda Party.

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA, concluded in September 1945 that Bandera had conducted a “reign of terror” during the war. Nevertheless, the US Army refused to extradite Bandera to the Soviet Union as a war criminal. “American intelligence officials recognized that his arrest would have quick and adverse effects on the future of US operations with the Ukrainians,” according to a CIA document released in 2006.

Ukrainian ‘heroes’

Some US leaders had misgivings about Ukraine’s modern-day Nazis. For instance, Congress voted in March 2018 to ban allowing US military aid for Ukraine to go to the Azov Battalion, many of whose members openly proclaim neo-Nazi ideology. “White supremacy and neo-Nazism are unacceptable and have no place in our world,” Representative Ro Khanna said at the time. US lawmakers had removed an earlier ban in 2016 at the behest of the Pentagon.

The issue was controversial back then. Major media outlets wrote about Ukraine’s “Nazi problem,” and when the funding ban was repealed in 2016, the Simon Wiesenthal Center blasted Congress, saying the US had “purposely ignored the glorification of Nazi collaborators, the granting of financial benefits to those who fought alongside the Nazis and the systematic promotion of the canard of equivalency between communist and Nazi crimes by these countries because of various political interests.”

Forty US senators signed a letter in 2019 demanding that the Azov Battalion and other far-right groups be designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington think tank, wrote in May 2021 that Ukraine’s “slide into authoritarianism” was accelerating. “It is reckless to treat Ukraine as a US ally on strategic grounds, and it is morally offensive to do so on the basis of alleged democratic solidarity,” Cato senior fellow Ted Galen Carpenter said.

However, as the current Ukraine crisis began to bubble up late last year, such concerns were squashed. Last December, the US and Ukraine were the only nations to vote against a United Nations General Assembly resolution “combating [the] glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism” and other practices that fuel racism. Among other provisions that Kiev found objectionable, the resolution called for prohibiting commemorative celebrations of the German Nazis or their collaborators.

Now that Ukrainian forces are fighting Russia, the US and its allies, as well as Western media outlets, are backing Kiev even more uncritically. Biden has framed the conflict as a battle for “democracy and freedom,” even as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky bans opposition parties, shuts down critical broadcasters and arrests dissenters.

Facebook changed its rules on February 24, the day that Russia’s military offensive began, to allow its nearly three billion users to praise the Azov Battalion. Media outlets softened their portrayals of the militia. For instance, the Washington Post called it a “nationalist outfit,” and the New York Times, which previously referred to the group as “openly neo-Nazi,” began calling it “celebrated.”

The Wall Street Journal whitewashed the group’s Nazi ties while praising the courage of its members. Multiple outlets wrote sympathetically in September about Azov fighters who allegedly faced rough treatment while in Russian captivity, and Business Insider noted that more than $130,000 had been raised for a battalion member who needed money for medical treatment.

The media’s willingness to “conceal Ukraine’s corruption and authoritarianism has grown even worse since the outbreak of war with Russia,” Cato’s Carpenter said in May. “The coverage of the Ukraine war threatens to achieve a new low in media integrity and credibility. When the establishment press whitewashes the behavior of outright neo-Nazis, something is terribly amiss.”

Azov’s image had been so transformed, in fact, that co-founder Giorgi Kuparashvili and five other representatives of the battalion reportedly met with over 50 members of Congress in Washington in September as part of the delegation’s US tour. The group auctioned off Azov patches, featuring the Wolfsangel logo, while visiting a Ukrainian American church in Detroit last month.

Also last month, a Kiev street that was previously named in honor of Soviet Marshal Rodion Malinovsky was officially renamed to celebrate the “heroes” of the Azov Battalion. Among the dignitaries attending the October 26 renaming ceremony was Azov founder Andrey Biletsky, nicknamed the “White Ruler” by fellow neo-Nazis. Malinovsky, a Ukrainian by origin, liberated much of the country from Hitler’s Nazis in 1943-1944 and was twice named a Hero of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine’s fascist elements apparently aren’t limited to the fringes of its society, or the fringes of its military. In an October 6 Twitter message, General Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces, posted a photo of himself apparently wearing a bracelet made of tiles emblazoned with swastikas. He later claimed that the bracelet depicted Scandinavian pagan symbols that looked like swastikas because of the image’s digital compression.

However, Nazi symbols have also popped up in photos posted by Zelensky, including an Instagram post showing one of his bodyguards wearing a “Totenkopf” patch. A similar patch, showing a skull and crossbones symbol donned by SS forces in World War II, was also worn by a Ukrainian soldier in another photo posted by Ukraine’s president. Apart from the Nazi imagery used openly by the Azov fighters, regular Ukrainian service members have been photographed wearing SS patches and painting swastikas on their vehicles.

History repeats itself

Such symbols aren’t a concern for the US and its NATO allies. Biden dismissed the claim by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Moscow aimed to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, calling it a “cynical” and “obscene” lie. Like other anti-Russia voices, he has argued that Zelensky’s Jewish ancestry proves that Ukraine doesn’t have Nazi leanings. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov countered that Zelensky “personally patronizes” Kiev’s Nazi tendencies.

Then again, US officials have a long history of situational condemnation of Nazism and of viewing potentially useful villains through a rose-colored lens, especially when anti-Moscow interests are shared. Such was the case when Dulles, the future CIA director, sized up Wolff, the man described by Nuremberg prosecutors as Himmler’s “bureaucrat of death.” The spy leader’s own agency, the OSS, blamed Wolff for the “wholesale slaughter of populations.”

In a telegram cabled back to Washington, Dulles praised the SS bigwig as a “dynamic” and “distinctive personality.” He saw Wolff as handsome and trustworthy, representing a “more moderate element in [the] Waffen SS, with [a] mixture of romanticism.”

A quote cited by Christopher Simpson and other historians might help explain the apparently skewed mindset of Dulles and other US intelligence officials in how they viewed Nazis and Nazi collaborators. “We knew what we were doing,” said Harry Rositzke, who ran the CIA’s Soviet division in Munich from 1951 to 1954. “It was a visceral business of using any bastard as long as he was anti-communist.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... st-russia/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 14, 2022 11:46 pm

The 3 Most Likely Scenarios After Russia’s Partial Pullback From Kherson Region
NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Image
Tanks flock to the front lines outlined in the backdrop. Photo: Center for Land Warfare Studies.

By Andrew Korybko — Nov 9, 2022

The following three interpretations provide the most likely explanation for the latest development: 1) Kiev is successfully pushing back Russian forces with full Western support; 2) Moscow is laying a clever military trap for its opponents; or 3) partially pulling back from Kherson is the secret prerequisite for a ceasefire.

The Russian Ministry of Defense’s announcement on Wednesday evening that its forces are pulling back beyond the Dnieper River in its newly reunified southern region of Kherson was met with shock among those across the world who are sympathetic to Moscow’s special operation in Ukraine. Even though the authorities had been evacuating civilians from the right bank over the past month and Army General Surovikin had previously told his people around that time to possibly expect militarily tough decisions in the future, few on this side of the New Cold War actually expected yet another Russian pullback.

This follows the surprise setback in Kharkov Region two months ago, which was much more chaotic and disorganized than the partial pullback from the Kherson Region, though the first-mentioned wasn’t a constituent part of the Russian Federation when that happened, unlike the second. The optics of the latest development are therefore extremely uncomfortable and can’t be sugarcoated, though to their credit, the Russian Ministry of Defense didn’t attempt to do that. Instead, Army General Surovikin and Defense Minister Shoigu candidly informed the Russian people about why this was happening.

According to them, retaining that territory makes little military sense, especially since the Damocles’ sword of Kiev attacking the nearby Kakhovka Dam is hanging over everyone’s heads and could ultimately isolate those of its forces remaining on the right bank in that scenario. With this in mind, the decision was made to start the pullback of their forces from there. Most painful of all, however, is that the region’s eponymous capital will also be evacuated as part of this process. For that reason, Kiev, its Western patrons, and their supporters are wildly celebrating what just happened.

The following three interpretations provide the most likely explanation for the latest development:

1. Kiev Is Successfully Pushing Back Russian Forces With Full Western Support

This conventional interpretation of events posits that US-led NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine that provoked Moscow’s special operation there in the first place has evolved to the point of successfully pushing back its opponent’s forces from the same territory that they now claim as its own.

2. Moscow Is Laying A Clever Military Trap For Its Opponents

The second more speculative interpretation is to suspect that things aren’t as they seem and that Moscow is laying a clever trap for its opponents to tempt them into overstretching their supply lines, more easily exposing themselves to strikes, and fighting a Stalingrad-esque pivotal battle in Kherson city.

3. Partially Pulling Back From Kherson Is The Secret Prerequisite For A Ceasefire

The last interpretation is purely speculative and relies on the sequence of signals that the US sent prior to this week (detailed here) and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova’s reaffirmation of Russia’s interests in talks on Wednesday to suggest that this pullback is the secret prerequisite for a ceasefire.

Regarding the first interpretation, it’ll be considered credible if the following happens:

1A) Kiev’s Western-backed forces successfully occupy the entire right bank that Russia withdrew from;

1B) They then successfully cross the Dnieper River in Kherson Region;

1C) And this leads to them either chipping away at or quickly crushing Russia’s “Crimean Corridor”.

The second interpretation requires the following to happen in order to be deemed credible:

2A) Kiev’s Western-backed forces struggle to occupy the entire right bank of the Kherson Region;

2B) They similarly struggle to occupy Kherson city;

2C) And their efforts end with the right bank of Kherson Region becoming a (demilitarized?) buffer zone.

Finally, the following must soon happen in order for the third theory to not be dismissed as coping:

3A) The right bank of Kherson Region either remains demilitarized or is only lightly militarized by Kiev;

3B) Fighting between Kiev’s Western-backed forces and Russia’s in Kherson Region slows down or stops;

3C) a diplomatic breakthrough is achieved ahead of, during, or immediately after next week’s G20.

To wrap it all up, here are the three main takeaways from what just happened:

1. Russia pulled back from territory that it claims as its own to the disappointment of its supporters;

2. It’s more likely that Kiev will keep advancing or get bogged in a quagmire than agree to a ceasefire;

3. And there’s a chance that Kiev and/or Russia might asymmetrically react to the latest development.

(korybko)

https://orinocotribune.com/the-three-mo ... on-region/

*********

BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S NOVICHOK INQUIRY REVEALS THAT ITS NOVICHOK CASE OFFICERS ARE ALSO THE GOVERNMENT’S UKRAINE WARFIGHTERS

Image

By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

The British Government has admitted over the weekend that its troops currently running the British war in the Ukraine are also engaged in managing the document file for the alleged Novichok attack against Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March 2018.


The disclosure appears in the text of a document signed by Cathryn McGahey KC, dated October 31, and released on the website of the
Dawn Sturgess Inquiry chaired by Lord Anthony Hughes (lead image left). “The war in Ukraine has required”, McGahey (right), a barrister representing the government ministries, wrote to Hughes, “and continues to require work to be undertaken by many of the same individuals and resources who are working on disclosures. Many of those working disclosure are subject matter experts,. While disclosure to the Inquiry is a priority, there have been times when this has had to take second place behind live, ongoing issues of national security.”

McGahey testifed before Hughes at a two-hour hearing on the Novichok allegations in a London courtroom last Friday, November 11. Follow what was said, and what was meant, in this analysis. An official transcript of the hearing can be read here.

According to McGahey, “approximately 80,000 documents (including emails) have been identified and located as relevant” to the Hughes inquiry. But before any of them can be identified, quoted, or released publicly, McGahey suggested, the government’s Ukraine warfighters will be obliged to down their weapons and pick up censorship tools to prevent the Russians from gaining any advantage.

As Hughes has announced, referring to the allegations of Novichok poisoning, “the responsibility for the events in Salisbury [Skripal incident March 4, 2018] and Amesbury [Sturgess incident June 30, 2018] is what is to be decided by this Inquiry. There is, however, at least a prima facie case (denied by those accused) that those responsible were Russian nationals acting in the interests of the Russian state and allegedly under its direction.”

Exactly what roles in the Ukraine war the “subject matter experts” are playing has not been disclosed. The Russian Government has publicly accused the British Government of providing undersea drone and other technology for attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines, Russia’s Black Sea fleet, a plan of attack against the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, and nuclear weapons design.

McGahey told Hughes the British Government hasn’t enough money to pay these warfighters to do both the Ukrainian and the Novichok jobs. “There are stretched resources and budgets across HMG [HHis Majesty’s Government], which are not trivial, and there is very real pressure on government departments and agencies.”

Hughes has decided there must be a near-total ban on identifying by name any British official engaged in warmaking against Russia, including intelligence gathering, weapons training, plans and operations.

“The risk of damage to national security here,” he said, ” lies in the risk that hostile actors, whether State or otherwise and, if State, whether Russian or otherwise, might target individuals identified as concerned in the UK reaction to those events, and/or might use access to their names as a means of disrupting UK public functions. I am satisfied, on all the material I have seen, both OPEN and CLOSED, that these are marked real risks to some of those who were involved in the 2018 events, and that Russia in particular has both an interest in such activity and a known capacity to carry it out. For most of these persons therefore, a restriction order is likely to be necessary… [Russia] would have a similar interest in anyone amongst government staff who carried out any sensitive role; an obvious example would be any person concerned in the work of intelligence agencies, or other covert activities, but the risk will not be limited to them. General disclosure of the names of persons subject to these risks would indeed present a hostile actor with a convenient directory of suitable targets and/or a list of sensitive functions which would be of considerable value to a hostile actor accumulating intelligence about UK security and government systems.”

http://johnhelmer.net/british-governmen ... more-70183

**********

U.S.-Russian Intelligence Chiefs Discuss Ukraine

Earlier today the Russian news outlet Kommersant reported on U.S.-Russian negotiations in Turkey (machine translation):

As it became known to "Kommersant", today, November 14, negotiations between the Russian and American delegations are taking place in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin flew to Ankara from the Russian side.
This meeting has not been publicly announced before. The source has so far declined to provide details of the talks.

Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov said that he could neither confirm nor deny the information about the talks in Ankara.

The last time the Russian and American delegations met in Geneva was on January 10 for talks on security guarantees. The lack of practical results of the January negotiation process is often seen as a diplomatic prerequisite for the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine.

The U.S. counterpart of Sergei Naryshkin is CIA director Bill Burns.

The negotiations have long been requested by Russia:

In the last month, the volley of calls for negotiation from Putin has intensified. On September 30, Putin called on Kiev “to return back to the negotiating table.” On October 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia "was willing to engage with the United States or with Turkey on ways to end the war." Two days later, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow is “open to negotiations to achieve our objectives." On October 26, Putin sent a message to Zelensky through President Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo of Guinea Bissau, saying that “He wishes and thinks that a direct dialogue should happen between your two countries.” On October 30, Lavrov said that Russia is “ready to listen to our Western colleagues if they make another request to organize a conversation" as long as Russia’s security needs were considered. And on November 1, Putin said that “necessary conditions” could arise that would be a catalyst to talks.

On the U.S. side only one voice had recently publicly urged to start negotiations:

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to US officials, Milley “has made the case in internal meetings that the Ukrainians have achieved about as much as they could reasonably expect on the battlefield before winter sets in and so they should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table.”

The top US general has made no secret of his stance. “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” Milley declared in a public speech this week.


At the end of last week the Wall Street Journal reported that more members of the Biden administration agreed with that position:

As Ukraine Retakes Kherson, U.S. Looks to Diplomacy Before Winter Slows Momentum
American arms are flowing, but officials in Washington question how much territory either side can win Ukrainian cities including Kyiv have turned off streetlights to conserve energy after Russian attacks on power plants.

Senior U.S. officials have begun nudging Kyiv to start thinking about peace talks in the event winter stalls its momentum, following Ukraine’s recapture of Kherson in one of its most stunning triumphs of the war.
The imminent onset of winter—coupled with fears of inflation spurred by mounting energy and food prices, the billions of dollars of weaponry already pumped into Ukraine, and the tens of thousands of casualties on both sides—has prompted talk in Washington of a potential inflection point in the war, now in its ninth month.


Fact is that the 'west' is running short of ammunition it can deliver to Ukraine. That is why the U.S. is buying 100,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition from South Korea:

“Negotiations are ongoing between the US and Korean companies to export ammunition, in order to make up for the shortage of 155mm ammunition inventories in the US,” the ministry said. The Pentagon said in a statement it has been “in discussion” about “potential sales” of ammunition by the US from South Korea.
But statements from South Korea and the US make clear that the deal, which has been in the works for months, has not yet been finalized. The purchase of such a large supply of artillery ammunition is highly sensitive for South Korea, especially given the recent missile launches and weapon tests conducted by North Korea.


To call 100,000 artillery rounds a 'large supply' is a joke. It is less than what the Russian army expenses in two days.

The 'west' currently no longer has the industrial capacity to make the products that are needed in a long high intensity war. It could rebuild that capacity but that would require a huge amount of money and long term commitments to buy significant amounts of such products.

Without a steady resupply of huge amounts of ammunition the Ukrainian army is done.

The Biden administration has now confirmed that CIA head Burns has met with Naryshkin. But it is lying about the content of the talks:

William J. Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, met with his Russian counterpart in Turkey on Monday to warn Russia against the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, a White House spokesman said.
The National Security Council said Mr. Burns’s meeting in Ankara was not in any way meant to negotiate or to discuss any settlement of the war in Ukraine. Ukraine was briefed in advance on the trip, the spokesman said.

President Biden has insisted that Ukraine, and not the United States, will dictate if and when negotiations commence to end the war.


Russia has not threatened to use nuclear weapons. There is no reason for it to do so and many good reason to refrain from using them. It would foremost alienate China and other Russian allies. It was in fact the U.S. which planted nuclear scare stories in another of its attempts to smear Russia. The U.S. of course knows that there is no danger that Russia would use nukes and it is likely that Burns did not even mention them.

There are enough other problems. The electricity situation in Ukraine is getting worse as the weather gets colder. Some 40% to 50% of the 330 kilovolt network is down and more of it will fail.

What the U.S. needs is more time for Ukraine to repair damage and for the production and delivery of more weapons and ammunition. It needs a pause in the war. It may well hope for a kind of ceasefire during the winter. It is highly likely that Burns went to Ankara to talk about that.

Sure, the Biden administration has no interest in ending the war. It is setting up a headquarter in Germany where a three star general and his headquarter staff will direct the U.S. efforts in its, for now, proxy war against Russia. The claim is that the new command will be responsible for supplying Ukraine. That is unlikely to be true:

The Pentagon puts a 3 Stars General in Charge of War Operations — not Inventory. And you do not need a Headquarters Staff of 300 to do an Audit. It’s a War Headquarters Staff. We are going to war against Russia unless the American People can figure out some way to stop it!

The headquarter means that the U.S. is planing for a very long and bigger war.

NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has said that a Russian victory in the conflict in Ukraine would be a defeat for NATO and that it can not allow such an outcome.

If you can not allow something to happen that is already mostly assured you will have to do something very serious to prevent that outcome. NATO is not united enough to go to war. But the chances for a direct conflict are growing by the day. It will be left to U.S. and some east European countries to send their own troops into Ukraine.

The U.S. public is not yet ready for such a step and it will take more time to get to that point.

It is another reason why the U.S. would like to pause the war for now. But Russia is unlikely to fall for such a scam. A ceasefire would allow the Ukrainian military to regain some strength and to build up more defensive lines.

After its mobilization of reservists in September Russia will soon have the forces available that are necessary to breach the Ukrainian front lines to then storm through and attack deep behind those lines. As soon as the ground freezes it will be ready to go. Any pause now would make a later move more difficult.

There will be no ceasefire now but the talks are good anyway. Both sides should do there best to keep them going.

Russia has asked for a lot: a pullback of NATO to its 1997 position, four parts of Ukraine to become parts of Russia, a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO. The U.S. is certainly not willing to commit to those steps - at least not yet.

It will need time and many more talks for the U.S. to come to its senses and to make the necessary concessions to end the conflict.

It will also require the defeat of the Ukrainian military, and anyone who joins it, on the battle field. Russia can do that if it concentrates on that effort.

Posted by b on November 14, 2022 at 15:48 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/11/u ... .html#more

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

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Soledar direction
situation as of 20:00 November 14, 2022

Image

Before regaining control over Kherson, the Ukrainian leadership considered leaving Bakhmut due to lack of resources to keep it.

However, the withdrawal of Russian troops to the left bank of the Dnieper and the entry of the Armed Forces of Ukraine into the city without a fight and virtually without losses allowed the Armed Forces of Ukraine to redistribute the surviving units to other areas.

Now the command of the Soledar OTG of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has received a command to keep Bakhmut with all its might. The Ukrainian government promised to send reinforcements to the Bakhmut region to deter the Russian advance.

🔻Due to the threat of a breakthrough in the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area of ​​Opytny , a tank reserve of the 53rd mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was deployed to the south-west of Bakhmut .

▪️Assault detachments of the 53rd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine attempted an offensive from positional areas three kilometers west of Otradovka and Zaitsevo . The attack was repulsed, and the Ukrainian formations were driven back to their original positions.

▪️However, the Armed Forces of Ukraine intend to continue attacks on the positions of Wagner PMC fighters. 100 mobilized people were transferred to the sector from Chasov Yar after combat coordination.

In addition, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine considers an offensive by the RF Armed Forces from the territory of Belarus in the Kyiv region unlikely. Therefore, until November 20, units of the territorial defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the Kiev garrison, which were previously supposed to hold the defense of the capital, will be transferred from Kiev to Bakhmut .

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

********

Poland Sends a Military Contingent to Ukraine Under Mercenary Cover
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Image

The number of Polish mercenaries in Ukraine is increasing, which is seen even in Kiev, which happily announces the help given by the neighboring state in the fight against Russia. However, Polish mercenaries are not going to die for Bandera’s ideas. They have a completely different task: to ensure the annexation of part of western Ukraine to Poland.

“ Poland has begun sending military contingents to Ukraine, so far under the guise of mercenaries ”, writes the Polish publication Niezależny Dziennik Polityczny.

The Polish government is sending regular Polish army military personnel to Ukraine, allegedly “ on vacation ”. British intelligence has counted 1,800 Polish mercenaries in Ukraine, many of them women. In fact, those numbers are already out of date: there are many more “ tourists ” Poles.

To date, Poland It ranks first in terms of the number of mercenaries sent to Ukraine. Although mercenarism is considered a crime, in Poland this prohibition can be circumvented by obtaining official permission from the government and the Ministry of Defense. The Law and Justice Party ( PiS ), in government, does not want to wait any longer and has begun to implement a plan to regain its territories in eastern Ukraine.

Poles and Ukrainians will never become brothers; not even good neighbors. Duda and Zelensky’s hugs are aimed at preparing the ground for the annexation of the Polish historical lands.

Polish mercenaries are unwilling to follow orders from the Ukrainian army command, and there are increasing skirmishes with Nazi punishment battalions.

As soon as there is a tactical pause in Russia’s actions and consider that the tasks of the special operation have ended, after recovering the lands of eastern and southern Ukraine, including Transnistria, Poland its operation will begin, and mercenaries in Ukraine will ensure the implementation of the plans, according to the Polish magazine.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... ary-cover/

Russian Ops in Ukraine – Update: What is the Goal & is Moscow Achieving it?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 14, 2022



In order to analyze whether or not Russia is successfully carrying out its special military operation, it is first and foremost essential to understand what it is actually trying to achieve. In late February, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine seeking first and foremost the “demilitarization” of Ukraine. During the same speech, President Putin specifically noted that taking territory was not a priority. Since then, Russian forces have decimated Ukraine’s armed forces, eliminating their trained manpower and emptying out both their own and their Western sponsors’ arsenals in the fighting. Russian forces have suffered relatively light losses compared to the tens of thousands Ukraine has suffered. If Russia is fighting a war of attrition, it is clear they are winning despite the territorial changes on the map.

References:

Washington Post – Russia’s heavy casualties in Ukraine spark outcry and rare official response: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/

BBC – Ukrainian casualties: Kyiv losing up to 200 troops a day – Zelensky aide: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe

Reuters – Ukraine’s Kherson races to restore power, water after Russian retreat: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/

Bloomberg – Transcript: Vladimir Putin’s Televised Address on Ukraine (February 24, 2022): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... ieving-it/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 15, 2022 1:35 pm

Risks of war and diplomacy
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 11/15/2022

Image

Since the Russian withdrawal from the city of Kherson and all the territories on the right bank of the Dnieper River was announced last week, the specter of the possibility of a prior agreement has hovered over the debate on the decision. Russia, which since the beginning of its military intervention in Ukraine has not been able to clearly express its real objectives and has failed to explain its military defeats or lack of success and controversial decisions, such as the exchange of prisoners of war from the Azov regiment, guards silence. Moscow has offered no further explanation about the withdrawal from Kherson, the only Ukrainian regional capital it had in its power and which had already been designated a Russian city,

With these images, and the confirmation that it was a decision made by the Ministry of Defense, that is, by the military authorities, Russia presented a military decision, not a political one. However, and given the absolute lack of real information on the situation on the Kherson front over the last few weeks, the discourse of the military necessity of a strategic withdrawal contrasts with the eagerness of the official reports to allege that each Ukrainian attempt in this front was being defeated. Now, the same media that until a few days ago claimed that the right bank was the defense of the left bank, now vulnerable to Ukrainian artillery, or that boasted of the high number - real or imaginary - of Ukrainian attacks in the area, they defend withdrawal as a way to free up troops in preparation for further offensive action. Without real information about the casualties that each side has suffered in the months of fighting in Kherson, and in which Russian troops have been unable to expand the security territory or prepare a serious defense, speculation substitutes to the arguments.

The theory of the existence of some kind of understanding is supported by certain movements that have been made over the last few days. In the first place, the rapid Russian withdrawal took place without being hindered by the Ukrainian troops, who, thanks to the real-time intelligence provided by their partners, must have been aware that Russia was not preparing a "fortress city" but rather the withdrawal. If kyiv was not aware of the facts and truly believed its own propaganda, which claimed that Russia was trying to lure the Ukrainian Armed Forces into a death trap in urban battle, it could only be because of the lack of information from its British partners and Americans, whose intelligence has been able to follow in detail every development of events up to now.

Secondly, coinciding with the Russian announcement, two aspects that had been entrenched for months were unlocked: first, the United States authorized banking operations related to Russian diplomatic missions abroad and later it became known through a leak to the agency Reuters that the shipments of Russian fertilizers held for several months in Rotterdam will be able to leave for Malawi. As announced in advance, Russia will deliver the cargo free of charge, a form of diplomacy and a gesture towards the third world in a year in which Western countries have repeatedly accused Moscow of gambling with the food security of less developed countries.

None of these aspects proves the existence of any previous or possible understanding in the short term, but it denotes a moment in which movements that have not been possible up to now can be made. To this must be added a wave of information leaked to different media about possible negotiations in search of an agreement or an attempt to freeze the conflict. La Repubblica in Italy and The Wall Street Journalalready published details on possible points of agreement to freeze, even temporarily, the conflict after the Ukrainian capture of Kherson, either due to Russian withdrawal or after a battle in which they took for granted that Ukraine would take control. The terms of that negotiation were based on the continuation of military and financial aid from the West to Ukraine and the use of the Dnieper River as a temporary border between the parties to avoid continuing a battle in winter that could lead to a dramatic situation for the Ukrainian population in general. . The guarantee of continued electricity supply from the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant was another of the aspects mentioned, which, added to the evident demand for an end to Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, it would guarantee Ukraine the supply and the possibility of repairing the damage caused so far. None of the proposals to alleviate the serious situation of the civilian population due to the war proposes guaranteeing the supply of water to cities as important and populated as Donetsk, a supply without which the heating season is in danger.

Yesterday, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, neither confirmed nor denied reports of a high-level meeting of Russian and US intelligence in Ankara. As published by both Kommersant in Russia and CNN in the United States, CIA director Bill Burns met with his Russian counterpart Sergey Narishkin. Throughout the day, after many hours of speculation about whether Russia is trying to negotiate directly with whoever has the power to decide in Ukraine, CNNHe clarified the reasons for the negotiation, which the United States wanted to transcend: the warning to Russia against the use of nuclear weapons and the nationals of each country imprisoned on the contrary. Burns wanted to insist that this was not a negotiation, implying that the United States had only met to give its terms.

In recent days, several high-ranking representatives of the European Union, including Macron and Borrell, have mentioned the possibility of diplomacy, always insisting that Ukraine will decide the moment and the forms. Also a part of the Biden administration, through anonymous leaks to several important media, has wanted to point out the need for diplomacy in the face of a complete Ukrainian victory that they do not see possible. The capture of Kherson, which was reflected yesterday in Zelensky's visit in a staging of nationalist fervour, means that Ukraine is once again at a short geographical distance from Crimea, the territory in which Russia has the most to lose and which it would defend with hardest.

Under the current conditions, freezing the conflict, even temporarily, would allow Russia to reinforce its grouping and prepare to defend the territories under its control, but it would make offensive actions in Donbass, the only area in which these attempts persist, more difficult, and would risk repeating a situation similar to that of Minsk and Minsk-2, with a breached ceasefire and constant accusations against Moscow in a war that would become chronic.

In any case, any agreement would suppose the rectification of the discourse of both parties. Russia would be forced to accept that its current situation is one of weakness and Ukraine to give up the idea of ​​complete victory that its authorities proclaim to the four winds. "Ukraine is ready for peace throughout the country," said Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday, who practically since he came to power has used the concept of peace as a synonym for victory, a peace born of his victory.in which there has never been an understanding with the population of Donbass and Crimea. Already in August 2021, the president who came to power with the promise of compromise to end the war, addressed the citizens of Donbass and Crimea to condescendingly explain that they should move to Russia in case they felt Russian. Ukraine, which has always wanted to recover the territory, but not necessarily the population, continues to speak of offensives and proposes a return to the 1991 borders as a prerequisite for any negotiation. One step further, the hero Zaluzhny has been even clearer. Speaking to the press, he stated that the armed forces will not accept "negotiations, agreements or compromises."

It is hard to imagine that kyiv, which last March, under heavy military pressure, refused to admit the loss of Crimea, will do so now that its troops have regained and retained the initiative at the front without making maximalist demands on Russia that Moscow could not accept. . Except if their US partners demand it and use coercive measures to guarantee it.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/11/15/riesg ... more-25946

Google Translator

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

Assistance to the 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the RF Armed Forces
November 15, 12:10

Image

As part of information support.

Assistance to the 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the RF Armed Forces

Last week, we completed the delivery and delivery of the sixth cargo purchased with your money to the 7th brigade of the NM of the LPR.
For the most part, it was digital communications. The howitzer battalion is now fully equipped with closed digital communications, and the entire artillery of the brigade is now provided with secure smartphones with artillery software.
Signalers of the brigade received 20 sets of radio bridges. We also provided two reserve battalions that are part of the brigade with closed digital communications. We publish reports in our TG channel: https://t.me/omsbr7

The brigade continues stubborn offensive battles for Soledar, with great difficulty gnaws through the enemy defenses. Lugansk infantry in this war comes constantly. Somewhere quickly, as in Lisichansk and Berestovoye, somewhere slowly, as in Rubezhnoye and Soledar, but it is coming.
Well, we, as best we can, help the Luhansk guys to create the most necessary thing - a stable closed connection.

We are starting a new collection. The brigade really needs powerful radio bridges.
Ubiquiti AirFiber 5U - 4 sets
Ubiquiti AirFiber 11 Complete - 2 sets.
In addition, AGM batteries and diesel generators are very much needed. We could not buy them from the last collection - the prices for these products in the Russian Federation are simply horses. We will order and deliver from China.
We do not forget about the winter and the needs of ordinary soldiers. We will purchase warm sleeping bags for artillerymen and an engineer company. We will purchase armor plates for bulletproof vests - samples will soon arrive from China.

We continue to develop means of anti-drone warfare. In addition to us, there are already several volunteer groups working in this direction. I am sure that together we will be able to saturate the front with cheap and reliable equipment - drone detectors and jammers. In a good way, such equipment should be in every company. Prior to current events, such equipment was "elitist" and cost as much as an airplane wing. Times call for a different approach. We will be able to show the first developments and send them to the front in the near future.

But nothing will happen without your help. "After all, ours will not come, all of ours are us."
Thanks to everyone who helped and helps!

Contacts and details: Sber
card: 4276 5500 9314 7760
YuMoney: 4100117858586135
Mail for questions: help.for.7omsbr@gmail.com
With transfers from abroad it is now very difficult, but solvable. Send us an email and we'll try to resolve it.
Please do not write anything in the comments to the translations - bankers are nervous people.

https://leon-spb67.livejournal.com/1499486.html - zinc

Thank you to everyone who has helped and is helping.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7975150.html

Google Translator

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

Attempt to Try Russian Leaders for War Crimes is Part of the West’s Weaponization of the International Criminal Court
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 14, 2022
Robin Philpot

International Criminal Court (ICC) continues to serve as a “battering ram for U.S. and NATO policy,” as the former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes in the Clinton administration defined it.

The quote above does not come from President Putin of Russia or from President Xi of China. It comes from David Scheffer, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001) in the Clinton administration and lead negotiator for the United States during the creation of not fewer than five international criminal tribunals, namely for ex-Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Scheffer used the battering-ram image while talking about the first international criminal tribunal established in May 1993, the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia. He said:

“By then, the tribunal was a potent judicial tool, and I had enough support from President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and other top officials in Washington to wield it like a battering ram in the execution of U.S. and NATO policy.” (All the Missing Souls, A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals, Princeton University Press, 2012)

This quote is important today as calls resound to bring Russian citizens and the president of Russia before international criminal courts, whether they exist or are being planned. The calls are being issued by NATO countries, the European Union as well as by UN organizations and by the obedient Western media.

NATO and European Union strategy is becoming clear. Their goal is to weaponize international criminal justice and human rights, today against Russia, today and tomorrow against China or any other country that dares to say NO to what the United States and its allies or vassals are trying to impose—or save. Here are a few examples:

The ICC has declared itself to have jurisdiction over Russia even though Russia is not a member. According to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, that is not a problem, “Legally yes it wouldn’t represent an obstacle to our jurisdiction.” Prosecutor Khan travels to Ukraine under the benevolent and totally impartial protection of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, whose many documented crimes committed since 2014 are of course not mentioned.
In March 2022, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Judge Erik Møse to head the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine that would investigate alleged crimes in Ukraine that could lead to indictment of Russians. Møse was judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 1999 to 2009. (see below)

Møse’s Commission also conducted its investigation under the very kind protection of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. It produced a report on September 23 that quite predictably concluded that Russians had committed war crimes. Unsurprisingly, it also concluded that Russians had committed sexual crimes and that the victims were 4 to 82 years old.

Equally unsurprisingly, no mention was made about the well-documented crimes of the Ukrainian Army from 2014 on, particularly in the Donbas.

The International Bar Association is working closely with the Ukrainian Bar Association to prepare for criminal trials to be conducted in Ukraine or before the ICC. Mark Ellis, Executive Director of the IBA, recently declared that the fact that Russia is not a member of the ICC is not a problem. Russian political and military authorities could be indicted, tried and, in the case of a conviction and regime change, could be arrested wherever they are.
The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in charge of issues related to sexual violence, Pramila Patten, declared at a Paris press conference on October 14 that acts of rape, mutilation and sexual aggression were part of the Russian military strategy. She also claimed that Russian soldiers were equipped with Viagra. She presented no evidence, but simply parroted the report of the Commission of Inquiry led by Judge Møse referred to above.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, takes every possible occasion to threaten Russia militarily while at the same time boasting about how great international criminal justice is. Borrell is the man who says Europe is a garden while the rest of the world is a jungle that is threatening to invade the garden. He also calls on the European gardeners to go and show the backward peoples of the jungle how they should live.
The product of a unipolar world order

The fact that the first international criminal tribunals after Nuremberg were created in the 1990s is significant. It would not have been possible before 1990.

According to the late Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, “There would be no UN had it been implied in any way in the Charter that there would be a criminal tribunal. If it had been put in directly, the meeting would have been over. People would have packed their bags in Washington before the San Francisco meeting and left. The United States would have been the first to leave.” (Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa, p. 171)

The tribunals established in the 1990s are a pure product of the New World Order announced by George H. W. Bush after the fall of the Soviet Union. It was to be a unipolar world order led by the United States. The U.S. would control the international institutions, make the laws, identify the guilty people, indict, try and punish them, while remaining unaccountable for their own acts. The Clinton administration took over in 1993 to lead the creation of the tribunals that his negotiator boasted about as a “battering ram in the execution of U.S. and NATO policy.”

Ramsey Clark insisted: “I wouldn’t underestimate the central wrong of selecting people for prosecution. It’s enemies they’re choosing. It really is war by other means and it’s very cruel.” (Ibid., p. 185)

That is how the tribunals operated. In ex-Yugoslavia, mainly Serbs were indicted, but not a word was mentioned about NATO’s massive bombing and destruction of ex-Yugoslavia.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was probably the worst case of victors’ justice. Whereas war raged when the events in question took place, only members of the former government or opponents of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its leader Paul Kagame, who was backed by the U.S. and UK, were indicted.

Despite irrefutable evidence of crimes committed by the RPF and by Paul Kagame himself—who triggered the mass killings in Rwanda by invading the country illegally from Uganda, and as evidence indicates, shot down the airplane of Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana—he and his entire army have enjoyed total impunity.

What has happened to the people the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda acquitted, sentenced or sentenced and eventually freed? In short, some of the acquitted or “freed” people are still under house arrest in Niger years after they were acquitted or “freed,” stateless, without papers, without the right to join their families, and/or abandoned by an international kangaroo court.

Others are sent to 21st century penal colonies in Benin, Mali, and Senegal, but not to The Hague, headquarters of the ICC. It is a judicial apartheid for Africans. The question arises: How could the UN High Commission on Human Rights entrust the inquiry into crimes in Ukraine to a judge like Erik Møse who left such a flagrant violation of human rights in his wake and who has been silent about solving the problem?

Déjà vu all over again

The current calls to indict Russian authorities, citizens and the president of Russia resemble exactly what NATO did in 2011 to Libya and to Muammar Gaddafi.

In March 2011, shortly after U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice declared that Qaddafi was providing Libyan troops with Viagra to help them rape women, the very obedient ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, upped the ante, saying that Qaddafi had ordered that hundreds of women be raped and that Gaddafi himself “decided to rape.” He produced no evidence.

The UN Commission on Human Rights also quickly sent investigators to identify the crimes committed, including rape and the use of Viagra by the Libyan Armed Forces. When their report came out in March 2012, the investigators concluded that there was no evidence of any systematic policy of sexual violence.

Nonetheless, Moreno Ocampo insisted that the new Libyan authorities had irrefutable evidence to that effect. He appeared to want to provide more propaganda to justify the destruction of Libya and the assassination of Muammar Qaddafi on October 21, 2011. (Source: Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa, Maximilian Forte, Baraka Books, 2012, pp. 253-256.)

Russia is not Libya

Fortunately, Russia is not Libya and the unipolar world is sputtering out. Yet old habits die hard and can continue to destroy people and lives.

Although the promoters of so-called international criminal justice are going to have a hard time making their dreams come true, they can still score propaganda points, especially when most of the Western media are satisfied to parrot NATO and EU spokespeople.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... nal-court/

Russia Strategises with Iran for the Long Haul in Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 14, 2022
M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Image
Ali Shamkhani (L), representative of Supreme Leader and secretary of Supreme National Security Council, met Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Tehran, Nov. 9, 2022

Ignoring the hype in the US media about White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Kissingerian diplomacy over Ukraine, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, former KGB counterintelligence officer and longstanding associate of President Putin, travelled to Tehran last Wednesday in the equivalent of a knockout punch in geopolitics.

Patrushev called on President Ebrahim Raisi and held detailed discussions with Admiral Ali Shamkhani, the representative of the Supreme leader and secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. The visit marks a defining moment in the Russia-China partnership and plants a signpost on the trajectory of the war in Ukraine.

The Iranian state media quoted Raisi as saying, “The development of the extent and expansion of the scale of war [in Ukraine] causes concern for all countries.” That said, Raisi also remarked that Tehran and Moscow are upgrading relations to a “strategic” level, which is “the most decisive response to the policy of sanctions and destabilisation by the United States and its allies.”

The US State Department reacted swiftly on the very next day with spokesman Ned Price warning that “This is a deepening alliance that the entire world should view as a profound threat… this is a relationship that would have implications, could have implications beyond any single country.” Price said Washington will work with allies to counter Russian-Iranian military ties.

Patrushev’s talks in Tehran touched on highly sensitive issues that prompted President Vladimir Putin to follow up with Raisi on Saturday. The Kremlin readout said the two leaders “discussed a number of current issues on the bilateral agenda with an emphasis on the continued building up of interaction in politics, trade and the economy, including transport and logistics. They agreed to step up contacts between respective Russian and Iranian agencies.”

In this connection, Patrushev’s exceptionally strong support for Iran over the current disturbances in that country must be understood properly. Patrushev stated: “We note the key role of Western secret services in organising mass riots in Iran and the subsequent spread of disinformation about the situation in the country via Persian-language Western media existing under their control. We see this as overt interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”

Russian security agencies share information with Iranian counterparts on hostile activities of western intelligence agencies. Notably, Patrushev sidestepped Iran’s suspicions regarding involvement of Saudi Arabia. Separately, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also publicly offered to mediate between Tehran and Riyadh.

All this is driving Washington insane. On the one hand, it is not getting anywhere, including at President Biden’s level, to raise the spectre of Iran threat and rally the Arab regimes of the Persian Gulf all over again.

Most recently, Washington resorted to theatrics following up an unsubstantiated report by Wall Street Journal about an imminent Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia in the coming days. The US forces in the West Asian region increased their alert level and Washington vowed to be ready for any eventuality. But, curiously, Riyadh was unmoved and showed no interest in the US offer of protection to ward off threat from Iran.

Clearly, Saudi-Iranian normalisation process, which has been front-loaded with sensitive exchanges on their mutual security concerns, has gained traction neither side gets provoked into knee-jerk reaction.

This paradigm shift works to Russia’s advantage. Alongside its highly strategic oil alliance with Saudi Arabia, Russia is now deepening its strategic partnership with Iran.

The panic in spokesman Price’s remarks suggests that Washington has inferred that the cooperation between the security and defence agencies of Russia and Iran is set to intensify.

What alarms Washington most is that Tehran is adopting a joint strategy with Moscow to go on the offensive and defeat the weaponisation of sanctions by the collective West. Despite decades of sanctions, Iran has built up a world class defence industry on its own steam that will put countries like India or Israel to shame.

Shamkhani underscored the creation of “joint and synergistic institutions to deal with sanctions and the activation of the capacity of international institutions against sanctions and sanctioning countries.” Patrushev concurred by recalling the earlier agreements between the national security agencies of the two countries to chart out the roadmap for strategic cooperation, especially in regard of countering western economic and technological sanctions.

Shamkhani added that Tehran regards the expansion of bilateral and regional cooperation with Russia in the economic field as one of its strategic priorities in the conditions of US sanctions, which both countries are facing. Patrushev responded, “The most important goal of mine and my delegation in traveling to Tehran is to exchange opinions to speed up the implementation of joint projects along with providing dynamic mechanisms to start new activities in the economic, commercial, energy and technology fields.”

Patrushev noted, “Creating synergy in transit capacities, especially the rapid completion of the North-South corridor, is an effective step to improve the quality of bilateral and international economic and commercial cooperation.”

Patrushev and Shamkhani discussed a joint plan by Russia and Iran “to establish a friendship group of defenders of the United Nations Charter” comprising countries that bear the brunt of illegal western sanctions.

With regard to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Shamkhani said the two countries should “intelligently use the exchangeable capacities” of the member countries. He said the danger of terrorism and extremism continues to threaten the security of the region and stressed the need to increase regional and international cooperation.

Patrushev’s visit to Tehran was scheduled in the run-up to the conference on Afghanistan being hosted by Moscow on November 16. Iran and Russia have common concerns over Afghanistan. They are concerned over the western attempts to (re)fuel the civil war in Afghanistan.

In a recent op-Ed in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Russian Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov alleged that Britain is financing a so-called “Afghan resistance” against the Taliban (which is reportedly operating out of Panjshir.) Kabulov wrote that the US is baiting two Central Asian states by offering them helicopters and aircraft in lieu of cooperation in covert activities against the Taliban.

Kabulov made a sensational disclosure that the US is blackmailing the Taliban leaders by threatening them with a drone attack unless they broke off contacts with Russia and China. He said, specifically, that the US and Britain are demanding that Kabul should refrain from restricting the activities of Afghanistan-based Uyghur terrorists.

Interestingly, Moscow is exploring the creation of a compact group of five regional states who are stakeholders in Afghanistan’s stabilisation and could work together. Kabulov mentioned Iran, Pakistan, India and China as Russia’s partners.

Iran is a “force multiplier” for Russia in a way no other country — except China, perhaps — can be in the present difficult conditions of sanctions. Patrushev’s visit to Tehran at the present juncture, on the day after the midterms in the US, can only mean that the Kremlin has seen through the Biden administration’s dissimulation of peacemaking in Ukraine to actually derail the momentum of the Russian mobilisation and creation of new defence lines in the Kherson-Zaporozhya-Donbass direction.

Indeed, it is no secret that the Americans are literally scratching the bottom of the barrel to deliver weapons to Ukraine as their inventory is drying up and several months or a few years are needed to replenish depleted stocks. (here, here ,here and here)

Suffice to say, from the geopolitical angle, Patrushev’s talks in Tehran — and Putin’s call soon after with Raisi — have messaged in no unmistaken terms that Russia is strategising for the long haul in Ukraine.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... n-ukraine/

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

Medvedev: “Anglo-Saxons” Seeking To Take Frozen Russian Assets

Image
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev (2-R) visits the Kurgan Machine-Building Plant (Kurganmashzavod) in Kurgan, Russia, 11 November 2022. | Photo: EKATERINA SHTUKINA / SPUTNIK

Published 14 November 2022 (14 hours 58 minutes ago)

The countries of the West - especially the Anglo-Saxons - are looking for a legal basis to keep frozen Russian assets, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said Monday, commenting on the UN General Assembly resolution recommending Russia to make reparations to Ukraine.

"The General Assembly adopted a recommendatory resolution on reparations to be paid by Russia to Ukraine. The conclusion is that the Anglo-Saxons are looking for a legal basis that would allow them to steal frozen Russian assets," Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.

The senior official suggested passing, in the same way, a resolution demanding the United States to repair the damage caused to countries such as Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia and others that were victims of US and NATO aggression.

This Monday, the UN General Assembly approved by a majority vote a draft resolution on the payment of reparations to Ukraine. The document received the support of 94 UN member countries, while 14 voted against and 73 abstained.

Numerous countries condemned the special military operation Russia launched in Ukraine on February 24 and activated several batteries of individual and sectoral sanctions intended to inflict the greatest possible damage on the Russian economy to pressure Moscow to stop the hostilities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out that the policy of containment and weakening of Russia is part of the West's long-term strategy. The sanctions the West and its allies adopted have already dealt a severe blow to the entire world economy.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Med ... -0014.html

**********

Russia rejects resolution on reparations for damages to Ukraine

Image
The resolution, which requires a protocol and a registry for the repair of damages, was voted with 94 countries in favor. | Photo: A
Published 15 November 2022

The Kremlin spokesman emphasized that the organizers "try to end the theft of our gold reserves."

The Russian government spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, expressed on Tuesday the Kremlin's rejection of the resolution approved yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly on the payment of reparations to Ukraine.

The Kremlin spokesman emphasized that Russia is "categorically against this resolution" while assuring that it is "a non-legally binding decision" for what Moscow considers it that way.

At the same time, Peskov pointed out that the organizers of the draft resolution process “are trying to end the theft of our gold reserves and foreign currencies that were completely illegally blocked”.


In this sense, the spokesman stressed that it is "an officialization of the robbery using the UN platform", meanwhile, he emphasized that Russia "will do everything possible" so that the assets are not confiscated.

In turn, Russia's deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitri Polianski, stated that this resolution “will serve to cover up its illegal actions” and pointed out that its essence “has nothing to do with Ukraine. It is about the theft of Russian assets.”

Similarly, the Russian diplomat specified that the United States and other nations “undermine the system of international relations. This risk should not be underestimated. Its reinvention has been questioned by many countries.”

On the day of this Monday, the resolution, which requires a protocol and an international registry for the repair of damages, was voted with 94 countries in favor, 14 against and 73 abstentions.

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

Google translator

***********

Image

Collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX had ties to Ukrainian government, WEF, and top Biden adviser

<snip>

SBF goes to the White House
The 30-year-old billionaire was able to gain access to a top Biden advisor weeks before he offered vast political donations to the Democrats.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that Bankman-Fried met with top Biden adviser Steve Ricchetti on April 22 and May 12, according to White House visitor logs.

Gabe Bankman-Fried—SBF’s brother who handles the billionaire’s political operations—visited the White House on March 7, according to the outlet.

SBF largely funded the Democratic Protect Our Future PAC that only launched in May 2022. SBF’s brother said the PAC was formed to “stop the next pandemic.”

In May, Gabe Bankman-Fried said of the Protect Our Future PAC,

If this is a weird crypto play, I certainly have not been informed about it. I want to stop the next pandemic. That is really my one and only goal here… I think over time, people will realize that.

Bankman-Fried’s mother is also a major fundraiser for Democrats

Bankman-Fried’s mother, Barbara Fried, is a Stanford professor, and has “written extensively on questions of distributive justice, in the areas of tax policy, property theory, and political theory.” She is also the co-founder of the Mind the Gap political action committee that was established in 2018 to help Democrats win elections.

Vox published a glowing article about Mind the Gap in January 2020 titled: “Inside the secretive Silicon Valley group that has funnelled over $20 million to Democrats.”

“What is also unusual is that Mind the Gap is led not by highly experienced political hands, but by academics with no professional backgrounds as fundraisers,” the Vox article reads.

The group’s leaders are a pair of Stanford law professors: Barbara Fried, who has no apparent campaign experience, and Paul Brest, the former president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Graham Gottlieb, a Stanford fellow who served in junior roles for former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and in his White House, is its executive director.

Vox notes,

Backers include people like Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, San Francisco power broker Ron Conway, and a coterie of major Democratic donors from across Silicon Valley, including fundraiser Amy Rao.

The FTX connection to the Ukrainian government and WEF

Curiously, the Ukrainian government launched a cryptocurrency donation website in March that was backed by FTX.

CoinDesk reported in March,

‘Aid for Ukraine,’ which has the backing of crypto exchange FTX, staking platform Everstake, and Ukraine’s Kuna exchange, will route donated crypto to the National Bank of Ukraine, Everstake’s Head of Growth Vlad Likhuta told CoinDesk. Ukraine’s crypto-savvy Ministry of Digital Transformation is also involved.

An Everstake Press Release stated,

Aid For Ukraine is cooperating with the cryptocurrency exchange FTX which converts crypto funds received into fiat and sends the donations to the National Bank of Ukraine. This marks the first-ever instance of a cryptocurrency exchange directly cooperating with a public financial entity to provide a conduit for crypto donations. Earlier this month, FTX already converted $1 million worth of SOL and transferred it to the National Bank of Ukraine.


Bankman-Fried said at the time:

At the onset of the conflict in Ukraine, FTX felt the need to provide assistance in any way it could. By working with the Ministry of Digital Transformation to set up payment rails and facilitate the conversion of crypto donations into fiat currency, we have given the National Bank of Ukraine the ability to deliver aid and resources to the people who need it most. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with Sergey and the Everstake team as they continue to work tirelessly in helping Ukrainians as they suffer from this conflict.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) lists FTX as a partner and provided a link, to the exchange’s website. The original has been removed but here is an Archive Link.

https://mronline.org/2022/11/15/collaps ... n-adviser/

Wonder how much of that ended up in Zelensky's pocket...No matter, in capitalism 'corruption' is 'business as usual'.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 16, 2022 12:11 am

Russia started paying reparations to Ukraine
November 15, 17:46

Image

Today Russia started paying reparations to Ukraine. There were three large tranches in total.
The issuance of reparations occurs through the free delivery of cruise missiles to infrastructure facilities in Ukraine.

As a result of dozens of hits in various regions of Ukraine, power went out in Kyiv, Kharkov, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytsky, Sumy, Lvov, Rivne, Odessa, and Izyum.
There were also arrivals in Vinnitsa, Krivoy Rog, Kovel, Kremenchug, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zaporozhye, etc. etc.
See photos/videos and other details of arrivals on the channel https://t.me/boris_rozhin
In Kiev, an anti-aircraft missile has traditionally hit a residential five-story building. In the evening we are waiting for tales about the fact that all 120% of the missiles flying to Ukraine were shot down.

I think that the payment of reparations should be intensified. Responsible for payments - General Surovikin.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7975927.html

Ukrainian air defense destroyed a Polish tractor
November 15, 22:55

Image

During today's "payment of reparations" to Ukraine, according to Poland, 2 rockets fell on Polish territory and allegedly killed two people and damaged a tractor trailer.

After that, the media began to declare two Russian missiles and threatened to use the 5th article of the NATO charter (hello Caribbean Crisis 2.0)
. However, after the publication of the photos, it turned out that at least 1 missile belongs to Ukraine.
In the first photo, a fragment of a rocket that fell in Poland.
In the second photo, a fragment of the S-300 air defense missile system that fell in Dagestan on 10/08/2020 during the Karabakh war.
As you can see, the wreckage is identical, which means that a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile from the S-300 air defense system fell on the territory of Poland.

Image

The Russian Defense Ministry has already reported that no strikes were made on the border areas with Poland, and the missile fragments belong to Ukrainian weapons.

The statements of the Polish media and officials about the alleged fall of "Russian" missiles in the area of ​​​​the settlement of Przewoduv is a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation.

No strikes were made against targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border by Russian means of destruction.
The fragments published in hot pursuit by the Polish media from the scene in the village of Przewoduv have nothing to do with Russian weapons.


https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7976737.html

Google Translator

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

WHEN MARSHAL KUTUZOV JOINS GENERAL WINTER AND GENERAL SUROVIKIN, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT ON THE FRONT

Image

By Yevgeny Krutikov, introduced and translated by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

The problem of interpreting the war from the Russian point of view is that the Russian military does not signal its punches, make idle threats, believe its own propaganda, or make money on click bait. The Stavka never leaks.

By contrast, Russian open-source commentators are driven, as is normal in a functioning democracy, by domestic politics. This requires them to disguise or camouflage their support for or opposition to the political and oligarch factions in Moscow with a variety of ploys — attacks on named generals; analyses of the Army’s mistakes; speculation about the negotiations initiated by US officials with their Russian counterparts; warnings of Fifth Columns, stabs in the back, and a shameful peace.

The outcome in Moscow doesn’t exist in any European or North American capital — noisy debate with sharp dividing lines drawn between the factions of patriots (Tsargrad, Vladimir Soloviev); the left (Sergei Glazyev, Mikhail Khazin); the fakes (Yevgeny Prigozhin); the right (Elvira Nabiullina, Alexei Khudrin); the oligarchs (Oleg Deripaska); the puppets (Margarita Simonyan); and so on, not counting the oppositionists in hiding, exile or jail.

Easy to misread Russian military analysis then, because there is so much of it; because the Stavka doesn’t talk to any of them; and because for Russian commentators this is an opportunity for waging their contests for the usual things — power, money, celebrity. You will see criticism of President Vladimir Putin (lead image, 2nd left, rear), therefore, but always under cover of something or somebody else.

This is understandable because he and the war aims are so popular. Public support for Putin is currently ten points higher than it was in January of this year; three points lower than in April; two points higher than in September. There is nothing and no one comparable on the US or NATO side. Since the start of the special military operation on February 24, the Russian president’s approval rating has remained stable within a 4-point variance; that is roughly equal to the pollster’s margin for statistical error. This means that, strategically speaking, most Russians are almost as patient as the Stavka.

By contrast, the politics of the US and NATO side is an impatient, short-term business. A week is a long time in politics, the former British prime minister Harold Wilson once said, correcting Joseph Chamberlain, a nineteenth century predecessor who didn’t quite make it to the prime ministry; Chamberlain said it was two weeks.

Warfare is a longer term business. This war is going to be longer still.

To follow, understand, and anticipate as Russians do requires a form of thinking that can be called byzantine. Not the western meaning of deviousness, but the eastern meaning of the way the thousand-year Byzantine empire was ruled from Constantinople. In our time this starts with the doctrine of economy of force. Cost-effective calculations regulate the deployment of men and materiel, hence the changeable combination and schedule of fixed-wing air attack, helicopter air attack, missiles, drones, and artillery in Russian operations so far. The rules of war of attrition also apply, as do the tactical variables of positional and mobile warfare. By the time these variables are counted up, and multiplied by firepower and deception, this is thinking which goes far beyond games of chess or Go. Situation report maps in publication don’t help much; they are already days old and obsolete.

Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov’s (lead image, left front) strategy of the Golden Bridge, applied successfully against Napoleon, requires allowing the enemy the time and space to retreat and withdraw to his own territory because the cost of annihilating him on Russian territory is much greater and unnecessary. General Winter (centre front) also requires operational patience because the freeze doesn’t always deploy itself when the Russian army wants it. This year, however, it has begun already. Snow has started falling in Kiev; in a week’s time it will be minus 8 degrees Celsius. It remains warmer along the eastern front, and in Kherson.

Russian or byzantine thinking is the antithesis of the shock and awe doctrines of the US and NATO. Their journalists and staff colleges have invented terms to conceal their incomprehension of Generals Sergei Surovikin (front right) and Valery Gerasimov (rear right), and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (rear left). But they remain in the dark – as US Army Colonel (retired) Douglas Macgregor keeps trying to point out.

Byzantine thinking can’t be memorised, photocopied, or cribbed. To learn, start with this paradox of imperial impatience first published by C.P. Cavafy in 1904; he called it “Waiting for the barbarians”.

There is also what Russians say they are thinking will come next. Take it as carefully as you read Cavafy. What’s the hurry?

Yevgeny Krutikov was a military intelligence officer of the GRU before he became a journalist for the Moscow internet publication Vzglyad. Last Friday evening he published the following analysis which has been translated without editing. Maps have been added.

Image
Source: https://vz.ru/


HOW ARE UGLEDAR AND THE PLANS OF THE UKRAINIAN OFFENSIVE AGAINST MARIUPOL CONNECTED

The winter campaign will have its own peculiarities
November 11, 2022
Text: Evgeny Krutikov
The town of Pavlovka, located in the Donbass, has been liberated by Russian troops. At first glance this looks like an insignificant event, especially compared to what is happening in the Kherson region. In fact, these two sections of the front have a direct connection, especially in relation to the upcoming winter campaign.

Image

Image
Source of map: https://mapcarta.com/
For video of Russian capture of Pavlovka, see this.

By Friday, November 11, Russian troops finally occupied Pavlovka and began to clean up, including the territory in the direction of Ugledar. Still, a full-fledged attack on Ugledar has not yet been observed.

Near Artemovsk, fighting continues for the suburban settlements, especially Opytnoye, without taking which it is impossible to talk about a further offensive on Artemovsk. About the same story with the battles for Soledar. There are already fighting units in the city, but without control over the suburban villages of Belogorovka (to the north) and Bakhmutsky (to the south), the situation in Soledar will be unclear.

There have been no significant changes in the Avdeyevka direction — there are battles for Opytnoye (not to be confused with the same-named Opytnoye near Artemovsk) and Vodyanoye; Pervomaiskoye is being cleaned out. A slight advance was also noted in Maryinka.

What is happening in this sector of the front may seem small-scale compared to the regrouping of forces on the left bank of the Dnieper. The enumeration of the names of little-known Donbass villages didn’t say much to the average Russian even before this. Nevertheless, right now – after the relocation to the left bank of the Dnieper – it becomes more important than ever before to understand what will happen next. At least in the time perspective of the winter and spring.

Taking into account the balance of forces as a whole along the entire line of contact, we can say with a high degree of confidence that there will be no more serious positional movements until the end of November. The stabilisation of the front along the Dnieper River and along the established line in the north from Kremennaya to Kupyansk is a stabilizing event by itself. Russian troops are thereby given the opportunity to release those units which have been under shelling, and transfer them to other sectors of the front which the command deems important.


Another thing is that the VSU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] has also been redeploying 4 to 5 brigades. There is no big doubt where they will transfer them. The enemy has been pushing all the reserves at its disposal for several months, including newly formed and numbered brigades, to the arc from Ugledar to Soledar. That is, exactly where the Russian army is leading the offensive and where Pavlovka is located.

Image

Some small settlements in that area have already been turned into a kind of medieval encampment; there are ten times fewer civilians in them than reservists. In this sector of the front (in a broad sense, throughout the Donetsk arc), the enemy has been building a line of defence for years which resembles in its configuration not even the Second World War, but in some places the First World War.

The defence line of the VSU north of Donetsk airport and the famous village of Peski has even officially been called the Big and Small Anthills – that’s because of the abundance of trenches and other fortifications. It was possible to clean up this ‘Ukrainian Verdun’ only last week, but right now the fighting is going on at the outskirts of these ‘anthills’ – in the villages of Vodyanoye, Opytnoye, and Pervomaiskoye.

There’s an idea circulating that the current battles on the Avdeyevka arc [дуга] are something unimportant and meaningless. In reality, this is not the case, and the enemy is clinging to these positions to the last for good reason. There, as well as on the Seversk– Soledar–Artemovsk line and further to Chasov Yar and the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration, almost a quarter of the entire Ukrainian army has been pumped at the moment. And reserves are constantly arriving. So no one has terminated the spring task of destroying the VSU grouping around Donetsk and Avdeyevka. Not to mention the fact that this is the territory of Russia all the way to Slavyansk.

Another thing is that now there are no prerequisites for the encirclement of this grouping, and there is a classic passage through the enemy’s fortifications. And this is not only a purely military issue, but also a political one. There is no alternative to fighting for positions around Avdeyevka and for the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration in the broad sense of the word. Not under any command nor under any strategic plan, whatever it may be.

Weather conditions will change the nature of tactics somewhat, but in general the situation will not change. Fighting in the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] is basic, fundamental, for which everything will be sacrificed. If you want, this is the quintessence of the special military operation. Such is the geography, with which you cannot argue. Be you even Suvorov [Marshal Alexander Suvorov 1730-1800], even Zhukov [Marshal Georgy Zhukov 1896-1974], but you will not be able to avoid the continuation of trench fighting in the arc from Maryinka to Seversk.

The enemy also needs a respite, especially since the five brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which have been pressing on Kherson, are now severely battered. In their condition, it’s quite impossible to take them and throw them somewhere else to organize some new offensive. They require additional equipment, rest and rearmament. So it’s simple — the VSU will be forced to take a break, despite the fact that there are rumours about an upcoming offensive in the southern sector.

There is euphoria in Kiev, and even the foreign advisers who manually manage the Ukrainian general staff cannot dissuade these people from further movements. At the same time, the need to constantly bring reserves to Chasov Yar reduces Kiev’s chances of forming a new offensive grouping.

Nevertheless, it is the southern direction which should be recognized as the most important. In Kiev they look at the map and see that the distance to the coast of the Sea of Azov (Berdyansk, Melitopol, and Mariupol) from the front line is about two hundred kilometres. That’s not far.

But in order to advance in this direction, the VSU must hang on to Ugledar. Ugledar is of critical importance for the VSU in order to try to develop an offensive against Mariupol from the north. Without controlling the Ugledar area, the VSU units advancing to the sea risk getting a stab in the back. That is why it is extremely important for the Russian troops, in turn, to clean up the approaches to Ugledar – the very settlements of Pavlovka and Novomikhailovka, even Maryinka. The occupation of Ugledar by Russian forces, or at least fire control over this zone, by itself prevents the possibility of a Ukrainian offensive to the coast of the Sea of Azov.

Although, given the euphoria in the minds of Kiev, they may well try to attack even with their flanks exposed.

Another option for the development of the winter campaign may be the organisation of a Russian offensive on a less than obvious sector of the front. Previously, a compensating counterattack in the Kharkov region was considered as such after the stabilisation of the front there. But on reflection, it is clear that this is too costly and risky. The enemy is exhausted in this area, but it is still unclear what its possible reserves are.

Another option can be considered on the southernmost flank, most likely in the direction of Zaporozhye. But not the area which the enemy considers as its possible springboard, but the territory from the Dnieper to Gulyai-Pole, where troops will be withdrawn from the other side of the river. This is possible, however, only after the end of the regrouping and the formation of new units from among the mobilised.

Image

To be sure, all these scenarios can be implemented on condition that there are no unexpected changes in the terms of Russia’s strategic approach to the military action. So far, such changes are not visible. But in any case, the winter campaign will bear little to no resemblance to the summer-autumn one.


http://johnhelmer.net/when-marshal-kutu ... more-70188

***********

Who are the Ukrainian Integral Nationalists ?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 15, 2022
Thierry Meyssan

Image

Who knows the history of the Ukrainian “integral nationalists”, “Nazis” according to the terminology of the Kremlin? It begins during the First World War, continues during the Second, the Cold War and continues today in modern Ukraine. Many documents have been destroyed and modern Ukraine forbids under penalty of imprisonment to mention their crimes. The fact remains that these people massacred at least four million of their compatriots and conceived the architecture of the Final Solution, that is, the murder of millions of people because of their real or supposed membership in the Jewish or Gypsy communities of Europe.

Like most Western political analysts and commentators, I was unaware of the existence of Ukrainian neo-Nazis until 2014. When the president-elect was overthrown, I was living in Syria at the time and thought they were violent groupings that had burst onto the public scene to assist pro-European elements. However, since the Russian military intervention, I have gradually discovered a lot of documents and information on this political movement which, in 2021, represented one third of the Ukrainian armed forces. This article presents a synthesis of it.

At the very beginning of this story, that is to say before the First World War, Ukraine was a large plain which had always been tossed between German and Russian influences. At the time, it was not an independent state, but a province of the tsarist empire. It was populated by Germans, Bulgarians, Greeks, Poles, Rumanians, Russians, Czechs, Tatars and a very large Jewish minority supposedly descended from the ancient Khazar people.

A young poet, Dmytro Dontsov, was fascinated by the avant-garde artistic movements, believing that they would help his country to escape from its social backwardness. Since the Tsarist Empire had been immobile since the death of Catherine the Great, while the German Empire was the scientific center of the West, Dontsov chose Berlin over Moscow.

When the Great War broke out, he became an agent of the German secret service. He emigrated to Switzerland, where he published, on behalf of his masters, the Bulletin of the Nationalities of Russia in several languages, calling for the uprising of the ethnic minorities of the Tsarist Empire in order to bring about its defeat. This model was chosen by the Western secret services to organize the “Forum of Free Peoples of Russia” this summer in Prague [1].

In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution turned the tables. Dontsov’s friends supported the Russian revolution, but he remained pro-German. In the anarchy that followed, Ukraine was divided de facto by three different regimes: the nationalists of Symon Petliura (who imposed themselves in the area held today by the Zelensky administration), the anarchists of Nestor Makhno (who organized themselves in Novorosssia, the land that had been developed by Prince Potemkin and that had never known serfdom), and the Bolsheviks (especially in the Donbass). The war cry of Petliura’s followers was “Death to the Jews and Bolsheviks”. They perpetrated numerous murderous pogroms.

Dmytro Dontsov returned to Ukraine before the German defeat and became the protégé of Symon Petliura. He participated briefly in the Paris peace conference but, for some unknown reason, did not remain in his delegation. In Ukraine, he helped Petliura to ally with Poland to crush the anarchists and Bolsheviks. After the capture of Kiev by the Bolsheviks, Petliura and Dontsov negotiated the Treaty of Warsaw (April 22, 1920): the Polish army undertook to push back the Bolsheviks and to liberate Ukraine in exchange for Galicia and Volhynia (exactly as the Zelensky administration is negotiating today the entry of Poland into the war against the same lands [2]). This new war was a fiasco.

To strengthen his side, Petliura secretly negotiated with the founder of the Jewish battalions in the British army (the “Jewish Legion”) and now administrator of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), Vladimir Jabotinsky. In September 1921, the two men agreed to unite against the Bolsheviks in exchange for Petliura’s commitment to forbid his troops to continue their pogroms. The Jewish Legion was to become the “Jewish Gendarmerie. However, despite his efforts, Petliura did not succeed in pacifying his troops, especially as his close collaborator Dontsov was still encouraging the massacre of Jews. Finally, when the agreement was revealed, the World Zionist Organization rebelled against the Petliura regime. On January 17, 1923, the WZO set up a commission to investigate Jabotinsky’s activities. Jabotinsky refused to come and explain himself and resigned from his position.

Petliura fled to Poland and then to France, where he was murdered by a Jewish anarchist from Bessarabia (now Transnistria). During the trial, the latter assumed his crime and pleaded to have avenged the hundreds of thousands of Jews murdered by the troops of Petliura and Dontsov. The trial had a great impact. The court acquitted the murderer. The League against Pogroms, later Licra (International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism), was founded on this occasion.

Not only were the nationalists defeated, but the anarchists as well. Everywhere the Bolsheviks triumphed and chose, not without debate, to join the Soviet Union.

Dmytro Dontsov published literary magazines that fascinated the youth. He continued to promote a Central Europe dominated by Germany and became closer to Nazism as it rose. He soon referred to his doctrine as Ukrainian “integral nationalism “. In doing so, he referred to the French poet, Charles Maurras. Indeed, the logic of both men was initially identical: they sought in their own culture the means to affirm a modern nationalism. However, Maurras was a Germanophobe, while Dontsov was a Germanophile. The expression “integral nationalism” is still claimed today by Dontov’s followers, who, after the fall of the Third Reich, are careful to refute the term “Nazism” with which the Russians describe it, not without reason.

According to him, “Ukrainian nationalism” is characterized by:

“the affirmation of the will to live, power, expansion” (it promotes “The right of strong races to organize peoples and nations to strengthen the existing culture and civilization”)
“the desire to fight and the awareness of its extremity” (he praises the “creative violence of the initiative minority”).

Its qualities are:
“fanaticism” ;
” immorality”.


Finally, turning his back on his past, Dontsov became an unconditional admirer of the Führer, Adolf Hitler. His followers had founded, in 1929, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) around Colonel Yevhen Konovalets. Konovalets called Dontsov “the spiritual dictator of the youth of Galicia”. However, a quarrel arose between Dontsov and another intellectual about his extremism that led to war against all, when Konovalets was suddenly murdered. The OUN (financed by the German secret service) then split in two. The “integral nationalists” reserved for themselves the OUN-B, named after Dontsov’s favorite disciple, Stepan Bandera.

In 1932-33, the Bolshevik political commissars, who were mostly Jewish, levied a tax on crops, as in other regions of the Soviet Union. Combined with significant and unpredictable climatic hazards, this policy caused a huge famine in several regions of the USSR, including the Ukraine. It is known as “Holodomor”. Contrary to what the nationalist historian Lev Dobrianski says, it was not a plan for the extermination of Ukrainians by the Russians, since other Soviet regions suffered, but an inadequate management of public resources in times of climate change. Lev Dobrianski’s daughter, Paula Dobrianski, became one of President George W. Bush’s aides. She led a merciless struggle to have historians who did not adhere to her father’s propaganda excluded from Western universities [3].

In 1934, Bandera organized, as a member of the Nazi secret service and head of the OUN-B, the assassination of the Polish Minister of the Interior, Bronisław Pieracki.

From 1939, members of the OUN-B, forming a military organization, the UPA, were trained in Germany by the German army, and then still in Germany, but by their Japanese allies. Stepan Bandera offered Dmytro Dontsov to become the leader of their organization, but the intellectual refused, preferring to play the role of a leader rather than an operational commander.

The “integral nationalists” admired the invasion of Poland, in application of the German-Soviet pact. As Henry Kissinger, who could not be suspected of pro-Sovietism, demonstrated, it was not a question of the USSR annexing Poland, but of neutralizing part of it in order to prepare for the confrontation with the Reich. On the contrary, for Chancellor Hitler, it was a question of beginning the conquest of a “vital space” in Central Europe.

From the beginning of the Second World War, under the guidance of Dmytro Dontsov, the OUN-B fought alongside the Nazi armies against the Jews and the Soviets.

The collaboration between the Ukrainian “integral nationalists” and the Nazis continued with constant massacres of the majority of the Ukrainian population, accused of being Jews or Communists, until the “liberation” of Ukraine by the Third Reich in the summer of 1941 to the cry of “Slava Ukraїni!” (Glory to Ukraine), the war cry used today by the Zelensky administration and the US Democrats. At that time, the “integral nationalists” proclaimed “independence” from the Soviet Union in the presence of Nazi representatives and Greek Orthodox clergy, not in Kiev, but in Lviv, on the model of the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia and the Ustasha in Croatia. They formed a government under the leadership of Providnyk (guide) Stepan Bandera, whose friend Yaroslav Stetsko was Prime Minister. Their support in Ukraine is estimated at 1.5 million people. That is, the “integral nationalists” have always been in the minority.

The Nazis were divided between the Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine, Erich Koch, for whom the Ukrainians were subhuman, and the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg, for whom the “integral nationalists” were true allies. Finally, on July 5, 1941, Bandera was deported to Berlin and placed under Ehrenhaft (honorable captivity), i.e., under house arrest as a high-ranking official. However, after the members of OUN-B murdered the leaders of the rival faction, OUN-M, the Nazis sanctioned Stepan Bandera and his organization on September 13, 1941. 48 of their leaders were deported to a prison camp in Auschwitz (which was not yet an extermination camp, but only a prison). The OUN-B was reorganized under German command. At that time all Ukrainian nationalists took the following oath: “Faithful son of my Fatherland, I voluntarily join the ranks of the Ukrainian Liberation Army, and with joy I swear that I will faithfully fight Bolshevism for the honor of the people. This fight we are waging together with Germany and its allies against a common enemy. With loyalty and unconditional submission I believe in Adolf Hitler as the leader and supreme commander of the Liberation Army. At any time I am prepared to give my life for the truth.

The Nazis announced that many bodies had been discovered in the prisons, victims of “Bolshevik Jews. So the “integral nationalists” celebrated their “independence” by murdering more than 30,000 Jews and actively participating in the roundup of Jews from Kiev to Babi Yar, where 33,771 of them were shot in two days, on September 29 and 30, 1941, by the Einsatzgruppen of SS Reinhard Heydrich.

In this tumult, Dmytro Dontsov disappeared. In reality, he had gone to Prague and placed himself at the service of the architect of the Final Solution, Reinhard Heydrich, who had just been appointed vice-governor of Bohemia-Moravia. Heydrich organized the Wannsee Conference, which planned the “Final Solution of the Jewish and Gypsy Questions” [4]. He then created the Reinard Heydrich Institute in Prague to coordinate the systematic extermination of all these populations in Europe. The Ukrainian Dontsov, who now lived in Prague in great luxury, immediately became its administrator. He was one of the main architects of the largest massacre in history. Heydrich was assassinated in June 1942, but Dontsov retained his functions and privileges.

Stepan Bandera and his deputy Yaroslav Stetsko were placed under house arrest at the headquarters of the General Inspectorate of Concentration Camps in Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen (30 km from Berlin). They wrote letters to their supporters and to the Reich leadership in complete freedom and were not deprived of anything. In September 1944, as the Reich army retreated and Bandera’s followers began to rebel against it, the two leaders were released by the Nazis and reinstated in their previous positions. Bandera and Stetsko resumed the armed struggle, among the Nazis, against the Jews and the Bolsheviks.

But it was already too late. The Reich collapsed. The Anglo-Saxons got Dontsov, Bandera and Stetsko. The theorist of integral nationalism was transferred to Canada, while the two practitioners of mass murder were transferred to Germany. MI6 and the OSS (predecessor of the CIA) rewrote their biographies, making their Nazi involvement and responsibility for the “Final Solution” disappear.

Bandera and Stetsko were installed in Munich to organize the Anglo-Saxon stay-behind networks in the Soviet Union. From 1950 onwards, they had an important radio station, Radio Free Europe, which they shared with the Muslim Brotherhood of Said Ramadan (the father of Tariq Ramadan). The radio station was sponsored by the National Committee for a Free Europe, a CIA offshoot of which its director Alan Dulles was a member, as well as future president Dwight Eisenhower, newspaper magnate Henry Luce and film director Cecil B. DeMilles. Psychological warfare specialist and future patron of the Straussians, Charles D. Jackson, was chairman.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, for his part, after living in Palestine, took refuge in New York. He was joined by Benzion Netanyahu (the father of the current Israeli Prime Minister). The two men wrote the doctrinal texts of “revisionist Zionism” and the Jewish Encyclopedia.

Bandera and Stetsko moved around a lot. They organized sabotage operations throughout the Soviet Union, particularly in the Ukraine, and parachuted leaflets. For this purpose, they created the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), which brought together their Central European counterparts [5]. The British double agent, Kim Philby, informed the Soviets in advance about the actions of the Bandera. Bandera met with Dontsov in Canada and asked him to take the lead in the struggle. Once again, the intellectual refused, preferring to devote himself to his writing. He then drifted into a mystical delirium inspired by Viking myths. He announced the final battle of the Ukrainian knights against the Russian dragon. As for Bandera, he allied himself with the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek whom he met in 1958. But he was assassinated the following year by the KGB in Munich.

Yaroslav Stetsko continued the struggle through Radio Free Europe and the ABN. He went to the United States to testify before Senator Joseph MacCarthy’s Commission on Un-American Activities. In 1967, he and Chiang Kai-shek founded the World Anti-Communist League [6]. The League included many pro-US dictators from around the world and two schools of torture, in Panama and Taiwan. Klaus Barbie, who assassinated Jean Moulin in France and Che Guevara in Bolivia, was a member. In 1983, Stetsko was received at the White House by President Ronald Reagan and participated, along with Vice President George Bush Sr., in Lev Dobrianski’s “Captive Nations” (i.e., peoples occupied by the Soviets) ceremonies. He finally died in 1986.

But the story does not end there. His wife, Slava Stetsko, took over the leadership of these organizations. She too travelled the world to support any fight against the “communists”, or rather, if we refer to Dontsov’s writings, against the Russians and the Chinese. When the USSR was dissolved, Mrs. Stetsko simply changed the title of the League to the World League for Freedom and Democracy, a name it still has today. She then devoted herself to regaining a foothold in Ukraine.

Slava Stetsko ran in the first elections of the independent Ukraine in 1994. She was elected to the Verkhovna Rada, but having been stripped of her nationality by the Soviets, she could not sit. However, she brought the Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma, to the CIA offices in Munich and dictated parts of the new constitution to him. Even today, Article 16 of the new constitution states: “Preserving the genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people is the responsibility of the state. Thus, Nazi racial discrimination is still proclaimed by modern Ukraine as in the worst moments of World War II.

Slava Stetsko was re-elected at the next two sessions. She solemnly presided over the opening sessions on March 19, 1998 and on May 14, 2002.

In 2000, Lev Dobriansky organized a large symposium in Washington with many Ukrainian officials. He invited Straussian Paul Wolfowitz (a former collaborator of Charles D. Jackson). During this meeting, the “integral nationalists” put themselves at the service of the Straussians to destroy Russia [7].

On May 8, 2007, in Ternopol, on the initiative of the CIA, the “integral nationalists” of the Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense and Islamists created an anti-Russian “Anti-Imperialist Front” under the joint chairmanship of the Emir of Itchkeria, Dokka Umarov, and Dmytro Yarosh (the current special adviser to the head of the Ukrainian army). The meeting was attended by organizations from Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Russia, including Islamist separatists from Crimea, Adygea, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Ossetia and Chechnya. Dokka Umarov, who was unable to go there due to international sanctions, had his contribution read out. In retrospect, the Crimean Tatars are unable to explain their presence at this meeting, if not their past service to the CIA against the Soviets.

The pro-US president, Viktor Yushchenko, created a Dmytro Dontsov Institute, following the “Orange Revolution”. Yushchenko is an example of Anglo-Saxon whitewashing. He has always claimed to have no connection with the mainstream nationalists, but his father, Andrei, was a guard in a Nazi extermination camp [8]. The Dmytro Dontsov Institute would be closed in 2010, and then reopened after the 2014 coup.

President Viktor Yushchenko, shortly before the end of his term of office, elevated the criminal against humanity Stepan Bandera to the title of “Hero of the Nation”.

In 2011, the mainstream nationalists succeeded in passing a law banning the commemoration of the end of World War II because it was won by the Soviets and lost by the Banderists. But President Viktor Yanukovych refused to enact it. Enraged, the “integral nationalists” attacked the procession of Red Army veterans, beating up old men. Two years later, the cities of Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk abolished the Victory Day ceremonies and banned all manifestations of joy.

In 2014, Ukrainians in Crimea and Donbass refused to recognize the coup government. Crimea, which had declared itself independent before the rest of Ukraine, reaffirmed its independence a second time and joined the Russian Federation. The Donbass sought a compromise. The “Ukrainian nationalists,” led by President Petro Poroshenko, stopped providing public services there and bombed its population. In eight years, they murdered at least 16,000 of their fellow citizens in general indifference.

It was also from the 2014 coup that the full nationalist militias were incorporated into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In their internal regulations, they enjoin each fighter to read the works of Dmytro Dontsov, including his master book, Націоналізм (Nationalism).

In April 2015, the Verkhovna Rada declared members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) “independence fighters.” The law was enacted, in December 2018, by President Poroshenko. Former Waffen SS were retrospectively entitled to a pension and all sorts of benefits. The same law criminalized any claim that OUN militants and UPA fighters collaborated with the Nazis and practiced ethnic cleansing of Jews and Poles. Published in Ukraine, this article would send me to jail for writing it and you for reading it.

On July 1, 2021, President Volodymyr Zelenski enacted the Law “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” which places them under the protection of Human Rights. By default, citizens of Russian origin can no longer invoke them in court.

In February 2022, the “full nationalist” militias, which made up one-third of the country’s armed forces, planned a coordinated invasion of Crimea and the Donbass. They were stopped by the Russian military operation to implement UN Security Council Resolution 2202 to end the suffering of the people of Donbass.

In March 2022, Israeli Prime Minister Nafatali Bennett, breaking with the “revisionist Zionism” of Benjamin Netanyahu (the son of Jabotinsky’s secretary), suggested to President Volodymyr Zelensky that he should agree with Russian demands and denazify his country [8]. Emboldened by this unexpected support, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dared to mention the case of the Jewish Ukrainian president, saying: “The Jewish people in their wisdom have said that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews. Every family has its black sheep, as they say.” This was too much for the Israelis, who always worry when someone tries to divide them. His counterpart at the time, Yair Lapid, recalled that the Jews themselves never organized the Holocaust of which they were victims. Caught between its conscience and its alliances, the Hebrew state repeated its support for Ukraine, but refused to send it any weapons. In the end, the General Staff decided and the Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, closed any possibility of support to the successors of the mass murderers of Jews.

Ukrainians are the only nationalists who are not fighting for their people or their land, but for one idea: to annihilate the Jews and the Russians.

Main sources:

Ukrainian Nationalism in the age of extremes. An intllectual biography of Dmytro Dontsov, Trevor Erlacher, Harvard University Press (2021).
Stepan Bandera, The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Ibidem (2014).

Translation by Roger Lagassé

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... ionalists/

The Geopolitics of Famine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 15, 2022
Scott Ritter

Image

Most geopolitical analysts can agree that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has detrimentally impacted the global economy. This is especially true when it comes to food security, with supplies disrupted, prices skyrocketing, and shortages created that run the risk of causing famine. The US and European Union have accused Russia of “weaponizing food” by cutting off Ukrainian grain and Russian fertilizer from global markets. Russia, in turn, blames the food supply crisis totally on Western sanctions. The truth may lie somewhere in the middle. The ongoing crisis has disrupted the economies of both Ukraine and Russia, denying them access to income-generating global markets. It has also contributed to the high level of inflation in both the US and EU. But one thing is certain: The populations of the countries that need Ukrainian wheat and Russian potash the most are paying the highest price, with millions facing the prospect of hunger and starvation.

A report prepared by the Global Network Against Food Crises, an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger, which acts under the auspices of the World Food Program, shows that in 2021 global levels of hunger surpassed all previous records — with close to 193 million people acutely food insecure and in need of urgent assistance across 53 countries and territories. This represents an increase of nearly 40 million people compared with 2020. According to the report, the outlook for 2022 is for further deterioration of global hunger levels, exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which is having severe repercussions on global food, energy and fertilizer prices.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 severely disrupted the global agricultural supply chain by compromising deliveries of food and pushing up food prices around the world. While prices for every category of foodstuff had already been on the rise since late 2020, the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused global cereal and vegetable oil markets, in which both Ukraine and Russia play significant roles, to jump. They increased by 12.6% from February to March, reaching an all-time high of 159.3 points on the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization’s Food Price Index.

Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports that serve as a vital gateway for food exports prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in May to plead with international leaders over the imminent food crisis and the need for immediate action to facilitate the delivery of Ukrainian grain to foreign markets.

In July, an agreement with Russia and Ukraine was brokered by Turkey and the UN, which designated three ports for Ukraine to ship grain supplies through the Russian blockade. A similar agreement signed at the same time gave Russia a waiver to sanctions imposed by the US and its European allies so that it could export its agricultural products and fertilizer.

Price Stability vs. Food Supply

Within weeks, Russia issued threats to exit the deal, declaring that while the agreement had opened the way for Ukrainian grain shipments, it had failed to follow through regarding the export of Russian fertilizer and food products. By way of illustration, Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted that Russian ships carrying an estimated 300,000 tons of fertilizer were being held up in European ports because of sanctions.

Putin also was critical of the distribution of the food, noting that of 87 ships loaded with grain from Ukraine, just two carried grain for the UN’s World Food Program (WFP), accounting for just 60,000 tons of the estimated 2 million tons shipped. Only two nations listed by the WFP as experiencing a food supply emergency (Yemen and Lebanon) received food; 36% of the grain shipped was delivered to EU countries; and the rest went to Asian nations that were not suffering food shortages.

While this may seem antithetical to the concept of fending off a global food emergency, it is in keeping with one of the fundamentals of global food supply — to keep the price of food down. Most of the ships released under the UN deal had been previously contracted in normal commercial transactions and were delivered in fulfilment of contractual obligations. By allowing these contracts to be fully implemented, the UN eased global food supply pressures, allowing the price of food to fall. Low food costs are critical when it comes to the provision of emergency food aid, since most aid is provided in the form of cash credits used to buy food on the open market — thus, the higher the cost of food, the less purchasing power in the credits allocated.

This relationship between cost stability (and lower costs) and food aid, however, creates problems for a supplier like Ukraine, for which grain sales represent a major source of income. Recently, Russia, sensing hesitation on the part of Ukraine to release food supplies without being adequately compensated, has offered to provide 500,000 tons of free grain to countries most in need.

Politics and Food

Whether free of charge, or at full cost, the future of the food supplies covered by the UN-brokered grain deal is an open question. In the aftermath of a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Black Sea fleet, Russia suspended its participation in the deal, accusing Ukraine of using the shipping lanes used to transport the grain as cover for the attack. Ukraine denies this.

While Ukraine has provided written assurances that it will not use the shipping lanes for military purposes, prompting Russia to rejoin the agreement, the agreement itself is set to expire on Nov. 19. Russia remains unhappy with the deal, given the uneven approach toward its implementation, which largely facilitates Ukrainian participation while restricting Russia. Renewal of the deal is expected to be high on the agenda at the G20 summit in Indonesia later this month.

The geopolitics of famine is such that millions of lives are held hostage to conflicts far from the nations most in need. Hopefully, the US, Russia and the UN will be able to reach an equitable balance before it is too late.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... of-famine/

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

From Cassad's Telegram account:

***

Colonelcassad

Image

Kherson direction
situation as of 16:00 November 15, 2022

Ukrainian units continue to consolidate on the right bank of the Dnieper . As regular formations, as well as battalions of the territorial defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, they are preparing to be transferred to other areas.

🔻Over the territory of the Kherson region and the coast of Ochakov , the activity of the Bayraktar TB2 UAV was noticed. The drone conducted reconnaissance of the activities of the RF Armed Forces on the Kinburn Peninsula and along the left bank of the Dnieper .

Despite the statements of some sources about the capture of the peninsula by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, this information is not true . Now the Ukrainian command is testing the ground for a tactical landing in the area, and artillery pieces have been transferred to Ochakov .

🔻At the Nikolaev site, engineering units of the 28th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are clearing mines in the occupied territory. Nevertheless, during the transfer of equipment to Kherson on the Aleksandrovka - Stanislav highway, one armored combat vehicle was blown up by a mine .

▪️A group of Canadian advisers is working at the Kulbakino airfield near Nikolaev . They are responsible for the distribution of weapons supplied to the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

🔻Filtration activities continue in Kherson and its environs. Mercenaries from Great Britain and Georgia are participating in punitive actions against the civilian population.

▪️Ukrainian artillery fired indiscriminately at the villages and towns of the Kherson region on the left bank. And at night , a boat with a reconnaissance group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on board operated on the Dnieper along the Konka River.

Information about the capture of the Ukrainian Armed Forces of Nova Kakhovka , Aleshkov and other settlements on the left bank is also an information stuffing of Ukrainian resources.

Nevertheless, throughout yesterday, the parties exchanged artillery strikes, and informants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to operate in Aleshki and Nechaevo .

▪️Russian troops hit the deployment point of the 15th battalion of the 128th Guards Rifle Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. 21 people were killed , among them - battalion commander major Vadim Oduda .

***

Colonelcassad
Against the background of statements by American officials that the threat of a nuclear explosion in Europe does not pose a direct threat to the United States, and also against the background of the story of the Polish tractor destroyed by Ukrainian air defense, the Biden administration asked the US Congress for another $ 37.7 billion for the war on Ukraine next year.
Again, to understand the reasons for the escalation - money will not master itself. Since the composition of the House of Representatives will change only in January, no special problems are expected with the passage of the next tranche.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

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

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 16, 2022 1:13 pm

The difficult Donetsk front
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 11/16/2022

Image

With the city of Kherson abandoned, the Russian troops now have to adapt to the defense of the left bank of the Dnieper River, where the Ukrainian authorities have already set their sights on Novaya Kakhovka, a town where the dam of the same name is located, one of the most important points in the area. The Ukrainian tactic is the same one it has used for Kherson since last summer: destroy supply lines and, above all, make the situation unbearable for the troops. In this case, the tactic also involves making the town uninhabitable for the population, which has been evacuated by the Russian authorities since last week. Yesterday, the Western press claimed that the local authorities had announced their evacuation to a safer place and Vladimir Saldo, governor of the part of the region under Russian control, He stated that the evacuation of the population will continue as long as there are people who want to flee to safer places. Uncertainty remains for Russian troops in that sector, but the Ukrainian attitude guarantees that, assuming that the Russian military authorities will fight to maintain control of the Left Bank, the situation in the area will remain serious as long as the front does not actually stabilizes on the Dnieper River.

In this context of the obvious military and political failure that the withdrawal from the city of Kherson supposes, although this also guarantees the integrity of the group that would have had to fight in uncertain conditions in an urban battle, even the successes on the front are nuanced. Last week, Russia announced the liberation of the town of Pavlovka, in the Ugledar area, south of Donetsk, a liberation that it announced again on Monday. On Tuesday, in its daily war report, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation stated that up to 1,400 Ukrainian troops had been destroyed in the battle, an unreasonable figure for a battle that, despite the Russian attempt to exalt, has been minor.

Although it is only the personal opinion of a commander, the analysis of Alexander Jodakovsky, founder and commander of the Vostok battalion, who has been in the area for months, is relevant when it comes to gauging the importance of the battle and all that remains to be done. to do in this local confrontation that will only end if the Russian troops are capable of expelling the Ukrainian troops from Ugledar, the only really important position in the sector.

This is how Alexander Jodakovsky described the development of the battle in his personal Telegram account yesterday:

After the completion of the Mariupol phase of the operation, we enjoyed a couple of weeks to put ourselves in order and it turned out that almost all the unit commanders were in the headquarters, so there was a conversation without officialism. Although pointing out that we had reason to be satisfied with the results, I pointed out the need to judge the facts objectively: if the army units that marched forward suffering serious casualties had not been able to lead us into the city, we would have run smack into the walls. Remembering that there is not a single significant victory that does not imply significant casualties and insisting that achieving the objective is only half a step ahead of saving lives, I left the boys pensive.

But it is important to determine the real goal. If we're advancing on a broad front and looking for large-scale targets, then yes, we'll have significant casualties. But those casualties will be proportionally lower than when we are fighting for a tactical objective, hitting the enemy's defenses without really affecting the infrastructure on the front. In this case, we take hits both in front and on the flanks - everything is focused on one point and burns us like a ray of sunlight through a magnifying glass. Here the principle of expediency is violated, when victory becomes such a headache that he would prefer to leave that place to the enemy and we are the ones who do what he is doing to us: win, not by advancing square kilometers, but by the number of personnel out of service due to disability.

But in order to advance on a broad front, it is necessary to prepare operations, accumulate resources, form reserves and not squeeze the last juice out of the enemy without leaving forces for defense. I will continue leaving the general to refer to the concrete: the damned recovery of Pavlovka. When the idea was raised, it was assumed that the offensive would be two-way. The brigade commanders and I discussed our capabilities to develop such an offensive at the present time and came to the conclusion that it was unequivocally impossible to implement this plan: the reserves were not trained and no matter how much was spared, it was only enough for the first phase. . However, the brigade commanders who had to solve the problems could not reach their superiors, who needed a result at any cost.

However, realizing that there were motives in the words of the brigade commanders, those at the top took a step that led to the consequences that have been observed: instead of holding their noses and preparing, they launched the two-way offensive plan and they threw weak forces into Pavlovka, baked, without extending the lines of the enemy and giving him the opportunity to concentrate all his attention on a narrow area. We already know that the second address was disabled in the process. I didn't know when I wrote that I considered the offensive premature but I was hopeful that it would succeed, so we were hopeful, even though we understood that we didn't have enough troops.

To make it clear: the 40th Brigade in two battalions was spread out over tens of kilometers of defense and had very few offensive forces. The 155th was more concentrated, but it didn't have too many troops either. And now that planning errors have led to unwarranted casualties for a limited result, they want to blame the commander of the 40th, allegedly for moving too slowly up the flank, leading to losses in the neighboring 100th and 155th. They want to hang a criminal case on a peasant and leave him exposed despite the fact that it was an extreme situation in which it was clear to everyone that the only ones to blame are those who planned it, not those who fulfilled their duty to the end.


In the battle since 2014, no one can doubt the commitment of Jodakovsky, who in these years has also stood out for his critical position with the political and military authorities of each moment. Whether his analysis is accurate or not, which should not be directly extrapolated to the entire Donbass front, his words do clearly show the difficulty that the Donetsk front is posing for the Russian and republican troops, in which the frontal assaults on fortified areas during the last eight years, are causing a large number of military casualties, but in which there are not always good options.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/11/16/25952/#more-25952

Google Translator

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

Another Ukrainian Missile Stunt

A factual assessment:

OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical - 19:41 UTC · Nov 15, 2022
The missile(s) that impacted Polish territory near the Ukrainian border very much looks like a 5V55K from the S-300.


The 5V55K is an old Soviet produced missile (1978/82) for the S-300 air defense system that the Ukraine is using against Russian cruise missiles. Its nominal range in air defense mode is 75 kilometer. If it fails to hit its target the debris is likely to fall at somewhat around that range. Przewodow in Poland (50.47099 lat, 23.93432 lon) where the missile landed, is some 70 kilometer northward of Lviv in Ukraine.

Image

But World War III mongers don't care about facts:

Dmytro Kuleba @DmytroKuleba - 21:35 UTC · Nov 15, 2022
Ukraine government official
Russia now promotes a conspiracy theory that it was allegedly a missile of Ukrainian air defense that fell on the Polish theory. Which is not true. No one should buy Russian propaganda or amplify its messages. This lesson should have been long learnt since the downing of #MH17.


"Russia promotes a conspiracy theory ..."

Biden: 'Unlikely' missile that hit Poland fired from Russia - AP - 23:44 UTC Nov 15, 2022

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AP) — President Joe Biden said Wednesday it was “unlikely” that a missile that killed two in NATO-ally Poland was fired from Russia, but he pledged support for Poland's investigation into what it had called a “Russian-made” missile.


It is good that no one of importance fell for this stunt.

UK media though ...

Image

Image

Image

Posted by b on November 16, 2022 at 8:31 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/11/a ... .html#more

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

Chronicle of Ukraine's undeclared aggression against NATO
November 16, 14:31

Image

Chronicle of undeclared Ukrainian aggression against NATO.

1. March 2 - Ukrainian S-300 air defense system destroyed a Romanian MiG-21 fighter. The pilot is dead.
2. March 2 - Ukrainian air defense shot down a Romanian military transport helicopter Mi-8, which flew out to look for a MiG-21 fighter shot down by Ukraine.
3. March 3 - Estonian bulk carrier Helt was blown up by a Ukrainian naval mine off the coast of Odessa. 4 people are missing.
4. March 10 - Ukrainian UAV Tu-141 "Swift" attacked Zagreb. Luckily, no one died.
5. March 13 - Ukrainian Volkssturm shot down the car of an American journalist from the New York Times, Brent Reno, in the Irpen region, who, according to Iranian intelligence services, worked as a CIA officer in Iraq.
6. September 9 - a Romanian minesweeper was blown up by a Ukrainian naval mine near Constanta. Luckily, there were no fatalities.
7. November 9 - A Turkish boat was blown up by a Ukrainian naval mine off the coast of Turkey. Luckily, no one died.
8. November 15 - The Ukrainian S-300 air defense system attacked Poland, destroying 2 Polish citizens and a tractor trailer.

Under the guise of a war with Russia, Ukraine is waging a hybrid war against NATO!

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7978488.html

Google Translator

Russian humor....

**********

EU Countries Decide to Create Their Own Rapid Response Force
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 15, 2022
Olivier Renault

Image

A European military unit – the rapid response force – must, in the future, specialize in evacuation and stabilization. The operational availability of this new military force is planned for 2025. A first mission could ensure a future cease-fire in Ukraine, ensures Die Welt. But, it is under the political and military command of Berlin that everything must take place. And, it was with the agreement of NATO that it was decided to set up the rapid response force.

Faced with the increasingly precarious security situation in the world, the European Union is working hard on a new rapid military intervention force of up to 5,000 soldiers. In November 2021, Continental Observer specified that « the EU validates pan-European defense ». As required, the rapid reaction force should include not only ground troops, but also air and naval forces. According to information from Die Welt, EU defense ministers want to take a fundamental decision on Tuesday: the first two of the five scenarios planned for the military operation must be adopted.

Germany wants to lead the EU rapid reaction force. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, explained the project to the German media, which is being drafted in Berlin: « First, we created two possible deployment scenarios for [ the EU rapid reaction force ]: rescue and evacuation operations and, in a second scenario, the start ( initial phase ) of a stabilization mission. These deployment scenarios will help us to better define the capabilities required for [ the EU rapid reaction force ] and to organize the first military exercise in the second half of 2023 ».

Die Welt underlines that this will take place in Spain « and that » Germany wants to be the first country to lead the new intervention force after its launch in 2025 «, but that, » however, this has not yet been decided ».

An evacuation mission mainly consists in rescuing European citizens from regions in crisis in the event of an emergency, argues Die Welt. Again, another largely unplanned withdrawal from Afghanistan should not be seen as in the summer of 2021. The EU wants to prepare for such cases in a timely manner, and Somalia or Libya would be possible as target countries for such a scenario.

Soldiers of the EU rapid reaction force will be placed in Ukraine and Moldova. The EU rapid reaction force has a stabilization mission. This means that crisis response forces, if necessary with robust military means, bring stability and ensure peace in the short term. The soldiers of this European force could be heavily armed, hammer Die Welt and indicates that, despite the conflict in Ukraine with Russia since last February, « the possible locations for this could be Ukraine or Moldova ».

Markus Kaim, the safety expert of the Science and Policy Foundation ( Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik ) based in Berlin, said the new working group could also be used to secure a « protection zone in Ukraine » – for example, if the UN accepts a future ceasefire agreement between Moscow and Kiev, as a mandate for a peacekeeping force. When adopting this historic strategic document for the European Union ( the strategic compass ) Emmanuel Macron a insisted on the fact that he wanted to define a « European strategic sovereignty » and that « this concept, which seemed unthinkable four years ago, allows us to anchor that we Europeans, whether we are members of NATO or not ( … ), have common threats and common goals ».

Funding is still unclear. The precursors of the new EU rapid reaction force are the battle groups. However, they have never been used, resulting in considerable funding problems, and their deployment has suffered from the reluctance of member states to send enough troops. This situation should change now. Rapid reaction force formation is significantly intensified, warns Die Welt. In addition, there should be different « modules » which can be combined according to deployment needs, for example, during’ a wave of politically organized refugees as was the case from Belarus to Poland in late 2021 and early this year. Another novelty is that the participating States will no longer have to bear the costs of training and deploying soldiers themselves. However, the exact way in which the new working group will be funded is still the subject of intense debate. A significant part of the funds will probably come from a special fund for EU global crisis operations: the European Peace Facility.

The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said, as explained by the media Die Welt, that the new force is « crucial to enable the EU to react quickly, vigorously and effectively to conflicts and crises, both in our immediate vicinity and beyond ». And, according to him, « the unit is one of the most important results of the strategic compass which was decided in March 2022 ». It should be mentioned again that a particular priority of the French Presidency is to strengthen the defense capacities of the EU.

Continental Observer made known that « in the margins, French diplomats note that the adoption of the strategic compass – launched under the German presidency – in early 2022 is a fundamental task, otherwise the process may be completely buried ». Also, in full awareness of Berlin’s desire to establish its military and political domination over the defense of the EU, France has validated this new project.

Do not compete with NATO. The head of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, David McAllister ( CDU ), stressed that this would make the EU « more capable of acting » in the future: « Judging by the obstacles that European cooperation in security and defense policy has encountered in overcoming in recent years, this intervention force is a milestone » ; « The concept must be implemented by 2025 at the latest ». For Die Welt, the rapid reaction force is intended to improve respect for the security interests of the EU, but it is not expressly intended to compete with NATO. An EU document from March states: « NATO is and will remain the foundation of the common defense of its members ».

Repression also in the civil field. Continental Observer warned that the Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defense of the European Union welcomed on 16 November 2021 the project for a new defense strategy ( strategic compass ) which now leads to this force rapid reaction for the military aspect, but which EU officials are also targeting, in particular, systems for repression in the civil field.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... nse-force/

How the UN Resolution on Ukraine Could Be Used to Demand Reparations from the Golden Billion
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 15, 2022
Andrew Korybko

Image

The Pandora’s Box that was just opened also creates the precedent for the majority of humanity across the Global South whose countries were previously colonized by the Golden Billion’s to create their own such reparation registers and mechanisms. Just like the US will likely form its own so-called “coalitions of the willing” to this end, so too could countries among the jointly BRICS- and SCO-led Global South form the same as well, especially those in Africa who are fighting on the front line of the New Cold War.

Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya warned on Monday that the General Assembly’s passing of a resolution on Ukrainian reparations could boomerang against the US-led West’s Golden Billion. This legally non-binding development will result in the creation of an “international register” for tabulating what its participants claim Russia supposedly owes to Ukraine for the damages caused by its special operation, after which a corresponding “international mechanism” will seek to obtain this from it.

#Nebenzia: The plot with first stealing and then spending sovereign state assets has been conceived by exactly the same states that have a hefty track record of robbing the rest of the world.

🔗https://t.co/J6HPhGRdeB pic.twitter.com/4E2JelZAkr

— Russia at the United Nations (@RussiaUN) November 15, 2022


Looking beyond the high-sounding rhetoric that exploits the Western public’s well-intended efforts to implement justice as they conceive it to be in this context, shaped as their views are by the infowar against Russia that manipulated them into regarding it as guilty, this is a clever “lawfare” power play. In short, it’ll speciously “legitimize” the Golden Billion’s illegal seizure of Russia’s foreign assets and create the precedent for threatening the same against whichever side of a foreign dispute that they’re against.

Put another way, this New Cold War bloc can arm regional partners as proxies against other targeted states while holding the Damocles’ sword of foreign asset seizures on this false “lawfare” basis over the heads of the latter’s leadership to deter them from defending their objective national interests. Those that dare to do so will be accused of “unprovoked aggression”, pressured by the creation of similar such “restitution” registers and mechanisms, and likely sanctioned indefinitely until they pull out and pay up.

There’s no doubt that this new form of “lawfare” will be effectively wielded by the Golden Billion to advance its interests in the New Cold War, but Ambassador Nebenzya’s warning about it boomeranging against them shouldn’t also be downplayed either. The Pandora’s Box that was just opened also creates the precedent for the majority of humanity across the Global South whose countries were previously colonized by the Golden Billion’s to create their own such reparation registers and mechanisms.

Just like the US will likely form its own so-called “coalitions of the willing” to this end, so too could countries among the jointly BRICS- and SCO-led Global South form the same as well, especially those in Africa who are fighting on the front line of the New Cold War. The Damocles’ sword that their multipolar-patriotic leaderships like Mali’s could hold over the Golden Billions’ head is the nationalization of the latter’s assets as restitution for their formerly colonized people.

Of course, it would take immense political will to actually go through with such a major move, but it nevertheless can’t be discounted. Those Global South countries that are led by multipolar-patriotic leaderships would risk being overthrown by Golden Billion-backed coups or subjugated to hitherto unprecedentedly intense Hybrid Warfare, but they could either preempt those regime change scenarios or dramatically enhance their defensive capabilities through strategic partnerships with Russia.

That newly restored world power is actively exporting bespoke “Democratic Security” solutions to its partners across Africa, which refers to the creative employment of counter-Hybrid Warfare tactics and strategists for defending their national models of democracy from the Golden Billion’s threats. The Central African Republic and Mali have already benefited from this but more such countries are expected to solicit Russia’s related support, especially if they countenance colonial-era restitution.

Given Russia’s de facto leadership of the Global Revolutionary Movement will predictably result in it attempting to make good on its promise over the summer to help its African partners fully complete their decolonization processes, the preceding scenario shouldn’t be ignored. To the contrary, it’s more credible than ever after the Golden Billion inadvertently established the pretext upon opening Pandora’s Box through the latest UN Resolution on Ukrainian reparations.

Just like the Kosovo precedent was later employed by Russia in Georgia and Ukraine, so too might the Ukrainian reparations one be employed by myriad Global South states (especially across Africa) to demand similar such reparations from their former colonizers in the Golden Billion. So long as they feel confident enough defending themselves from that New Cold War bloc’s wrath, which Russia is expected to help them with as explained, then it’s likely that at least some of them will pursue this path.

It’s precisely this sequence of events that Ambassador Nebenzya probably had in mind when warning that the latest resolution risks boomeranging against the Golden Billion. Multipolar-patriotic leaderships across the Global South will predictably explore the pros and cons of employing similar such means as those pioneered by the West against Russia for obtaining reparations from their former colonizers. It’ll remain to be seen when and how this unfolds, but there’s little doubt that it’ll eventually happen.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/11/ ... n-billion/

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

IMPACTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL OF KHERSON
15 Nov 2022 , 2:38 p.m.

Image
Ukrainian/NATO artillery on the Kherson front (Photo: Viacheslav Ratynskyi / Reuters)

On November 11, the three-day evacuation undertaken by the Russian army from the city of Kherson, capital of the oblast recently re-incorporated into the Russian Federation , culminated . In that period, 30,000 military personnel with 5,000 pieces of weapons and equipment, together with "tangible property" (fundamentally historical relics from the times of Catherine the Great), crossed over to the left bank of the Dnieper River, leaving the city inhabited only by the civilian population that decided to stay. In previous days, 115,000 civilians were also evacuated .

Following its passage, the army also blew up the last key crossing points from one bank to the other (most access points had already been destroyed by the Ukrainians/NATO), mainly the Antonovsky Bridge, turning the river into the natural defense of the new positions.

Despite the withdrawal of the provincial capital, Russia still controls about 60% of the territory that is now part of the Federation.

The state of vulnerability in which the city was already found led to the execution of a decision that had already been foreshadowing since General Sergei Surovikin himself assumed command of the Special Military Operation (OME) in the second week of October. . Over the course of three months, the Ukrainian army/NATO had methodically bombarded every possible liaison point (crossings, bridges, ports) severely disrupting the supply lines to the city, gradually making the possibility of establishing a more effective defensive line more remote. .

The systematic and permanent attack on critical nodes (passage points, power or pumping stations, dams) gradually diminished the options. Despite the constant failed offensives of the Ukrainian army during these months against the city, the deterioration of the situation ran into a decisive factor: the debacle that would have constituted an overwhelming attack on the Kajovka hydroelectric dam, already impacted by several artillery charges. A "sword of Damocles" that, had it been destroyed, would have flooded both banks of the river, isolated and separated the city, putting thousands of soldiers and civilians at risk, since it would have turned the military effort in general , compromising the process of partial mobilization and the course of the war itself.

REASONS FOR WITHDRAWAL
All observers and analysts of the war agree that this situation was reached as a result of a series of analytical, intelligence, calculation and planning failures, since the very essence of the OME set operational limits that were advantageously exploited by Ukraine . and NATO .

In a relatively deadlock between the OME, as it came, and its new reconfiguration, military and logistical restrictions, in addition to numerical and sizing where the ratio between Russia and Ukraine is still 1:5, sometimes more, they facilitated the vacuum that led, in part, to the decision to evacuate and withdraw to the eastern bank, to safe positions.

The nightmare of the capital of a recently incorporated territory, flooded, besieged and at the mercy of incalculable logistical adversities, with the respective number of casualties in lives and material, was the guiding principle. But this alone does not explain the whole picture.

The main cognitive dissonance in the framework of the war lies in the way in which both Ukraine and Russia conceive the military effort: while the latter frames its actions under the logic of a limited and self-restricted operation, with an eminently political and humanitarian (as long as it values ​​the civilian lives of the adversary), the former operates under the paradigm of total war without considering damage or effects on human or other lives, in order to achieve the objectives.

This, furthermore, is reinforced by the permanent endowment and the integral control of the process by the NATO (United States) commanders, happy to advance based on that state of mind, fighting against Russia to the last Ukrainian. On the other hand, the methodical Russian herself avoids risky situations in which any variable gets out of control to incalculable points.

To this must be added the concern about the impact that a dramatic increase in human lives among military personnel and civilians could have for public opinion within the Russian Federation itself: the massive arrival of bodies in bags or urns, as a perception of the public, could be even more dangerous than the bitter pill of territorial loss. A loss that, unlike the withdrawal from Kharkov in September, has the approval of weighty players within the allied military universe, such as Chechen President Ramzam Kadyrov and the head of the Wagner private military company, Dimitri Prigozhin.


An open front in that direction, too, would lead batteries into the Crimean corridor.

"STRATEGIC DEFENSE" POSITION
In military terms, it is conceived as an operational setback (rethinking of the action process) or a tactical decision (change of short-term objectives), but in terms of political and media language, it is a blow with a notable impact, especially in its translation in the media and symbolic field.

The withdrawal from Kherson, projected as a "victory" for Ukraine, constitutes an important boost on the informational battlefield level and gives greater "moral legitimacy" to NATO's military and financial support. In addition, it releases forces from that front towards other theaters of operations or axes along the extensive line of contact, towards Donbass.

The chances of Zaporozhye becoming the new main focus of the offensive increase after the Russian withdrawal. The latter is admitted to the extent that the forces stationed on the west bank of the river are also more exposed to artillery charges, where once again significant losses could be manifested.

On the other hand, the withdrawal also immediately cancels the direct expansion of the front towards Nikolaev and Odessa. Even so, beyond representing the most important military and political setback to date for the Russian Federation, it is not a strategic defeat on either level, even though it dangerously borders on it, and now demands for Russia, within the framework of the OME, some type of movement or maneuver on those same planes that gives a turn that modifies the dynamics.

To that extent the observation that the Russian Federation, as long as it does not undertake its winter campaign and NATO advances on Ukrainian soil without humane considerations, is in a position of "strategic defense" is acceptable .

LOSS AND RELEASE
It is worth saying that while the evacuation of Kherson was taking place, on the Donbass front, the allied forces managed to take over the settlement of Pavlovka , in what has been one of the hardest and bloodiest combat centers of the entire campaign in Donetsk; Pavlovka is important for the capture of Ugledar, another of the critical points from where, for eight years, it has enjoyed a privileged position to attack civilian targets in the city of Donetsk.

Despite the loss of territory in the south, methodical progress towards liberation continues. And just as the NATO/Ukrainian army can free up some numbers, so does the Russian side of the fight, consolidating a more robust line of defense towards Crimea and Zaporozhye, less geographically vulnerable, protecting the supply line both there and at home. peninsula in the chain that communicates these oblasts with the rest of the territory of the Federation via Rostov and Krasnodar , consolidating a probable winter campaign with the almost 400 thousand numbers recently mobilized and trained by Russia.

IS A SCENARIO LOOMING FOR THE NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN NATO AND RUSSIA?
Simultaneously, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the recently "liberated" city, declaring his readiness to move forward and his willingness to negotiate for peace, "peace for our entire country." However, this is happening, behind a very controlled media environment (even CNN and Sky News correspondents were prohibited from continuing to cover the events in the city), seeking to cover up the witch hunt and persecution of Russian "collaborators" in the city .

Zelensky's statements come while it is revealed that, in Ankara, Turkey, is the scene of talks between Russian and American delegations, led by the head of the foreign intelligence service, SVR, Sergei Naryshkin, on the Russian side, and the director of the CIA, William Burns, from the US side. Under this scenario, the terrorist attack on November 13 occurred in the very busy and crowded Istiklal boulevard in Istanbul, near the Russian consulate in the city. Attack that Turkish authorities have heavily suggested is targeting operators linked to the United States.

But neither Moscow nor Ankara initially officially confirmed that these talks were taking place. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, hours later, affirmed that said meeting took place, at the request of the United States, without revealing any further details. The information was initially leaked by a Turkish television channel. While another channel, based on sources from the intelligence services, unofficially suggests that the purpose was to establish lines of communication.

Granting that such talks exist and that they have that character, neither Russia nor Ukraine (United States) seem to benefit from negotiations on this point, beyond making absolute sense that the dialogue takes place directly between the United States and Russia: the real actors of this war .

According to the military specialist Andrei Martyanov, what was "officially" understood as the Ukrainian army itself ceased to exist around May, and the "avatar" act is commanded, directed, equipped and nurtured with a greater number of mercenaries is already in all rule a NATO army .

Regardless of the points of contact that may exist, this is hardly the time to reach agreements, at least definitive, between the parties, given the existential reason for this war, the higher objectives at stake (the multipolar commitment itself) than the OME has been accelerating, since beyond this reflection abroad, Russia is risking its place in the world.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/im ... -de-jerson

Google Translator

Not wanting to minimize anything but 'the fall of Kherson' implies that it was taken, rather it was given.

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

Poland Not to Invoke the North Atlantic Treaty

Image
Missile crash site, Poland, Nov. 16, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @JohnFollain

Published 16 November 2022 (1 hours 45 minutes ago)

Polish President Duda acknowledged that the missile was launched from Ukraine.

Poland will inform the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that the missile that hit its territory on Tuesday and caused two deaths was fired by the Ukrainian Army.

President Andrzej Duda declared that "it is probable" that the missile "was launched by Ukraine" and that "nothing indicates" that it was an "intentional attack against Poland".

Warsaw will not finally invoke Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which provides for consultations between allies when "the territorial integrity, political independence or security of either Party" is threatened.

The Polish Executive would have already contacted its NATO allies to confirm that it was a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile that deviated from its trajectory.


On Wednesday, however, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak announced that air defense systems, ground forces, and the navy were on high alert.

"The Polish army is monitoring the situation. We are in constant contact with our allies," he said.

After registering an explosion caused by a missile in Przewodow, a town near the Ukrainian border, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki appeared before the press last night to warn against false news, provocations and disinformation "that only benefit Russia".

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Pol ... -0001.html

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

Germany 'bracing for run on cash amid power cuts'
By JONATHAN POWELL in London | China Daily Global | Updated: 2022-11-16 09:30

Image
Felix Hufeld, president of Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority BaFin. [Photo/Agencies]

Germany is reportedly preparing for emergency cash deliveries in case of winter power cuts, giving an example of how seriously authorities are taking the threat of outages caused by soaring energy costs.

Multiple anonymous sources involved in the planning told the Reuters news agency that preparations include the Bundesbank, the country's central bank, storing extra cash so it can cope with a surge in demand, and possible limits on withdrawals.

The bank, along with its financial market regulator BaFin, and multiple financial industry associations are said to be exploring ways to manage any crisis, through such things as priority fuel access for cash transporters.

Preparations are said to have increased in urgency in recent weeks and since gas supplies were reduced as a consequence of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Reuters said the discussions give a deeper insight into the implications of the Russia-Ukraine conflict for Germany, which has long relied on affordable Russian energy. As well as the threat of energy shortages, Europe's largest economy is now confronting double-digit inflation.

Finance should be considered as critical infrastructure if energy is rationed, according to Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft, the financial sector's umbrella organization.

A survey published by Funke Mediengruppe last week said more than 40 percent of Germans fear a blackout in the next six months.

Germans tend to use cash more than other Europeans, valuing the security and anonymity it offers over digital transactions, noted the Reuters report.

It cited a recent Bundesbank study that revealed around 60 percent of everyday purchases in Germany are paid in cash. It said Germans withdrew 20 billion more euros than they deposited in a rush for cash at the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.

Authorities' initial planning for any power crisis reportedly revealed issues around transportation of money from the central bank to cash machines and banks. Security vehicles would have to line up at gasoline stations like everyone else, said a senior official with industry organization BDGW.

"There are big loopholes," said Andreas Paulick, BDGW's director. "We must preventively tackle the realistic scenario of a blackout. It would be totally naive to not talk about this at a time like now."

Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft is said to believe a full-scale blackout is "improbable", but remains "in contact with the relevant ministries and authorities" over any such development. Another official said German finance officials worry that banks are not fully prepared for major power outages.

Thomas Leitert, chief of KomRe, a consultancy company that specializes in planning for catastrophes, said finance authorities knew of the blackout risks but that planning has been inadequate.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20221 ... 29fa5.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

Post Reply