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

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

Post by blindpig » Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:50 pm

U.S. Considers Supplying Ukraine With Fighter Jets, White House Says

Potential move would expand U.S. involvement in war and risk significant escalation with Russia

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John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said the Pentagon would not be able to supply fighter jets to Ukraine right away.
PHOTO: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

By Nancy A. YoussefFollow
and Yaroslav TrofimovFollow
Updated July 22, 2022 6:13 pm ET

The Pentagon is considering providing Ukrainian forces with fighter jets, the White House said Friday, marking what would be a significant expansion of U.S. involvement in the war and carrying with it a risk of more direct confrontation with Moscow.

The Pentagon “is making some preliminary explorations into the feasibility of potentially providing fighter aircraft to the Ukrainians,” said John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications. “But it’s not something that they’re going to be able to execute immediately or even in the short term.”

(more, behind paywall...)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-consid ... 1658522096

They flap their jaws to make noise...totally irrelevant given the time it would take to train pilots on not only a different aircraft but one from a different design school.

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Shooting the messenger: Press TV correspondent in Ukraine put on 'kill list’
Friday, 22 July 2022 11:39 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 23 July 2022 2:00 PM ]

Press TV correspondent in Ukraine Johnny Miller says he has been placed on a “kill list” by Ukrainian ultranationalists following his revelations about Ukrainian atrocities against pro-Russian children and other civilians in the Donbas region.

Reporting from the war-torn country on Friday, Miller said that the neo-Nazi group wants him dead following his repeated reports about Ukrainian forces’ violence in the east of the country.

In an interview with Press TV, Miller said that he was placed on the kill list after he sent a journalistic inquiry to the website that had published a kill list of hundreds of people.

“Actually I contacted the website for a statement, which is normal in journalistic standards, but they didn’t reply to my statement… rather, they put me on the list,” the correspondent said.

“It’s clear that some parts of Ukrainian society [are] witnessing some kind of Kafkaesque nightmare, when a journalist does a legitimate story about a kill list and they put him on the same list,” he added.

He warned that most of the people on the list, including a 13-year-old teenager who was interviewed by Miller, “have already been receiving threats of physical violence.”

“There is no doubt that this list does promote violence, and the killing of anybody on that list,” he noted, adding that there are “over 300 children” on that kill list right now.


Miller called on international organizations such as the UN to take down this list and said that it’s so shocking that there is no pressure from such organizations.

“There should be more pressure from western countries to take down this list, [which is] promoting violence against children and journalists through an extremist behavior and ideology.”

“The Ukrainian government has the power to take down this list; NATO countries have a huge influence over Ukraine, but it doesn’t seem to be any pressure to take down this list at the moment,” Miller said.

He said that in spite of Western media’s supposition, there is a considerable degree of “extremism” in Ukraine, which he has been trying to highlight through the years.

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Journalists face threats if they criticize NATO, Ukrainian govt: Press TV’s correspondent

A Press TV correspondent says security situation inside Ukraine is too dangerous for journalists critical of the the US-led NATO Western military alliance.
The development comes as a number of journalists have been killed in Ukraine after being put on the list.

Miller is famous for his revealing reports in the east of Ukraine since the Russian offensive started on Feb. 26.

In a damning report last month, Miller revealed that the Ukrainian army has been shelling civilians in the areas surrounding the Donetsk region, while accusing the Russian army of atrocities.

“The uncomfortable truth is that Ukraine is killing civilians, indeed its own civilians, as it has been doing so for the last eight years,” said Miller, who traveled to the Petrovsky district near the frontline in Donetsk to investigate the incidents.

Back in May, the Russian army also confirmed that Ukraine’s shelling killed and injured its civilians in the southern region of Kherson, pounding southern and eastern areas with missile strikes.

According to Russia’s RIA news agency, Ukrainian missile strikes hit a school, kindergarten, and cemetery in the villages of Kyselivka and Shyroka Balka in the Kherson region in early May.

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2022/07/2 ... t%E2%80%99

Video at link.

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Solidarity rally in Galicia, Spain, in 2014.

Understanding Ukrainian Nazism
Originally published: Struggle-La Lucha on February 26, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz (more by Struggle-La Lucha) | (Posted Mar 05, 2022)

In the West, media outlets are claiming that Russia’s agenda to “denazify” Ukraine is unfounded. At the same time, public opinion in Western countries is totally alienated from the Ukrainian reality, tending to believe only what is reported by the hegemonic media. The result of this is strong disapproval of the Russian attitude based on the lie that there is no trace of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine. In this sense, it is urgent that quality information be disseminated to the Western audience to avoid the proliferation of lies about the Ukrainian reality.

On almost every TV channel and newspaper in the West, Ukrainian Nazism is questioned with the worst possible arguments: Zelensky is Jewish, and the Ukrainian state is democratic. This kind of superficial thinking prevents a detailed analysis of the catastrophic situation in Kiev since the Maidan, when, through a coup d’état, an anti-Russian junta took power and institutionalized a racist and anti-Russian ideology, which remains until the current days.

When we talk about “Ukrainian Nazism” we are not saying that Kiev is a contemporary copy of Hitler’s Berlin, but that the neo-Nazi element is a fundamental point of post-2014 Ukraine. The Maidan coup was openly supported and financed by NATO as a way of undermining any Russian influence in Moscow’s own strategic environment. The aim was to make Ukraine a puppet state, commanded from Washington, ending any link with Russia. There was not only the objective to annihilate political, economic, and diplomatic relations between Kiev and Moscow, but also to eliminate cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic ties between both nations.

Since then, anti-Russian plans have been implemented. Ethnic Russians have been persecuted for the past eight years–even through systematic extermination in some regions. The Russian language has been criminalized in entire cities where the population does not speak Ukrainian. Schisms in the Orthodox Church have been supported to form a Ukrainian “national church” out of the Moscow Patriarchate. But the question remains: how has this been possible if Ukrainians and Russians are such close peoples? Many Ukrainians speak Russian and marry ethnic Russians, in addition to the fact that most of the country’s population follows the Orthodox Church. So how was it possible to initiate such a successful racist policy?

This was certainly one of the biggest concerns of the Maidan planners. And the answer lies in the Nazi element, which was very well worked out by Arsen Avakov, Minister of the Interior during the Poroshenko government. Avakov initiated a process of instrumentalizing neo-Nazi militias that had supported Maidan, making these extremist groups key points in the defense of the new Ukrainian regime. In the West, due to collective ignorance about Slavic history, many people think that Nazi racism was restricted to Jews, but in fact, anti-Russian hatred was one of the biggest locomotives of WWII, having led Hitler to the irrational decision to invade and try to annex the USSR. This sentiment is alive in these neo-Nazi militias, who are literally ready to do anything to annihilate the Russians, being much more fanatical in their racist convictions than the Ukrainian armed forces.

Groups such as the Azov Battalion, C14 and the armed militias of rightist parties such as Pravyy sektor and Svoboda operate freely in Ukraine and are most responsible for the extermination of ethnic Russians in the Donbass. These groups act with more violence and using more sophisticated equipment than the Ukrainian armed forces themselves, being the real face of Kiev’s anti-Russian brutality. As neo-Nazis, these militias have no obstacles in complying with the government’s objective of destroying any ties between Russians and Ukrainians, thus being the main allies of the Maidan era.

In a 2020 Freedom House’s report, “A new Eurasian far right rising”, it is said that the far right is one of the strongest and most influential elements in Ukrainian society today, being a sophisticated, highly professionalized, and visible political force. In other words, what would be violent and criminal urban groups elsewhere on the planet have been converted by Kiev into a pro-Maidan parallel armed force. The inspiration for this model of action comes from the original Nazism: the Schutzstaffel (SS) was one of the largest German armed political forces during the 1930s and 1940s, but the group was not part of the German Armed Forces, but a paramilitary militia instrumentalized by the government apart from the official troops. There was a major strategic objective with this: while the German military was commanded by the government, the SS fought for the Nazi Party and for Hitler–that is, if Germany surrendered, the SS would declare war on the German military. This type of “double-shielded” military system is the same one that Kiev has implemented: if one day a pro-Russian government is elected, the neo-Nazi militias will declare war on Kiev–and will be strong enough to defeat the official troops in the same way as the SS was stronger than the German armed forces.

It is necessary to note that these groups operate not only in the sphere of military force, but also in the cultural field, fomenting anti-Russian hatred among ordinary Ukrainians. The exaltation of Stepan Bandera (Ukrainian anti-Soviet nationalist leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany) is one of the symptoms of this. Before the Maidan, Bandera was a name like any other in Ukrainian history, but he came to be remembered and venerated as a national hero by neo-Nazis and anti-Russian politicians. In the same sense, these groups vandalize parishes and monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church and are responsible for the consolidation of a Ukrainian mentality entirely hostile to Russia, which is gradually permeating the local population.

Ukraine is in fact ruled by a Jew and the country’s power structure is indeed publicly “democratic”, despite being internally authoritarian and corrupt. But the Nazi element is not in these aspects, but in the structure of protection of the post-Maidan Ukrainian state, which is supported by a national coalition of neo-Nazi militias whose objective is simply to persecute and kill Russians, regardless of who is in power in Kiev. It does not matter to these militias if the President of the Republic is a Jew–what matters is that Russians are dying, which favors both neo-Nazis and the pro-NATO politicians they protect. In other words, the Western media’s arguments to deny Putin’s claims about Ukrainian Nazism are weak and superficial.

Moscow is right in its concern to denazify Ukraine. It is a measure that should be taken in coalition by several countries. All over the world, Nazism is “condemned”, but only when it benefits the West. The closest political experience to Nazism in the present days has been seen and peacefully tolerated by liberal governments that claim to be defenders of human rights and democracy. Russia is simply no longer willing to put up with crimes being committed by neo-Nazis against its people and there is nothing wrong with that decision.

https://mronline.org/2022/03/05/underst ... an-nazism/

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Will US citizens be exchanged
July 23, 17:30

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Will US citizens captured in Eastern Ukraine be exchanged?

This week, SouthFront published the appeals and stories of American mercenaries Alexander Dryuke and Andy Hinh, who were captured in June 2022 in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine.

At the same time, the American media began to raise the question - what are the ways to return US citizens to their homeland. Taking into account all the circumstances of the detention of Alexander Dryuke and Andy Hinha, this can only possibly arise as part of the exchange procedure.
US officials report that they are in constant contact with their Ukrainian counterparts and are making every effort to include mercenaries on the next exchange list. Previously, the parties to the conflict have repeatedly carried out the exchange of prisoners of war. However,from the point of view of the Russian Federation and the DPR, these persons do not have the status of prisoners of war, since they are citizens of a third country who took part in an armed conflict for a monetary reward, in other words, they are considered criminals who are accused of committing crimes against citizens of the Russian Federation and the DPR. In particular, they were charged under Art. 430 of the Criminal Code of the DPR. This article is a complete analogue of Art. 359 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

In accordance with Art. 430 of the Criminal Code of the DPR and Art. 359 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, a mercenary is a person who acts in order to receive material reward and is not a citizen of a state participating in an armed conflict or hostilities, who does not permanently reside on its territory, and is also not a person sent to perform official duties.

An important circumstance is that legal actions against the detainees are carried out by law enforcement agencies of the DPR. Apparently, this is due to the fact that in July 2022 the DPR authorities lifted the ban on the use of the death penalty as capital punishment. Earlier, other 3 foreign mercenaries have already been sentenced to death and are awaiting execution. The only chance to save the lives of these convicts was an act of pardon by the head of the DNR, Denis Pushilin. It is likely that a similar verdict will be passed against Alexander Dryuke and Andy Hinh.

The exchange of mercenaries for military personnel of the DPR or the Russian Federation seems unlikely due to their legal status. Does this mean that the fate of the Americans is sealed. Definitely not. There are procedures for the political exchange of convicts, which have previously occurred repeatedly between the United States and the Russian Federation (USSR). The last such case took place on April 27, 2022, when US citizen Trevor Rowdy Reed, previously convicted in the Russian Federation, was exchanged for Russian citizen Konstantin Yaroshenko, convicted in the USA. Legally, the procedure was formalized through acts of pardon.

Thus, it is possible for US citizens to avoid the death penalty and return home. About 400 citizens of the Russian Federation are kept in US prisons, a significant part of whom were convicted for political reasons. Probably the most notable example is Viktor Bout, who has already served half of his sentence in an American prison.

However, there are several pitfalls in the way of political dialogue on the exchange of convicts.

First, there are no even indirect contacts between the US and the DPR. It is hard to imagine that for the sake of individual citizens, Washington will go to establish even unofficial contacts with Donetsk, because this will mean the recognition of the DPR as an actor in international relations.
Contacts along the lines of the USA - Ukraine - Russia - DPR seem to be unproductive. As it was written above, Alexander and Andy do not have the status of prisoners of war. Through the Ukrainian side, it would be possible to carry out an exchange if the prisoners were officially US military personnel, were in Ukraine as instructors under an agreement between the US and Ukraine, and, of course, did not take a direct part in hostilities. The last condition is mandatory, since the United States does not recognize itself as a party to the conflict.

The US-RF-DPR channel remains. On this path, the main obstacle will be the public opinion of the residents of the DPR. For 8 years of aggression from Kyiv, almost every inhabitant of the republic lost relatives or close people killed. Residents of the DPR are hungry for retribution. In order for the exchange to take place, the leadership of the republic will need very weighty arguments why foreign mercenaries sentenced to death or long terms of imprisonment are pardoned and transferred to the Russian side for a subsequent exchange.

At the same time, there are signals that the Russian Federation and part of the DPR leadership are still open to negotiations with the United States. The success of the negotiations will depend entirely on the political will of Washington. From what price the American establishment is ready to pay in order to demonstrate to its population the commitment to the principle of protecting its citizens abroad in all possible ways. At the moment , unfortunately for the prisoners, Biden did not come up with anything better than to announce some new sanctions against those involved in holding US citizens in captivity. How the "sanctions" should help Americans return home, the oldest US president did not say.The situation is also complicated by the emerging information that behind the recruitment and organization of the traffic of American mercenaries to the territory of Ukraine are official US structures, in particular USAID through intermediaries.

https://southfront.org/us-citizens-capt ... exchanged/ - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7755211.html

Attacks on the Odessa port
July 23, 16:31

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Regarding strikes on the Odessa port. If you carefully study the published documents of the agreement on the export of grain, it is easy to see that:

1. There are no obligations of Russia not to strike at Odessa. There are only obligations not to attack the infrastructure necessary for the export of grain.

2. The destroyed boats in the port have nothing to do with the export of grain. These are military targets that can and should be destroyed as part of achieving the goals of the NMD, which have not disappeared anywhere.

3. This strike simply shows that the export of grain according to Istanbul-1 does not mean the cessation of hostilities and attacks on Odessa will continue.

4. How does it work? Take Hodeida in Yemen. In 2018, from June to November, as part of Operation Golden Victory, the Saudi coalition, with the support of Israel and the United States, fought intense battles against the Houthis, with missile and air strikes, with thousands of dead and hundreds of pieces of destroyed equipment (Saudi and co. raked). All this did not interfere with the process of implementing the agreements (although they were also thwarted) on the entry of ships with food for the starving population of Yemen into the port of Hodeidah. agreements under the auspices of the UN.

So the war is separate, the grain is separate.

The tantrums about the strikes are to try to provide cover for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Odessa with grain export agreements. The worst thing that the Russian Federation could do is to stop strikes on the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Odessa and the Odessa region because of the tantrums of Kyiv and its sponsors. I hope the strikes continue. The best way to stop attacks on the port of Odessa is to withdraw the entire military infrastructure from there, while the city is not yet liberated.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7754782.html

"Alliance of Teachers" and its work for the SBU
July 23, 14:50

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Trade Union "Alliance of Teachers" and its work for the SBU
It looks like an iron foundation for the closure of the trade union and the imprisonment of all those involved in the transfer of data to foreign intelligence agencies who did not have time to escape.

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https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7754725.html

Google Translator

Too bad I can't read Russian...and it's too bad we no longer have access to the posts from 2014-2015. In the early 90's the Ukrainian so-called nationalists(Nazis) got their foot in the door of government and got one Ministry as a result of parliamentary elections. They chose Education, a reflection of long term planning. They immediately began stuffing education on all levels with their hateful propaganda and fanciful histories, and this is how a movement originally identified with the old Hapsburg province of Galacia became widespread throughout much of Ukraine.

"Russia send teachers to control what students learn" was the caption from the Washington Post that accompanied the image which refuses to show.
Damn straight, save the children.

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About new deliveries of MLRS to Ukraine
July 23, 23:56

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About new deliveries of MLRS to Ukraine

In Washington, after the voyage of congressmen to Kyiv, they said that the United States should supply only 25-30 HIMARS MLRS (and identical systems from other countries) to Ukraine. That is, to the declared 20, of which 16 were officially transferred (and of which, according to the statement of the RF Ministry of Defense, 4 + 1, which was allegedly sold, but which was never shown), should be added another 5-10 pieces.

It is important to understand that in addition to issues related to the desire to intensify strikes against warehouses and command posts of the RF Armed Forces, these deliveries also hide a rather banal goal - to replenish the general fleet of heavy MLRS, which the RF Armed Forces have fairly thinned out by destroying a significant number of Hurricanes, etc. . systems. In addition, due to heavy use, there is a known problem with the resupply of ammunition for such systems. For Western heavy MLRS, there is no problem with BC, because deliveries, despite the known percentage of the RF Armed Forces destroyed by missile strikes, can go on for a long time.

Unlike Europe, in the United States, the stocks of missiles and shells are as voluminous as in the Russian Federation, which is why they are pledged for a long war, because from a resource point of view they can afford it (unlike Europe). The main thing is that Ukrainian cannon fodder stably fertilizes the fields of the left bank and maintains the conflict at a level convenient for the United States without freezing and dumping it into a direct conflict between the United States and Russia. This, in fact, is the essence of the rather unsophisticated American strategy.

PS. At the front today without significant progress, so tomorrow evening there will be a summary for 2 days. Well, yes, in Ukraine today they crookedly admitted that they messed up with the "environment of Vysokopolye". Big losses + zero result.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7756120.html

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

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forwarded from
WarJournal[Z]
❗️Feedback on the work of Russian tankers in the area of ​​Seversk, DPR.

American journalist "The Politico" Christopher Miller reported the destruction of four foreign mercenaries in the Seversk region during the week, he was told about this by the commander of this unit. The militants were reportedly ambushed by Russian tankers northwest of Seversk. Their group was tasked with stopping the possible forcing of the Seversky Donets by units of the RF Armed Forces.

Destroyed: 2 US citizens - Luc Lucishin (b. 1991) and Brian Young (b. 1971), Canadian citizen - Emily-Antoine Roy-Sirois (b. 1991), Swedish citizen - Edward Celander Patrignani 1994 (b. R). A few more unnamed “Russian safari” lovers escaped with injuries.

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Сolonelcassad
Wrote on this topic this afternoon https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7754782.html .
In the evening, the UN read the text of the agreement in Istanbul and began to suspect something.

The UN said that Russia may not have violated the agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain by shelling the port of Odessa. The words of an unnamed representative of the organization are quoted by The New York Times.
According to the official, "technically, Russia may not have violated the deal, since it did not commit to avoid attacks on those parts of Ukrainian ports that are not directly used for grain exports."

I repeat, anyone can open the text of Istanbul-1, read it, think (if there is something) and realize that in the text of the agreement there are no obligations of Russia not to strike at military targets in Odessa or the Odessa region. All agreements concern, roughly speaking, only merchant ships that export grain, mooring walls (roughly speaking, part of the Odessa port) and grain terminals. All.

Therefore, it is logical to expect that the Armed Forces of Ukraine, realizing the reality, will begin to hide ammunition and equipment as close as possible to the grain terminals or port facilities involved in Istanbul-1, so that in case of strikes, yell that "Russia is violating the deal", although it is Ukraine that violates it when it deploys military installations next to the structures that are involved in it. But as we know from the experience of Mariupol or Severodonetsk, this is standard practice, so if necessary, ammunition will be buried directly into the grain.

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Сolonelcassad
Today in Ukraine they began to declare that there is no encirclement of the RF Armed Forces near Potemkino and Vysokopolye. This was forced to broadcast, including Arestovich, who launched this duck. Since their flock spent the whole day eating this informational manure from a shovel and demanding evidence of "encirclement", the topic became too toxic and today they began to merge it so that it would not work out like with the "attack on Kherson".

In practice. As it was mentioned yesterday, the attempts to "encircle" the RF Armed Forces near Vysokopolie ended with the fact that 2 battalions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that rushed to organize the "Vysokopolie Cannes" came under concentrated artillery fire of the RF Armed Forces, suffered heavy losses in killed and wounded and rolled back to the original ones.
In Ukraine, they preferred to inform the audience about the beginning of the "offensive", and not about its outcome.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

Post by blindpig » Sun Jul 24, 2022 2:07 pm

Azov: rupture or continuity? The Borodach Division
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/24/2022

PART 2. The Borodach Division

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In the historiography of Azov, the establishment of the so-called Borodach Division appears as a determining milestone in its evolution. For the still dominant groups in Azov, linked to the political structure of the National Corps, this Division has been the true backbone of the movement.

The Azov Battalion was formally constituted on May 5, 2014, and already within the azovtsi structures , the “ bearded ” Division was constituted informally, but decisively, on the 14th of that same month. According to Nackor , that day Buba (Vladyslav Korenok), then a platoon leader, along with his friends and comrades-in-arms Mose (Maksim Zhorin) and Cartman , create the Borodach Division.

After forming his illegal paramilitary group into the Men in Black, and then even formally joining the Azov Battalion, according to Volynnews , “ Buba and his comrades fought for six months without adequate security and pay. Quietly, no complaints, no special plans for the future ”.

In that period, the former Men in Black are in charge of recruiting new fighters, forming the first platoons and then consolidating what -in the mythologized version of the group's history- would become the first century of Azov, or "first hundred". ” of the Azov Battalion. In any case, a group of ultra-nationalists from football hooliganism (Dnipro, Dinamo, Kharkiv Metallist, etc.) or from the Nazi-fascist extreme right of the Patriots of Ukraine.

In short, what some sources consider to be the informal name of the First Azov Division will essentially include the first Hundred of Azov, fundamentally linked to the first paramilitary groups originating from the Men in Black. In this sense, The Borodach Division is the consolidation, basically informal, but with a structural base in the internal organization of the original Azov Battalion (and its Hundred of Azov), of part of the groups that constituted the Men in Black, fundamentally the linked to Kharkov or to the first actions of the Black Corps in that city.

The Division will become, within Azov, a unit of "special operations" and intelligence, in charge of the most difficult tasks for the Battalion and future Regiment.

In its symbolic dimension, the emblem chosen by Buba, Mose and Cartmanto represent the Division, it links with the main referential myths of the Ukrainian violent extreme right, the one represented by Nazism and the one linked to Nordic mythology, although passed through the particular sense of humor of the militants who promote the unit. In this way, the adopted emblem is outlined as the skull of the Totenkopf Division of the SS, modernized in the South Park style, with the addition of a beard and mustache to the skull, and the addition of a visor. The name of the Division is written, moreover, with recourse to the symbols of the Nordic world (rune writing). It is, on the other hand, an adaptation of the emblem of the Misanthropic Division that, in 2013, seemed to constitute the embryo of the fascist international with a vocation to deploy in Ukraine, with a strong presence also in Azov.

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As a movement with a political dimension, and not as a simple Battalion or Regiment, Azov is therefore constituted and configured in parallel to the Borodach Division. To a large extent, in its original dimension, Azov is the Borodach Division, or the other way around if you prefer.

The Borodach flag becomes, in fact, a battle standard of the Hundred Azov and accompanies them on their adventures, especially in the operation to reconquer Mariupol, Marinka or Shirokino against the militias of the Donetsk People's Republic.

The farewell ceremony of soldier Belaz on December 14, 2015, who died in the incident in which Buba lost his leg the previous year, is a good graphic example of the weight of the Borodach Division in Azov. The two images presented below, taken from the video of the ceremony, show the Division as a whole, as well as its main figures, including Buba and Mose . Zhorin's weight is already evident and he is the one who addresses the members of Borodach. The Division emblem is clearly seen on his shoulders.

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In its origin, however, Buba is the main character of Borodach. Considered one of the main leaders of Borodach, he is in any case the character that Azov places as the main ideological mentor of the Barbudos. However, it would not be Buba but Zhorin who would be the heir to the importance of the Borodach within Azov. The reason is linked to the accident suffered by Buba on December 12, 2014. Buba accidentally stepped on a landmine in Pavlopol that day. As a result, BubaHe was in serious danger of death and ended up with his right leg amputated. This accident ended his military career and affected both Borodach and the First Century of Azov of which he, at the time, was deputy commander. Despite his injury, he temporarily rejoined Azov in 2015 and kept his weight as a leader and ideological mentor within the Regiment. Zhorin, however, would assume the command that, without a doubt, would have corresponded to Buba.

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Borodach's emblem, generally hidden under the formal cloak of official Azov symbology, would be seen much more clearly later, in a period in which, called by the then Governor of Odessa, Mikhail Saakashvili, the Azov forces They would walk in late April and early May 2016 through the city of Odessa to control the events around the commemoration of the May 2, 2014 attack on the House of Trade Unions. As Slavyangrad.es found out on the spot, the unfounded fear of new confrontations or "provocations" by the Kulikovo activists in Odessa led the state's regional authorities, then led by Saakashvili, to exaggerate a threat in order to justify the request to send National Guard troops , which arrived in Odessa along with Azov at the end of April. Thus, they imposed a preventive militarization that did not respond to any real threat.

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Azov soldiers also participated in a military parade held before less than a dozen people in the Kulikovo camp, next to the House of Trade Unions. Police, National Guard and the Azov Regiment paraded along with trucks and military vehicles, some of them with the Azov emblem, all led by a member of the Regiment. After the parade, it was that same commander, whose bulletproof vest could clearly read SS (actually the Borodach Division logo), who informed the press of the details of the security device. It was Maxim Zhorin, Mose .

In subsequent years, the members of the Borodach Division have been distributed among different units of the Azov Regiment. In this way, its members are involved in various areas, both in the military Regiment itself and in Ukrainian public and political life. The brotherhood thus formed, built and consolidated in the war, is the basis of a structure in which the Borodach Division forms " a family within the broader family" represented by Azov and its political referent, the National Corpus. This participation in the different structures of the movement guarantees the control of the bearded men over the movement itself.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/24/azov- ... -borodach/

Google Translator

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation confirmed the strikes on Odessa
July 24, 13:22

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation confirmed the strikes on Odessa

Trailer to yesterday's https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7754782.html about the port of Odessa.

The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed https://t.me/MariaVladimirovnaZakharova yesterday's strike on the port of Odessa, pointing to the destruction of a Ukrainian boat with precision weapons. As yesterday I wrote https://t.me/boris_rozhin/58119, the Russian Federation has no restrictions on strikes against military facilities in Odessa and the Odessa region. All obligations of Russia relate only and exclusively to ships and that part of the port infrastructure that is involved in the export of grain. Yesterday the United States and the UN began to understand this, so against the backdrop of ritual condemnations, publications about "Russia's technical ability to strike" began to appear. At the same time, the actual preparation for the implementation of Istanbul-1 does not stop, which was confirmed by Turkey, the UN, and Ukraine. So we can continue.

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, following the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, confirmed (see briefing for July 24 https://t.me/boris_rozhin/58173 ) yesterday's strike on Odessa.

In the seaport of the city of ODESSA, on the territory of a shipyard, sea-based high-precision long-range missiles destroyed a Ukrainian warship in the dock and a warehouse of Harpoon anti-ship missiles supplied by the United States to the Kyiv regime. Also, the production facilities of the enterprise for the repair and modernization of the ship structure of the naval forces of Ukraine were put out of action.

So it is possible and necessary to hit the military facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Odessa.
Tem. who expected that with the conclusion of Istanbul-1, Odessa would stop flying, hello.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7756974.html

Google Translator

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

Biden Approves 16th Weapons Transfer To Ukraine - Total Security Aid Now Over $8BN
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, JUL 23, 2022 - 04:30 PM
Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

The White House announced a $270 million weapons package Kiev on Friday. The latest transfer will send four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS and drones to Ukraine.

The additional four HIMARS brings the total number the US has committed to sending to Ukraine to 16. Commander of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley said the other 12 HIMARS have reached Ukraine and have not been destroyed by Russia. The US has provided Ukraine with rockets that can be fired 50 miles by the rocket systems.


Official says with the help of HIMARS, Ukraine has taken out more than a hundred “high-value” targets, attacking Russian command posts, ammunition depots, air-defense sites, radar and communications nodes, and long-range artillery positions.

— Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin) July 22, 2022
John Kirby, communications director for the National Security Council, announced the package on Friday. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters on Wednesday the US would be sending the additional HIMARS.

The package also includes 36,000 rounds of artillery ammunition for howitzers and 560 Phoenix Ghost tactical drones. The latest transfer is the 17th approved by the White House since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The Biden administration has now committed over $8 billion in weapons to Kiev’s fight.

Russia has been critical of arms assistance to Ukraine from the US and its allies. The HIMARS have drawn particular ire from the Kremlin because of the platform’s long range. Ukrainian officials have recently suggested the HIMARS could be used in an offensive to retake the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.

Last week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin had decided to take more Ukrainian territory because of the advanced weapons the West sent to Kiev.

Image
Image: US Marine Corps

"That means the geographical tasks will extend still further from the current line. We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Zelensky will control or whoever replaces him to have weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of those republics that have declared their independence," he said.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... w-over-8bn

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U.S. plans to send NATO-made jets to Ukraine to fight against Russia
Originally published: World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on July 21, 2022 by Andre Demon (more by World Socialist Web Site (WSWS)) | (Posted Jul 23, 2022)

In a massive expansion of U.S. involvement in the imperialist proxy war in Ukraine, the Pentagon is actively preparing to send new, modern military aircraft made in NATO countries to fight against Russian forces in Ukraine, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, told the newspaper that “discussions are ongoing” to send the fighters to Ukraine. Speaking at the Aspen Security Conference, Brown was asked,

Is it possible the U.S could sell or provide Ukraine more U.S fighter platforms?
To this, Brown replied,

It’ll be something non-Russian, I could probably tell you that.


By “non-Russian,” Brown was referring to an earlier proposal by Poland to send Soviet-made MiG fighters to Ukraine which was rejected by the Biden administration on the grounds that it was too likely to escalate the war.

At the time, Biden declared that the move could start “World War III,” saying,

The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews–just understand, don’t kid yourself, no matter what y’all say, that’s called World War III.

Brown’s proposal is, however, a far more provocative move than the earlier plan to send aging and semi-obsolete Soviet aircraft.

His comments came the same day that the Pentagon announced that it would send four more HIMARS long-range missile systems to Ukraine, bringing the total deployed in the country to 16.

“(We) will keep finding innovative ways to sustain our long-term support for the brave men and women of the Ukrainian armed forces, and we will tailor our assistance to ensure that Ukraine has the technology, the ammunition and the sheer firepower to defend itself,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday.

“Ukrainian forces are now using long-range rocket systems to great effect, including HIMARS provided by the United States and other systems from our allies and partners,” Austin said, adding,

[t]he international community has also worked hard to provide Ukraine with better coastal defense capabilities.
Ukrainian and U.S. officials are more and more openly discussing the details of a plan to amass an enormous stockpile of high-end U.S. weapons systems, allowing Kiev to stage a major counteroffensive in the fall with the aim of sinking the Russian fleet and “retaking” the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea, which Russia annexed in the wake of the 2014 coup in Kiev.

During a visit to the UK, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Volodymyr Havrylov pledged to use U.S.-supplied heavy weapons to mount an offensive against Crimea. “We are receiving anti-ship capabilities, and sooner or later we will target the fleet. It is inevitable because we have to guarantee the security of our people,” he said. “Russia will have to leave Crimea if they wish to exist as a country,” Havrylov insisted.

On Saturday, Ukrainian military intelligence official Vadym Skibitsky said that Ukraine would use HIMARS missile systems to attack targets in Crimea, which he said “had to be destroyed for the safety of our citizens, our facilities and our Ukraine.”

The increasingly open talk of a Ukrainian offensive to retake Crimea has prompted extremely sharp warnings from Russian officials.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Washington was seeking to provoke a “real war” with Russia, stating,

Our American counterparts … really want to turn this war into a real war and start a confrontation between Russia and European states.

He warned,

[Ukraine is] not just [being] pumped with weapons. They are forced to use these weapons in an increasingly risky way.
On Sunday, the former Russian president and deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said that an attack on Crimea would pose a “systemic threat to Russia,” prompting a “Judgment Day” response from Russia.

In the event of a Ukrainian effort to retake Crimea, “Judgment Day will come very fast and hard,” Medvedev said.

Geopolitical commentators have warned that Russia views the defense of Crimea as a vital state interest and would use nuclear weapons to protect the territory.

Inviting U.S. arms manufacturers to take part in this joint effort by the United States and the Kiev regime, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov openly declared Wednesday that the country should be viewed as a “testing ground” for U.S. defense contractors.

“We are inviting arms manufacturers to test new products here,” he said.


The enormously dangerous escalation of the war comes as the energy crisis triggered by the conflict is having increasingly devastating consequences for the population of Europe and the whole world. “We have to prepare for a potential full disruption of Russian gas,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday, calling this “a likely scenario.”

On Wednesday, the EU rolled out a plan for its member states to begin rationing energy supplies, in preparation for a full shutoff of gas supplies over the winter. That same day, the IMF warned that a total shutdown of Russian gas supplies could shrink the economies of some EU member states by 6 percent and send them into recession.

The revelation that the U.S. plans to send NATO-made aircraft to Ukraine comes just two weeks after New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) released a 90-second public service announcement (PSA), giving instructions to city residents on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack on America’s largest city.

The video begins with the narration,

So there has been a nuclear attack. Don’t ask me how or why, just know that the big one has hit.

The extraordinary recklessness with which the United States is escalating its war with Russia raises the very real danger of just such a disastrous outcome.

https://mronline.org/2022/07/23/u-s-pla ... st-russia/

Could be these Ukes are delusional. Or it could be that they are being put up to talk this inflammatory nonsense by the US just to stir the pot and flog on the fight to the last Ukrainian.

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

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Сolonelcassad
Regarding the funny wave in the telegram, that if you change the streets of Lenin and demolish / do not erect a monument to Lenin, then everything will immediately improve in the liberated territories (I will tell you a secret - this issue does not depend on the monuments at all - the process depends on a competent policy to restore the liberated territories and establishing an adequate daily life + effective CTO), then, firstly, it is worth noting that such recipes, in terms of their "healing effect", have not gone too far from the dreams of the Zapadensky raguli who ruined post-Soviet Ukraine under the Leninfall.

Secondly, this issue will not affect the problem with the lack of ideology in the country. There is an order for ideology - there is no ideology as such. Not for internal or external use.
This situation has not formed today and will not be resolved in the foreseeable future. Here's your money, write us an ideology - that's not how it works. So only the ideological facade can be installed and painted with any optional symbols, which in our rich history can be selected for any electoral field and any target segment of society.

The authorities understand this, therefore, along with ideological ersatz, both the right and the left are given the opportunity to play role-playing games in the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire on a symbolic level to fill ideological voids. It has nothing to do with ideological construction. If someone seriously believes that right now the Russian Federation is being transformed into the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, then I have bad news for them. Well, okay, in 2014 it was still possible not to understand this, but in 2022 then ...

“Less political chatter. Less intelligent reasoning. Closer to life.“ (c) Lenin

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

Well yes, as far as the authorities go...some folks might think differently

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

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

Post by blindpig » Sun Jul 24, 2022 10:20 pm

About the course of the NWO. 07/24/2022
July 24, 23:12

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Answers to questions on the course of the CBO for the channel of the military commander Yuri Kotenok.

About the course of the NWO. 07/24/2022

- In the event that the operational pause ends and active hostilities resume, is the intensity of battles possible at the level of the beginning of the NMD?

- The continuation of intense hostilities is objectively inevitable, since it is absolutely not profitable to freeze the conflict in the current configuration of the front line of the Russian Federation. Therefore, serious efforts will be made in a number of areas for the further liberation of Ukrainian territories.
The regrouping of forces after the completion of the battle for Severodonetsk and Lisichansk is nearing completion. One can expect an increase in the activity of the offensive of the RF Armed Forces on the Seversk-Soledar line, in the Slavyansko-Barvenkovsky direction, near Artemovsk, etc.
It is unlikely that the RF Armed Forces will attack in all directions, since this requires a further increase in the size of the group.

- Do the Istanbul agreements on the export of grain mean that before the winter the Russian Federation will not take active steps to liberate Odessa?

- As shown by yesterday's attacks on Odessa, "Istanbul-1" does not mean the cessation of hostilities in Odessa and the Odessa region.
The agreements concluded in Istanbul do not prevent such strikes against military targets. Accordingly, there are no obstacles to the development of offensive operations in the direction of Odessa, if the command of the RF Armed Forces decides to rely on this direction after the completion of the operation in Donbass. Of course, this is not so easy to do due to the resistance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the terrain around Odessa, but with sufficient massing of troops in this direction, the RF Armed Forces are quite capable of taking both Nikolaev and Odessa.

- What is the morale of the Armed Forces of Ukraine? How do high losses affect morale in enemy units and subunits?

- At the current stage, the moral standing of the Armed Forces of Ukraine can be characterized as complex. Heavy losses in manpower, of course, hit the morale of those units that suffered them. Hence the complaints from the front, and the refusal to advance to the front line, and the demands to be taken to places of permanent deployment, because the front-line reality does not correspond to the propaganda pictures in the media. However, this does not apply to all parts.
Where there is a high percentage of shelled infantry, there are foreign mercenaries or gangs of motivated Nazis, there are no signs of a critical breakdown yet. This indicates the need to continue and intensify the daily grinding of enemy manpower at the front, which the RF Armed Forces are undertaking. We rely on a long fire offensive, on a barrage of fire, which are aimed specifically at grinding the enemy’s manpower, which leads to the manifestation of signs of a decline in morale in parts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Volkssturm.

- If we abstract from the statements of Arestovich, etc., what does the Kyiv regime count on in the Kherson direction?

- Active actions of the enemy in the direction of Kherson are very likely, but not from the side of Nikolaev, but in the Krivoy Rog and Nikopol directions. The Nikolaev grouping, due to daily strikes against it, is hardly capable of actively advancing on Kherson. Now the activity of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is manifested in the form of local attacks, mostly unsuccessful, but the enemy is obviously preparing for more serious actions. But still, it should not be ruled out that chatter about the Kherson offensive may be trying to cover up attempts to camouflage preparations for an offensive in the Zaporozhye or Kharkov directions. Here, much depends on our intelligence, which must penetrate into the real plans of the enemy and reveal them in advance in order to stop them effectively.

- Aggressive statements are again heard from Chisinau. Is a new escalation around Transnistria possible? Did Kyiv abandon the idea of ​​invading the PMR?

- The topic of the reopening of the conflict in Transnistria does not leave the agenda and is regularly pumped over both in Ukraine and in Moldova itself. This is done at the suggestion of the United States and NATO. At the current stage of the development of the conflict, the escalation is held back by the general weakness of Moldova itself and its Armed Forces. The hasty attempts to strengthen the Moldovan army and the cleansing of the opposition in Chisinau are attempts to create conditions for a joint attack by Moldova and Ukraine on Transnistria with the indirect assistance of NATO. The best guarantee of suppressing these plans is the liberation of Odessa and the withdrawal of Russian troops to the borders of Moldova and Transnistria.

- Does the Armed Forces of Ukraine have at least a theoretical possibility to inflict damage on one of the 6 reactors of the Zaporizhzhya NPP, or are the attacks on the facility purely psychological in nature?

- The Armed Forces of Ukraine have the technical capabilities to strike at the ZNPP reactors - this can be done both with cannon or rocket artillery, and with drones. In the meantime, strikes on the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant keep the possible topic of nuclear provocations and radiation contamination in good shape, which they use to intimidate the townsfolk. The task of not allowing the IAEA delegation to the facility, which should investigate the revealed facts of Ukraine's attempts to create a dirty nuclear bomb, is also being solved.

- How did Johnson's resignation affect London's plans to fight Moscow "to the last Ukrainian"?

- There are no significant signs of a change in British policy at the moment, especially since Johnson will act as prime minister for a few more weeks, and he is not going to change course. Johnson's likely successor Liz Truss is also committed to this course, so the role of Ukrainians as cannon fodder for the US and Britain will not change.

- Is it possible to carry out the death sentence against British mercenaries?

- From the point of view of the law, there are no obstacles for this. The case was investigated, the trial was held, the verdict was passed. From the point of view of the law, the only way to avoid an announced verdict is a pardon from the head of the DPR.
Of course, there is still a scenario with an exchange, but at the moment, Britain has not contacted the DPR about the exchange of its mercenaries. In view of this, the likelihood of several death sentences being carried out is quite high.
From my point of view, several such sentences should be carried out, regardless of whether there are subsequent exchanges of mercenaries or not. Perhaps the execution of a few mercenaries will increase the interest in exchanging others.
At the same time, it must be emphasized in every possible way that the British government left the mercenaries to their fate and did not save them from capital punishment.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/58223 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7758047.html

Raider attack on Gazprom Germania
July 24, 21:45

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Raider attack on Gazprom Germania

Gazprom Germania GmbH is the operator of several large gas storage facilities in Germany. The company was previously owned by Gazprom Export. The holding also includes the distribution company Wingas, underground gas storage operator Astora, the trading division of Gazprom Marketing & Trading, and the global LNG trader Gazprom Global LNG.

On April 4, 2022, the Ministry of Economy of the Federal Republic of Germany handed over) Gazprom Germania GmbH and all of its subsidiaries, including Gazprom Marketing & Trading Ltd. in trust management to the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA). Initially, the question was about the nationalization of the company, but the German side did not use this wording due to fears of a serious deterioration in Russian-German relations. It was planned that Gazprom Germania would be under the control of BNetzA until September 30, 2022. However, then the German authorities extended the s-budushchim-byvshey-dochki-gazproma-gazprom-germa/ ) for an indefinite period of external management of the company and renamed it Securing Energy for Europe GmbH (SEFE).

Together with Gazprom Germania, charters for gas tankers Amur River, Ob River and Clean Energy, sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands, also came under the control of the German government. Amur River and Ob River were chartered by Gazprom Marketing & Trading until 2028, and the Clean Energy vessel until 2026.

On June 29, the Financial Times wrote ( https://www.ft.com/content/3911551b-8472-4d09- 9c7a-692cf51d0c90 ) that the renamed company Gazprom Germania GmbH has resumed operations. Its head, E. Lage, in an interview with FT said that the company had returned and was ready to resume its activities after receiving a loan of 10 billion euros from the German state banking group KfW. The loan provided SEFE with the liquidity it needed and helped it pay for the more expensive gas it buys.

Parallel to the process of renaming and lending assets resulting from this large-scale raider takeover involving the German state, the US Treasury Department published a license to conduct transactions with Gazprom Germania GmbH. The permit will be valid until September 30, 2022. The license applies to the parent company and to all structures owned by it by 50% or more. The company can now issue new debt and issue shares.

It is worth paying attention to the efficiency and consistency of actions. Changes of this magnitude require planning and careful preparation for at least 2-3 years. From which we can conclude that this operation was planned long before the start of hostilities in Ukraine with the active participation of all interested parties.

The announcement of the lifting of sanctions on the former Gazprom Germania was interpreted in the Russian media space as positive news, although in reality there is no reason to be happy. Everything is like in the dashing 90s: they stole a car, smashed the numbers and assigned it to the bank as collateral for a loan.

Therefore, it is quite reasonable that Russia promptly imposed sanctions ( https://www.rbc.ru/politics/11/05/2022/ ... b76b0e88c7 ) both against the former Gazprom Germania and against its subsidiaries in the EU. A complete ban was introduced on new transactions and on the execution of existing contracts. Vessels chartered by the above companies are prohibited from entering Russian ports.

Germany's actions indicate that, in principle, the EU is ready to buy gas at market prices and even on credit. But for this it is necessary to "squeeze out" the infrastructure of Gazprom, which was done with the direct participation of the German state and the US Treasury. Now a similar situation is brewing with respect to Rosneft Deutschland and a number of other Russian assets in the EU.

Against this background, all the talk that Russia should continue to supply gas through gas pipelines is nothing more than an attempt to blackmail the raiders who are hiding behind the population of the EU.

https://t.me/rybar/36053 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7757746.html

We will demolish the monument to Lenin and immediately everything will work out ...
July 24, 18:14

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We will demolish the monument to Lenin and immediately everything will work out ...

Regarding the funny wave in the telegram, that if you rename the streets of Lenin and demolish / do not erect a monument to Lenin, then everything will immediately improve in the liberated territories (I’ll tell you a secret - this issue does not depend on the monuments at all - the process depends on a competent policy to restore the liberated territories and establishing an adequate daily life + effective CTO), then, firstly, it is worth noting that such recipes, in terms of their "healing effect", have not gone too far from the dreams of the Zapadensky raguli who ruined post-Soviet Ukraine under the Leninfall.

Secondly, this issue will not affect the problem with the lack of ideology in the country. There is an order for ideology - there is no ideology as such. Not for internal or external use.
> This situation was not formed today and will not be resolved in the foreseeable future. Here's your money, write us an ideology - that's not how it works. So only the ideological facade can be installed and painted with any optional symbols, which in our rich history can be selected for any electoral field and any target segment of society.

The authorities understand this, therefore, along with ideological ersatz, both the right and the left are given the opportunity to play role-playing games in the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire on a symbolic level to fill ideological voids. It has nothing to do with ideological construction. If someone seriously believes that right now the Russian Federation is being transformed into the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, then I have bad news for them. Well, okay, in 2014 it was still possible not to understand this, but in 2022 then ...

Regarding the burning issue of monuments and names in the liberated territories.
Everything that the raguli demolished - to restore. Ukrainian names are canceled by decrees, as was done in the DPR and LPR, where all names were rolled back to the state of May 2014, canceling all renaming for 8 years.
Everything connected with the Bandera regime must be erased and liquidated at all levels - from tridents to the streets of the Heavenly Hundreds. This process is successfully progressing both in the liberated territories of the LDNR and in the liberated territories of Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Kherson regions.

New monuments in the Donbass and the liberated territories should be set in a conditional proportion of 33%:

1. Heroes and prominent figures of the Russian Empire
2. Heroes and prominent figures of the Soviet Union.
3. Heroes of the Special Military Operation (including the heroes of the DNR and LNR).

So everyone will be happy.
The same approach can be applied to the names of new streets that will appear during the restoration of destroyed cities and towns.

Any questions about the names of streets, squares, settlements should be left to the discretion of the locals, who, if necessary, collect signatures (they say this and that, we want to rename this and that), submit an application to the local CEC (which checks the legality and validity of requesting a local referendum) and tie the local vote to the next Single Voting Day to save money. This will be the most democratic approach, which will take into account the opinion of the local population, and not radicals of any color, who want a war of monuments for the amusement of the Ukrainian Nazis and their Western masters in the dilapidated territory, where the CTO will go on for several more years.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7757360.html

On the supply of UAV Shahed 129 to Russia
July 24, 16:40

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On the supply of Shahed 129 UAVs to Russia

There have been reports that Iran has allegedly already supplied Russia with Shahed 129 strike and reconnaissance UAVs.

The drone itself is an illegitimate distant relative of the American MQ-1 Predator (it was created using technologies obtained by capturing American drones). Later modifications of the drone made this car quite original and very good in terms of price / quality, although the United States continues to insist that their Predator is better, although the experience of using the Shahed 129 in Iraq and Syria showed more than serious combat qualities of the Iranian car.

On the presented videos you can see his appearance, camera capabilities and cutting strikes in Syria.

(4 videos at link)

Russia and Iran have not officially confirmed such deliveries (and even if they are, they are unlikely to confirm them), so we are just waiting to see if drones from Iran appear at the front or not.
It cannot be ruled out that this is just a hoax so far in order to test the real level of progress on the issue of deliveries of Iranian UAVs to the Russian Federation.

Personally, you know my position - in the face of the need to increase the number of strike and reconnaissance drones in a vast theater of operations, the possible purchase of what is needed abroad is more than justified, coupled with an increase in our own production. Iran and China are the best options here, because if necessary, they know how to put the device on the US tantrums and bypass the sanctions regimes.

The ideal option is the purchase of a large batch at the start + the deployment of joint production on the territory of the Russian Federation.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7757300.html

Google Translator

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US HIMARS vs. Russia’s Tornado-S
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 23, 2022



The Western media continues singing the praises of US HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems as well as the arrival of M270s from US allies across Europe. However claims that these rocket launchers are “more accurate” and give Ukraine a “game changing” ability are not only false, it omits the fact that Russia has much more capable systems firing rockets just as accurate and at much further ranges.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... tornado-s/

Kastous Kalinovski: The Alliance of Neo-Nazis and Christian Democrats
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 24, 2022
Laurent Brayard

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Kastous Kalinovski is a regiment composed of Belarusians that was formed recently. It is the result of an alliance of early neo-Nazis, who came to fight in Ukraine in 2014-2015, with political dissidents from the Young Front, led by ex-presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, now in exile. The veterans of the ATO operation and neo-Nazis form the regiment’s seasoned cadres, the mass being provided by these very young activists, essentially Christian Democrats. Many were already there, in the Belarusian Houses formed in 2020-2021, in Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, with money from the US and EU countries. Tikhanovskaya proclaimed herself in Paris (March 2022) as the true representative of the Belarusian people, and is a CIA agent, with USAID funding all these “democratic” opponents for a long time. According to her, this first regiment was the base of a “Belarusian liberation army”… which would then descend on this country and on Russia. A crazy project that nevertheless pushed hundreds of young Belarusians into its ranks, real cannon fodder that has already paid the price of blood in Lisichansk and Nikolaïev.

From the genesis of the battalion to the regiment. The battalion was formed by former Belarusian volunteers who had served in the Ukrainian reprisal battalions of the ATO operation against the Donbass. Its rear base was the Belarus House in Warsaw, which served as a recruitment centre for political dissidents from the Young Front and other Belarusian movements working against President Lukashenko’s regime. Initial funds were provided by Poland, including for the acquisition of anti-tank weapons and assault rifles. Former presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya called on her activists to support it, to join it and for Westerners to fund it. The first volunteers gathered in Kiev, in the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, or Ukrainian Foreign Legion (February 2022). The first elements of the battalion served in the defense of Kiev and the Butcha region. The battalion was sworn in to Ukraine, officially becoming part of the Ukrainian Army (25 March 2022). At that time it had a strength of about 200 Belarusian fighters. It was later transformed into a regiment (May), with two battalions: Litvin and Volat. According to the Belarusian defectors themselves, about 1,500 Belarusians were serving in the Ukrainian army (early July). The regiment’s declared objectives are to fight with Ukraine, to invade Belarus and to overthrow President Lukashenko, who, like Yanukovych in Ukraine, is considered a creature of Moscow. The different cadres also stated that this would have to be done through the destruction of Russia, which was seen as a permanent danger. In the various speeches, either its total destruction or its ‘liberation’ by relying on the opposition forces. The regiment is considered to be the embryo of a “Belarusian liberation army”, with funds and weapons coming from Poland and Lithuania, but also from the USA.

The alliance of neo-Nazis with Christian Democrats. The big difference with the Ukrainian Maydan period is that, unlike the Zagin Pogonia organisation, the Belarusian dissidents were much more numerous due to the contribution of the exiles of 2020-2021. While those from 2014-2015 were all ultranationalists linked to neo-Nazism and the Pravy Sektor Party, the new recruits now came mainly from the Young Front movement, and activists of the 2020 presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. Around 200 neo-Nazis fought in the early days of the ATO operation (perhaps a few more), but today the Christian Democrats provide a large, young and motivated cannon fodder. This youth had taken to the streets in response to the call of political opponents for the 2020 presidential election. Tikhanovskaya or the Young Front were clearly supported and financed from abroad, from Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine in particular, but mainly by USAID and the CIA. The main cadres are even agents and were trained and recruited by the Americans, as shown for example in this very interesting report on the US plans for Eastern Europe (2005). We can observe here the same alliance that was created during the Ukrainian Maydan (winter 2013-2014), between neo-Nazis and banditry and Europeanist movements, students and various Christian democrats, very close to their counterparts in Poland or Lithuania. Several thousand Belarusian dissidents, often very young, had fled Belarus (end of 2020, beginning of 2021). The Ukraine and Poland had taken advantage of this to found, with the help of American money, Houses of Belarus in various cities. These houses allowed them to be welcomed, trained, indoctrinated and, soon after the beginning of the Russian special operation, recruited. They now form the largest contingent of the Kastous Kalinovski regiment, but they pose a major problem: 1) they come from pacifist, rather Christian, democratic and Europeanist movements, 2) they have no military experience and no weapons, 3) they dream of a Belarus that is identical to Poland, i.e. entry into the European Union, a higher standard of living, the apparent advantages of Western Europe. Their goals are therefore in complete contradiction with the nationalist leaders who command the regiment. They are also untrained in combat and will require extensive training. The recent battles in which battalion commander Martchouk was killed demonstrated the poor preparation of these men. Out of a platoon of eleven soldiers, only five came back abandoning the bodies of their comrades, and two men surrendered to the Russians almost without a fight. These very young dissidents, sometimes not even 20 years old, also come from a partly globalised youth, from the cities and from the middle or wealthy classes. From the simple point of view of the necessary rustic and physical qualities (not to mention military qualities), these men will only be able to get used to combat after many months or even one or two years on the front line. This is why the propaganda of the Belarusian dissidents, and those of the Ukrainian media, magnify these men and show only the few neo-Nazi figures of the veterans of the ATO operation, more martial and ultimately reassuring, than young men barely out of adolescence who yesterday were mostly interested in video games or their phones.

The historical connection with the Polish uprising of 1863, and Kastous Kalinovski. The regiment was named after Kastous Kalinovski (1838-1864), considered by some as a Pole, by others as a Belarusian national hero. In reality, he was fighting for the independence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a powerful state in the 15th and 16th centuries, which later joined forces with Poland to found the Republic of Two Nations. Kalinovsky studied law at the University of St. Petersburg, coming from a wealthy family (1856-1860), linking himself to the student and revolutionary movements in a Russian empire already in turmoil after the Napoleonic campaigns, e.g. the famous Decembrist revolt (1825). Russia was then ruled by Tsar Nicholas I (1796-1825-1855), an autocratic and reactionary ruler who had blocked all reforms in his empire. Kalinovski returned to his native region (Grodno and Vilnius), soon organising revolutionary circles (1861-1863). He set out to publish newspapers in the Polish language, as he placed his hopes rather in the ability of the Poles to rise up more massively. The Poles had already risen in a great revolt (1830-1831), but had been crushed, Warsaw severely repressed. He tried to launch an insurrection in Belarus and Lithuania, but could not raise the mass of peasants (1863), who were otherwise often hostile to the uprising. The meagre revolutionary forces were swept away by the imperial army, and the movement continued the struggle underground. Chased, he was finally arrested (mid-January 1864). He was sentenced to death by a military tribunal and hanged in a public square (12 March 1864). No one was interested in him anymore, until he was taken over by the Belarusian nationalists after the formation of the Belarusian People’s Republic (1918), which was soon crushed by the Poles and the Red. In this context, the exiled nationalists made him a national hero, who in fact fought for the independence of Belarus, a cult that spread rapidly (1920s). However, in the writings of various Soviet historians, he was sometimes shown as a Polish nationalist, sometimes as a precursor of the revolution, fighting for the peasants, and he died shouting that there was no aristocracy and that all men were equal. That is why a group of Belarusian Soviet partisans named their brigade Kastous Kalinovski (1943), and why he was honoured in Soviet Belarus with street and school names (1960s). Post-USSR independent Belarus also took up the figure, through stamps (1993), postcards, anniversaries, commemorations and an exhibition in the national library (2013). A commemorative plaque was even installed in Kalinovski Street in Minsk (August 2013). His remains and those of the rebels even became a political issue, but this time in Lithuania. Archaeological excavations were carried out (2017-2019), and the Lithuanian government in turn took over this ‘national hero’. It appointed a commission for the burial of the revolutionaries’ remains with great pomp and ceremony (22 November 2019). It is therefore no coincidence that Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the Belarusian presidential candidate who contested the result of the vote (2020), then fled to Lithuania, and in the Lithuanian embassy in Paris, proclaimed herself the representative of the entire Belarusian people and its interests. This is also the reason why the Belarusian ultranationalists, veterans of the ATO operation, chose the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a knight wielding a sword, as early as 2015, and why this emblem was also taken up by the Kastous Kalinovski regiment. In Poland, the Poles also claim the character as a national hero.

The Belarusian Liberation Army. By April 2022, the battalion already had about 300 combat-ready soldiers. After fighting in the Donbass and also in the Nikolayev-Kherson frontline region (May-June 2022), the battalion was transformed into a regiment (21 May) with the addition of new recruits from Poland, Lithuania and the Belarusian diaspora around the world. The idea of the political cadres, including Tikhanovskaya, was to turn it into a real “Belarusian Liberation Army”. Appeals were made to Belarusians to leave the country, desert the police force and the Belarusian army and join the Kalinovsky regiment in Ukraine. Although the instructors were often foreigners, Americans, British, Ukrainians and Georgians, the soldiers were all Belarusians, at least officially. President Lukashenko reacted to the formation of the army (3 June), stating that it was acting against the interests of Belarus and that its members were subject to the law on charges of treason, mercenarism and various other charges. The Belarusian security services investigated the regiment’s volunteers, announcing that they had a list of some 50 names (27 May), and opened legal proceedings against them. Two days later the Deputy Minister of the Interior announced that all volunteers who set foot in Belarus would be ruthlessly destroyed. The serious defeats suffered by the Ukrainian army, the capitulation of Mariupol, the loss of the territory of the former Lugansk oblast, the loss of South-East Ukraine, the liquidation of various cauldrons, led to a drying up of the flow of militants motivated to come and fight. The military strength of this unit is today that of a militia, certainly well armed, but of negligible military value. With some of its cadres having disappeared in the first battles, this is where the Belarusian liberation army has the most problems. The now certain defeat of Ukraine finally broke the momentum of the first weeks. The future of those fighting in it is fraught with ominous clouds. If caught by the Donetsk and Lugansk Republicans, they would be considered mercenaries and subject to the death penalty.

Opposite and very diverse profiles. As usual, here are some biographies to illustrate the nature of this unit through its men. The science that is used in this article is called prosopography, to summarize the social study of a group through the collective biography. It is difficult to discover information about them. These men are considered traitors in Belarus. They have acted and are acting since 2014, mostly in the shadows and anonymity, both to try to go unnoticed in their country, to secure a return, and to possibly protect their families or their property (which may be confiscated). The few who are publicized are political figures, naturalized Ukrainian ATO veterans, and stars in spite of themselves, through their death or capture. Here are a few short biographies to help you understand:

Pavel ?, known as Volot (?-2022), originally from Belarus, did his military service in the Belarusian armed forces, and according to him “was surprised by the pro-Russian feelings” that prevailed among his comrades (2012-2013). A convinced ultranationalist and extremist, he joined the ranks of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi party, Pravy Sektor, and then joined the DUK corps, the party’s political army, in an assault company (2014). He continued to serve in the Donbass, later signing a contract in the regular armed forces of Ukraine (2018). He was a specialist in hit-and-run, sabotage and reconnaissance operations. He was wounded several times during his years of service, to the extent that he earned a legend as a death trumpet. He left the service at an unknown date, and joined the Kastous Kalinovski battalion as a company commander (April 2022). He was seriously wounded in an obscure battle for a village in Donbass on 16 May 2022. He did not make it to the military hospital alive. In reality, one never cheats death.

Dmitri Apanasovitch, known as Terror (1989-2022), originally from Smorgoni in Belarus, joined the Belarusian army and had a career as a professional soldier, in the 38th parachute brigade in Brest, serving notably as a sniper (2013-2014). He then emigrated to Poland (2017-2018), living in Warsaw and getting a job as a truck driver. He became a political opponent of President Lukashenko and came to Minsk to participate in the demonstrations and riots that attempted to bring down the regime (2020). An extreme ultranationalist activist, he had become a pagan and believed in the ancient Viking and Slavic gods and Valhalla. When the Russian special operation in Ukraine was announced (24 February 2022), he was on a trip to Riga, Latvia, and immediately decided to go to Kiev (25 February). He then joined the Kastous Kalinovski Battalion. He did not remain a “terror” for long, as he was mortally wounded near Irpen, in the Kiev region. He died of his wounds in Kiev on 26 March 2022.

Sergei Bespalov (?-), from Belarus, political dissident, long-time activist, participated in the political unrest around the 2010 presidential election, and was arrested at the Belarusian border on his way back from Poland, his laptop confiscated (23 April 2012). As he was about to be arrested again by the Belarusian special services in Minsk, he jumped out of the window of his flat, managed to escape and cross into Poland. After a long journey (30 August), he jumped on a train in Vitebsk, then on another one to reach Russia and the city of Smolensk, and from there the city of Pskov. After a hundred-kilometre walk, he managed to enter Latvia, was picked up by a Ukrainian driver-roader, who together with colleagues enabled him to reach Warsaw (3 September). He created a Telegram channel Maya Kraïna Bielorossia and was soon followed by over 67,000 people. He was again wanted and threatened with legal action (25 June 2020), narrowly missing being arrested at his home (26 June). He preferred to leave and went into exile in Ukraine, where his friend who was hosting him was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He called to fight the government and actively participated in supporting the demonstrations and riots to try to bring down the Lukashenko regime (summer 2020). He found a job in computer programming. He joined the Kastous Kalinovski Battalion after the outbreak of the Russian special operation (24 February 2022), and called on all his compatriots to come to Ukraine to fight :” I am aware that if we hand over Ukraine to Putin’s pack today, we will lose the independence of Belarus forever, and we will have to bear the consequences for ourselves and our children”. Interestingly, he claimed to have no money problems, as his Telegram channel and numerous donations allow him to live “without money problems”. He was attacked in Kiev by Ukrainians, despite showing his “Stop Louka” tattoo, while taking pictures of a queue. Belarus being considered by many as an enemy, he was beaten up and taken away by police officers who were also very hostile. He was interrogated for a long time, his camera confiscated, as well as a knife and a torch, and after many explanations of his activity, he was finally released (25 February). Since then, he has been frequently featured in the Ukrainian propaganda media.

Sergei Degtev, known as Tick (1987-), a native of Belarus, from Minsk, was one of the political dissidents who participated in the riots to try to overthrow the Belarusian government (2020). He was arrested twice and decided to flee the country, going to Ukraine, Chernigov, joining the Belarusian House. He decided to enlist in the Kastous Kalinovski regiment. After a short training under a British instructor, his group was sent to Kiev, then to the furnace of Lisichansk, supervised by Belarusian veterans of the ATO operation. Without military experience and poorly armed, he preferred to surrender, his unit having been ambushed and his battalion commander killed in action (26 June 2022). A video provided by the Russian army appeared a few days later, showing a summary of his statements as a POW. He claimed that the morale of the Ukrainian army was very low and that many understood that defeat was inevitable.

Jan Diubayko, also known as Trombli (1996-), is a native of Belarus, from Minsk, with Polish origins. He dreamed of entering the State Aviation Academy to become a pilot, but was prevented by his physical condition. He then worked in a factory (2020) and was one of the most active dissidents who participated in riots to try to bring down President Lukashenko (2020). He was arrested by the police (1 November), threatened with prosecution, his parents advised him to flee. With the help of a friend, he crossed into Ukraine, reaching the town of Khmelnitsky, where there was a Belarusian House. He claimed that he was forced to enlist in the Kastous Kalinovski regiment, or be deported to Belarus. He was sent to Kiev, where he underwent rapid training to be sent to the front, along with mercenaries, Chechen veterans of the Iraq and Syria wars, veterans of the Afghanistan war, an Azov regiment instructor and a British instructor. He was captured by the Russians in an ambush near Lisichansk (26 June 2022). The Russians published a video a few days later of his statements as a prisoner of war.

Alexander Dubliaouskas (2003-), a native of Belarus, from Minsk, participated in the demonstrations and riots to try to bring down the Lukashenko regime (2020-2021), and was soon sought by the security services. He preferred to flee and went into exile in Ukraine (July 2021). After the beginning of the Russian special operation (24 February 2022), he joined the Kastous Kalinovski battalion.

Pavel Gorbatch (1992-), originally from Belarus, joined the Belarusian Army and became a career soldier. He beat up a colleague, literally slaughtered him and was sentenced to 8 years in prison. After serving his sentence, he sided with the demonstrators and rioters who sought to overthrow the Lukashenko regime (2020). Worried, he preferred to go into exile in Poland (2021). He failed to find a job, but after the announcement of the Russian special operation (24 February 2022), he went to Ukraine and joined the Kastous kalinovski battalion.

Vassil Groudovik, known as Atom (1991-2022), originally from Belarus, from Pinsk, he worked as a manager, then was deputy director of a Belarusian-Polish transport company. During the presidential election he worked for the opposition, organizing rallies, including for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, distributing leaflets in the street, etc. He was also a member of the opposition party. Having come to work wearing a T-shirt bearing the effigy of this political figure (26 July 2020), his manager, who was in favor of the regime, asked him to stop his political agitation, then asked him to resign, which he soon did by slamming the door, even though he had a loan to pay back for the house he had built (29 July). He was one of the political dissidents who tried during demonstrations and riots to overthrow the regime of President Lukashenko (2020). In his home town of Pinsk, he threw a punch against the police (August 2020). He was wanted as one of the agitators, hid at his parents’ house, and after a month moved to Poland (October). He went to Warsaw, where he became a street musician and tried to sell candles. When the Russian special operation began (24 February 2022), he started to help collect humanitarian supplies, and decided to join the Kastous Kalinovski regiment as a soldier. With his parents having died of covid in the meantime, his sister supporting Russia and the Belarusian regime, and no future, his escape was logical. He followed a 7-day military training in Poland, left the country and left a daughter behind. He said: “Yes, I know I can be killed, but I will take many enemies with me. All I have left is anger, because these inhumane people are killing civilians […] and now I have a chance to take revenge. The confusion of his motives was very great, as can be seen. He was sent to Kiev, then with his unit to Boutcha. As he had foreseen, he was killed in a Russian ambush near Lisichansk (26 June 2022).

Young Front, a Belarusian political movement partly financed and supported by other similar movements, all linked to USAID and leading straight to the CIA. The movement was created in 1997, in a context of the difficult years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in the desire of the Americans to support youth movements, students or associations promoting democracy, in order to extend the influence of what was modestly called here “the importation of the market economy”. These supports were in fact preparing for the expansion of the European Union and the erosion of Russian influence in the territories where it continued to hold strong positions. The movement started by creating cells throughout the country, recruiting young people, organising congresses, demonstrations and actions. In a few years, the Young Front became a significant political force, organising hundreds of demonstrations and trying to influence legislative and presidential elections (from 2000-2001). Having become the 5th largest political force in the country, they started to send deputies to the assembly and regional councils (2003-2004), and then tried to organise a colourful revolution, through tent camps and massive hunger strikes. The confrontation led to a flop and the movement turned to charity and humanitarian actions (2008). They participated in the political unrest in Belarus around the presidential elections (2010-2011), tried to impose the red and white striped flag of the exiled Belarusian nationalists (Belarusian People’s Republic). This other “Belarus” was used during the Cold War by the CIA, and has always been used as a scarecrow to try to push out President Lukashenko. The Young Front movement similarly engaged in subversive actions, in particular the demonstrations and riots challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election. Many of the activists had moved, or moved by then, to Ukraine, where the Ukrainian government created, as in Poland, “Belarusian Houses” as a base for Belarusian “democrats” and dissidents. Some of the members of the Young Front have long-standing links with the activists who made the Maidan Revolution (2014). But the bulk of the Young Front’s activists engaged militarily in Ukraine, poured in after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine (24 February 2022). In their view, Belarus is supporting Russia in this operation and the “liberation” of Belarus can only be definitively achieved after the destruction of Russia. Seven historical leaders of the Young Front enlisted in the Kastous Kalinovski regiment, taking with them a few hundred opponents, some of whom were already refugees in Ukraine. Officially, the movement classifies itself in the ideology of Christian democracy, combining the values of Western democracies with traditional and Christian values (very close in fact to a certain political fringe in Poland or Lithuania, also the backbone of the movement). Vadim Kabanchuk, also known as I have the right (?-), ultranationalist, founder of the Bison movement, and of the sports, paramilitary and patriotic organisation Kraï, member of the Young Front. He was a frequent participant in demonstrations, riots and political unrest aimed at bringing down the Lukashenko regime. He was arrested for the first time in 1997, took part in the riots during the presidential elections (2010 and 2020), and was eventually sentenced to six months in prison. He was arrested at the Belarusian border with Lithuania (15 February 2011), while bringing back from the latter country about a hundred clandestine newspapers printed abroad. An outspoken Russophobe of rare violence, he was close to the neo-Nazis of Pravy Sektor, not hesitating to join the retaliation battalions of Operation ATO in Ukraine’s Donbass (2014). He was one of the founders and second-in-command of the Kastous Kalinovski battalion and later regiment (March 2022). He was put in charge of the training of volunteers, and he also became a kind of spokesman, often shown on the Ukrainian media. He declared for example:” We will strangle the cockroaches here, they will start to fall, Putin’s regime will be shaken, and then we will attack the Lukashists, this is our main mission, to put an end to this regime, which has delayed its end for more than 27 years. He made a threatening statement to the Ukrainian media (22 May): “We will release all political prisoners, and those who prevent this will be killed. This is a message to the Belarusian riot police and to those who mock political prisoners today. Sleep with this, and remember, we will come to you, and that time will come soon. A few days later, he made another statement that was violent to say the least: “Despite the heavy losses, the morale of our soldiers is very high, especially after everyone saw what they did in Butcha [remember that it was a Ukrainian set-up] everyone understands that they must be pushed out of Ukraine, and it is desirable to destroy them completely. After all the existence of this state itself, the Russian Federation, will always create a threat to all its neighbours” (27 May).

Ilya Khrenov (1995-2022), originally from Minsk, Belarus, was a high school student and activist among the political dissidents to President Lukashenko. He was also an ultranationalist clearly attracted to Nazism. He became enthusiastic about the Maydan Revolution in Ukraine (winter 2013-2014). He left to enlist in the Azov Battalion with a hundred dollars in his pocket (summer 2014), then served in the Mariupol region for a year (2014-2015). He returned to Kiev and became one of the instructors of the unit that became the Azov regiment (2016-2017). In Ukrainian neo-Nazi circles he met his wife Karina, with whom he got married (2017), and then worked as a civilian programmer in Ukraine (2017-2022). He enlisted on 24 February 2022 and the beginning of the Russian special operation, in the territorial defense troops. He was seriously wounded in Butcha, near Kiev, by Russian artillery fire. Despite an emergency operation, he did not survive his injuries (3 March 2022).

Pavel Koulajanko (1984-), originally from Vitebsk, Belarus, studied to become an English teacher at the university in his city. He abandoned his studies to do his military service in Polotsk, and joined the riot police in his home town (2003). He served with the latter during the unrest following the 2010 presidential election, and claimed to have refused to arrest people during the riots in Vitebsk (15 June 2011), but was later exposed for this lie. Nevertheless, he resigned and decided to go into exile and joined the United States, where he lived in New York, in Brooklyn (2011-2022). Fascinated by the Viking pagan religion, he declared that he did not in fact have any specific political activities during this period, but published on his social networks many neo-Nazi images, and the portrait of Adolf Hitler… to wish his friends and family the New Year. He started to appear on various Youtube channels after the events of the protests that tried to overthrow the Lukashenko regime (2020), himself soon calling on the police to side with the rioters. He was one of the first Belarusians in exile to reach Ukraine, and above all to enjoy a very large media audience in Ukraine. Belarus issued a wanted notice against him (April 2021). He enlisted in the Kastous Kalinovski battalion and took part in a few battles after the beginning of the Russian special operation (24 February 2022), arriving in Ukraine in Kiev in March. He plays a lot with his physique, literally making the female masses in Ukraine fantasize, very much liking the cameras and the thundering media statements.

Alexei Lazarev (?-), originally from Belarus, a political dissident affiliated with the Young Front, ran for parliamentary elections (2019) and was not elected. He was called up for military service in the same year, and completed it, before participating in the demonstrations to try to bring down the Lukashenko regime (2020). Together with his girlfriend, Veronika Yanovich, also an activist of the movement, they decided to leave the country and go into exile in Georgia (September 2021). They then migrated to the city of Lvov, Ukraine (15 January 2022). After the Russian special operation (24 February), they organised some humanitarian aid and then joined the Kastous Kalinovski battalion. They got married in Ukraine wearing uniforms (13 March).

Emiliy Lobeïko (2000-), native of Belarus, computer science student in Minsk, anarchist activist. He took part in the demonstrations and riots to try to overthrow President Lukashenko (2020), then, worried about legal proceedings, preferred to flee to Poland (July 2021). The Russian special operation in Ukraine (24 February 2022), motivated his departure for Ukraine, where he joined the Kastous Kalinovski battalion, and was engaged in the fighting on the Nikolaëiv front (May-June).

Ivan Martchouk, known as Brest (1994-2022), originally from Belarus, from the city of Brest. He was a petty criminal in a gang and was involved in acts of vandalism (2010). He was arrested and convicted many times, and did not do his military service because of legal proceedings against him. He decided to travel to France to join the most prestigious elite unit there is, the Foreign Legion (2013). This story is probably a lie, because less than two years later he was in Ukraine. The commitments to the Legion being 5 years, he should have left the French army in 2018. The following hypotheses are therefore possible: 1) he simply told a lie to make himself look good, 2) he presented himself at the selection centre and was turned away, 3) he was accepted for the first selection tests and was dismissed at the end of this period, 4) he deserted the Foreign Legion as he could not stand the harsh conditions of this famous unit. A fanatical ultranationalist, he decided to join the Zagin Pogonia organisation and went to Ukraine (2015), serving in the Azov retaliation battalion for many months. He then engaged in arms trafficking from Ukraine, ammunition and explosives, and was involved in a grenade attack on a company in Kiev. He participated in numerous raids mainly against “Russian” companies in Ukraine, and in numerous destructions and rackets (2016-2018). He was arrested with eight other accomplices for illegal possession of weapons and explosives, criminal association (17 November 2018). Sentenced to three years in prison (2019), his sentence was reduced as he agreed to give up all his accomplices and was eventually released. After the outbreak of the Russian special operation in Ukraine (24 February 2022), he decided to take up arms again and was one of the founders of the Kastous Kalinovsky regiment, commander of the Volat battalion. He was ambushed near Lisichansk and killed on 26 June 2022. According to the Ukrainians, he had become the figure of the Belarusian fighter in Ukraine and ‘a legendary warrior’.

Alexander Mikhailenko (1991-), a native of Belarus, linked to ultranationalist circles in Belarus and Ukraine, was one of the activists who took part in the riots and demonstrations aimed at bringing down the Lukashenko regime (2020). He was spotted at an early stage and preferred to flee the country (January 2021), moving to Ukraine. After the start of the Russian special operation (24 February), he joined the Kastous Kalinovsky battalion.

Evgen Mikhasiouk (1995-), political dissident, participated in the demonstrations and riots that attempted to overthrow the Lukashenko regime (2020), and was reportedly beaten by the riot police and arrested (11 August 2020). When released, he preferred to flee to avoid political repression and took refuge in Ukraine (November). In an article in Le Monde, he said that he knew that Belarus would never be free if Ukraine was not free […] 100% we will win this war, and we will go and liberate Belarus, the Ukrainian soldiers I know tell me that they will come to help us” (3 May 2022). He joined the Kastous Kalinovski battalion after the start of the Russian special operation (24 February 2022), and is logically on the front line with his unit, which was partly decimated in the battle of Lisichansk.

Alexander Naoukovitch (1988-), originally from Belarus, from Minsk, he worked as an animator and tourist guide, fascinated by the Slavic and Viking pagan religions, he also did historical re-enactments, notably of the Russian Imperial Army and the German Hitlerian army. He soon made friends with Banderist ultranationalists, coming to meet them in Ukraine (2010). After the outbreak of the Russian special operation (24 February 2022), he tried in vain to cross into Ukraine, but was turned back at the border. He then crossed into Poland, joined the Belarusian House in Warsaw and enlisted in the Kastous Kalinovski Battalion.

Denis Ubarnovich (?-), originally from Belarus, member and president of the Young Front movement, a political organisation close to USAID and the CIA. He announced with great fanfare that he was leaving with six other leaders of the movement to fight in Ukraine after the start of the Russian special operation (24 February 2022). He joined the Kastous Kalinovski battalion and later regiment. He was sent with part of his battalion and a small company of about sixty men to participate in a coup de main on Russian positions in the region of the front between Nikolayev and Kherson. He was concussed in an assault (2 June).

Vasily Parfenkov, known as Syabro (1984-2022), a native of Belarus, from Minsk, studied to become a locksmith. He became involved in the dissident political movement Young Front, as well as in the nationalist movement Bison (2002). He participated in the agitation and public disturbances during the presidential elections (2010), and was arrested and sentenced to a few months in prison (2011). On remand, he broke the rules, was arrested twice more while intoxicated, was sentenced to 6 months in prison, and a year’s treatment for his alcoholism, then another year in prison, having failed to calm down. He was recognised as a political prisoner by human rights activists. After being released (2014), he joined the ultranationalists in Ukraine (2015), an admirer of the neo-Nazi Pravy Sektor party, he enlisted in the reprisal battalions, notably in the OUN battalion in position on the side of the village of Peski, near the Donetsk airport. He soon received Ukrainian citizenship (2015). On the front he met a military nurse, who became his wife and with whom he had two children. Together with members of the National Socialist Party of Ukraine, S 14 and Pravy Sektor, he participated in demonstrations and ransacking of Russian bank offices in Kiev (Alfa bank and Sberbank, February 2016), and then in the attack on the procession of the Immortals’ regiment (9 May 2017), which annually celebrates the victory against Nazi Germany and the veterans of the Great Patriotic War. The violence led to his arrest, but he was released the same day. When the Russian special operation was announced (24 February 2022), he enlisted as a soldier in the Kastous Kalinovski regiment. His own mother condemned her son in a video, which she disavowed for his engagement against the Russian forces (April), but he assured that she had been forced… He was killed during an ambush by the Russians, on the side of Lisichansk (26 June 2022).

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... democrats/

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

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forwarded from
Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts on the evening of July 24, 2022

⚔️The situation on the fronts for the past day:

▫️Kharkiv direction without tactical changes. Positional battles and the fight against enemy DRGs are noted.

▫️In the Slavic direction, our fighters attacked enemy armed formations on the outskirts of Soledar. According to some reports, our troops advanced to the Seversk-Serebryanka road. Also, our fighters destroyed at least five foreign mercenaries near Seversk.

▫️In the Artemovsky (Bakhmutovsky) direction, it was reported that the assault detachments of the Wagner Group, in cooperation with units of the People's Militia of the LDNR , liberated the Uglegorsk thermal power plant, but later the information from the field was refuted. If this happens, then the capture of the thermal power plant opens an offensive foothold for the Russian army in the direction of Bakhmut.

▫️Counter-battery battles are underway in the southern direction. Any attempts to break through the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kherson direction are blocked.

"Arrivals". Donetsk was again shelled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A polyclinic in Gorlovka was bombed. The building received significant damage.

Rocket strikes by our Aerospace Forces were inflicted on military warehouses and strategic facilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the territories of Mykolaiv, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov regions. In the seaport of Odessa, our missiles destroyed a Ukrainian warship that was in the dock.

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Сolonelcassad
❗️🇬🇧🇺🇦 Offensive to Donbass: the situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of July 24, 2022

Both sides are actively preparing for the next stage of hostilities both in the Donbass and in the south. Forces are being regrouped in the sectors of the front.

▪️Local battles are going on in the Kharkiv direction. Russian rocket troops and artillery strike at targets in Kharkov and settlements along the line of contact.

▪️On the outskirts of Seversk , the Russian Armed Forces are suppressing the identified firing points near Verkhnekamensky, as well as positions in the fortified area of ​​the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Ivano-Daryevka. There was information about the withdrawal of advanced Russian units to the road between Serebryanka and Seversk.

▪️In the Soledar direction, the allied forces are fighting on the outskirts of Bakhmut:
➖Clashes continue in the village of Pokrovskoye . The offensive of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is complicated by the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine of the dominant heights near the Bakhmut - Svetlodarsk highway .
➖North of Pokrovsky , the allied forces began an assault on the village of Bakhmutskoye on the southeastern outskirts of Soledar .
➖Fighting is underway in the area of ​​the Uglegorsk thermal power plant: reports of its transition under the control of the allied forces have not yet been confirmed.

▪️Ukrainian artillery shells Donetsk and other settlements of the agglomeration.
➖Mutual strikes continue on the line of contact in the Avdiivka sector. In the area of ​​Marinka , units of the NM of the DPR identified and hit an armored group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, destroying several pieces of equipment.

▪️In the Zaporozhye region, the RF Armed Forces hit the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the village of Yurkovka in the Orekhovsky district.

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

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 25, 2022 1:15 pm

lights over the city
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/25/2022 ⋅ LEAVE A COMMENT

Original Article: Dmitry Steshin / Komsomolskaya Pravda

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On Saturday night, fifteen minutes before the start of the curfew, the center of Donetsk was attacked by Grads equipped with incendiary ammunition. This KP correspondenthe watched and filmed this attack from the kitchen window. It was a fascinating scene, beautiful and deadly. Actually, it was like that. He had just returned from the Zaporozhye region, from the "liberated territories", which have already started preparing for a referendum in September, in which there will be only one question: the return to Russia. Few hours of sleep, sporadic and scarce meals, which I was going to compensate for in Donetsk, which has become my home. I live very close to the center, there are no military facilities in the district, although there is the big Kalinin hospital, where, by the way, our wounded and captured Ukrainian soldiers have been treated since 2014. Perhaps that was the goal of the Ukrainian gunners, it is difficult to decipher, since in Donetsk there is no longer a rear.

The explosion occurred directly above, before the open window. The sky lit up, windows rattled, and car alarms in the yards went off. Then there were two more bursts and hundreds of illuminated white dots began to descend in the black sky. Visually, they looked like ordinary fireworks. But the fire drops did not dissolve in the sky, but flowed down to the ground, leaving an illuminated tail in the darkness. Then the first lights fell on the neighboring rooftops: white lights that made a flash of light. One of the stars fell in the courtyard, setting the top of a tree on fire. Windows slammed shut and concerned neighbors could be heard talking. In other courtyards the “lights” fell on vehicles and I heard the screams of people and even the sound of fire extinguishers. What was that?

The benevolent “preliminary examination” of a calm distant voice advised the residents of Donetsk “not to panic, it is a chandelier” , luminous ammunition and I quote directly: “If it were phosphorus, you would be drowning right now”. It is what kind people wrote to us with their best will. There was a noticeable smell of chemistry in the neighborhood. An hour later, experts from the Joint Coordination and Control Center confirmed that Donetsk had been attacked with Grads, loaded with magnesium incendiary rockets.

In 2014, in Slavyansk, Sasha Kots and I experienced an attack with incendiary phosphorus ammunition. We not only live it, but we record it, with its date and time, showing the moment in which match balls fell on us. We submitted this material to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. The use of phosphorus in residential areas is prohibited and was presented in the UK as part of the documents recording the war crimes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

So, fearing bad publicity and reprimand, Ukraine has switched from phosphorus to magnesium in recent years. Magnesium can be used in a tortured city trying to fall asleep. Luckily, its combustion temperature is even higher. However, it burns faster than phosphorus. Believe me, when it falls on your head and on your house, the feeling is similar. A rocket contains 180 incendiary elements, magnesium hexagons and a pyrotechnic composition that ignites when the ammunition is launched. The number of lights in the sky roughly corresponds to the number of incendiary items. The affected area is 6400 square meters. Luckily, at night, a storm front passed through the DPR. I think that saved us from several fires.

A little later, the official information arrived. Three missiles had been fired at Donetsk, two of them intercepted by air defenses. It is the Ukrainian tactic: fire to try to overwhelm the air defenses with simultaneous targets. Unfortunately it works. Two hours later, I tried to sleep but had to jump out of bed when another explosion was heard in the sky. I opened the window, but instead of magnesium fireworks, I heard a strange sound: pieces of metal were falling from the sky. After the "lights," they hoped the air defenses hadn't had time to recharge. But they had. It may have been a Tochka-U intercepted by the city's defenses, or it may have been a Tornado or Uragan. The metal remains of the indefinite projectile took about a minute to fall from the sky. We will never know where he was going and what his goal was. Air defense keeps much of its victories secret. But Donetsk listens and knows that those boys never sleep. So that the rest of us can at least try to sleep.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/25/25129/#more-25129

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Russia attacked warship and arms depot in Odessa port
Originally published: Prensa Latina English on July 24, 2022 by Martin Hacthoun (more by Prensa Latina English) | (Posted Jul 25, 2022)

“Long-range and high-precision naval missiles destroyed a Ukrainian warship in the dock of a shipyard in the seaport of Odessa and a depot of Harpoon anti-ship missiles that the United States had supplied to the Kiev regime,” the ministry declared in a communiqué.

The release refers that the action put out of service the shipyard dedicated to repair and modernize ships for the Ukrainian Navy.

The statement also clarifies that the Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles were developed by the U.S. company McDonnell Douglas and are currently manufactured at Boeing’s facilities in the United States.

Each missile of this model is capable of developing subsonic flight speed and carrying a warhead of 225 kilograms, and has a maximum range of 120 to 280 kilometers, which varies depending on its modification.

The clarification of the Russian Defense Ministry came the day after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the attacks on the port of Odessa, key to ensuring the safe transportation of Ukrainian grain to international markets.

The UN top representative recalled that Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the international body signed on July 22 an agreement to unblock the export of Ukrainian grain, food and fertilizers across the Black Sea from three ports, including Odessa.

Russia from the beginning of the arrival in Ukraine of foreign armaments stated that any site where such weapons were located would be a military target of its Army.

https://mronline.org/2022/07/25/russia- ... essa-port/

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Ukraine grain deal is feel-good event, but road to peace is long and winding
Under the agreement, Ukrainian vessels would guide ships in and out of Ukraine’s heavily mined ports, and Russia would agree not to attack the area while shipments were moving. Turkey’s role will be to inspect ships leaving Ukrainian ports for smuggled arms

July 25, 2022 by M.K. Bhadrakumar

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Combines work on a wheat field near the village of Talniki in Siberia (File photo). For the first time since the days of the tsars, Russia has emerged in recent years as the world’s largest wheat exporter.

The agreements signed in Istanbul on Friday regarding the export of grain out of Ukraine and Russia catch the headlines as a major development from the angle of global food security, which it surely is. Between around 22 million tonnes of grain from last year’s harvest now trapped inside Ukraine due to the war, and an estimated 41 million tonnes from Russia’s 2022/23 wheat exports, around 60 million tonnes, are reaching the world grain market.

A conservative estimate is that Russia’s 2022 wheat crop will reach 85 million tonnes and if the weather holds good, it may go up to 90 million tonnes, a record harvest. Suffice to say, Russia’s importance to the global wheat balance in the new season is likely to be unprecedented. Supplies from Russia will account for more than 20% of the 2022/23 global wheat trade, consolidating its position as the world’s number one wheat exporting country.

Thus, two sets of agreements were signed in Istanbul, one relating to the modalities of transportation of the Ukrainian grain from three designated ports on the Black Sea — Odessa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhne — via a “grain corridor” to Turkey, and a second one between Russia and the United Nations relating to the lifting of Western sanctions on Russia’s exports of wheat and fertilizer.

In reality, Russia is getting sanctions waiver from the West even as it is facilitating the operation of the “grain corridor” out of Ukrainian ports in the war zone. Is there a linkage between the two? The answer is “yes” and “no”. But the Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports followed the Western restrictions on shipping and insurance for Russian ports was more than a coincidence.

Therefore, this is a political victory for Russia — apart from substantial income out of the exports (roughly, $20 billion) and continued Russian presence in the important markets in Africa, the West Asian region, etc. which has strategic implications for Russian foreign policy in the medium and long term.

Under the agreement, Ukrainian vessels would guide ships in and out of Ukraine’s heavily mined ports, and Russia would agree not to attack the area while shipments were moving. Turkey’s role will be to inspect ships leaving Ukrainian ports for smuggled arms. In effect, Turkey has emerged as a broker between Russia and Ukraine under UN supervision from a Joint Coordination Center being set up in Istanbul for the implementation of the accord.

The fact that Russia and Ukraine could strike a deal at all is important enough. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has welcomed the grain deal in Istanbul as “a positive step towards addressing the far-reaching impacts of Russia’s war… The international community must now hold Russia accountable for this deal.” The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on his part, said Moscow finds it “gratifying that Washington and Brussels have stopped obstructing the path toward an agreement on grain.”

Things are adding up

The big question is whether this development and the “feel-good” it created in a “win-win” spirit betwixt two warring nations would have any downstream impact. The indications are mostly discouraging but the dawn of peace often breaks unexpectedly.

The military situation in Ukraine is somewhat static at the moment, although it can change abruptly. There have been no breakthroughs on the front lines since Russian forces seized the last two Ukrainian-held cities in the eastern province of Luhansk in late June and early July. The Russian operations in the Donetsk region have generally slowed down in the past fortnight but that could be attributed to the hilly terrain surrounding the key city of Slavyansk, which is of strategic importance. (The Ukrainian steppes begin to the west of Slavyansk.)

Meanwhile, a new phase of the war has commenced with the deployment of the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) supplied by Pentagon, which fires GPS-guided rockets at targets 80 kilometers away, a distance that puts it out of reach of most Russian artillery systems. Conceivably, it bolsters Ukraine’s strike capability. But then, HIMARS is neither a game changer nor a compensation for the vast depletion of Ukrainian fighting capabilities during these five months of fighting, which will take years to recoup.

Kiev seems to believe that its gradually increasing supply of Western arms, such as HIMARS, will enable it to recapture lost territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed Friday’s grain deal as unlocking around $10 billion worth of grain exports, but on the war as such, he said there could be no ceasefire unless lost territory was retaken.

Zelensky said, “Freezing the conflict with the Russian Federation means a pause that gives the Russian Federation a break for rest. They will not use this pause to change their geopolitics or to renounce their claims on the former Soviet republics.” The White House on Friday also announced $270 million in fresh support for Kiev, which includes four more HIMARS and up to 580 Phoenix Ghost drones, “produced specifically for Ukraine.”

That said, the fact remains that the wheat deal is yet another instance of sanctions waiver by the European Union, where its own interests are also involved. In particular, shortage of fertilizer has become a hot button issue in Europe, which recently witnessed farmers’ protests.

To be sure, things are adding up. The EU is increasingly hard-pressed to come up with credible sanction packages anymore. In the latest instance, after oil and gas and fertilizer, the EU blocked a proposal on Thursday to sanction a Russian metals company, which is a critical supplier of titanium to Airbus.

The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban probably articulated a thought that is gaining ground in the European mind when he said in a speech in Romania on Saturday that the EU needs a new strategy on the war in Ukraine, as the sanctions against Moscow have not worked. “A new strategy is needed which should focus peace talks and drafting a good peace proposal … instead of winning the war,” Orban said.

Orban recalled that the Western strategy has been built on four pillars: the first that Ukraine would win a war against Russia with NATO weapons; second, that sanctions would weaken Russia and destabilize its leadership; third, that sanctions would hurt Russia more than Europe; and, fourth, that the world would line up in support of Europe.

This strategy has failed, according to Orban, as governments in Europe are collapsing “like dominoes”, energy prices have surged and a new strategy was needed now. “We are sitting in a car that has a puncture in all four tires, it is absolutely clear that the war cannot be won in this way,” he said, adding that Ukraine will never win the war this way “quite simply because the Russian army has asymmetrical dominance.”

Significantly, aside the plain-speak, the salience of Orban’s speech was his call for US-Russia talks. “Only Russian-US talks can put an end to the conflict because Russia wants security guarantees” only Washington can give, Orban said.

Orban’s speech came just two days after an unannounced visit to Moscow by the Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto on Thursday, ostensibly on a mission to discuss with his counterpart FM Sergey Lavrov the possibility of securing more gas supplies from Russia. Interestingly, Szijjarto flew to Moscow from Washington.

While in Washington, in an interview with the Washington Times, Szijjarto called for immediate talks to end the war in Ukraine, saying “all wars end up in negotiations” and the world should be focused on how to achieve peace by quickly bringing about a cessation of the nearly five-month-old conflict.

Of course, Orban’s credentials to facilitate US-Russia talks are impeccable — and matchless. The known unknown here is whether there is sufficient interest among the warring parties to freeze the conflict at this point. Russia seems to insist that any peace talks at this stage would have to recognize its control over not only Donbass but the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia as well. There is also talk of the special military operations going far beyond its originally set parameters. Indeed, the Kharkiv front has become kinetic.

The Moscow press and TV have been reporting that preparations are under way to hold referendum in Kherson and Zaporizhia on their integration into Russia. On Wednesday, on the eve of the “feel-good” news regarding the grain deal, the White House spokesman John Kirby alleged that “Russia is beginning to roll out a version of what you could call an annexation playbook” and that there is “ample evidence in the intelligence and in the public domain” of Russia’s unfolding efforts, which include installing the ruble as the national currency in the areas it intends to annex, just as it did in Crimea.

One way of deciphering Kirby’s rhetoric is that it could be an opening shot? But the paradox is that the longer the war continues, the bigger becomes Russia’s scale of demands and by autumn/winter, Russian demands may well include Kharkiv — and, quite possibly, the Odessa Region as well.

‘Why Biden Failed’

On the other hand, the geopolitical reality is that Russia’s diplomatic space to maneuver is also expanding and possibly outstripping Washington. For instance, in the critical West Asian theater which has historically been important for the Western Cold War strategy against the former Soviet Union, President Biden tried to convince the nine Arab leaders he met in Jeddah last week that a reviving Cold War is coming to the Middle East and to sign up on the side of the US against Russia (and China), but “found no takers for his message, even when he added Iran to the equation,” to quote David Ottaway at the Wilson Center.

The public silence of those Arab leaders when it came to Biden’s talk of a Cold War or even the US and Israeli confrontation with Iran over its accelerating nuclear program was deafening. Again, on Tuesday, the ringing endorsement of Russia’s war in Ukraine by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during his meeting with President Putin went further than the Kremlin’s all other allies in backing Moscow in the Ukraine crisis, signaling a much stronger alliance between Moscow and Tehran in the making.

Meanwhile, in a dramatic display of the reach of Russia’s influence in West Asia, upon his return from Tehran, Putin had a phone conversation with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud “with an emphasis on the expansion of mutually beneficial trade and economic ties” where they “examined developments on the global oil market”; “focused on the importance of further coordination within OPEC+”; and were “pleased to note that the OPEC+ member countries consistently fulfill their obligations in order to maintain the necessary balance and stability in the global energy market.”

Again, on Thursday, even as the Istanbul agreements on grain exports were signed, Putin signed a decree on the holding of the second Russia-Africa Summit and other events of the Russia-Africa format in Russia in 2023, while on Sunday, Lavrov set out on an Africa tour to follow up, starting with Egypt. No doubt, Russia’s grain supply chains with African countries across the continent being restored now, Lavrov will top up Moscow’s dynamic agenda with African continent with newer areas of cooperation with special attention to the situation around Ukraine.

The contrast between the America’s and Russia’s creativity on the diplomatic plane couldn’t be sharper. Biden promised a foreign policy in the interests of America’s middle class. What happened to it? Hasn’t the Biden presidency lost the plot? The sooner the Ukraine peace talks begin, the better chance for the Western card in the long and difficult negotiations ahead.

Wisdom lies in seizing the “feel good” over the grain deal to open negotiations with Russia. Or else, 2022 might be the last year Ukraine would have exported its grain through its own ports on the Black Sea. The non-Western world that has its priorities worked out on the development agenda and is struggling with recession and the pandemic has no interest in bandwagoning with the US’ new Cold War against Russia and China.

Surely, there must be some other way to regain America’s leadership role globally? Washington is not realizing how much it is in the US interests too to rethink the Ukraine strategy and Russia relations.

What Biden’s recent tours abroad underscore is that “the damage done by decades of misguided US geopolitics cannot be undone,” while on the other hand, “the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine will push weakened institutions of governance to the point of collapse… (and) the pillars of the US’s own liberal regime are under attack.” These are excerpts from a searing piece titled Why Biden Failed authored by Adam Tooze, the well-known British historian who is a professor at Columbia University and Director of the European Institute.

Prof. Tooze wrote last week: “Meanwhile, the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine will push weakened institutions of governance to the point of collapse. And as Washington seeks to cajole “democracies against autocracies” abroad, the pillars of the US’s own liberal regime are under attack. The overturning of Roe vs Wade enables the reactionary denial of reproductive rights across red-state America.

“The (US) Supreme Court is also set on demolishing the legal bases for key environmental regulations… If Biden’s plan was to stabilize US democracy with progressive politics –- an updated New Deal for the 21st century –- the conclusion now is that his presidency has failed.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/07/25/ ... d-winding/

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US & EU Hindering Russo-Turkey Efforts to Solve Food Crisis, Mediate Peace
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 24, 2022
Ekaterina Blinova

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On July 22, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine signed documents aimed at resolving the problems of supplying food and fertilizers to world markets and ensuring safe maritime corridors for Ukrainian grain. The Joint Coordination Center will make sure that Kiev does use the grain shipments to import weaponry.

“The signing of the grain agreement in Istanbul showed that the parties can negotiate and reach consensus, which means that there is a theoretical possibility for making peace [between Russia and Ukraine],” says Baris Adibelli, political scientist, professor at Kutahya Dumlupinar University and expert on Asian countries. “This is very important because a certain critical threshold has been crossed. Turkey’s efforts have paid off. The agreement showed that both sides of the conflict trust Ankara.”

Earlier, the United Nations raised the alarm over the emerging food crisis, with the West trying to pin the blame on Moscow. The US and its allies particularly accused Moscow of the alleged blockade of Ukrainian grain shipments amid Russia’s special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.

Russia has repeatedly shredded the allegations, citing the fact that Kiev created numerous obstacles for the Ukrainian grain exports by mining its sea ports and deliberately setting crop fields on fire using helicopters and artillery in the Zaporizhzhya, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Kherson regions to frame Russia as a threat to food security.

The Kremlin also lambasted the Western press for deliberately distorting the facts with regard to the food crisis and silencing the fact that Western sanctions on Russia’s agricultural sector have inflicted far more damage on the world’s food market than the alleged “blockade.”

In May, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) signaled that it had arranged a safe corridor for food exports from Ukraine, stressing Kiev is not in haste to exploit the opportunity and refusing to de-mine the ports. The Turkish leadership, which joined Moscow’s effort to solve the grain dilemma, echoed Russia’s concerns. Speaking to Anadolu Agency on May 31, Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu noted that the food crisis is facilitated by naval mines placed by the Ukrainian military at the country’s ports and Western sanctions slapped on Russian ships in terms of insurance and the provision of services at international ports.

“The [Russo-Turkish-Ukrainian] agreement was necessary so that food could reach the regions in need, reducing a famine threat,” says Hasan Unal, political scientist and lecturer at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Maltepe. “Who was capable of mediating the deal? Direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia were impossible. Not a single Western country could do this – almost all of them are on Russia’s list of ‘unfriendly countries’. The UN also behaved quite passively on this issue, not showing sufficient initiative. As a result, Turkey entered the process and achieved a solution to this problem.”

Unal explains that since the beginning of the Russian special operation, Turkey has pursued a cautious, balanced policy. Despite being a member of NATO, it did not join the West’s anti-Russian sanctions, and closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles to all warships under the 1936 Montreux Convention on February 27. According to the political scientist, these steps ensured the trust of Moscow and Kiev in Ankara.

Nonetheless, the assumptions that the grain export deal could be a harbinger of a peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine is “too optimistic,” according to Unal: “The problem is that the Western world has not yet abandoned the desire to force Ukraine to fight with Russia,” the political scientist stresses. “The West, primarily the US and the UK, wants to continue this conflict by supplying even more weapons to Ukraine”.

All Major Agricultural Producers Should Take Part in Solving Food Crisis

However, the food crisis will not end with the arrival of grain from Ukraine, highlights Baris Adibelli, adding that other agricultural producers should join the initiative spearheaded by Ankara and Moscow.

The Istanbul agreement envisages not only ensuring Ukraine’s food exports but also the UN facilitating the removal of Western restrictions on the export of Russian agricultural products, including fertilizers, in the first place.

Russia is seen as a larger producer of agricultural goods than Ukraine. In particular, while the countries jointly produce nearly a third of global wheat supplies, Russia provides around 17-18% to the market, with Ukraine’s share amounting to roughly 9-10%. When it comes to fertilizers, Russia is a top exporter of the commodity. In 2019 Russia’s global share of the nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus export markets accounted for 15%, 19% and 14%, respectively, while Ukraine’s share of fertilizers amounted to less than 1%. While this makes Russia’s agricultural exports a key to solving the emerging crisis, the US, India and China should also contribute their fair share, insists Adibelli.

“This year, the United States, India and China set a record for cereal production. However, these countries do not export grain,” argues Adibelli. “They store the commodity for domestic consumption and buy grain in world markets to replenish their storage facilities. The UN in this situation should intervene and urge these countries to share surplus grain with the countries in need.”

The professor notes that Turkey can actively participate in the initiative to resolve the global food crisis given that Ankara has already demonstrated that it has the potential to do this.

“Incidentally, Europe has also come up with a number of initiatives to transport food by rail,” says the political scientist. “However, Europe’s goal is not to ensure that products are delivered to the people in need. The European countries’ task is to prevent Turkey from taking the leading role in this process and raising its prestige in the international arena. As you know, Europe is following the US’ suit when it comes to provoking and maintaining military conflicts.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... ate-peace/

How the US is Killing its Principal Competitor – the EU
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 24, 2022
Vladimir Danilov

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It will hardly be a revelation for anyone that the United States, being historically the “stepchild” of Europe from where the mass-scale population of the New World began, has always manifested a jealous attitude towards their Alma Mater. This process has especially aggravated in the recent decades when America entered the path of severe competitive struggle with Europe in economics, trade and for global domination.

By pursuing the policy of weakening of the national elites and economy of the European countries, the United States managed to remove Europe from among its competitors. In striving to become the sole “owner of the world”, Washington managed to destroy the old Europe and, leading the new political elite, with a focus solely on the White House to take its place there, to eliminate the then existing balance of opinions, finally weakening the European states. As the result, today both the European Parliament and the laws adopted by the US proteges in the EU are aimed at absolute abiding to the instructions coming from the White House. These instructions do not reflect even a visible European sovereignty and many of them are quite contrary to the interests of the residents of Europe. Regretfully, these new “American wave” politicians are those who play the first fiddle in the European policy. Washington stops at nothing in planting such obedient puppets with the EU decision-making bodies. To confirm this, it is enough to recollect the former head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was slandered when he tried to make decisions that were disadvantageous for the US. Yes, later it was found out that he had been slandered and that he was innocent, however the White House managed to remove the unwanted politician. Unfortunately, this is not a single case; apart from Strauss-Kahn, very many European politicians have been subjected and are subjected to similar pressure.

After the Ukrainian crisis, generated by Washington by bringing to power in Kyiv a manifestly Nazi regime, the US demands the European Union to impose numerous anti-Russian sanctions. Washington is far less affected by these sanctions as compared to its European partners, as the US is lenient to itself and tries not to be active in those spheres where its own economy may be seriously affected. Europeans especially suffer from such policy pursued by Washington in order to weaken the European Union as its competitor. As emphasized by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin at the 2022 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, we see against this background how the economic and social issues in Europe have worsened, the prices for goods, food products, electric energy and motor fuel are growing, the quality of Europeans’ life is decreasing and enterprises lose their competitiveness. According to experts’ estimates, only the direct losses suffered by the EU as the result of the sanctions may exceed $400 billion in the next year. These costs are born directly by the European Union population and companies, the inflation growth in some of the Euro region countries has already exceeded 20%.

The US needs a half-starved and intimidated Europe, obedient to any signals from Washington. This is what the politicians, implanted by the US into various EU structures, are doing. Now, the most complicated situation is forming in the energy sector.

As you know, the reallocation of the hydrocarbon market has long been the main driver of the US geopolitics. The US has unleashed several wars, provoked coups and other conflicts in order to control this market. In view of the fact that the prospects for the growing share of gas in the energy business have significantly increased, the interest of the US in obtaining the global domination in the gas market (promising, according to Washington’s plans, the possibility of increasing domination, as it happened back in the day with the US’s winning of the global oil market) has increased too. Based on the significant role played by the European market in this area, the White House, under purely artificial pretexts, started – via its controlled European politicians and media – the struggle against the alleged threat of the EU’s energy dependency on Russia; as the result, artificial hindrances for supplies of Russian gas to Europe started being created. The European Union, that has fallen into vassal dependence of the US, due to the policy pursued by Washington’s minions in Brussels, such as President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Council Charles Michel, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, has found itself in the conditions of gas and overall energy crisis. After announcing the decision of the American Baker Hughes to stop servicing all Russian LNG projects the European market was thrown into particularly great disorder, as the US has wuthdrawn its service engineers from the Russian gas projects related to Europe. After promising to Europe to compensate the losses from reduced supplies of the cheap Russian pipeline gas with the American LNG, and thereby trying to become the main supplier of this energy resource to Europe, the US puts forward the hard terms for the European Union. According to Forbes, Europe should pay extra charges for energy resources in order to break the demand by the Asian consumers.

However, Washington did not cope with this task in practice, devoting Europeans to even greater misfortunes in July. Thus, due to an accident at the Texas Freeport LNG plant, the export terminal that provided for 68% of the LNG from the plant to Europe will not be operating for about three months. The situation in the European gas market was worsened by Ottawa’s disruption of the repair, maintenance and return of gas turbines for Nord Stream and the corrupt sanctions conspiracy of the US and Canada, which resulted in the forced reduction of Russian gas supplies to Europe.

All these have even more accelerated the growth of the stock exchange gas prices in Europe almost by 25%. Consequently, the stock exchange prices for gas have grown many-fold leading to increasing social tension in the EU countries. Thus, according to reports in the German media, gas prices for consumers in Germany may grow threefold, many enterprises are closed and go bankrupt.

Therefore an epiphany for Europeans about Washington’s blatantly provocative and anti-European policy in the “gas war” it has unleashed is inevitable.

The recent depreciation of Euro, on which the world has placed great hopes and which was regarded by it as the main rival of the US Dollar, became evident competitive struggle between the US and the EU. This has already produced a serious impact on the European countries, and the global economic development will result in failure, as written by Lyan Yabin, professor of the International Strategy Institute of the Central Party School of the PRC.

In the recent years, migration flow has turned into another theater of war between the US and the Old World. However, if earlier this was formed by thousands of refugees coming to Europe from the countries and regions subjected to the US military actions (in the first turn, in the Middle East and North Africa regions), in the last months this is formed by Ukrainian refugees. According to the data provided by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, their number exceeded 8 million due to the situation with the neo-Nazi rampage in Ukraine, inspired by Washington; as the result thereof, Russia was forced to begin the special military operation to counter the policy pursued by the current Kyiv authorities. It is worth reminding in this connection that as far as in 2017, when Europe was swept by a huge stream of refugees from Syria, the European Union, under the pressure from the public opinion, was for a long time refusing to host hundred thousands of immigrants from the Middle East. However the American consulting company McKinsey, closely connected to the CIA, crushed the European officials and developed the logistics for hosting and placing a whole million of new migrants in Europe. A similar situation is taking place now with the Ukrainian refugees: the EU have to spend significant funds at the expense of resolving the social problems of their countries.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... or-the-eu/

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About "Knights of the Winter Campaign"
July 25, 3:52 am

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During one of the recent attacks on Nikolaev, the brigade commander of the 28th Ombre was liquidated (destroyed along with a group of other officers at the field command post), which is called the "Knights of the Winter Campaign".
Below is what kind of "knights" they are.

About "Knights of the Winter Campaign"

And now about the "Knights" (correctly Knights) of the Winter Campaign, whose name is the brigade of the deceased. These are the same "knights" that are spoken of in the "Decalogue of the Ukrainian Nationalist": "avenge the death of the great knights."

Now about the winter hike. There were two of them in Ukrainian history! The first (December 6, 1919 - May 6, 1920) and the second (November 1921) Both ended tragically and shamefully.

Today they are called "raids", although the first, under the command of General Omelyanovich-Pavlenko, was a confused ferment along the Right Bank, where the Petliurists terrified the locals until they surrendered to the Poles. The second campaign under the leadership of Yurka Tyutyunnik was intended to initiate the deployment of an insurgent movement in the rear of the Ukrainian SSR. However, the “reamers” were surrounded near Bazar and Malyye Minki by the brigade of G. Kotovsky and exponentially destroyed, the survivors again fled to the Poles. Tyutyunnik himself, a lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Army, who suddenly became Petliur's general coroner, returned to the Ukrainian SSR and became an active builder of socialism. Having handed over his partners to the Chekists, Tyutyunnik earned the right to teach at the Kharkov School of Red Commanders, where he taught the course "Tactics of partisan and counter-partisan struggle."

Here is an excerpt from his book “With Poles Against Ukraine”: “National heroes” like Petlyura and Levitsky (President of the UNR) traded the lands of the Ukrainian nation, the souls of millions of Ukrainian workers and peasants, traded, hiding like thieves from the eyes of the people and did not ask anyone. They considered themselves called to liberate the Ukrainian people. So they “liberated”, giving Galicia and Volhynia with Kholm region under the rule of the Polish magnate.

Tyutyunnik rose to the position of secretary of the audit commission of the All-Ukrainian State Joint Stock Company of Trade, until he was repressed and shot.

Well, the commander of the first Winter Campaign, General Omelyanovich-Pavlenko, would later become a Nazi collaborator and organizer of the Schutzmannschaft and SS auxiliary police battalions.

Even his own brother Ivan, he arranged for the commander of the Schutzmannschaft of the battalion, which participated in the extermination of the Jews of Vinnitsa and the region.

(c) Miroslava Berdnik

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/58221 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7758221.html

FSB prevented attempted hijacking of combat aircraft
July 25, 9:08 am

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The FSB conducted an effective counterintelligence operation with an operational game against the NATO intelligence services.

The FSB of Russia revealed and stopped the operation of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, supervised by NATO special services, to hijack combat aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

Members of the Ukrainian military intelligence, acting on behalf of the political leadership of their country, tried to recruit Russian military pilots for a monetary reward and guarantees of obtaining citizenship of one of the EU countries.

It was planned to persuade Russian pilots to fly and land aircraft at airfields controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

During the operational game, Russian counterintelligence officers obtained information that helped our Armed Forces inflict fire damage on a number of Ukrainian military facilities.

Employees of the Ukrainian special services involved in the operation and their accomplices have been identified.(c) FSB DSP

Video with FSB operational materials https://t.me/boris_rozhin/58260

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7758366.html

Chancellor Scholz pursues German great power policy
July 25, 11:39 am

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Chancellor Scholz pursues German great power policy

On Monday, Scholz published a guest column in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in which he plainly explained why Germany supports the US war in Ukraine against Russia, actively arming Ukraine, disrupting any peace agreements and overhauling the Bundeswehr.

All this has nothing to do with defending democracy or "Western values", resisting an authoritarian aggressor, and other things that are usually listed as official excuses. In fact, the war in Ukraine is aimed at helping Germany become the leading military power in Europe and from a great power to a world power.

The column is titled "Europe in an Age of War: The EU Must Become a Geopolitical Player."
Scholz writes: “In recent years, there has often been a rightful demand that the EU should become a geopolitical actor. This is an ambitious statement, but no less fair for that! The historic decisions of recent months mean that the EU has taken a big step in this direction.”

When a representative of the German government says "Europe" and "EU", he means Germany. In the article, Scholz emphasizes that the policy of dissent from smaller states in the EU will no longer be tolerated. As we already see in the financial and economic spheres, Brussels, Berlin and the powerful economic forces behind them will also dictate foreign policy. Europe's "most important response to the change of eras" is "unity," Scholz argues.

“We must categorically support it, and we must deepen it. For me, this means an end to the selfish blocking of European decisions by individual states. An end to individual national actions that harm Europe as a whole. We simply can no longer allow the veto of individual states, for example, in foreign policy, if we want to be listened to in a world of rival great powers.”

This article also exposes Zelenskiy's lie that EU membership means democracy and national self-determination. In fact, the oligarchs, for whom Zelenskiy speaks, are promising themselves that in the EU they will be able to exploit their working class more effectively.
The workers of Greece, whose standard of living has been ruined by "economy", at the request of the EU, could say a few words about it, as can the workers of Bulgaria, Romania and other Eastern European countries who, after 15 years of EU membership, still earn only a fraction of that. that their counterparts in Western Europe. As members of the EU, they can freely move to other EU countries and work, but even there they are exploited for pennies in construction sites, slaughterhouses and in the service sector.

Scholz unequivocally supports NATO's goal of continuing the war in Ukraine until Russia is defeated, even if that means the risk of nuclear war. "We support Ukraine - and we will continue to support it as long as it needs our help: economic, humanitarian, financial, and arms supplies," he writes. At the start of the war, Scholz and his SPD party were accused of reluctant support for Ukraine and delaying arms deliveries. But since then the party has taken a clear position. Those who were against a complete break with Moscow were isolated. Former Chancellor Schroeder, a friend of Putin and a long-term employee of Gazprom, is now even threatened with expulsion from the party.

At a conference of the SPD-affiliated Friedrich Ebert Foundation on June 21, the new head of the party, Lars Klingbeil, had already called for "new strategic partnerships".
"We need new strategic alliances based on economic interests and political focus," he said. “Germany should strive to become a leading power. After almost 80 years of restraint, Germany now has a new role in the international frame of reference.”

Klingsbeil openly emphasized that this role of "leading power" also included the use of military force. "I suspect some are now alarmed," he said. “The head of the SPD talks about the “leading power”, about the Bundeswehr, about military force. I can imagine that some will argue. But I can say that we are realists.”

Waging a proxy war against Russia, the German government follows the tradition of the Nazi Wehrmacht. The military defeat of Russia, which NATO and the German government desire, will create the conditions for the fragmentation of a huge country and the plunder of its vast reserves of raw materials - a goal that Germany had already pursued in World War II when it attacked the USSR.

Scholz also wants to strengthen Germany's dominance in Eastern Europe with the help of the war in Ukraine. As "a country at the center of Europe", Germany "will connect East and West, North and South of Europe," he writes. Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and all countries of the Western Balkans should be admitted to the EU. "In the east of the alliance - in Lithuania, Slovakia, the Baltic" - Germany "will significantly increase its armed presence," he adds.

And in thisScholz draws on the criminal tradition of Germany. Control of "Mitteleuropa", as it was then called, was a central goal in the First and Second World Wars. The infamous "September Program" of Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, then Imperial Chancellor, drawn up shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, argued that only Germany, strengthened by Mitteleuropa, could become an equal world power along with Britain, the United States and Russia.

Strikingly, Scholz never mentions the United States in his article. This is not an oversight. Now the US is needed for Germany as the strongest military power in the world and the head of NATO, but in the long run, the US is seen as a strategic rival.

The German media are following the internal and external decline of the US with a mixture of concern and gloating. Here is a typical Süddeutsche Zeitung commentary on Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia.

Biden "arrived with a totally unrealistic list of demands only to depart 24 hours later with many big words but few concrete accomplishments," he learned a "lesson of power loss," writes Stefan Cornelius, head of the paper's political section. “This visit demonstrates the decline of American power; it shows the action of centrifugal forces in what has become a multi-polar world."

(c) Peter Schwartz

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/0 ... f-j21.html - original in English

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

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

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 25, 2022 11:19 pm

Ukrainian Neo-Nazi Battalions Indoctrinated Children with Anti-Russian Ideology
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 25, 2022
Lucas Leiroz

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In a recent report, information was published on how young Ukrainians were indoctrinated to adopt racist anti-Russian ideology in training camps commanded by the neo-Nazi battalions that have been operating in the country since the Maidan coup. In these camps, in addition to ideological indoctrination, children were also initiated into military training to fight Russians, being taught to kill at an early age, which reveals how anti-humanitarian the anti-Russian militias’ praxis is.

Since 2014, children living on the suburbs of most important Ukrainian cities have attended summer camp groups where they are said to be undergoing ideological indoctrination and military training. These camps are relatively common around the world and usually the ideology taught on these occasions is limited to patriotism and nationalism, just as military training is restricted to notions of survivalism and self-defense. In the Ukrainian case, however, the situation was different: children learned to hate Russians and received instructions on how to use weapons against the Russian population.

In the report, it is possible to read the words of some of the instructors of these fields about what is taught to children. It is publicly taught that Russians are “not people” and can be killed. For example, Yury “Chernota” Cherkashin, one of the instructors, stated: “We never point weapons at people. But we don’t consider the Donetsk people, separatists, the Novorossians, the green men, and the Moscow occupants to be people. So we can and should aim at them”. Obviously, these children grow up with this kind of dangerous thinking deeply ingrained in their minds, tending to become racist murderers when they reach adulthood.

This racist hatred is only absorbed into the minds of children due to the exhausting routine of training and indoctrination they are subjected to in the camps. For example, one of the sources mentioned in the report says: “The morning in the camp begins with a roll call and a Ukrainian nationalist prayer. ‘Ukraine, holy mother of heroes, descend into my heart. Holy! Mighty! United! Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!’, the children yell in fervor. In this camp, those who have a cold are mockingly called ‘three-hundredth’ (…), and children often use call signs instead of names. At the beginning of the shift, each child is handed a wooden machine gun. The older children go to the island, where they receive mock-ups of ‘real’ guns”.

“One squad can include from 8 to 14 children. The program is as follows: over the 12 days of the camp, the children go through 10 disciplines: the history of Ukraine, disassembling/assembling a machine gun, tactics, medicine, rope park, climbing wall, self-defense, an obstacle course, a survival course, and robotics”, another source adds.

One of the journalists who participated in the investigation about the training of children, Ethel Bonet, from the Spanish newspaper “El Confidencial”, in 2019 visited the “Leader” camp, one of the largest summer camps in Ukraine, where hundreds of children have already been trained. She had the opportunity to interview several of these children and realized the overwhelming power that neo-Nazi brainwashing had on them. One of the children interviewed was eight-year-old Victoria, who says: “There is only one Ukraine, and we have to protect it. That’s why I came here. I want to learn how to fight. I really enjoy shooting a pistol and walking around in military camouflage”.

Commenting about the girl, Bonet said: “Eight-year-old Victoria seems like an ordinary girl. And her dreams for the future can hardly be called very different from those of her peers: she dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Or maybe a model when she grows up. But the little girl already feels like a soldier. And one does not preclude her future in the ranks of combatants of Ukrainian army. At war with whom? But her instructors explain this to her. Those either who have been in battles against the ‘pro-Russian separatists’ or who have taken part in sabotage operations by the Ukrainian armed forces in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics”.

Victoria is just one example of what neo-Nazi psychological terror is doing to these kids. Young people are growing up thinking it is “normal” to hate Russian people and considering the desire to shoot Russian citizens “good and normal”. The neo-Nazi battalions that promote this type of indoctrination and implant in the minds of these children the desire to kill Russian citizens do not act in this way for nothing: they expect these children to grow up ideologically linked to Ukrainian ultranationalism and to volunteer to fight alongside the paramilitary militias against the pro-Russian forces. It is a process very similar to what Nazi forces did with German youth in the Hitler Jugend’s training programs, in which the youth also learned to hate all the Germany’s “enemies” and were instructed in advanced military techniques.

In other words, the childhood of these children is robbed and their innocence is violated in the name of a racist and outdated ideology, which openly preaches hate against the Russian people. In this sense, it is important to think about the current Russian special military operation as something more than a mission to pacify the internal conflict that has lasted for eight years: indeed, for the Ukrainian youth, Russian military victory will mean the end of a long process of brainwashing and neo-Nazi indoctrination – and an opportunity for children to live like children again.

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

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Another Crazy Plot By A Ukrainian Secret Service Just Blew Up - Flimsy Excuses Follow

In May 2018 the Ukrainian secret security service SBU faked the murder of the Russian 'journalist' Arkady Babchenko in Kiev for very questionable reasons. The murder had first been blamed on Russia.

The SBU claimed that by faking the murder they would uncover a real Russian murderer which made no sense.

It later turned out that the whole thing was part of a corporate raid:

The staged murder, with a fake cadaver, a fake killer and a fake operator behind it, was endorsed (video) at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government.

"Western" media used the hoax to accuse and defame Russia and its president Putin without the slightest supporting evidence. That alone is already a serious mess and reveals the utter failure of "western" journalism and media.

The background of the case, a takeover of a company by illegal means, demonstrates the total social failure of the "western" coup in Ukraine. The worst of the worst, robber barons like Poroschenko and criminal bankers like Kolomoisky went on to steal billions of "western" aid while the Ukrainian state fell apart. Defying the courts the power of the state is secretly abused for slapstick worthy plots to grab up industrial assets.

The victims are the people of Ukraine who get robbed of their means and their security. Russia, the permanent boogeyman of the "west", is least to blame for it.


In August 2000 there was another crazy SBU plot which a month later unraveled:

On August 7 we reported how the Ukrainian intelligence service SBU, in the guise of a private military company, hired former Russian and Ukrainian soldiers allegedly for jobs in Venezuela. All the hired men had previously fought on the 'Russian side' of Ukrainian civil war in the Donbas region. The men were told to go to the Belorussian capital Minsk from where they were supposed to be later flown to Venezuela to guard oil installations.

The Ukrainian SBU then told the Belorussian security service KGB that the Russian mercenaries, who were then waiting in a resort near Minsk, were in Belarus to overthrow its president Lukashenko. The men were arrested and Lukashenko made a public fuss about the alleged Russian coup against him. Ukraine then asked for the extradition of the men. It had plans to indict them for their involvement in the Donbas war.

But just a few days after the men were arrested the whole plan unraveled. Russian media proved without doubt that the men had been tricked to go to Belarus and that they had no plans to overthrow Lukashenko. The Belorussian president apologized and the men were returned to Russia. As the Russian broadsheet kp.ru summarized (machine translation):

...

That version of the story has since been confirmed by the Ukrainian side (see below).


The original plot was indeed to get the former Russian soldiers (who had fought in Donbas) to Kiev by high jacking their plane on the way from Minsk to Turkey. Someone in the Zelensky government had prevented that by contacting the Belorussians.

Today we learn about another crazy Ukrainian plot. The Russian news agency Tass reports of it (machine translation):

FSB thwarted Ukrainian military intelligence operation to hijack Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft

MOSCOW, 25 July. /TASS/. The FSB of Russia disrupted the operation of the Ukrainian military intelligence to hijack the planes of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which was supervised by the NATO special services. This was reported to TASS on Monday at the Center for Public Relations (CSP) of the FSB of Russia.

"The Federal Security Service uncovered and stopped the operation of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine to hijack combat aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces, supervised by NATO special services," the CSO noted.
The FSB reported that "Ukrainian military intelligence officers, acting on behalf of the political leadership of their country, tried to recruit Russian military pilots for a monetary reward and guarantees of obtaining citizenship of one of the EU countries, to persuade them to fly and land aircraft at airfields controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine."

As noted in the special service, the identification of these plans by the counterintelligence of the FSB also made it possible to strike at a number of Ukrainian military facilities. "In the course of the operational game, Russian counterintelligence officers obtained information that helped our armed forces inflict fire damage on a number of Ukrainian military facilities," the FSB said. In addition, employees of the Ukrainian special services involved in the operation and their accomplices have been identified.

From the FSB video with a conversation with a Ukrainian intelligence representative, it follows that the Russian Aerospace Forces were ready to pay up to $2 million for the hijacked plane.


You may want to watch the video on the TASS site. It shows excerpts from Telegram chats, maps and flight plans, as well as a recording of the plotters talking with one pilot.

The basic story has been confirmed by Christo Grozev, who works for the British disinformation service Bellingcat as lead Russia investigator. But Grozev is giving the story a very different slant:

Christo Grozev @christogrozev - 11:51 UTC · Jul 25, 2022
Today FSB announced that they have “foiled a plot by Ukraine’s intelligence services” to lure Russian military pilots to surrender to Ukraine – with their planes – in return for millions of USD in payments (thread).

Using a traditional mix of forged "evidence" and loosely interpreted facts, the FSB also accused me personally of being involved in the plane-hijacking plot (on screen: totally forged message, I never had a UK number, obviously).

What is true, however, is I was involved in this crazier-than-fiction story of triple-agents, fake passports and faux girlfriends - as a documentary film maker. Yes, we were chronicling one of the wackiest counter-counter-intel operations of all time. And the docu is still on.

While Russia is presenting today this as a coup for its counter intelligence, in fact the operation was a serious blunder for the FSB, disclosing unintentionally identities of dozens of counter intel officers, their methods of operation, and their undercover assets.

Remember the Wagner sting operation in Belarus? Well, as Russia invaded Ukraine, some of the Ukrainian operatives who engineered that sting decided to repeat it: this time by enticing RU military pilots to surrender. In April, Ukraine adopted an “weapons-surrender-incentive law”

A team of Ukrainian operatives decided to approach Russian pilots with an offer based on this law. We found out about the initiative, and assured ourselves a front seat – to make a documentary about this brazen operation.

Several Russian military pilots were approached and even sent “proof-of-access” videos from inside their planes, in each case bearing a separate number hand-written on pieces of paper. Some of the footage from the inside of the planes was quite detailed and enlightening.

(Note that now FSB are presenting these videos as "controlled leaks" - while at the same time blurring the inside of the cockpit on TV).

The “negotiations” between the Ukrainian recruiters and the pilots, which we filmed, started out as expected, but their tone changed quickly, suggesting the pilots were no longer talking on their own behalf but were “coached” – likely by FSB military counter-intelligence officers

A clear clue that the FSB had intercepted the communications came when one of the pilots suddenly said he no longer wanted to get his wife out of the country, but his "lover" instead.

It took me about 5 minutes to discover that the pilot's "lover" (waaay too hot for him, FSB) was an FSB asset, working as a fitness trainer by day, but moonlighting as an FSB girlfriend-for-hire the rest of the time. (The Ukrainians figured that out too).

Nor did the pilot seem to know anything about his "girlfriend's" background (he was earnestly surprised she even had a travel passport, and that she had been in Istanbul a few months ago, and to Barcelona a year earlier).

...but I also found out throughout the process of her "boyfriend's negotiations with the Ukrainians, she she had been talking to an FSB military counter-intel officer.

Another clue came when a different pilot suddenly asked his Ukrainian counterparts for advice in incapacitating his co-pilot with a sedative.

At this point, it became clear to me that the original luring operation was over – and had turned into a double “operational game” in which both sides were trying to extract maximum information from the other, while feeding them maximum disinfo.

The Ukrainians started feeding the "pilots" - imem the FSB -fake maps of their anti-aircraft deployments, as well as disinfo on the operational airstrips.
At the same time, the pilots sent (probabably equally fake) approach and descent maps of their own. We kept filming.

(At one point, the Ukrainians even convinced the FSB to send the wife of one of the pilots - along with a whole FSB tailing team - to Minsk, waiting for a promised "meet up" with the Ukrainians handlers. The FSB waited in vain for 4 days)

This bizarre mutual-deceipt game came to an end when the FSB realized no one will show up at any of the suggested meet-ups (FSB were keen to identify Ukrainian agents), realizing they've been burned. And the Ukrainians realized they're likely not getting a real pilot either.

Despite the unexpected ending (so far), we still plan to finish this crazy film.


Grozev's long account of him being involved as only a documentary film maker is unconvincing to me.

The plot by whomever was certainly done in secret. So how would Grozev find out about it?
Why would any secret service allow some outsider to film a documentary while they are implementing such a plot? Fact is, none would.
How and why would the Russian FSB know that Grozev was involved in the whole thing if he was only documenting it?
Why would it accuse him of being involved, including with chat screenshots he now claims are fake, if he played no active role in it?
More likely is that Grozev was part of the crazy scheme and helped the plotters with his 'investigating' experience.

The whole thing blew up and they now need a story, any story, that makes the failure look good. Grozev is providing that to an international audience.

The SBU did the same in the crazy fake murder of Arkady Babchenko case. They did the same after the crazy Wagner plot blew up.

Are you telling me that the people behind this would refrain from offering flimsy excuses now that their latest crazy plot has been exposed?

Posted by b on July 25, 2022 at 14:24 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/07/a ... .html#more

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What's up with fascism in Ukraine?
July 25, 22:44

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What's up with fascism in Ukraine?

I'll start sorting out with Dimitrov's definition. Why with the definition of Dimitrov? Because this is the best definition of fascism at the moment, it has become a classic for a reason.All the rest, including 14 signs of fascism by Umberto Eco, 100 questions and answers about fascism by O. Mosley, are just nonsense. In general, the inability to deal with fascism, its essence, has long surprised me. And if this inability of the capitalists is understandable. Who will dig for themselves? The inability to deal with fascism among the communists is decidedly unclear. I'm not clear. Helplessness in generalizations, in the derivation of the general, irritated and irritated. The definition of Dimitrov and the independent derivation of the genesis of fascism from historical examples of fascism will help, which I will do in this article. But back to Dimitrov.

Dimitrov's definition of fascism:
Fascism is an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of finance capital. Fascism is not supra-class power, nor is it the power of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen proletariat over financial capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. This is the organization of terrorist reprisals against the working class and the revolutionary part of the peasantry and intelligentsia. Fascism in foreign policy is chauvinism in its grossest form, cultivating zoological hatred against other peoples.

1. There is certainly a dictatorship of financial capital in Ukraine. As in many (if not all) other countries. But it is not imperialist, and not open, at least for now, although it is chauvinistic (national superiority).
2. The revolutionary part of the intelligentsia and workers, who do not know if they mean communists, is suppressed. Prohibited by law, prosecuted, including criminal articles.
3. Reprisals against the working class. There is a difficulty with the fact that the working class of Ukraine in a significant part is represented by Russian citizens. Of course, it cannot be said that the workers in Ukraine are all Russian, but the industrial regions of Ukraine are mostly Russian. So the representation of Russians among the workers of Ukraine is significant. However, in my opinion, Russians in Ukraine are being persecuted because of chauvinism, i.e. on a national basis, and not because of belonging to the working class.
4. There is no peasantry in Ukraine, as well as in Europe, Russia and many other places, therefore the mention of the peasantry is no longer relevant.
5. There is definitely fascism in foreign policy in Ukraine. Zoological hatred for other peoples is not just a lot, it is something that is hard not to notice.

Conclusion. According to Dimitrov's classical definition, there is no fascism in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, even if not all the points from Dimitrov's definition are fulfilled, there are enough of them to be ignored, and to be attributed to the typical presence of a certain number of fascists in a capitalist state. There are many fascists and crimes of fascists in Ukraine, below I will show how many, the fascists are to a certain extent merged with state structures: the Rada, the army, the SBU, etc. This cannot be brushed aside.

Consider the Origins of Fascism. From here, its essence will be revealed to us. If you look at the development of fascism in Germany, Italy, Poland, Japan, Spain, you can see certain common features. Here I will offer for review the videos of the YouTube channel “ Keep the course". The establishment of fascism followed the same scenario everywhere. The local capitalists have problems, which they transfer to the workers. The workers, suffering hardships, rise up, organize themselves, and oppose the bourgeoisie. The advanced part of the workers, together with part of the intelligentsia, form the Communist Party. Power in the state under the bourgeoisie begins to stagger, and somewhere (Spain) even they lose it. The bourgeoisie is looking for options to keep power, and finds a solution in fascism. The fascists are destroying the vanguard of the workers and part of the intelligentsia - the communists, they are smashing the organizations of the workers - the trade unions. This eliminates the immediate threat of the bourgeoisie. Further, the task of the fascists is to unite the workers and the bourgeoisie. This is done by looking for a common enemy. More precisely, an enemy of the bourgeoisie is chosen and appointed as the common enemy of the nation. This is the path the capitalists always go first, because the other way is a more equitable distribution of income. And when capital is ready to go this way, as it was after WW2, and happens in “rogue countries” (Iran), the threat of revolution is removed for it. And then the bourgeoisie does not need fascism. But the trouble is that capital is ready to accept a more equitable distribution of income only under the threat of death, not before. Hence the fascists have a chauvinistic foreign policy, where the hatred of the nation is directed at the immediate threat of the capitalists. This may lead to war. If the country did not break into the war by the Nazis, then fascism quietly degrades and goes away on its own. He fulfilled his task of eliminating the immediate threat to the bourgeoisie. Accordingly, it ceases to be needed, hence funding is reduced. And apart from supporting the bourgeoisie, the Nazis have nothing. This is a very important point that without the support of the bourgeoisie, the fascists have no way to retain power. Fascists are not an independent force. It should be noted here that in historical examples, the control over fascism by the bourgeoisie is indirect, through financing. The Nazis quickly took power into their own hands and established a dictatorship. There are few fascists, and in a democracy they have no chance to stay in power. From this, problems arose for the bourgeoisie when the Nazis were swept away. The bourgeoisie could not immediately stop them.

Now back to Ukraine. The trigger for the spread of the ideology of fascism in Ukraine was 2014. If before him fascists were present in Ukraine, say, as in the Baltic states, and even if they violated the law they were persecuted, then after him the persecution stopped, there was a lot of fascism in schools, politics, the army. At the same time, the Nazis do not have full power. There is no majority in the Duma, no fascist president.

Now I will give examples of fascist manifestations in Ukraine, so that it can be seen that there are indeed many of them. When you meet this periodically in the news, it does not always allow you to determine the scale of the phenomenon. But when you see the list, the scale of the phenomenon is hard not to notice. I will make a reservation that I give the title, a brief description and the date (where necessary). Having scored them in the search, it is easy to find the details. I recommend doing this. Also note that not all examples are given.

Fascist humor in advertising and agitation:
[ Fascist humor in advertising and agitation: ]

Fascist organizations:
[ Fascist organizations: ]

Part of the events of the fascists and in honor of the fascists, including in politics and culture:
[Part of the events of the Nazis and in honor of the Nazis, including in politics and culture: ]

Politicians of Ukraine about fascism:
[ Policies of Ukraine about fascism: ]

In 2014, power in Ukraine changed from pro-Russian to pro-American. So, consider all sides of the conflict. And this is clearly seen in the financing of regimes. And therefore, where Yanukovych fled (to Russia). The policy of Ukraine has changed to anti-Russian, which, apparently, was the goal of the Americans. This required the strengthening of nationalism in Ukraine. The so-called nation-building. But historically, the nationalists of Ukraine have become soiled with fascism. By the way, as in Russia, the problems of nationalists in Russia have aggravated. But since there were no other nationalists, they used those that were: Bandera, Shukhevych and others. Which inevitably led the nationalists of Ukraine to fascism. Those. if "Old Man - Bandera", then there are no options other than fascism, because Bandera is a fascist henchman. Quite possible, that if there were other tools for building a nation in Ukraine, a surge of fascism would not have occurred. But there were also many Russians in Ukraine. This is the so-called mine laid by the Bolsheviks. And I form a nation on the image of an enemy - Russia, and Russian Ukrainians were inevitably declared enemies. By the way, it also happened in the Baltics. Unless the European Union financed the changes there in, let's say, a calmer time, and did not demand Russia in the form of an enemy, therefore the changes took place in a milder version. There were enough Russian Ukrainians to organize and oppose such changes. In Crimea, they separated by referendum and went to Russia. A civil war was unleashed in the Donbass. This moment, with a large number of Russian Ukrainians, did not allow Ukraine to easily and quickly form a Ukrainian nation on the image of an enemy - Russia. And if Russia came out at this moment in defense of the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine, the entire US plan to separate Ukraine from Russia and turn it into an enemy would collapse. Unfortunately, the situation reached the Russian authorities only after 8 years. When the Americans managed to create, re-equip and train the army of Ukraine.

Fascists always oppose the communists, which happened in Ukraine, where the communist party was banned by 2015. But in Ukraine there was no strengthening of the working class. He, like the local communists, quietly degraded. The Nazis would never have gained strength there, Ukrainian capital does not need them. If it were not for the monetary and organizational support from outside by the Americans, the fascists in Ukraine would have degraded to the level of the Baltic ones. Local Ukrainian capital is not fully ready to pay for Ukrainian fascists. In the elections to the Duma, the fascist parties of Ukraine were not particularly supported, they did not gain even 5%. The fascist candidate also lost in the presidential elections. After all, fascists are needed to oppose the workers and communists. What was not required in Ukraine. In Ukraine, capital fought with each other. And the Nazis used in the fight against each other. Many of the oligarchs were even called pro-Russian by the Nazis (Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Novinsky). Even about the ATO (Anti-terrorist operation of Ukraine against the eastern regions) they talked about the capture of the east of Ukraine by the oligarch Kolomoisky for himself. This squabbling of the Ukrainian oligarchs with each other in many ways helped the DPR and LPR to fight back and bring the civil war, aka the ATO, to the "Minsk agreements". But American capital needed the Nazis in Ukraine for the anti-Russian agenda. It is quite possible that if another tool for the anti-Russian agenda were available in Ukraine, they would have managed differently.

Conclusion. Thus, the presence of fascism and fascists in politics, the army of Ukraine, for the most part, is planted, financed from outside, by the United States. Fascists serve as a tool for rallying the nation around the image of the enemy. In this case, Russia. At the same time, power is not completely transferred to the Nazis. Fascists even pull back the times. The bourgeoisie is trying to use fascism with more control. How to call such regimes? I think they will come up with a biting name soon.

Z.s. I used the materials of the network, including the materials of colonelcassad , the Plague Doctor and others. https://smertnyy.livejournal.com/49568.html - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7759827.html

Removed from office the head of the MTR of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
July 25, 19:42

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Zelensky, by his decree, removed the commander of the MTR of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Grigory Galagan (more about the character https://diana-mihailova.livejournal.com/5354620.html ) and appointed Viktor Khorenko instead, who served as head of the special reserve of the GUR MOU.

I would not rule out that this is an echo of a failed operation to recruit Russian pilots. I can remind you that as a result of the failed operation to capture a group of Russian PMCs flying through Belarus in 2020 before the presidential elections in Belarus (remember this scandalous story?), Vasily Burba, the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, lost his post, who fell victim to trials and the search for the guilty.
And now, a new failed operation on the territory of Russia https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7758366.html , and again the Ukrainian special services suffer personnel losses at the very top. FSB counterintelligence in both cases outplayed their opponents, for which they paid with their posts.

Plus "Rybar" about participating in this "Bellingcat" story.

On the foiled hijacking of Russian aircraft and the role of Bellingcat

In the story ( https://t.me/rt_russian/121140 ) with the failed Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the operation to recruit Russian military pilots and hijack Russian aircraft, the emphasis is somewhat shifted.

The involvement of the self-styled “Sherlock Holmes of the 21st century” Khristo Grozev (part-time lover of tame Russian deer ( https://t.me/pezdicide/82 ) and head of pseudo-investigators from Bellingcat) is a direct consequence of the incompetence of the Ukrainian special services.

About the professional abilities ( https://t.me/rybar/22594 ) of old Christo, we wrote enough at one time: this is both a banal inability ( https://t.me/rybar/22584 ) to deal with facts, and working out the “order » ( https://t.me/rybar/21535)cosides of the Bulgarian gun mafia.

Last year, this character publicly said ( https://t.me/rybar/22752 ) that he was ashamed of the operation of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine to capture the "Wagnerites", and if it were his will, he would have done everything differently.

A month before the start of the special military operation, Bellingcat ( https://t.me/rybar/23573 ) was turned into a full-fledged anti-Russian information PMC.

Today, Bellingcat acts as the “drain tank” of the Mi-6, which works out the narratives that customers need.

"Civil detective" Hristo Grozev was allowed to document the intelligence operation of Ukraine (as he himself claims). The operation to recruit pilots and hijack aircraft was not only carried out under the direct patronage of Western intelligence services, but also its information support was entrusted to a “media pad” with an extremely dubious professional reputation.

I wonder what it is like for the employees of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine to feel that no one puts their own skills at a penny?

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/58290 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7759499.html

Google Translator

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

From Cassad's Telegramaccount:

***

forwarded from
Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts in the evening of July 25, 2022

⚔️The situation on the fronts for the past day:

▫️Kharkov direction. Our troops, in response to the shelling of Cossack Lopan, respond with artillery to the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Kharkov and Chuguev.

▫️In the Slavyansk direction, the NM of the DPR completely blocked Novoluganskoye and began to clean it up. The APU decided to leave their positions and retreat.

▫️On the Artemovsky (Bakhmutovsky) direction , the enemy continues to defend in the northern part of the settlement of Stryapovka and on the adjacent heights. No significant progress yet.

▫️In the Donetsk direction , counter-battery battles are being fought in Avdeevka, Lastochkino and Orlovka.

▫️In the southern direction , in the waters of the Dnieper estuary, an attempt was discovered to advance and land on the territory of the Kherson region from high-speed landing craft of the Ukrainian sabotage group. As a result, two boats with saboteurs on board were destroyed by Russian troops.

On our border - the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired at the village of Alekseevka in the Kursk region. As it turned out, the fire was fired at the cell tower.

"Arrivals". Krasny Luch in the Luhansk People's Republic was fired upon by American HIMARS missiles.

Rocket strikes by our VKS were inflicted on warehouses with weapons and ammunition in Nikolaev, Zaporozhye, Artemovsk and Kharkov.

In the world.The Russian Federation, within the framework of the grain deal, did not assume obligations that prevented the continuation of a special military operation and the destruction of military infrastructure. This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In addition, Lavrov said that the Odessa grain terminal is located at a considerable distance from military facilities, and Moscow did not create any obstacles for the export of grain.

From the interesting: "At the call of the heart" - a pensioner from Yakutia took a loan for the sake of a trip to the Donbass and help Russian fighters. Andrei drove 9,000 km in his car to bring spare parts for cars to the front and support the fighters in the DPR. In a conversation with Readovka, the man also told what feelings and emotions he experiences while in the danger zone.

Iran will supplyShahed 129 UAVs for Russia. For several days now, the hype about leaks that Iran has sold Russia a certain number of UAVs has not subsided on the network. It is noteworthy that representatives of Washington spoke about this for the first time. In Moscow, the information is not confirmed, but it is not particularly refuted either. Meanwhile, transport Il-76 from Iran with unknown cargoes continue to arrive at airports near Moscow.

Well, we cannot fail to note the act of the brave Russian pilot. He did not succumb to the persuasion of the Ukrainian special services and refused to fight for the side of the Ukrainian militants.

Image

***

Сolonelcassad
❗️🇬🇧🇺🇦 Offensive on Donbass: the situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of July 25, 2022

▪️There are no significant changes in the front line in the Kharkov direction. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are accumulating forces and resources for the long-term defense of Kharkov ..

▪️There are battles and artillery duels on the outskirts of Seversk , for the heights south of Serebryanka.

▪️In the Soledar direction, the allied forces are fighting on the outskirts of Bakhmut:

➖The most intense battles are taking place in the vicinity of Pokrovsky : after taking the southern outskirts of the settlement, the Wagner PMC assault detachments continue to break into the defenses inside the settlement itself. The occupation of Pokrovsky will allow reaching the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut (Artemovsk) and proceeding to storm one of the key links in the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in this sector of the front.
➖To the north of Pokrovsky , from the side of Vladimirovka , there is an assault on Bakhmutsky - the settlement is the "gateway" to Soledar .
➖Ukrainian artillery fires barrage at the area of ​​Berestovoye , Belogorovka , Yakovlevka .

▪️The situation under the Uglegorsk TPP:
➖Uglegorsk TPP still remains under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The command left the ordinary personnel and left the area of ​​​​the power plant. The day before, key strongholds around the station were taken, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were left with the last escape route to Semigorye .
➖Simultaneously with the flight from the Uglegorsk TPP , units of the 72nd brigade retreated from Novolugansk to Semigorye . Units of the allied forces entered Novoluganskoye , the assault and cleansing continues.
➖The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will use army and tactical aviation along the entire Novoluganskoye-Bakhmut highway , covering the retreat of its forces.

▪️ Ukrainian artillery continues to shell Donetsk , Gorlovka and other settlements of the agglomeration.

▪️ In the Zaporozhye region, the RF Armed Forces hit the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the village of Yulyevka, as well as in Novoaleksandrivka, located in close proximity to the military unit 22051 "Gemini" on the Orekhovskaya highway.

▪️ In the Krivoy Rog direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to expand their success in the Potemkino region and continue the offensive against the positions of the RF Armed Forces in the Kherson region .

Image

***

Сolonelcassad
About fresh deliveries of arms to Ukraine.

1. The United States will soon deliver 4 HIMARS MLRS + ammunition, 580 Phoenix Ghost UAVs and a large number of 155-mm artillery shells.
2. 3 ZSU "Gepard" + ammunition for them were transferred from Germany to Ukraine. In total, it is planned to deliver up to 30 3SUs of this type.
3. Poland to transfer to Ukraine up to 30 modernized T-72 tanks from its stocks.
4. Slovakia says it wants to deliver 11 MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine by the end of August.

***

Сolonelcassad
Regarding "Peonies" https://t.me/boris_rozhin/58284 from long-term storage warehouses.
Now it is quite obvious that our ancestors stockpiled huge arsenals of various weapons not just as they liked to inspire us during the period of Perestroika and the "Saints-90s".
The ancestors stored up all this stuff for the cause and for such historical events, like those that are now taking place in Ukraine.
Yes, weapons can lie dead weight for a long time and create the erroneous impression that all this is scrap metal that will never be useful.
But suddenly there comes a moment when all this goodness is needed, and at the same time there is a reason to grieve over that goodness that was not properly stored and it simply rotted due to improper storage.
But we have done so much that even having squandered part of the huge legacy of the Soviet Army and the Soviet military-industrial complex, we still have huge reserves. So thanks to our hardworking ancestors, who produced all this starting from Stalin and kept it until the collapse of the USSR.
All this is part of their material heritage, the significance of which you begin to understand especially acutely during military operations.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 26, 2022 1:44 pm

The road to Slavyansk
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/26/2022

Image

With the parties increasingly focused on their main objectives, Russia continues to focus its forces on the advance on Donbass. Despite the much-announced and anticipated counter-offensive in Kherson - Ukraine has made several attempts this week to break into various areas of the Kherson region, which will continue and will predictably try to become stronger if the objective of liberating the city is really to be achieved. for September - Russia does not seem to have diverted part of its troops to the southern front and continues with the original plan. After the capture of the entire territory of the Lugansk People's Republic, the advance on the north of Donetsk, more populated and fortified by the Ukrainian troops during the first eight years of this war, was always going to be harder, slower and more difficult.

Original Article: Alexander Kots / Komsomolskaya Pravda

Two Su-25 aircraft broke the usual morning silence and advanced on Lisichansk heading west. Before reaching Grigorovka, they turned their noses skyward, fired their shells, and turned to the left. The aircraft acted on the strong points of the enemy in the surroundings of Seversk, one of the hottest points of the current phase of the special military operation .

Having fled from Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, the opponent has concentrated his main forces here, stretching a line of defense to the south of Artyomovsk. The front line has been leveled, allowing the Ukrainian Armed Forces to hold their positions while engineering units erect the strongest fortifications on the eastern outskirts of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk conurbation. Almost eight and a half years ago, it was here that the resistance of the Donbass militia against the kyiv junta began.

Hence, the battle for Slavyansk will have an importance for both sides that is not only tactical and strategic, but also symbolic. The most combat-ready units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are gathering in this city, whose task is to stop the offensive of the allied forces and prevent our units from reaching the borders of the former administrative regions. It should be remembered that the highest authorities of the country have marked the complete liberation of Donbass from the presence of Kiev troops as the main task of this phase of the special military operation .

The difficulty with a straight line front is that it is difficult to break through the middle and attack orders can wipe out surrounded troops. So the main efforts are now focused on advancing on the two ends of this border: Artyomovsk to the south and Seversk to the north. If you are lucky at one of these points, the entire line will gradually shake and begin to retreat to the next echelon of defense. If we talk about Seversk, the enemy will only be able to retreat to Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, since the road to the south will have been cut off. Without capturing this city, there can be no talk of progressing further west.

The LPR army, which is also taking part in the battles on the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic, drops leaflets calling on Ukrainian troops to leave the city to avoid its destruction and civilian casualties. However, the problem is among the paramilitary units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which here have a large number of foreign mercenaries who managed to flee from Lisichansk. In the last week alone, Americans Luke Skywalker have died near GrigorovkaLucyszyn and Bryan Young, the Canadian Emile-Antoine Roy-Sirois and the Swedish Edvard Selander Patrignani. It is known that Lucyszyn was a policeman. As a young man he served in the US Army. Canadian Roy-Sirois served in the French Foreign Legion. There is not much information about the Swede, but there is evidence that, before arriving in Ukraine, he served at the Uppsala air base with the rank of lieutenant in the Swedish aviation. This is a contingent that is not going to give up, considering the experience of their comrades captured in Azovstal. So the key to Slavyansk will have to be torn out by fighting.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/26/25134/#more-25134

The casual observer may not ken the importance of Slavyansk to the people of Donbass...
The Donbas Rebels in Their Own Words

Dimitri A. Simes
Apr 25, 2022

April 12, 2014, started out as just another typical day for the eastern Ukrainian town of Slavyansk. At 9 a.m., a dark green truck surrounded by several dozen fighters wearing masks drove up to the local police station. The armed strangers took a rope that was attached to the truck and tied it to a metal grid covering one of the police station’s windows. Within seconds, the truck drove off at full speed, ripping the grid completely off.

Having eliminated this obstacle, the fighters smashed in the window with their rifles and began entering the building one by one. Shots were heard from inside. At the same time, several fighters climbed onto a canopy above the police station’s entrance. Seizing a Ukrainian flag that was hoisted there, they threw it to the ground and triumphantly raised a Russian tricolor in its place.

Thus began the Battle for Slavyansk, the opening shot in the Donbas War that has resulted in over 14,000 dead and many more displaced since 2014. The conflict entered a new, deadlier phase on February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow would launch a so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine under the pretext of defending the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas. Although the final outcome has yet to be determined, the past month of heavy fighting in Ukraine has already caused destruction on a scale not seen in Europe since the end of World War II.

Surprisingly, very little has been written about the Battle of Slavyansk in English despite its historical significance. In Russia, however, a number of books about the clash have been published in recent years. Perhaps the most prominent of them is 85 Days in Slavyansk by Alexander Zhuchkovsky, a volunteer from St. Petersburg who fought in the battle alongside the pro-Russian rebels. Relying on his personal experiences and interviews with other direct participants, Zhuchkovsky provides a rare insider’s look at how the battle unfolded, who exactly were the pro-Russians rebels, and their complicated relationship with Moscow.

The story of the Battle of Slavyansk begins with Igor Girkin, better known by his nom de guerre “Strelkov,” a former colonel in Russia’s military and Federal Security Service (FSB). Born in Moscow in December 1970 and initially trained as a historian, Strelkov gained his first battlefield experience as a volunteer in Transnistria and Bosnia in 1992–93. He later fought in both the First and Second Chechen Wars. Strelkov retired from the FSB in 2013, but claims to have played an active role during Russia’s annexation of Crimea the following year.

Although Strelkov only became a household name in Russia following Slavyansk, he was already well known within a narrow circle of veterans and journalists. During his spare time, Strelkov often penned articles for nationalist newspapers and helped organize reenactments of famous battles from Russian history. Ideologically, Strelkov was an avid monarchist who called for a new union between Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

In early April 2014, while Strelkov was still in Crimea, a wave of pro-Russian demonstrations swept over eastern Ukraine. Inspired by Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and hoping to capitalize on its momentum, a group of local activists reached out to Strelkov for help in transforming the protest movement into an armed uprising. As Zhuchkovsky explains, the plan for Strelkov and his associates was to occupy government buildings, unite local residents around them, and prepare the ground for the arrival of Russian troops—in other words, the Crimean scenario.

Every uprising needs a flashpoint and Slavyansk was soon chosen as the ideal choice for this particular one. Like in much of the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, the population of Slavyansk exhibited strong pro-Russian sympathies. The city was small enough to be quickly taken by several dozen fighters, but also large enough to serve as a key transportation hub. Finally, Slavyansk was geographically well positioned to serve as a “shield” for the major industrial cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, which in the long run would become the political centers of the Donbas rebellion.

One obvious question emerges: Who was behind Strelkov’s expedition to Slavyansk? Zhuchkovsky admits that he does not have a definitive answer and reveals that Strelkov was, unsurprisingly, reluctant to elaborate on the issue during their interview. Zhuchkovsy proposes the following explanation: In the absence of a definitive decision by the Kremlin on what to do next with Ukraine, some elements of Russia’s elite were willing to help Strelkov test the waters in the Donbas.

On the night of April 12, Strelkov and 52 volunteers that he had recruited in Crimea arrived in Russia’s Rostov region, near the border with Ukraine. After leaving their documents behind on the Russian side of the border, the fighters crossed into the Donbas on foot, where they met up with local activists who had prepared transportation for them. By morning, they had arrived in Slavyansk. As Strelkov had anticipated, local police surrendered after a brief exchange of gunfire.

During the first two weeks after the capture of Slavyansk, very little actual fighting took place. Zhuchkovsky writes that when the Ukrainian government sent its 25th Airborne Brigade to the city, the rebels were able to disarm the unit without firing a shot. For their part, the rebels avoided attacking Ukrainian military checkpoints.

This relative lull came to an end on May 2, when the Ukrainian military attempted a frontal assault on Slavyansk with the help of hundreds of soldiers and dozens of armored vehicles and combat aviation. Although the Ukrainians succeeded in seizing a strategic height near Slavyansk, the rebels managed to repel the offensive on the city itself.

Zhuchkvosky argues that a major reason why this initial assault failed was because Ukrainian troops showed excessive caution, fearing that the positions in Slavyansk were being manned by elite, undercover Russian Spetsnaz units. “In fact, at each of these positions, there were between three and ten poorly armed militiamen who would have been easily dispersed in a real attempt to break through with armored vehicles,” he writes.

According to Zhuchkovsky, the Slavyansk militia consisted predominantly of Donbas locals, with a significant number of Russian volunteers as well (the ratio moved from 90:10 to 70:30 as the battle went on). At its peak, the Slavyansk garrison numbered around 2,500 fighters. Ideologically, they were all over the map. Whereas the Russian volunteers tended to be Orthodox Christian monarchists like Strelkov, most of the Donbas locals harbored nostalgia for Soviet-era socialism.

“A significant number of the Slavyansk militiamen are men of age,” Zhuchkovsky writes, quoting a Donbas pro-Russian activist. “They wanted revenge for the treason of 1991, for the robbery of the 90s, for the elections of no choice, for the government dancing to the American tune, for the years of Ukrainization. For them, it was probably their last attempt, their last opportunity to fight for the country they lost in 1991.”

Despite their early successes on the battlefield, Strelkov’s forces lacked the necessary manpower and weaponry to conduct any serious offensive operations beyond the occasional ambush or counterattack. This problem was compounded by the absence of a central command among the rebels. Zhuchkovsky explained that although a significant number of Russian volunteers and weapons crossed into the Donbas during the late spring and early summer of 2014, only a small percentage made their way to Slavyansk since they were quickly scooped up by other local commanders. Strelkov’s forces also lacked proper communications equipment, forcing them to rely on short-range radio devices and even mobile phones.

However, their main predicament was that contrary to Strelkov’s expectations, Russian military help did not appear to be on the way. At first, there were some signs that the situation in the Donbas would evolve along the Crimean scenario. On April 24, Russia kicked off large-scale exercises near the Ukrainian border, sparking hopes among the rebels that Moscow was preparing to intervene. Less than a month later, however, the drills came to a close and Russian troops returned to their barracks.

At the same time, Putin publicly urged the rebels to postpone a referendum scheduled for May 11 that would decide whether the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts would secede from Ukraine. Despite this request, the rebels went ahead with the referendum as planned and declared independence. The following day, Strelkov, in his new capacity as “defense minister” of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, issued a formal appeal to Moscow for Russian military help. That request went unanswered.

Following Ukraine’s election on May 25, Russia recognized Petro Poroshenko as the new president of Ukraine, a decision that Zhuchkovsky says many rebels regarded as a “heavy psychological blow.” Exactly one month later, the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, canceled a resolution that it had adopted prior to Crimea authorizing Putin to use Russian military force on the territory of Ukraine.

While the Kremlin signaled that it had no plans of sending troops to the Donbas, the Ukrainian military switched its strategy from attempting to storm Slavyansk to besieging it. Over the course of May and June, Ukrainian forces captured the settlements surrounding Slavyansk one by one from the vastly outnumbered rebels. At the same time, Ukrainian artillery bombarded the city, cutting off its water, food, and electricity supplies. By the time July rolled around, Slavyansk was almost completely surrounded.

“The militiamen often won local victories and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, with many still hoping for Russian support,” Zhuchkhovsky writes. “But the mood was already fatal. The fighters lived each day waiting for the enemy’s attack, waiting for the opportunity to give a final and decisive battle, in which the entire garrison could heroically die defending Slavyansk.”

That anticipated final showdown never came. Although Strelkov had vowed for months to hold onto Slavyansk till the very end, he suddenly reversed course on July 4, ordering his fighters to prepare for an imminent withdrawal from the city. Around midnight the following day, Strelkov and his troops abandoned Slavyansk under the cover of darkness and headed towards Donetsk. The Battle of Slavyansk had finally ended after nearly three months of grueling fighting.

In the weeks after the fall of Slavyansk, Strelkov was removed from his command position among the rebels and forced to return to Moscow. Between September 2014 and February 2015, Germany and France helped broker two peace deals known as the Minsk accords, which sought to reincorporate the Donbas into Ukraine as an autonomous region. The Kremlin eagerly backed the initiative, seeing it as a way of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO in the long run.

Although the Minsk accords helped reduce the scale of the fighting, disputes over their implementation derailed efforts to end the war. Over the subsequent seven years, the Donbas remained a frozen war zone in which both sides frequently exchanged gunfire and artillery salvos, but made little territorial gains. This fragile stalemate finally broke down on February 24, when Russia launched a full-scale military offensive into Ukraine.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... own-words/
Not bad at all, considering the source, however, giving equivalency to the tit for tat that has been going on all along is incorrect as the Ukrainian forces often targeted civilian areas, accounting for the bulk of the 14,000 causalities.

'Red' added. Why do some communists refuse to support these comrades?

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BRICS' Member State Could Ensure Ships With Ukraine’s Grain

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A BRICS member state could be considered as a candidate for watching over the safety of the ships transporting Ukraine's grain in the Black Sea. Jul. 25, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@WarintheFuture

Published 25 July 2022 (14 hours 21 minutes ago)

According to Andrey Bystritsky, one of the member states of the BRICS can be a third country involved in ensuring the shipment of Ukraine's grain.

Chairman of the Board of the Valdai Discussion Club’s Development and Support Foundation, Andrey Bystritsky, said Monday that one of the BRICS nations states could be a good candidate for ensuring the safety of Ukrainian grain's shipment in the Black Sea.

On Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that a third party would be designated later to guarantee, along Türkiye and Russia, the security of the vessels transporting Ukrainian grain in the Black Sea.

"We managed to reach an agreement in Istanbul: Ukraine demines ports and lets ships take to the sea, while Russia, Turkey, and one more party, which will be determined later, escort the ships to the Bosporus," he said during his meeting with the ambassadors of the Arab League nations.

"This country cannot be from the list of unfriendly states that impose or support sanctions against Russia," told Bystritsky. "It is clear that these are not European Union or NATO member countries, or, for example, Australia and New Zealand. This country must be non-aligned in the full sense of this word, independent, have weight in the international arena, have enough resources and personal qualities of its leaders not to turn a blind eye to possible violations, and behave by the agreed rules," he explained.

"For example, it could be one of the BRICS countries or one of the African states, although quite unexpected options are also possible," added the expert. According to the Chairman, the nominee must be capable of negotiating and suit all the parties: Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye, and the UN. "There should be a consensus on this issue."


He continued to say that the designated state should be a maritime power, owner of its fleet. "A land-based country like Serbia, which, in principle, could well be considered as one of the candidates, will hardly qualify," he explained.

In light of the current global crisis regarding the issue of food and fertilizer supplies, last July 22, a package of documents was signed in Istanbul for the solution of this matter.

Russia and the UN signed a memorandum in which the UN was committed to lifting anti-Russian restrictions preventing exporting agricultural products and fertilizers.

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

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Bellingcat Denies Ukrainian Officials Responsible For Failed Plot - Zelenski Promptly Fires Them

A few hours after the revelations about the failed Ukrainian secret operation to hijack Russian fighter airplanes were published, Bellingcat's lead Russia investigator Christo Grozev added a few more flimsy excuses for his deep involvement in the failed clandestine scheme:

Christo Grozev @christogrozev - 14:52 UTC · Jul 25, 2022
An important P.S. based on questions from readers.
The Ukrainian operation was not a project of either SBU or GUR. (If it were, there'd be no way we would - or want to - get access to it). It was organized by maverick ex operatives whom we got to know in the Wagner investigation.

So all the Russian statements from today - claiming this was a "GUR" (Military Intel) operation "with support from NATO" - total, unadulterated bollocks. The whole of the FSB CI were fighting tooth and nail against a bunch of, essentially, volunteers. And not for the first time.


Ah. Sure. The following is just a weird 'unadulterated bollocks' coincidence ...

Russians With Attitude @RWApodcast - 16:27 UTC · Jul 25, 2022

Zelensky has removed Ruslan Demchenko from his position as First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council & dismissed Grigoriy Galagan as commander of the AFU Special Operations Forces, replacing him with Viktor Horenko

---
Erik Zimerman @ZimermanErik - 1:39 UTC · Jul 26, 2022
[...] After the release of this information, we learned of two high level dismissals in the Ukrainian government. #Zelensky fired the First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Ruslan Demchenko. As part of the Council, which among other tasks coordinates security matters and advises the president, he very well may have been involved in clandestine matters such as this operation. He also worked as deputy minister of foreign affairs.

Perhaps more tellingly Zelensky also fired the commander of Special Operations Forces (SSO), Hryhoriy Halahan. Until 2016 these units were under the Chief Directorate of Intelligence (HUR / GUR), and so are highly correlated with this kind of operation. The SSO includes psychological warfare units and can be regarded as special forces (Spestnaz) of military intelligence. An operation such as the one Bellingcat and Christo Grozev, aiming at the defection of Russian pilots and their planes to Ukraine, would be right up the alley of the SSO.


More of Erik Zimerman's interesting thoughts about the case can be found here and here.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1551 ... 64288.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1551 ... 24256.html

The whole thing wasn't Mr. Grozev's first foray into making stuff up to further a false narrative. Here is a video documenting previous dishonest behavior by him:

Bellingcat Scams MH17 Warplane Witness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQBkqfcP2sU

Posted by b on July 26, 2022 at 7:05 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/07/b ... .html#more

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Russia to Open a Glonass Navigation System Base in Venezuela
JULY 25, 2022

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Digital animation of Glonass satellite. File photo.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos has announced its intention to establish in Venezuela a monitoring and data collection station for its Glonass navigation system.

“As part of the implementation of the provisions of the agreement between the government of the Russian Federation and the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on cooperation in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes… the state corporation Roscosmos plans to install a measurement station of the Glonass system in the territory of Venezuela,” announced the Russian space agency in a statement issued on Sunday, July 24.

In March this year, Moscow and Caracas signed a cooperation agreement for space exploration. The collaboration is valid for five years and can be automatically extended for periods of five years if neither party leaves the agreement.

According to Roscosmos, the installation of the Glonass system, which is similar to the US GPS, the European Galileo and the Chinese BeiDou, will guarantee safe navigation using PPP (Precise Point Positioning) technology.

The station will monitor the open source signals of Glonass, GPS, Galileo and BeiDou systems, and transmit the measurement results in real time, added the statement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that Russia will continue to develop its space program despite Western sanctions, recalling the milestones that the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) achieved, including the launching of the first artificial satellite and sending the first human into space, despite the restrictions imposed against the USSR at that time.

Moscow has already announced that it would withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS), due to illegal sanctions imposed on Russia for the military operation in Ukraine.

The general director of Roscosmos, Dmitri Rogozin, has warned that the US is deliberating the possibility of disconnecting Russia from GPS, as part of the coercive measures on Russia.

All this is unfolding while the United States and Russia are in a fight to gain power and dominance in space. In this context, the US Department of Defense (the Pentagon) has expressed fear of Moscow’s advance, and acknowledged that the space could become a battlefield. Russia, however, continues to advocate for peaceful use of outer space.

(HispanTV)

https://orinocotribune.com/russia-to-op ... venezuela/

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Larissa, three months of torture in the SBU dungeons in Kharkov
By Laurent Brayard (Posted Jul 25, 2022)

Originally published: Donbass Insider on July 22, 2022 (more by Donbass Insider) |
WarEuropeNewswire

Larissa was a police officer in the city of Kharkov and served Ukraine faithfully for 18 years. But when the Maydan started in Kiev, she and her family, as well as the vast majority of the city’s inhabitants, began to worry. Even before the Odessa massacre, the population proclaimed a People’s Republic of Kharkov and raised the Russian flag over the administration of the Regional Council, firmly committing themselves to the path of joining the Russian Federation. The uprising was crushed in blood by the security forces and the arrival in the city of hundreds of fanatical ultranationalists, led by Andrei Biletsky, the future commander of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment, but also by Igor Mosiychuk, a henchman of the Pravy Sektor party, and of course by the forces of the Ukrainian political police, the SBU. Ukraine’s Minister of the Interior, Arsen Avakov, also bears immense responsibility for what happened in this city, and in many others in the east of the country. Larissa witnessed all these events and after a long time of carrying humanitarian aid to the occupied Donbass, she was finally arrested in March 2015, together with her son, and was ignobly tortured for 3 months in one of the SBU’s secret prisons. For three and a half hours, she agreed to tell us her story. She plunged into the heart of Ukrainian terror, under the blows, the psychological and physical torture, the blackmail and even the lies and absolute denial of the very principle of freedom of thought.

The revolt in the city of Kharkov is put down in blood and terror. Larissa welcomes us in her shop, because since 2016 she has been a refugee in Donetsk. She is a woman who at first sight seems fragile, one can feel the after-effects of the terrible ordeals she has lived through, but a fire burns within her that even the torture and humiliations she has suffered could not extinguish. A mother and grandmother, she was not a resistance fighter and did not take part in any plots against Ukraine, but she deeply disapproved of what had become of Ukraine and as a policewoman she also thought in terms of the law, she says: “I was born during the Soviet Union, in Minsk because my father was a soldier and we moved around a lot. Finally we settled in Kharkov where I got married and had my children. I was scandalized, as were all those around me, by the events in Maydan, all of which was totally illegal and violated the country’s constitution. How was it possible to throw Molotov cocktails at the forces of order, I saw the images of these berkuts burning like torches, the devastation caused in the capital, the destruction and looting. The new government that emerged afterwards was itself illegal, born out of this madness and born in blood. All over the city people were quick to take to the streets, to protest. The people were enthusiastic, peaceful, and after Crimea became part of Russia, we thought that we, too, had to separate from a country that had gone completely mad. My grandfathers fought in the Great Patriotic War, we could not understand that these Nazis could rule in Ukraine, impose their ideology and I understood that in 1945 we had not totally crushed these people. Today in the World, in Ukraine and in the United States, Nazism is rampant, how can they not react and how can they not understand in the West? And then we saw hundreds of Maydan activists arrive, with weapons, in black uniforms, SBU forces and people who came from Western Ukraine, with Biletsky and Mosiychuk. Very quickly they fired into the street and in April already they murdered three people. Terror spread, the city of Kharkov, which I love so much, was under the control of these brigands. I am not particularly attached to Lenin, but this is our history, we cannot cut everything out and it is despicable to fight against memory, culture and civilisations. I myself am a Russian speaker, I don’t speak Ukrainian, I can understand it, I can hardly read it, but everywhere in the city our language is Russian. So banning our history, our language, political parties and then soon using terrible violence against the population was not acceptable”.

Bugged by the SBU and arrested without reason for her political views. Larissa continues her story, sometimes trembling slightly as she speaks, but the further she goes into it, the more her moral and mental strength reveals itself to us. We listen as her story unfolds before us with precision, numerous details punctuated by reflections and considerations on human rights and humanity that no one in the West could contradict. We go from surprise to surprise listening to her, because even with the experience of the testimonies of tortured people that I have already noted, she still surprises us by recounting atrocious and new facts that I had never heard of. She continues: “I didn’t do armed resistance, I had my opinion and I couldn’t remain indifferent, so I started to bring aid to the Donbass. It was horrible to see the Ukrainian air force and their artillery firing on civilians in Lugansk or Donetsk. I remember a dying woman being torn apart by a shell, that image has stayed with me. Our TV channels were showing pictures without commenting, no denunciation of what was happening, so I decided to collect what I could around me, I had a good salary too, and I started to carry help to the back of the front, for the people, for the old people and the civilians. I went to Mariupol, Avdeevka, other towns in Donbass, we carried what we could by car, bread, medicine, clothes, food, whatever we could. It was terrible to see that, and I even heard that in one village three old people died of hunger. There was nothing, pensions were cut off by Kiev, it was terrifying. I made my last trip in December 2014, passing the controls, but I could not suspect that I had already been bugged for a long time. When I was arrested in March 2015, they had been listening to my phone conversations for six months, they told me afterwards. They came to arrest my son first, I was living with my other boy in another flat. I was living on the 9th floor, and they arrested two other people in my building alone. There was a wave of arrests all over the city, a roundup, I don’t know how many people, tens, hundreds. These political repressions were really on a large scale. Fourteen of them came! Fourteen to seize me and I didn’t have time to open the door before they had already broken it down. Some were in SBU uniforms, others in civilian clothes, they were armed, they spread out in the flat and arrested me. Some of them were shouting, others were asking questions calmly. At one point they asked me to go out into the corridor and immediately afterwards they found a grenade in my 12-year-old granddaughter’s boot… Of course it was them who had put it there, I denied having any weapons, but they said I was a terrorist and that I was undermining the security of the state. I found the strength to joke and told them that I had bought this grenade to put in this lined boot to protect it from moth attack… They understood then that they would not get anything from me. I had asked for a lawyer, they were filming with a big camera, I was told that I had no right to a lawyer, being an enemy of Ukraine. Then they took me to the SBU premises and hell broke loose”.

In the hell of torture, blackmail and the sordid dungeons of the SBU. The rest of Larissa’s story will plunge us into pure evil, because although her detention was shorter than that of other political prisoners I interviewed, Larissa was mistreated almost every day of her imprisonment in this secret SBU prison in Kharkov from March to May 2015, and then again in two other prisons between May 2015 and the end of January 2016. She explains: I was taken to the SBU premises and my first interrogation was truly terrible, it lasted 37 hours non-stop, I was prevented from sleeping and the most absurd questions rained down. The SBU agents took turns, I lost the sense of time and I was no longer myself after such treatment. My son had been arrested only to put pressure on me. He was beaten savagely for hours, he was a bloody, bruised, unrecognizable body. They broke his ribs and also his hands and I was threatened that if I did not confess everything they wanted, he would be beaten again. It is a terrible torture for a mother to be blackmailed so cruelly. Finally I was thrown into a jail and collapsed into a deep sleep. When I came to, I was in a cell with about a dozen of us. There were several adjoining cells, perhaps there were 70 unfortunates like me here. Every day we were taken out, taken for a new interrogation, always with lies, pressure, humiliation, threats. We had poor food, soup and bread and the conditions were terrible, it was really the antechamber of death. Men and women were separated. In an adjoining cell, when the guards were not there, we could talk with prisoners from other cells. The men were the worst off, with beds without mattresses or pillows. Some of them were injured and did not receive any treatment. Sometimes we were taken to the promenade, it was just a small courtyard surrounded by walls. I remember the 8th of May 2015, when to celebrate Victory we sang patriotic songs from that time. They were furious, but what could they do to us that was more terrible than what they had already done? They threatened to attack my 84-year-old mother and even my 12-year-old granddaughter. This blackmail did not work, I said they could do what they wanted. I was accused of absurd things, such as being a spy who could see the comings and goings of Ukrainian military planes from my balcony, that I was passing information to the Russians… I replied that this was absurd, but they continued to try to get me to sign a delusional confession. They also told me that if I gave them our flats (mine and my son’s), then I could be free, or that I could also pay a large sum of money that would trigger my release. I replied that there was no law to force me to do this, that it was racketeering and stealing. A prosecutor I knew finally intervened, I was still known with all my years of service in the police administration. But I was not released. They blew hot and cold, I was also beaten and constantly accused and threatened. Finally I was tried once, it was a farce of a trial, I was told that I would be released, which of course was a lie to get my hopes up and then break me. All the false accusations against me were validated, but the truth is that it was only my political views that brought me here. Is this normal in a civilized country? It was then that I was transferred at night so that no one could see me on the street, or see that there were people illegally imprisoned there, that I was transferred to a prison in Poltava. I stayed there until October, I was locked up with women who were partly common law prisoners, there were even murderers, but also political prisoners like me. I stayed there until my second trial, in October 2015, which sentenced me to a year in the camp. I was sent to the latter, in a town in central Ukraine. Then I was released at the very end of January 2016, and I was able to return to my home in Kharkov, my son had been in the camp for five years”.

The flight to freedom… in Russia and the Donbass. Psychological torture, attempts to swindle his property and money, blackmail and threats to harm his family, including the elderly and children, I had never heard such a tale of horrors and especially over such a long period. Three months of intense interrogations, we are here clearly in what was known and committed by the Gestapo during the Second World War, in the same intensity of barbaric and gratuitous violence. How indeed can this “crime of opinion” last 5 minutes in front of the Western media, these famous “democracies” of the European Union? How can support for Ukraine be justified under such conditions? Because the question is important, did the authorities know? Yes, because I have collected testimonies from prisoners who were interrogated at their exchange by people from the Red Cross, the UN and the OSCE. Larissa returned home dazed from such a detention, such a waking nightmare. But her troubles were not over, as she recounts in the rest of her story: ‘I went home, having lost my job, my son in prison, my granddaughter to take care of. One day I met the prosecutor who had investigated my case, it was in the street. He recognized me and came to me. He apologized a thousand times, telling me that he had been forced to conduct the trial in such and such a way. He warned me that I was in the SBU’s sights again, that they would come for me soon. He advised me to flee. I immediately understood that I had to do so, and thanks to my friends and acquaintances, I was able to pay a smuggler to cross the border between Ukraine and Russia, which is not very far from Kharkov. I had to pay a huge amount of money, and they hid me in the trunk of a car. That’s how I ended up alone in Kursk. I stayed at the station for 24 hours. I called other friends and my sister who lives in Moscow. I was looking at the ground totally haggard, all I had left was my handbag… a whole life to end up with a handbag, that was all I had, but I was free, finally! I asked relatives to put my granddaughter on a plane and send her to Moscow. I came to meet her and received political refugee status and even assistance. But because of the law and the fact that Russia and Ukraine were not at war, I was afraid that my granddaughter could be attacked, and I asked for her to be returned to Ukraine through the courts. I told myself that the only place where no international law could reach me… was the two people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk which were not recognized by anyone. I was aware that I was leaving for a theatre of war, but finally decided to settle there. I arrived in Donetsk in May 2016. The people were great to me, the mentality is slightly different from Kharkov, but still very close. Some people found me a modest flat where I only paid the utilities. Others found me things, including a frying pan which was used for a long time to do everything, I didn’t have a pan or a kettle, so even to make tea! I rolled up my sleeves, worked hard and now I have my own business here. My son was finally released after his sentence. He is still in Kharkov where he also helps civilians lacking everything on the front line, as the city is now under attack by Russian troops. After the war, I don’t know if I will go back to live in Kharkov, it is still my city, I have ties there, but in Donetsk now too, it is also my home now, I am very grateful to the people of Donbass for helping me so much. I wish victory for Russia and Donbass and that these Nazis are destroyed, but also that you tell all this to as many people as possible, people must know all this. These criminals and executioners, these politicians and soldiers in Ukraine will have to answer for their actions before the justice of men. We have to hammer it home and that is why I have been telling my story since then, all this has to be known, as far as possible, in all languages, because my case is not isolated, and I am going to try to convince people I know, who have been tortured, to talk to you. They are afraid because they often have family still in Ukraine, you can imagine what the SBU could do to their relatives…”.

Larissa survived the SBU jails, her story in the West will obviously not interest anyone, and yet she is just one of thousands of people all over Ukraine who were arrested, tortured and mistreated by the terrible Ukrainian political police. We will soon publish her video testimony in several parts with subtitles, no one can invent such things and no one can dispute the veracity of her statements. The worst thing is to think that Western governments, and the French government in particular, by supporting Ukraine from the beginning, have been complicit in all these crimes, committed in the name of Ukraine’s entry into NATO and the European Union, and so that oligarchs, lobbyists and foreign interests, especially Anglo-Saxon ones, can cut this country to pieces and strike at Russia. Larissa concluded by saying that justice will be done, that everything will be fine and that victory will inevitably go to Russia. To the question will you vote if there is a referendum for integration into the Russian Federation, she answered: “Of course I will and for Russia of course”.

Translation: Vz. yan for Donbass Insider

https://mronline.org/2022/07/25/larissa ... n-kharkov/

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Gazprom screwed up again
July 25, 18:03

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No sooner had the turbine from Canada reached the Nord Stream than another turbine was stopped for maintenance. Since July 27th.
In view of this, the pumping of gas through the Nord Stream to Europe will drop to 33 million cubic meters per day. It should be noted that before the start of the NWO, 167 million cubic meters per day were pumped through Nord Stream. Naturally, gas prices went up again. The current volumes of gas are not enough to fill storage facilities for the coming winter.
This decision hits Germany hardest, whose industry is critically dependent on Russian gas.
It will be interesting to see how long the repair of the other turbine will take and whether repair work will begin on the remaining ones before winter.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7759220.html

Need to reduce gas consumption
July 26, 10:07 am
.
Image

1. The EU plans to adopt a plan to reduce gas consumption by 15% today. to alleviate the coming energy crisis.
2. Most of the EU countries have already stated that the EU proposals to reduce gas consumption have not been coordinated with them and they cannot agree to such a reduction. Hungary directly called the plan absolutely unrealistic.
3. The EU expects that measures aimed at saving gas and electricity will reduce the consequences of a further reduction in gas supplies from Russia, up to their complete cessation.
4. Under this case, the European establishment has already launched a campaign among the population with might and main aimed at reducing the consumption of gas and electricity (turn up the temperature, turn off the lights, close the doors to rooms with air conditioners, etc.)
5. All this is happening against the backdrop of a reduction in energy-intensive industries in Europe and primarily in Germany. German industry leaders warn that the current exchange rate will be disastrous for gas-dependent German industries.
6. At the official level, the EU once again stated that there are no objective reasons to reduce gas supplies via Nord Stream to Europe. At the current level of supplies, the shortage of gas in Europe to fill storage facilities this winter could be as high as 15-20%.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7760266.html

Google Translator

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

Sharp rises in energy prices are jeopardizing production in Germany

DIHK survey shows: Energy-intensive economy particularly hard hit
natural gas refinery

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The topic of natural gas is becoming increasingly existential for the processing industry © JuliaLine / iStockphoto / Getty Images

More and more companies are giving up their production in Germany or have restricted their business operations due to the sharp rise in energy prices. This is the result of a DIHK preliminary evaluation of the annual energy transition barometer among around 3,500 companies from all sectors and regions nationwide.

Monday, 07/25/2022

According to this, a total of 16 percent of industrial companies feel compelled to react to the current energy situation by reducing production or at least partially giving up business areas. According to their own statements, almost a quarter of them have already done so, and another quarter are in the process of doing so. About half of these companies state that they are still planning corresponding steps.

Dismantling processes in every third energy-intensive operation

"These are alarming numbers," says DIHK President Peter Adrian. "They show how strongly permanently high energy prices are a burden on our location. Many companies have no choice but to close down or relocate production to other locations."

According to the evaluation, the energy-intensive economy is particularly badly affected: the values ​​here are consistently twice as high as the average for industry. A total of 32 percent of these energy-intensive companies are dealing with a reduction in production or a (partial) task of business areas. Almost a quarter of them, i.e. a total of 8 percent of all energy-intensive companies, have already implemented appropriate measures. A further 10 percent of the energy-intensive say they are in a corresponding dismantling process, and an additional 14 percent have such steps in their planning.

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© DIHK

Adrian: "We can also draw the conclusion from these figures: what we are currently observing in terms of the decline in gas consumption in industry is primarily due to the shutdown of machines and systems. It cannot be attributed to improved energy efficiency."

Many companies still without gas contracts for 2022
The DIHK evaluation also shows that many companies still have to procure significant quantities of gas for 2022 in the middle of the year. Only half of the industrial companies have already covered their gas requirements through contracts. More than a third still have to buy more than 30 percent of their annual requirements for 2022. This corresponds to an extrapolated amount of up to 50 terawatt hours of gas.

"Due to the current situation on the energy markets, there is a considerable cost and supply risk for companies in the coming months," says DIHK President Peter Adrian. "Many companies are currently finding that they cannot pass on the price increases they have experienced in direct or indirect international competition to a sufficient extent to customers."

According to the DIHK survey, almost two-thirds of industrial companies (63 percent) see high electricity and gas prices as a threat to competitiveness in Germany.

https://www-dihk-de.translate.goog/de/t ... r_pto=wapp

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

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 26, 2022 11:17 pm

Congressional Delegation in Kyiv Wants US Military Advisors Sent to Ukraine

Reps. Michael Waltz (R-FL) and Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) favor the idea
by Dave DeCamp Posted onJuly 24, 2022CategoriesNewsTagsUkraine

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers visited Kyiv on Saturday, and two members of the delegation told Fox News that they support the idea of the Pentagon sending military advisors to Ukraine, which would significantly escalate US involvement in the war.

After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) said he supported sending military advisors into Ukraine to oversee weapons shipments and help with intelligence and logistics. “It could be contracted, it could be civilian, but it could be military as well,” he said.

“I don’t think anybody is advocating for any [American] military on the front line, but helping with logistics, planning those operations, integrating the intelligence is incredibly important right now,” Waltz added said.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) also expressed support for sending military advisors to track weapons shipments. “It would be good to have a logistics officer here to make sure that we understand and track the weaponry that we’re sending,” she said.

Last month, The New York Times reported that there is CIA personnel operating in Ukraine to direct intelligence sharing with Kyiv. The report said there are also commandos in the country from Britain, France, Canada, and Lithuania to help facilitate the transfer of Western arms, but there is currently no known US military presence in Ukraine.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was also part of the delegation that visited Kyiv but wasn’t quoted saying he supported sending military advisors.

https://news.antiwar.com/2022/07/24/con ... o-ukraine/

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THE CASPIAN SEA: GEOSTRATEGIC NODE OF EURASIA
Betzabeth Aldana Vivas

Jul 25, 2022 , 4:18 p.m.

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Two workers walk in front of the oil wells off the coast of Baku, in the Caspian Sea (Photo: EFE)

"Sustainable development of the Caspian Sea region and better quality of life has always been and remains the priority task of the cooperation of the Caspian Five. Russia is ready to contribute most actively to this work."

President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin (June 2022)


The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in a report updated last March, indicates that the projection of world economic growth for 2022 registered a decrease from 3.6% to 2.6% , hitting maritime trade and increasing food import prices due – according to the report – to the "war in Ukraine", without referring to the wave of Western "sanctions" against Russia, a country that exports gas, wheat, fertilizers and other products crucial to everyday life.

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FAO Food Price Index, January 1961 to February 2022 (Photo: FAO)

Russia has not stood idly by in the face of the sanctioning attack by the United States and Europe. The alternatives of exchange and new commercial corridors, although they were being considered for more than a decade, now they are accelerating the march due to the impact of the coercive measures imposed on international trade.

That is why the importance of the Caspian Sea is growing due to its transit potential between five Eurasian countries, in the midst of trade blockades against Russia emanating from the European Union (EU).

In a past issue, Misión Verdad made reference to the new International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which was established in September 2000 by Iran, Russia and India in order to promote cooperation of transport between that triad, and years later the countries that cover the Caspian Sea were added.

The INSTC connects the countries of Northern Europe with Russia as a starting point, and through Iran with the countries of the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. This transport corridor is currently considered the shortest, cheapest and fastest transit route between Asia and Europe, being another commercial artery alternative to the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean routes.

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The blue line indicates the INSTC route; in red, the traditional route (Photo: File)

3.Last week the first pilot railway shipment between Russia and India through Iran under the INSTC standard was completed, connecting St. Petersburg with Mumbai. It is recalled that they transported two containers with sheets of laminated wood. Furthermore, the trip lasted less than 25 days; With traditional routes, it would take almost 40 days.
4.Last week, Iran and Russia (member countries of OPEC+) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to facilitate financial and commercial transactions between the two countries within the framework of the Western coercive measures that have been imposed on them. Likewise, this instrument, worth up to 40 billion dollars, includes accelerating the North-South crossing project, which corresponds to the INSTC, focusing on the construction of the necessary infrastructure for it.
5.At the end of last June, at the VI Caspian Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to the construction of the INSTC, emphasizing that the transport cooperation agreement between the members of the Caspian Five would make the maritime region an important international logistics center, facilitating the faster launch of the INSTC. In addition to this, the Russian president reported that the Strategy for the Development of National Sea Ports in the Caspian Sea is being implemented, as well as rail and road access, thus expanding the corresponding infrastructure in the aforementioned sea.

Taking advantage of the mention of the Caspian Summit, having reached the current point where each member agreed that they are responsible for the preservation of the Caspian region and its sustainable development, was the product of a long process of articulation to decide in 2018 with the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, namely:

*At the first summit held in 2002, it was agreed that no member state should use force in the Caspian Sea, or incite conflict. If the latter develop, they must be resolved through negotiations.
*The Second Summit was held in 2007 in Tehran, under the leadership of the then Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The final declaration established the regular meetings of the heads of the Caspian states and, in the intervals between those meetings, of the foreign ministers. On that occasion, President Putin raised the proposal to accelerate the development of the INSTC. The Russian president indicated about the corridor that he sought to "improve communication between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of ​​Azov and the Black Sea basin", which "is undoubtedly a promising effort".
*Three years later, in 2010, for the Third Summit, it was agreed that the security of the Caspian Sea is an exclusive right of the coastal States and it was sought to speed up the establishment of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea.
*In 2014, the next Summit was mainly based on the definition of the use of water resources of the Caspian Sea in the framework of cooperation between member states.
*It is in 2018 that the historic declaration that determines the legal status of the Caspian Sea, the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea , is achieved . Therefore, its five bordering States opened a new episode in the cooperation of this region. One of the most important points agreed at this summit is that no foreign army can enter this area.

Just as this seems to be a harmonious path with a happy ending, the United States hovers as a threat, since it knows well the potential of this region and will look for the well-known and hackneyed ways to destabilize the region so that this important commercial network does not consolidate.

That is why it is extremely important to have achieved the key legal framework for security in that area at that time, reaffirmed today; in other words: no NATO warships or military bases will be allowed in that space.

Now, the course of action, framed in the defensive, is directed towards putting together the land-sea exchange circuit to connect Saint Petersburg with Tehran and, from there, expand trade networks with countries that want to join multipolar cooperation and without financial blockades aligned with Western threats.

THE STRATEGIC ENERGY ELLIPSE AND THE INSTC

The Caspian Sea basin (the largest inland body of water on the planet) is one of the most important oil-rich areas in the world: if we add the reserves of the countries along its borders, it has 51% of the global total; In addition, it has 15% of the world's gas reserves.

The geopolitical term "strategic energy ellipse" was coined by scholars Robert Harkavy and Geoffrey Kemp in the book Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East, referring to the ellipse extending from the Caspian Basin to the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. across the Persian Gulf.

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Map of the "strategic energy ellipse" in the book 'Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East' by scholars Robert Harkavy and Geoffrey Kemp (Photo: Archive)

These authors, after studying different maps of that region, explain that such a geographical ellipse contains more than 70% of the world's proven oil reserves and more than 40% of the natural gas reserves. Here Iran is presented as the center of such a strategic area.

Undoubtedly, Iran is a fundamental point of connection between the two great energy basins of the world: the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, since it connects these resources, a priority for all countries, from the north around the Caspian Sea with the southern and upper regions. sea ​​across the Persian Gulf.

Within the territory of Iran, goods in transit are transported to ports in the north and south of the country by road or rail, with the Caspian Sea as a common denominator.

It becomes clear that the main advantages of the INSTC corridor are cost and time reduction, especially in sanctioned countries like Iran and Russia. The States involved in weaving this important network have the main intention that it be a zone of peace and good neighborliness, since it is the only way to promote common economic and political interests, in light of the fact that the Caspian Sea It is very close to international conflict zones.

By way of closing, there are great expectations about the results that may occur in the next Caspian Economic Forum scheduled to be held this fall in Moscow. Which would be another giant step in the efforts of countries that want to build the right platform for greater global cooperation for the general welfare.

Google Translator

https://misionverdad.com/investigacione ... de-eurasia

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War as a Purpose: Young Ukrainians Radicalized in Neo-Nazi Training Camps
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 25, 2022

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Thousands of Ukrainian children have been poisoned by the neo-Nazi ideology in the years since the Maidan Uprising. Grown-ups have consistently taught them hatred, calling it patriotism. To that end, the country established a whole network of children's camps, whose instructors had served as punishers in the Donbass. - Sputnik International, 1920, 24.07.2022Thousands of Ukrainian children have been poisoned by the neo-Nazi ideology in the years since the Maidan Uprising. Grown-ups have consistently taught them hatred, calling it patriotism. To that end, the country established a whole network of children’s camps, whose instructors had served as punishers in the Donbass.

‘Let Moscow Lie in Ruins!’

In 2017, the American TV network NBC aired a story about the Azovets children’s summer camp near Kiev. Children living in the Ukrainian capital and nearby districts spent their vacations there.



At first glance, there was nothing “criminal” about the camp’s program: drills, military training, the reconstruction of battles, and survival skills. However, the main purpose of the program was to instil an aggressive ideological narrative among these young Ukrainian patriots. A video shot by an NBC journalist showed children chanting inspirationally:

“What is our motto? We are the children of Ukraine! Let Moscow lie in ruins, we don’t care! We will conquer the whole world! Death to Russkies!”

This was their motto. This is what their “big brothers”, instructors from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, taught them.

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A Ukrainian girl in the Azovets military camp near Kiev, shouting: Let Moscow lie in ruins! We don't care! Footage from a news report by the American broadcaster NBC. - Sputnik International, 1920, 24.07.2022A Ukrainian girl in the Azovets military camp near Kiev, shouting: Let Moscow lie in ruins! We don’t care! Footage from a news report by the American broadcaster NBC.
– Sputnik International, 1920, 24.07.2022


The purpose of their mission was clearly designated: to wage war on Russians, to destroy the Russians as their main and worst enemy. This is how they were indoctrinated with a sense of belonging to the “great cause”.

NBC presented an interview with the camp instructors. They discuss their mission: “The children don’t know what war is, and we have to tell them what it is, because retaking Crimea and taking over Kuban are ahead of us.” Kuban is a historical and geographical region of Southern Russia located mostly in the Krasnodar region. Their plans were clearly outlined.

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We will take back the Crimea and take over the Kuban. These were the messages instilled in children in Ukrainian paramilitary camps. Footage from an NBC story. - Sputnik International, 1920, 24.07.2022“We will take back the Crimea and take over the Kuban.” These were the messages instilled in children in Ukrainian paramilitary camps. Footage from an NBC story.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/YGtanIzaY5w[/img]
“Their instructor gives advice: don’t think of your target as a person. Therefore, when these boys and girls shoot, they will shoot to kill. Most of them are teenagers, but some are as young as 8 years old. They are in a summer camp set up by one of Ukraine’s radical nationalist groups, hidden in a forest in the west of the country,” thus begins a piece by the Associated Press, whose journalists visited the Zakalka voli (Gart voli, Ukr.), a children’s military camp.

“We never point weapons at people. But we don’t consider the Donetsk people, separatists, the Novorossians, the green men, and the Moscow occupants to be people. So we can and should aim at them,” instructor Yury “Chernota” Cherkashin instructs the children shamelessly on camera.


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Footage from an Associated Press story about children’s military camps. – Sputnik International
© AP Photo



Even the biased report by Radio Liberty (a media outlet functioning as a foreign agent) about Azovets and the facts presented in it leave no room for discussion.



There is only one association that comes to mind, the Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth):

“The morning in the camp begins with a roll call and a Ukrainian nationalist prayer. ‘Ukraine, holy mother of heroes, descend into my heart. Holy! Mighty! United! Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!’, the children yell in fervor. In this camp, those who have a cold are mockingly called ‘three-hundredth’ or ‘WIA’ (Cargo 300 is a military term for transporting a wounded soldier – ed. note Sputnik), and children often use call signs instead of names. At the beginning of the shift, each child is handed a wooden machine gun. The older children go to the island, where they receive mock-ups of ‘real’ guns. This sniper rifle shoots using a laser scope. This is the first such game for 13-year-old Vladimir. ‘I like quiet engagement, so I’m a sniper,’ the boy explains.”

None of this is new. Here is a quote from German journalist and writer Guido Knopp on the education of youth in the Third Reich in the 1930s:

“They (members of the Hitler-Jugend. – ed. note Sputnik) slept in tent camps and haystacks. Each year about 2,000 members of the Hitler Youth enthusiastically answered the call of Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach: ‘We march towards the Führer. If he wishes, we will march for him.’”

The Azov Battalion’s punishers are perfectly suited for the role of instructors to train the Ukrainian Hitler Youth. Dedicated Nazis form the backbone of the regiment, and their symbols and methods correspond to their beliefs. Torture, rape, murder, kidnapping and secret prisons where prisoners and dissidents were maimed – Azov has done it all.

During the summer vacations, hundreds of Ukrainian children passed through the Azovets camp and were shaped into patriots charged with hatred.

‘I Really Enjoy Shooting’

Many journalists have written about Ukraine becoming a hotbed of neo-Nazism. The media has also raised the topic of the militarization of Ukrainian children more than once.

In 2019, Spanish correspondent Ethel Bonet from El Confidencial shared her impressions of the paramilitary children’s camp “Leader” near Kiev.

“Eight-year-old Victoria seems like an ordinary girl. And her dreams for the future can hardly be called very different from those of her peers: she dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Or maybe a model when she grows up. But the little girl already feels like a soldier. And one does not preclude her future in the ranks of combatants of Ukrainian army. At war with whom? But her instructors explain this to her. Those either who have been in battles against the ‘pro-Russian separatists’ or who have taken part in sabotage operations by the Ukrainian armed forces in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics.”

The journalist noted that “Victoria’s determination frightens even adults,” and cited the child’s words:
“There is only one Ukraine, and we have to protect it. That’s why I came here. I want to learn how to fight. I really enjoy shooting a pistol and walking around in military camouflage.”

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Children in Ukrainian camps were taught to handle weapons, including firearms. Footage from an NBC story.

In 2018, the Leader paramilitary camp hosted up to 200 children aged 7 to 16 during a 20-day shift. The camp ran for three summer months. Full board was $18 a day. The camp’s regimen was rigorous, packed to the brim with drills. Moving between facilities was strictly in formation.

The daily physical training “menu” included swimming, running, physical exercises, obstacle courses, climbing rope. Children were taught to handle firearms: seven-year-olds easily disassembled and assembled automatic rifles blindfolded. They mastered shooting from pneumatic weapons.

The background sounds were ultra-nationalist anthems. The marching in formation and the chanting of the slogans “Ukraine Is Above All!”, “Heroes Are Immortal, Enemies Must Die!”, “Leader Opens the Path! Ukraine Is United! Victory or Death!”

There are dozens of such children’s military camps in Ukraine. In the years since the so-called Revolution of Dignity, thousands of young Ukrainians have gone through this school of radicalism and hatred. If the goals of the ideologists of neo-Nazism were quite obvious, what did the parents hope for and what did they want to achieve by sending their children voluntarily to a place where they were trained to be aggressive ethnic nationalists?

Family psychologist Yekaterina Sivanova explained the dangers facing children who attend such “patriotic” camps and how it can affect their psyche:

“In this example, the accents placed by adults are important. Children are being indoctrinated to believe that those people are not human, that they must be killed. The child has no right to doubt; he takes it on faith that those are not people, relying on the opinion of the adults in charge”.

A person who is so instilled with hatred cannot see another human being as a person, he lacks that ability. This is very close to racism, hatred for the fact that the other is something different.

Children who are brought up with hatred subsequently have no opportunity to develop, to become versatile, to see different points of view simply because they won’t accept an opinion (they won’t hear it or see it) different from the paradigm in which they were raised.

In fact, to be fair, we can remember the patriotic military game “Zarnitsa”. In the early ’80s I went to school, we all went out into the fields, ran, the girls were taught first aid, the boys were taught to be scouts and commanders, to read maps and so on. But I don’t remember there being any aggression in that.

And we had basic military training in school, we used to take apart machine guns for a while. I still use the general medical training that was given in those classes and then in high school. But it was always a story about life, about help and interaction.

Here we see a tremendous effort to create an ‘enemy’, so that there is a clear understanding of who to fight. An external enemy is always needed to control those people who have been convinced that there is an aggressor who will come to kill them.

The basis of such upbringing is fear. People raise their children with the goal of raising them to be controlled. If I keep you in fear, accordingly, I can manipulate you, I can control you, and you will do what I want.”

Some parents were sincerely convinced, as journalist Pavel Volkov noted in an article for Ukraina.ru, that such camps teach “patriotism” and that there was nothing wrong there. This was what the bunchuzhnyi (a “staff of Cossack hetman”, what they call the instructors in Ukraine – ed. note Sputnik) of the Kiev camp with the call sign “Burik”, bearing the“black sun” symbol of occult fascism on his elbow, was trying to lure children with:

“One squad can include from 8 to 14 children. The program is as follows: over the 12 days of the camp, the children go through 10 disciplines: the history of Ukraine, disassembling/assembling a machine gun, tactics, medicine, rope park, climbing wall, self-defense, an obstacle course, a survival course, and robotics. There are many attacks about us training kids to be like the Hitler Youth. That is not true. We are not preparing kids for war. We are trying to bring them together, to teach them to love people so they don’t want war.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... ing-camps/

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From Casssad's Telegram account:

***

forwarded from
Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts on the evening of July 26

⚔️The situation on the fronts for the past day:

▫️In the Slavic direction , heavy fighting is going on near Yakovlevka and Belogorovka . On the eastern outskirts of Soledar , the enemy is still putting up serious resistance. Fighting is also taking place in the area of ​​Ivano-Daryevka and the Seversk-Serebryanka road.

▫️On the Artemovsky (Bakhmutovsky) direction , the fighters of the Wagner PMC occupied the territory of the Uglegorsk TPP , which the militants held for two months. Also, our soldiers knocked out the enemy from Novolugansk and Pokrovsky , in fact, freeing the entire Svetlodar arc .

▫️In the southern direction, our troops completely cleared Belogorovka from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which they occupied two years ago. Fighting continues for Andreevka .

▫️On our border : Ukrainian channels have distributed a video of the moment the Switchblade UAV hit the Troebortnoye checkpoint, located on the border of the Bryansk region in the Sevsky district. As a result of the attack , three residents of Moldova were injured - one of them died on the spot.

▫️Terrorist attack. In Zaporozhye, a Ukrainian suicide bomber blew himself up on a TM62 tank mine while checking documents at a Russian checkpoint. As a result of the explosion, the terrorist died, the employees of the National Guard were not injured.

🚀"Arrivals". Shelling of Donetsk by Ukraine does not stop. Last night, the Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked five districts of the city. There were also arrivals in Alchevsk and Kherson.

🎯Rocket strikes by our VKS were inflicted on warehouses with weapons and ammunition in Odessa, Nikolaev, Zaporozhye and Bakhmut (Artemovsk). As a result of missile strikes in the Nikolaev direction, the command of the 28th separate mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, headed by the brigade commander, was destroyed.

🌎In the world. Erdogan said that Vladimir Putin expressed a desire to establish cooperation with the Turkish manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles Bayraktar. This was reported today by the Turkish service of CNN.

👁From the interesting: A resident of the village of Dalmatovo in the Urals presented an armored car to the army of the DPR - Sasha Sebyanina personally delivered the car to the front. “I had a big dream - to assemble an armored car for the fighters. Managed to buy and transport! The guys were very happy!” Sasha admitted.

Image

***

‼️🇺🇦🏴‍☠️Ukrainians "blew up" the bridge in Kherson with the help of "Telegram" and squeal with joy 😀
The largest TV channels and the media are now happily publishing a photo of the blown up bridge, stating that it is the shelled Antonovsky bridge in Kherson.
❗️In fact, the liars publish a photo of the bridge in Mariupol , blown up on December 23, 2014: most-dnepr.info
t.me/RVvoenkor

***

Сolonelcassad
❗️🇬🇧🇺🇦 Offensive on Donbass: the situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of July 26, 2022

▪️In the morning , American-made Ukrainian Switchblade 300 drones hit the warehouse of the Troebortnoe checkpoint in the Bryansk region. A citizen of Moldova was killed, three more civilians were injured.

▪️In the territories of the Chernihiv and Sumy regions bordering Russia, the RF Armed Forces attacked the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Khrenovka, Senkovka, Tolstodubovo and Znob-Novgorodsky .

▪️In the north of the Kharkiv region , the parties continue to conduct positional battles and mutual shelling along the entire line of contact.

▪️In the Donbass , allied forces continue to push out units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) direction:
➖Assault detachments of the PMC Wagner completely cleared the territory of the Uglegorsk TPP , the destruction of which was minimized during the assault.
➖In Novolugansk , Ukrainian formations found themselves in the operational encirclement of the allied forces.
➖"PMC Wagner" also completely occupied the village of Pokrovskoye , in fact, opening the way for an attack on Bakhmut (Artemovsk) from the east.
➖In the evening, information was received about the capture by the allied forces of the village of Berestovoe on the Bakhmut-Lysichansk highway.

▪️The Ukrainian Armed Forces are continuously shelling the territories of the DPR and LPR. At night, one of the fuel depots in the Budennovsky district of Donetsk was attacked . Several residents were injured.

▪️ On the territory of the Zaporozhye region , the parties are engaged in artillery duels: Russian forces hit the enemy positions in Orekhovo, Kamensky and Shcherbak.

▪️ There was a relative calm in the Krivoy Rog direction . The parties are building up forces before the potential offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area.

Image

***

Сolonelcassad
⚠️ Recording of the facts of criminal actions of the Kiev regime against civilians, as well as the use by Ukrainian armed groups of civilian infrastructure for military purposes continues:

In the Donetsk People's Republic:

🔹in Druzhkovka , on the territory of professional lyceum No. 36 (Sobornaya St.) , territorial defense units are deployed, checkpoints and firing points are deployed, the approaches to the educational institution are mined , but the local population is deliberately not notified about this;

🔹in Zalizny, Ukrainian neo-Nazis in the House of Culture (Pionerov Avenue) equipped a stronghold, placed weapons and ammunition depots , while the local population was not evacuated from nearby residential buildings;

🔹in Artemovsk, military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the lower and upper floors of apartment buildings (Rozhdestvenskaya Street) equipped firing positions and ammunition depots , local residents are forbidden to leave their apartments, all attempts of citizens to independently evacuate to safe areas are severely suppressed.

⚠️In addition, in Semyonovka, militants of Ukrainian armed formations in residential areas equipped firing points, deployed artillery and MLRS , from which they systematically fire at the positions of the Russian Armed Forces and formations of the Donetsk People's Republic. At the same time, residents are kept in their homes, actually hiding behind them as a “human shield”. Nationalists, feeling their complete impunity, under the threat of using weapons, allegedly for the needs of territorial defense, seize valuable property and food from people. Citizens who resist in any way are accused of pro-Russian views and subjected to physical violence.

◽️ Such actions of the Ukrainian authorities testify to their inhuman attitude towards the fate of civilians and complete disregard for all norms of morality and international humanitarian law.

📄 Full text of the statement of the Interdepartmental Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response https://telegra.ph/Zayavlenie-Mezhvedom ... 22-g-07-26

***

Сolonelcassad
Regarding Schroeder's visit to Moscow for "energy talks", it is worth remembering that Schroeder is one of the main connecting links between the Russian Federation and that part of big German capital that is not interested in continuing the war in Ukraine, due to the prohibitive costs that the war incurs for German industry. The same circles once lobbied for Nord Stream 2. Therefore, Schroeder's services were generously paid both in Russia and in Germany.

It is quite natural that Schroeder's visit to Moscow for negotiations on energy (irrespective of their real content) is seen as an attempt by big German capital to reduce current costs through separate agreements with the Kremlin. There have been such contacts before, which resulted in a series of accusations against Germany, as well as attempts to completely "cancel" Schroeder, depriving big German capital of one of the main channels of informal communication with Russian political and economic elites.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 27, 2022 12:15 pm

Suffering that unites people
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/27/2022
Original Article: Yulia Andrienko / Komsomolskaya Pravda

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Every time I leave the house in Donetsk, even if it's just to go get bread, I leave my cat three servings of food and large amounts of water. You never know if you are going to come back and the animal should not suffer for it. The shelling of Donetsk does not stop and hits a different place each time, some that were not even hit in 2014. Every day, three or four civilians become victims of Ukraine. As in a fantasy in which the monster demands a new victim from the town every day. Mariupol, Berdyansk, Kherson or Melitopol are already trying to build a new life, but my city is a scapegoat for whom the war has turned into eight years of a wheel that now has the shape of infinity.

Going out for bread, we say goodbye to our families. All the neighbors have exchanged the phone numbers of their close relatives. You never know what can happen. Now the neighbors worry if my lights don't come on for too long. People have started communicating like they did in 2014. It's not a bad idea to call friends at 1am, or even 4am, when you read that the area you live in has been covered by artillery. In Donetsk, the news does not stop: a fuel depot burns there, Ukraine attacks a residential neighborhood here, a factory has been hit elsewhere. Everyone feels sorry for each other. Surprisingly, suffering unites people much more than joy.

Once, I was going to an interview and on the way I went to the market for coffee. Behind me I noticed a girl about 18 years old speeding up to get closer to me. "I can go with you? Please. I am very afraid". Of course, let's walk together. Just then, a nearby car hits a pothole and makes a noise. The girl reacts terrified. I understand that it is not simple fear, it is terror. Even her voice trembles from it. After all, she is just a girl.

“I have to go, you know? For the diploma. It cannot be done remotely. I study at the Academy of Management. Recently, my friend has been in a terrible bombing. Before she wasn't that scared, but now I can hardly leave the house,” she says.

“I understand you, I really understand you. But everything will be fine, don't be afraid." I try to distract her with light conversation, if only to fill the void in her and make her forget her fear. But there is another noise in the distance and this time it is not a car. “Don't be afraid, they're ours”, I say with a confident voice to my new friend although I'm really not sure about it.

“When I go out, I put on my best clothes and make sure my socks don't have holes. You never know what will happen to you and I don't want to be embarrassed, ”she smiles, blushing.

“Sure, everyone does. But make sure you read the recommendations for help”, I tell him. “Or write them down and take them with you, so you know what to do and you won't trip. You will see. Always read it and nothing will happen to you. Suddenly she hugs me. She is about to cry. I don't know what else there is that she is capable of causing such excess emotions in us. Nor how much are the diplomas worth.

On one of the trips to Mariupol, together with Father Teofan, I was able to visit the old SBU building. In 2015, he was a prisoner there. Ukraine accused him of terrorism and treason. He was tortured with drowning. Among other things, they put a handkerchief over his face and poured water over him in imitation of an execution. Then there was an exchange of prisoners and the religious was rescued.

We are in the ruins of the building. The roof is gone and the fourth floor is missing. The floors have collapsed. The wind blows through the windows, hitting the remaining doors and even the fence of this once formidable building has fallen. The generous southern sun warms us from above. This is probably what a happy ending would look like in a movie. I agree with my partner that nothing should be built on this site. There has been too much pain and suffering here, it is better to leave the square in memory of the victims of Ukraine.

Armed with flashlights, we went downstairs to the basement, where the evidence was kept. Among all the rubbish we find Vostok battalion badges, Saint George ribbons, Cossack symbols and leaflets about the 2014 referendum. Silent witnesses of what they have left behind. All this is for the museums of Donetsk or St. Petersburg.

I'm surprised by one of the things we found. They are leaflets calling to end the war in Donbass. The date is February 17, 2018. The idea that "There is no alternative to Minsk", the endless truces - school truce, Easter truce, harvest truce, Christmas truce - replaced each other and only differed in the name. With impunity, the murders of Donetsk residents had already become the norm, familiar to everyone, who was simply tired of Donbass. Things that happen.

And all of a sudden, someone in Ukrainian-controlled Mariupol calls for a demonstration demanding a stop to the war. Hundreds of flyers are scattered on the shelves of this dusty floor of the damned SBU building. There were people who suffered torture, others died, others were simply broken. Also for flyers like these. This means that the couch pundits' accusations that our compatriots did not resist the regime were unfair. Some will say that, in a city of half a million, this is not significant. But in any society there are always many more citizens without initiative than with it.

Teofan shows me the torture room where the agents simulated executions. They call it the “Gallery of the shots”. As I passed I was about to fall when I stumbled on the floor full of cartridges.

“They sat the prisoner on a bench. I was lying there. He was once sitting down and they were shooting around me to force me to sign a confession ,” says Teofan.

In one corner, we find the half-broken bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky that once stood in the courtyard of the SBU, from Soviet times to decommunization . Felix looks sad and his nose, cheeks and ears are chipped from bullets.

“At first he was a target for the SBU agents. But they quickly realized that the rebound effect is dangerous, so they started using prisoners to simulate executions”, says Teofan.

In the schools of Mariupol they instructed the future nationalists. But now the Saint George ribbons are used among the residents of the liberated territories. They take without more, without coercion. In the town of Volonterovka, north of Mariupol, where I carry humanitarian aid, two twins catch my attention: Damirel and Leminar Mamatov. Both wear Saint George ribbons. “They gave them in Mariupol on Victory Day and today my brother and I received our ninth grade diploma. A diploma that is already from the RPD. We have graduated with honors”, says one of the twins. It is hard for me to imagine how you can study to get honors when there has been a war here since February and now everything is destroyed, including the school, there is no electricity, water or transportation.

“I'm in the first year, but I almost didn't go to school. First the coronavirus, then the holidays and in the end, the war. I still can't really read well,” says Anechka, a blonde angel who shows me where the gym was and where the dining room was.

From the first days, the Ukrainian troops made the Volonterovka school their headquarters, which presaged a sad fate. It cannot be rebuilt. Still, in one of the old classes, I find a children's game about UPA, a manual for young Ukrainian nationalists, cardboard medals of Ukrainian patriots, apparently for the winners of the game. It has become clear that Ukraine wasted no time.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/27/25063/#more-25063

Google Translator

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European Countries Agree To Reduce Gas Consumption on 15%

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European member states reached a voluntary agreement on reducing gas demand by 15 percent. Jul. 26, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@EUCouncilPress

Published 26 July 2022 (12 hours 0 minutes ago)

According to the European Council, the bloc has agreed on a 15 percent gas reduction.

The European Union announced that its member states have council an agreement to be effective in the coming winter amid the voluntary reduction on gas consumption by 15 percent, as the EU Council confirms the prolonging of anti-Russian sanctions over the war in Ukraine for six months.

A statement issued by the European Council reads: "In an effort to increase EU security of energy supply, member states today reached a political agreement on a voluntary reduction of natural gas demand by 15% this winter." The EC said these new measures "foresees the possibility to trigger a ‘Union alert’ on the security of supply, in which case the gas demand reduction would become mandatory."

According to the statement, the countries engaged in lowering their gas demand in the period comprehended between August 1 and March 31 "with measures of their own choice." The document continued to explain that "whereas all EU countries will use their best efforts to meet the reductions, the Council specified some exemptions and possibilities to request a derogation from the mandatory reduction target, to reflect the particular situations of member states and ensure that the gas reductions are effective in increasing security of supply in the EU."

The Council clarified that the states that are not dependent on gas networks of other member countries are "exempted from mandatory gas reductions as they would not be able to free up significant volumes of pipeline gas to the benefit of other member states."


"The Commission shall present a proposal to trigger a ‘Union alert’ in case of a substantial risk of a severe gas shortage or an exceptionally high gas demand, or if five or more member states that have declared an alert at the national level request the Commission to do so," reads the statement.

The Council adverted that this is a temporary measure. "It will therefore apply for one year and the Commission will carry out a review to consider its extension in light of the general EU gas supply situation, by May 2023," it explains.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Eur ... -0012.html

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Exclusions And Sanctions Help 'Enemies' To Build Their Own Capabilities
The hostile behavior the 'west' is showing towards China and Russia has consequences.

The International Space Station is losing the Russian modules it needs to maneuver. The U.S. will immediately have to build new propulsion modules if it wants to save it.

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Russia to withdraw from International Space Station after 2024

Russia has said it will withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 to focus on building its own orbital outpost.
Yuri Borisov, who was appointed to lead the state-controlled space corporation Roscosmos earlier this month, said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia would fulfil its obligations to other partners before it leaves the project.

Mr Borisov said "the decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made."


The U.S. had planned to operate the station until 2031:

Earlier this year NASA published plans for the ISS which could see the 444,615kg structure taken out of orbit in January 2031 and crashed into a "spacecraft cemetery".
It said the laboratory would continue operating until 2030 but its long-term future is unsustainable.


The end date will now likely be earlier than NASA had planned. As an earlier report explained:

Russia provides the propellant and thrusters needed to periodically reboost the station, a critical capability NASA cannot currently replace. Maneuvering is provided by thrusters built into the Russian Zarya and Zvezda modules and aboard visiting Progress supply ships.
A Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship that arrived earlier this week is the first U.S. vehicle after the space shuttle to be capable of reboost, but it cannot on its own replace the Russian capability.
...
NASA astronauts are not trained to operate Russian systems and vice versa for the cosmonauts. Neither side can safely operate the lab on its own.


Without the Russians thruster modules the station will continuously slow down and sink towards earth until it breaks up and burns in the atmosphere.

For the U.S. to build its own thruster modules would very likely take more than two years. They would probably arrive too late to rescue the station.

Russia has plans to build a new space station. An alternative for it may be to hook up with the Chinese space station which was launched last year. Yesterday it received its second large module, a laboratory. A third large module will be added later this year.

China build its own space station because the U.S. had excluded it from participating in the ISS:

China has been barred from the ISS since 2011, when Congress passed a law prohibiting official American contact with the Chinese space program due to concerns about national security. “National security,” of course, is the lingua franca excuse for any country to do anything it jolly well wants to do even if it has nothing to do with, you know, the security of the nation. But never mind.

Just 11 years after the ban China has launched and operates its own space station.

It is likely that from 2025 on there will again be only one international space station. But it will be operated by China and probably Russia while the U.S. and its allies will likely be excluded from it.

This is the consequence of the U.S. hostile behavior which excludes and sanctions others for unserious reason.

The U.S. had pushed the Dutch government to prohibit the delivery of ASML machines to China that are needed to make the 4-7 nanometer structures of today's most advanced computer chips. Two weeks ago the U.S. started a push to prohibit ASML from delivering even its older models to China.

But a U.S. Canadian company recently found out that China' SMIC is already mass producing 7 nm chips. That capability had not been announced:

"This is the most advanced technology product TechInsights has seen from SMIC so far and may be leading to a true 7nm process that incorporates scaled logic and memory bitcells," TechInsights said.
...
Chip world watcher Dylan Patel noted another implication for SMIC's 7nm capabilities. He said the development means China is now further ahead than the US or Europe in having 7nm contract chip manufacturing capabilities since American chipmaker Intel has yet to make its 7nm process available to foundry customers.


China is also building more chip factories than anyone else:

China is leading the world in building new chip factories, a step toward achieving more self-sufficiency in semiconductors that could eventually make some buyers reliant on China for many of the basic chips now in short supply.
As chip makers race worldwide to boost production and ease supply shortages, no country is expanding faster than China, which is slated to build 31 major semiconductor factories, known as fabs, during the four years through 2024, according to the chip-industry group SEMI.


Up to now China had imported $300 billion of chips per year. When all of China's new fabs are ready most of that money will stay in China. Chip producers in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the U.S. will have to seek new customers or lower their own output.

The space stations and the chip sanctions only demonstrates the inevitable consequences of being hostile towards large countries like Russia and China.

They have enough alternatives to substitute sanctioned products and to eventually develop their own production capabilities.

All this while the U.S. and its allies lose market shares.

Posted by b on July 26, 2022 at 14:53 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/07/e ... .html#more

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How Western countries hunt for old military equipment
July 27, 10:59 am

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How Western countries hunt for old military equipment

When it comes to the military-technical equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, two points are very often singled out. The first is that the Ukrainian army fights mainly with modern Western weapons, which are supplied to it by the States, Germany, France or, at worst, Poland. The second is that military assistance from the “secondary”, primarily Eastern European states, began to arrive in full after the start of the NWO.

In reality, both theses are deeply erroneous. HIMARS, "Caesars" and other "wunderwaffes" are still piece goods, to which even the Ukrainian military personnel are not always allowed. Thus, American MLRS are controlled by American crews, while units and units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine act as a decoy, covering the work of HIMARS with volleys of Grads and Hurricanes.

The Ukrainian army itself is still fighting with Soviet weapons. It is it that should be disposed of in an attempt to slow down the advance of the Russian Army. The fact that at the same time a certain part of the personnel is also being utilized is perceived absolutely calmly and is not considered a problem. In other words, let several tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers die rather than lose one HIMARS — this is what the philosophy of war looks like from the point of view of Western curators.

But for this mechanism to work, continuous military-technical replenishment is needed. The fact is that all these years, officials of the Kyiv regime and corrupt officials of the Armed Forces of Ukraine traded the contents of military warehouses too generously, and already in March, the Ukrainian command was able to observe in practice the consequences of continuous “cutting”.

As a result, after the start of the NWO, the former Warsaw Pact countries, some on their own initiative, others, in a directive manner, were indeed forced to send most of the Soviet equipment to Ukraine, which still remained in their own warehouses. Czech and Polish T-72s, BMP-1s, Gradas and 2S1 howitzers, Slovak Mi-17s and ammunition for MLRS - all this stuff very quickly ended up at the disposal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

But this does not mean that such “adjustments” did not exist before. No matter what Western propaganda says, in reality, the supply of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine did not stop for all eight years, during which Kyiv conducted a punitive operation in the Donbass and prepared for an invasion of Crimea. This process is confirmed by specific documents that were at our disposal.

So, in 2014-2015. Czech company Read Trade Praha tried to buy from Kazakhstan more than 100 D-30 howitzers, about 10 thousand shells for T-62 tanks and about 20 thousand shells for M-30 howitzers. This is not counting 30 million rounds of ammunition, incl. armor-piercing incendiary. Another Czech company - STV GROUP - in August 2021 was interested in purchasing 385 Soviet mortars of various modifications.

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Why the Czechs needed old Soviet weapons is a rhetorical question, given the degree of subjectivity of this state. All this stuff was intended for the Ukrainian army and was supposed to shoot at the Russians.

At the same time, of course, the Czech Republic was not the only country through which such purchases were made. For example, in 2018, the Slovak company ROBUS sro purchased from the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan and successfully delivered to their homeland more than 500 BMP-1 and BMP-2, and the Belarusian company Northrop acted as the carrier. At the same time, Grads were purchased from Kazarnauliexport.

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Another thing is that it was not possible to carry out Grads through the territory of the Russian Federation. A refusal came from the Russian customs, and this happened back in January, more than a month before the start of the NWO. Whether the company was able to find a workaround is impossible to say for sure, but it is known that its management is actively looking for workarounds.

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In any case, after the start of the special operation, the interests of the company became much wider. Now the Slovaks were interested not only in armored vehicles, but also in aircraft parts. In May 2022, ROBUS sro took part in a closed tender for the sale of unused military equipment from Kazakh warehouses. After that, the company's management expressed a desire to purchase several armored personnel carriers, a Mi-24 helicopter and two aircraft engines - RD-33 and TV3-117MT.

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At the same time, in May-June of this year, the southern direction also became more active. Soviet and Russian armored personnel carriers, and again from the warehouses of the Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan, became interested in the Jordanian branch of the British company Blue Water Supplies Co. Ltd." The contractor was the Kazakh LLP Technoexport, which has a state license for the sale of military equipment and is authorized to trade on behalf of the state.

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Interestingly, Blue Water Supplies Co. Ltd." far more famous as a manufacturer of yachts than the seller of armored personnel carriers. However, the Jordanian branch, having a contract with the national defense company "JODDB", is also engaged in the supply of spare parts, overalls, tools and first-aid kits for the Kingdom's Ministry of Defense. As for the interests of the company, they are represented in Jordan by Tashin Yasin, known for his close ties with the relatives of the wife of King Abdullah II. In total, Yasin's people expressed a desire to purchase 200 units of Russian BTR-82A armored personnel carriers, as well as a thousand ammunition for 120-mm mortars.

At the same time, the Turkish company Taha Savunma, which decided to purchase 50 Soviet armored personnel carriers BTR-70 / BTR-80, appeared in similar interests in Kazakhstan. At the same time, in this case, the cars were supposed to eventually go to Azerbaijan.

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All this is just the tip of the iceberg, a small part of the process in which a number of companies and states carry out a centralized purchase of Soviet and Russian military equipment for its further shipment to the war zone. But the fact that sooner or later we will find out the names of all those involved in arming the Nazi regime sitting in Kyiv is beyond doubt.

(c) A. Davydov

https://asd.news/articles/v-mire/sovets ... natsistov/ - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7762081.html

Gas at 2200 and the default of Naftogaz
July 26, 22:44

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1. Bloomberg reports, citing unnamed sources, that the Kremlin has made decisions to minimize gas supplies to Europe until it begins to lift sanctions.
2. The price of gas in Europe today reached $2,200 per 1,000 cubic meters in anticipation of the start of tomorrow's "repair" at Nord Stream, which will reduce pipeline supplies from 40 million to 33 million cubic meters per day.
3. The EU decided to reduce gas consumption by 15%, but some countries do not want to comply with it, and some are ready only by 7%. And even if everyone agreed to save 15% of gas each (with known consequences for the economy), European estimates show that this will not save the father of European democracy from gas shortages in winter.
4. Schroeder, who represents large German industry, urgently flew to Moscow for negotiations on "energy negotiations". Big German industrial capital is looking for ways for separate negotiations.
5. The Russian Foreign Ministry proposes to solve the problem of "repair" at Nord Stream 1 by launching Nord Stream 2. Turbine has not yet arrived. But it's certainly not only and not so much in the turbine.
6. The German government said that if Germany agrees to the use of Nord Stream 2, then this will mean capitulation to Russia and the defeat of Germany.
7. Against this background, Naftogaz of Ukraine today announced its default on Eurobonds. Ukrenergo and Ukravtodor are also asking for a deferral of debt payments. If they don't get it,

And it's only July.


https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7761866.html

Google Translator

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Nazi from "Azov"* confessed to killing and robbing civilians in Mariupol

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The captured sergeant of the Azov Regiment* Andrei Pilyavsky spoke about the crimes committed by members of the gang against civilians in Mariupol, including murders and robberies.

The video with the confessions of the Nazi was distributed by the reporter of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Andrey Rudenko. On the footage, he asks the "Azov" about the crimes of his regiment, and he willingly talks about them.

First, he remembered how their commander ordered to shoot a minibus with civilians, which the Nazis did, after which the dead people were also robbed. He also spoke about the murder of an elderly citizen of Mariupol, who happened to be in the wrong place and prevented the "Azov" people from freely passing through his yard.

"How many more confessions there will be from these non-humans - only God knows, but the fact that these animals started talking and began to talk about their crimes already puts someone in an awkward position. For example, those Western leaders who zealously defended these sadists, and in fact, by supplying them with weapons, they became their accomplices," Rudenko commented on the published video.

https://novorosinform.org/nacist-iz-azo ... 00255.html

British intelligence recognized the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the Uglegorsk TPP

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The British Ministry of Defense recognized the tactical successes of the "private Russian army" taking part in the special operation in the Donbass.

A new British intelligence report talks about the success of the "private military company" Wagner ".
"The Russian private military company Wagner has achieved probable success in tactical offensives in the Donbass near the settlements of Novoluganskoye and the Uglegorsk power plant. Ukrainian military forces have left these territories," the UK defense department said in a statement.
Uglegorsk TPP is the second largest power plant in Ukraine, one of the strategic objects of Ukrainian infrastructure, as well as when moving towards Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.

https://novorosinform.org/britanskaya-r ... 00308.html

Odessa is Russia. Forever and ever. The United States announced a complete victory for Putin in Ukraine

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The hegemony of the West is coming to an end, in the conflict in Ukraine, Russia will win a complete victory. This was stated by American military analyst Scott Ritter.

According to the expert, today it becomes obvious that Russia is winning on all fronts: military, political and economic.

"If you take all three aspects together, there is nothing that could change the direction of development of each of these aspects. Russia is winning, and will develop victory on the battlefield," Ritter was quoted by the Pool #3 telegram channel.

The analyst drew attention to the fact that in Europe the resignations of leaders who took an openly anti-Russian position began, and soon the resignations will shock almost all the countries of the G7.

"Moscow's goals are also changing. The Russians say: the more weapons we supply to Ukraine, the greater the price both Ukraine and the West will pay. Anyone who doubts the fate of Odessa must understand that this city will forever become part of the Russian Federation," Ritter emphasized. .

In his opinion, Russia is tired of playing games, and President Vladimir Putin is starting a new stage of the special operation, during which the Russians are able to take not only Odessa, Nikolaev and Kharkov, but possibly Dnepropetrovsk as well.

Odessa brigade - Putin's signal

The sudden presentation of the Odessa brigade of Russian troops in the Russian media reveals Moscow's future plans for a military operation in Ukraine, according to military expert Yuri Podolyaka.

According to him, Russia simply cannot leave Ukraine a sea corridor as a result of the military campaign and not break through a corridor in Transnistria.

"For her, this will be an unequivocal defeat. And in any case, the war will not end until the Russian troops reach the border of Moldova," Podolyaka stressed.

In addition, the exposure of the Odessa brigade became a "response" to the rumors pumped up by Kyiv about the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the imminent abandonment of Kherson by Russian troops. Thus, according to the expert, not only the residents of the Kherson region were encouraged, but also the majority of the population of the Nikolaev and Odessa regions, whose release is not far off.

Grain case - a victory that turned into evil

The agreements signed on July 22 in Turkey on the export of grain from Ukraine were ambiguously perceived by the Russian patriotic community. Some were quick to accuse Moscow of abandoning the fight for Odessa in exchange for a partial lifting of sanctions.

In Ukraine, at the same time, they were intensively drawing another "overcome". But in reality, things were not so clear cut. The strike on a military boat in the port of Odessa the day after the signing of the deal on Ukrainian grain was a landmark event.

The Ukrainian telegram channel Legitimny, citing a source, writes that the strike on the port territory is a hint from Russia that Odessa remains the target of Moscow, despite the agreements on grain.

“Yesterday, they began to disperse the message that the grain case is allegedly insurance for the Odessa region against offensive and missile attacks. The entire elite in Odessa immediately exhaled, and the military began to think about how to use this insurance for their own purposes. Today, the Russians destroyed this myth, making a hint, that if they suspect something and fix it, they will immediately strike at military and related facilities. They don’t care about the West’s reaction now," the publication says.

The channel "Typicalnaya Odessa" completely assessed the grain case as a victory for Moscow. According to the authors of the channel, the Turkish agreements actually recognize Russia's right to blockade Ukrainian ports and prevent the transportation of weapons to them. Moreover, this right was actually recognized by both the UN and Ukraine, which now cannot lift this blockade by force of arms.

That is, in addition to unblocking the supply of Ukrainian grain and (importantly) its own fertilizers and food, Russia actually obtained from the UN a ban on the supply of weapons to Ukraine by sea. And in case of violation of this ban, strikes on the port of Odessa will be carried out immediately.

By placing Ukraine's maritime traffic under international control, Russia may well focus on the battle for Nikolaev and Odessa on land. And against the background of the worsening political crisis in Europe, the main front in the struggle for Odessa is the geopolitical and economic confrontation with the West, a victory in which could save thousands of lives of Russian soldiers.

Author: Tikhon Goncharov

https://novorosinform.org/odessa--eto-r ... 00020.html

Google Translator

Historical note: Odessa was founded by Catherine the Great and populated by Russians.

A story I've told once and now repeat:

I was working around 2015 and had a regular customer whose parents emigrated from Odessa when she was a young girl. We were discussing the situation in Ukraine when she exclaimed, "We are all Russians!". I could have kissed her but that would have been highly inappropriate.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 27, 2022 11:06 pm

The New York Times Confirmed That Ukrainians Are Losing Their Military Confidence
26 JULY 2022

The New York Times Confirmed That Ukrainians Are Losing Their Military Confidence

The reader shouldn’t forget that the insight shared in this analysis is gleaned from the New York Times' own reporting, which can’t realistically be described as “Russian propaganda”. If anything, the New York Times is more than likely covering up exactly how bad everything has gotten in Ukraine nowadays, which suggests that the situation is far worse than even its sharpest critics imagine.

The New York Times (NYT) published a piece on Monday titled “As Ukraine signs up soldiers, questions arise about how it chooses”, which is paywalled but can be read in full for free here. The gist is that the military has aggressively stepped up its recruitment across the remnants of this former Soviet Republic in a desperate drive to replenish many of its highly trained soldiers that it’s already lost thus far (per prior reporting from the NYT last month). According to the latest report, recruiters have even gone as far as to allegedly coerce untrained men into joining the armed forces while inexplicably ignoring those experienced and motivated ones who’ve tried to volunteer. The NYT also cites a military official who warned that these new heavy-handed tactics have demoralized their rank and file.

Seeing as how the NYT is one of the world’s most well-known US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) outlets and can’t by any stretch of the imagination be described as so-called “Russian propaganda”, its report should be considered an accurate reflection of reality in modern-day Ukraine. This realization should in turn prompt some questions about what exactly has been going on there in recent weeks for this disturbing development to have even happened at all, which contradicts a lot of what the MSM had previously reported about its fighters supposedly having “superhuman morale”. The truth, as it’s always been, is that Ukraine’s been misrepresented from the get-go as part of the ongoing information warfare campaign against Russia and that everything isn’t as the Western public has been led to believe.

It's already common knowledge even among the most passionate pro-Ukrainian voices that hoaxes like Snake Island and the Ghost of Kiev had to be concocted purely for the purpose of artificially manufacturing morale among members of that society otherwise there were serious concerns that few would have agreed to fight at all. Now that the fake news has worn off, reality is setting in, and recruiters are desperate to replenish their ranks after losing thousands of soldiers this summer thus far in the Battle for Donbass. Ukrainians had been fed an incessant stream of so-called “victory porn” up until Russia liberated the entirety of the Lugansk People’s Republic by freeing Lisichansk, which they now know was nothing but information warfare waged against them by their own rulers.

This explains the reluctance among many to risk their lives fighting for what they’ve rightly begun to conclude is a lost cause: removing all Russian forces from Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, which includes not just Donbass but also Crimea. In response, the military has aggressively begun to hunt for new recruits and coerce them into joining through what the NYT’s sources argue are illegal subpoenas in many cases. While it remains unknown why they allegedly turn away those experienced and motivated men who’ve tried to volunteer, this could be attributed to a combination of typical bureaucratic dysfunction as well as a possibly cynical desire to only throw the weakest citizens into the Donbass grinder while preserving the comparatively better ones for defending areas further inland if need be.

From the perspective of the average Ukrainian military-age male who isn’t already fighting on the front lines and also of course doesn’t want to, it seems as though their state is now waging war against them to an extent by hunting their fellows all throughout the country. The authorities are doing this because they’re losing the conflict despite having getting their people’s hopes up that Western heavy weapons would supposedly finally turn the tide. That obviously hasn’t happened, though, which is why they need more meat to urgently throw into the grinder so as to slow the Russia-led Allied advance. Put simply, inexperienced and demoralized men – including alcoholics according to the NYT – are being sent to die in a desperate bid for Kiev to buy time in the hopes that “wunderwaffen” will finally help them win.

All of this is unsustainable, but that doesn’t mean that Kiev’s forces are going to collapse any day now, even though it could still happen. Rather, this crumbling former Soviet Republic is turning into a dystopian military dictatorship as the armed forces exert full control over the populace, the weakest members of which they’re throwing into the meat grinder in order for the elite to save their own skin for a little while longer. The reader shouldn’t forget that the insight shared in this analysis is gleaned from the NYT’s own reporting, which once again can’t realistically be described as “Russian propaganda”. If anything, the NYT is more than likely covering up exactly how bad everything has gotten in Ukraine nowadays, which suggests that the situation is far worse than even its sharpest critics imagine.

https://oneworld.press/?module=articles ... ew&id=3108

By Andrew Korybko
American political analyst


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Ukraine Is None Of America's Business!
7 MAY 2022

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Ukraine is none of America's business! But it very much is the business of the American empire — a business that still might yet be stopped, before it's too late (for everyone).

Ukraine borders Russia, not America.

Mexico borders America, not Russia.

Russia never coup-grabbed Mexico, but in February 2014, America coup-grabbed Ukraine. That was an act of war against Russia (in order to steal Russia's naval base in Crimea and in order for America to become able to place U.S. nukes in Ukraine only a five-minute missile-striking-distance away from obliterating Moscow), and Russia responded to America's blatant aggression by allowing the residents in the region of Ukraine that the Soviet dictator had transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, Crimea, to vote on whether they should remain in Ukraine or be returned to Russia. Over 90% of them voted to return to being Russians.

For this democratic response by Russia to America's Ukrainian coup (and to America's attempt to grab Russia's naval base in Crimea to transform it into a U.S. naval base there), America and its vassal nations repeatedly sanctioned Russia — another step in America's World War III aggression against Russia — and refused even to consider Russia's demand that Ukraine must never be a member of America's anti-Russian military alliance NATO or otherwise become a staging-area for a possible U.S.-and-allied invasion of Russia (a modern-day version of Adolf Hitler's "Operation Barbarossa" blitz-attack to grab Russia).

The heads-of-state of U.S.-and-allied countries should therefore be removed and prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in order to halt WW III before it reaches the nuclear stage. If this would violate any laws, then it still must at least be attempted, in order to force the 'news'-media in those countries to report on what is really at issue in the 'war between Russia and Ukraine', which is America's empire and its world-endangering war against Russia (now using Ukraine as America's proxy-soldiers and WW III introductory battleground). That is "aggressive war," not any sort of defensive war by America and its vassal-nations. As such, it violates the U.N. Charter; and if the non-U.S.-allied nations won't do everything they possibly can to defeat America at this stage in its global war of aggression against Russia, then the consequences of their collective failure in this matter will assuredly be the elimination of the entire world as we know it.

A post-WW-III world would be far worse for its survivors than it would be for its billions of non-survivors. The burden of guilt now is, consequently, not only upon the regimes that are seeking to expand yet further the American empire, but it is also upon the bystander nations, whose fates are also on the line in this matter. The fate of everyone is. And this is why everyone — and not ONLY the U.S. and its vassal-nations — must become actively involved here, to prevent the nuclear phase (which would be its final phase, and would be completed in considerably less than an hour). Imperialism must finally meet its match, to end it, for all time, before it ends all of us.

We are already in WW III, but stopping it before the final phase might not be impossible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwc-XBjl1tc

U.S.-and-allied publics have been psychopathically deceived. NATO — America's anti-Russian and anti-Chinese military alliance — is the world's real satanic entity.

Ukraine is none of America's business! But it very much is the business of the American empire — a business that still might yet be stopped, before it's too late (for everyone).

By Eric Zuesse

https://oneworld.press/?module=articles ... ew&id=2832.

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The Kursk Report
7 MAY 2022

The Kursk Report

For Russia to step into this trap, fully aware, means that Ukrainian conflict is envisioned in a wider operational theatre, for which this conflict is just a tactical engagement. Just as in the Kursk Battle, the argument for the Russian army to engage in Ukraine, against the far stronger Western military axis, can only be supported by a balancing of forces somewhere else.
Propaganda is all political and does not change the events on the ground. Its purpose is to prevent the understanding of the events, promoting conclusions instead of explanations. It proclaims singular ‘truths’, instead of multiple possibilities. Conformity, instead of questioning. This article is meant to only propose possible variables, and invite to further prospects on the forthcoming of the Ukrainian crisis.

...

“In the first phase the enemy, collecting their best forces (...) will strike (...) I consider it inadvisable for our forces to go over to an offensive in the near future in order to forestall the enemy. It would be better to make the enemy exhaust himself against our defences, and knock out his tanks and then, bringing up fresh reserves, to go over to the general offensive which would finally finish off his force”

(Georgiy Zhukov - 1943’ April 8th)

The victories of the Russian army in the Second World War, which are rightfully feeding their pride today, have subjects of a different role to the other end of these shinning stories – the defeated. What should make us believe that for those reiterating the old victories, there are not also those that remember the defeats from the very same stories?

Just a few years ago, the Western political syndicate equated Hitler’s Nazism with Stalin’s USSR. The former ally that defeated the Nazism in the first place, suddenly became from ally, the villain, with just a brush of rewriting history. It only proves that the alliance against Hitler was mere conjectural, and as such also explains the hesitations and the collusion of Western powers and the US in stopping Hitler in the beginning of the war. There is no surprise then, to see the same Western states supporting fascism and militarisation in the proximity of Russia, from the Baltic States, to Ukraine and Romania.

Ukraine crisis has a strange similarity with the Second World War Battle of Kursk, the very battle that broke the spine of the German army, and was the last major operation Germany would be able to attempt in that war. I think history has its own irony of repetition, since human nature is too poor for history to be inventive with. Or it might be that the Germans and their Western allies didn’t forget that painful defeat. Most often, the defeats are better teachers, than are the victories. Something that Russia might have forgotten.

It should be noticed, that in the intelligence game, the stage for the events preceding and leading to the intervention of Russia in Ukraine, was set up not by Russia, but by the West, starting with the Maidan coup d’etat of 2014. Prior and parallel to that, other operations have also been taken in all countries of Eastern Europe, with inconvenient politicians arrested or compromised and the preparation of the political arm of the Western military alliance. Russia was left with the choice, but the options to choose between were not hers to decide.

While in terms of military strategy, the first to move gains the strategic initiative, in terms of intelligence, it is exactly the opposite, as your move is spent and the initiative passes to the adversary. And as long as the adversary is not moving, the initiative remains his. Russia is not only on the stage set up by the West for her, but is also trapped within the pending moves of the West. It can be no closer as to what Germans felt throwing themselves in the cauldron the Russians prepared for them at Kursk.

From 2014 till 2022, all that the West did in Ukraine was to build up military equipment, training, and preparing for war. It took Stalin 2 months to prepare the trap of Kursk. The Western military axis had 8 years to prepare Ukraine. Three factors made this possible. First, the fascist paramilitary troops functioned as a loyal apparatus above the political and democratic system, able to infiltrate and control the state, regardless of the popular democratic choices. Inconvenient people have simply been killed or arrested, from journalists to politicians, all under the scrutiny and agreement of the West. To no surprise, at the same time, in UK, another journalist, Julian Assange was being hunted down and finally imprisoned for revealing crimes of the same Western military axis.

Secondly, and probably the most important, the West was able to find the Ukrainian politicians willing to sacrifice the lives of the Ukrainian citizens into the venture of a war waged in their towns, used as fortified positions against the invading army. But after all, what would be politics good for, if not able to turn the executioner into hero, simply by the spin of a good narrative and an entertaining show.

Third – Time! 8 years to prepare the war. The optimal time for the Russian intervention was in 2014 while the colored revolution was still tearing apart the democratic structure of Ukraine. Every day since, became a day too late for Russia to intervene. 8 years later is not only an hazard, but a desperate move on the account of Russia.

Old plans - New surprises

It is easy to understand the purpose of controlling the propaganda in Russia, just the same as in Ukraine. As said in beginning, propaganda is all about political control. So what would be the purpose of propaganda in the rest of Europe?! If propaganda is about controlling masses in times of war, it means only that Europe is already at war, a war that while apparently hasn’t started yet, it is being prepared for. Ukraine is not a war to end, but a war just about to begin.

Plans were promising for the Western axis, also back in 1943, preparing for the Kursk Battle. And Western Allies were not even interested to give full intelligence support to their Russian ally, with most of the intelligence about the German impending attack being extracted through the Russian spies - John Cairncross of the Cambridge Five, and the Lucy spy ring. What would have happened without the Russian intelligence that allow them to prepare against the German attack, we can only fantasize. But both, the German Nazis and Atlantic Allies had their prospects changed by the Red Army.

Kursk Battle was not only about what happened on that field of battle. On the military proportions, Russian Red Army had a ratio loss of 6 to 1 compared to Germans, and the German Army was steadily advancing. If battle was to be decided on the field, it might have been a pyrrhic victory for Germans, or a more costly win for the Red Army. But was not. After just one week from the start of the German offensive, Hitler decided to terminate the operation, due to the Allied landing in Sicily.

Two strategic considerations must be taken into account. The concentration of the German armed forces on the Eastern Front was a crucial factor that facilitated for the Allied forces to land in Sicily. The Allied intelligence had knowledge of the German attack plenty of time before, and it is no coincidence they forced the landing just five days after Germans engaged their main forces into the Kursk Battle. Secondly, it was this landing that forced Hitler to stop the offensive into the Kursk salient.

Not only that there are similarities with the present Ukrainian conflict, but I believe these also explain the context and the possible development of this crisis. As mentioned before, Russia might have been forced into this conflict, as a trap set up by NATO & its Western axis, but the strategy of Russia apparently stepping forth into the trap, might not be so obvious as the Western military axis predicted. The West had been fooled into the Kursk Battle in 1943, but making the same trap again, for Russia this time, might have no element of surprise for Russia, and instead turn into quite the opposite, Western’s own trap for itself.

Russia has an inferior army compared to the Western military axis - US and its allies combined, from Western Europe, to Canada and Japan. It is most obvious and is enough to look to their military budgets, with US alone being the world champion by far for military spending. NATO and its military axis also made no secret its military build-up in Ukraine, so for all accounts, Russia was fully aware of what expected her in Ukraine.

For Russia to step into this trap, fully aware, means that Ukrainian conflict is envisioned in a wider operational theatre, for which this conflict is just a tactical engagement. Just as in the Kursk Battle, the argument for the Russian army to engage in Ukraine, against the far stronger Western military axis, can only be supported by a balancing of forces somewhere else.

So as the intelligence theatre discloses, Ukrainian “Kursk” is quite the opposite of what the Western axis might have planned for, and once the NATO and Western resources will be committed into this conflict, we should expect the second front to open. Since the Ukrainian front is meant only to pin down the NATO & Western axis, it is most likely that the most important strategic development is the one to disclose itself on the other front that is about to open.

If NATO & Western axis will not commit further in Ukraine, Russia will win the conflict. So NATO and the West have no other option but to push for further military involvement in Ukraine. So the entire intelligence theatre flips. Western options are actually contained by Russia, and the intelligence initiative is also on the Russian side, with the pending of the second front, which I believe will disclose itself before the end of this year, most likely in the East.

... This is not a war to end, but a war just about to begin!

https://oneworld.press/?module=articles ... ew&id=2833

File under 'interesting' but bootless speculation. Anything is possible, but I don't think China is looking for military confrontation, they are beating the pants off the US in multiple areas as is. But they will not be pushed around on home turf either. Russia could use a second front to take the pressure off but we don't know how deeply China is committed to this alliance. I'm sure the Chinese will be cautious about trusting Russia.

The Nazis did not end their Kursk operation because of Sicily, they ended it because a massive counter-attack of over 1000 armored vehicles put an end to their delusions.

*******

Aggressive strategy of US influence on Russia
July 27, 16:31

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Aggressive strategy of US influence on Russia

The July 5, 2022 "Atlantic council" article describes a recommendatory propaganda strategy for the US and allies against Russia, as well as a methodology for exerting psychological influence on citizens.

1. Impact on three main audiences: the Russian people, the military loyal to the President of the Russian Federation and Russia's allies around the world.

2. Using the political apathy of the citizens of the Russian Federation to undermine the current political regime.

3. Geotargeting, propaganda and promotion in social networks of media content of "independent" Russian-speaking sources.

4. "Working with the Russians in such a strategy would open up a new front in the conflict."

5. Promotion of the Western agenda in social networks VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Rutube, Telegram, Instagram* and WhatsApp*.

6. Promoting online circumvention tools sponsored by the USAGM Open Technology Foundation, such as the Icarus Project, OpenVPN, or Psiphon.

7. Provide assistance to media outlets on standby, such as the Ekho Moskvy* radio station, Novaya Gazeta* newspaper, and the independent Dozhd* TV channel

. Russia.

9. "In the countries of Central Asia, historical mistrust and competition for influence in the region between Russia and China should be taken as a basis."

10. Demoralization of Russian troops with the help of digital systems.

https://telegra.ph/NKO-Atlanticheskij-s ... giya-07-26

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7762794.html

chain reactions
July 27, 15:39

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chain reactions

Pandemic, inflation, an energy crisis, a weak euro – this conglomerate of crises is how German politics and the economy are coping with difficulty, acting at the limit of their capabilities. In this situation, there is only one way to strengthen Germany's position. The dangerous situation now prevailing in Germany can be compared to a snowball effect. High in the mountains, the rolling of individual and harmless lumps of snow when combined with other snow masses can set in motion a dangerous avalanche that sweeps away everything in its path. Similarly, low-dangerous, easily resolved individual problems, when combined together, can give rise to a devastating catastrophe. This is what threatens to happen in Germany and what cannot be allowed. A lot of snowballs have been rolling down here lately.

These include measures to combat the pandemic, which have led to the restriction of production processes and the disruption of global supply chains. Suddenly, things that used to be in abundance began to disappear in stores. Prices are rising, especially for raw materials and building materials. The Russian attack on Ukraine further fueled the rise in energy prices. This caused inflation to get out of control. In annual terms, it reached a record high of 7.6 percent in June. This has not been seen in Germany for a long time. As a result, the purchasing power of earnings and savings has decreased so much that many low-income citizens have financial problems. Some families today do not know if they will be able to pay their heating bills this winter.

The list of alarm messages is getting longer every week. The fall in the euro exchange rate gave rise to fears that a new currency crisis will arise in Europe. The European currency, which has been falling below the dollar in recent months, has never been so cheap in the last 20 years. Talk about the collapse of the European Economic and Monetary Union, which previously seemed like speculation, is becoming more and more convincing.

The conflicts around Nord Stream 1 increase the risk that gas supply to industry and private households will indeed not be able to be provided by the end of the year. Therefore, many are afraid of the cold winter. In addition, it is becoming increasingly clear that due to restrictions on wheat exports from Ukraine, famine in the world's poorest countries could become a reality.

None of these problems individually poses an existential threat to the future of Germany. All of them are not new or solvable. Everything has happened before, and for many problems there are well-established methods of counteraction.
So, for example, they fight inflation by raising the key rate, and problems in the energy sector by using other energy sources that are (still!) in sufficient quantities, such as, for example, coal or nuclear energy. However, a new and extremely dangerous factor is the simultaneous occurrence of crises, as well as the fact that between individual negative events, increasing chain reactions begin to arise with unclear and difficult to control consequences. These are typical snowball effects.

Trade unions are automatically forced to react to a decrease in the purchasing power of their members' earnings. If they do not do this, then many may ask themselves why workers' representations are needed at all and why they, poor workers, pay membership dues.
However, with their understandably high demands for higher wages, unions are accelerating the inflationary spiral in which wages constantly and futilely try to catch up with prices. So it's getting harder and harder to put the genie of inflation back into the bottle.

At this point, the snowball effect begins to develop its destructive power. Methods that can work in each individual case become useless in a chain reaction and, on the contrary, can increase the negative consequences.
For example, economics textbooks say that central banks should respond to rising inflationary expectations by raising the key rate. This should reduce the general economic demand for money, and the dynamics of the rise in price will slow down.

The US followed this logic from the textbooks. However, the success was very modest: despite the increase in the key rate, inflation continues to pick up pace. It reached 9.1 percent in June, the highest since December 1981. Apparently, traditional academic methods are nowhere near as effective as they once were. Snowball effects follow a different logic than individual glitches: they provide a negative "cumulative effect".

The extent to which fear of further chain reactions hinders the use of traditional problem-solving methods can be seen in the hesitant behavior of the European Central Bank (ECB). They fear - and not without reason - that the emergence of negative and zero interest rates from oblivion and the increase in key rates will plunge the economy into recession, at least in the weakest countries of the eurozone.

Out of fear of this, the ECB is procrastinating and will make a key rate change too late and too small. But by doing so, he sets in motion another chain reaction that will exacerbate existing problems, namely the depreciation of the euro.
Recently, the euro fell below parity against the dollar due to the indecision of the ECB. Who would want to invest in a currency whose purchasing power is falling every year, as it is now happening with the euro?

So many people sell their euros and buy other currencies that people think are more stable and more reliable in terms of purchasing power, like the Swiss franc or the US dollar.
The depreciation of the euro, however, means that for Europeans the prices of imported goods in particular, and of all goods in general, will continue to rise. This phenomenon is called "imported inflation". It leads to a completely undesirable effect, when Germany has to pay Russia for gas and oil more than before. The consequence of this was a negative trade balance in Germany: this is when a country spends more on imported goods than it receives for exports.

With the effect of a snowball and the imposition of practical crises on each other, our "politically correct" democracy and the "rule of law" imbued with ideology with might and main are coping with difficulty. But the German model has worked exceptionally well in the past.In a normal situation, when there were pauses for a respite between individual crises, politicians had enough time to find rational solutions, in the implementation of which the maximum number of citizens participated. Therefore, the country coped with numerous individual crises quite successfully.

But in the case of the snowball effect, the German model based on the search for a reasonable consensus turned out to be powerless. As long as the coalition government, with its wide range of different interests, agrees on a single modus operandi, the avalanche will long begin to move.
The German model has also proved to be limited in effectiveness because, in full accordance with the expectations of most of society, it wants to protect the population from change and maintain the status quo.
For example, in the labor market, maintaining employment levels is seen as a priority, although today it would be wiser to maintain the ability of the economy to create jobs. After all, one who clings to the old for too long and too stubbornly will not keep up with events and will have to solve problems after they arise.

Politicians often react to such things with rush, political fuss, activism and emergency measures. Ideas such as subsidies for housing and heating, taxes on excess profits or property, discounts on car fuel or cheap train tickets - all this will now have to be forgotten. Experience has shown that such intervention by the state is usually delayed, these measures are poorly thought out and often do not achieve their goal.

Therefore, it happens that, for example, support measures are received by those who do not need them, and random people. In addition, abuse and other undesirable phenomena are possible. As a rule, government subsidies end up in the accounts of the strong, and not in the pockets of the weak, as planned. For example, targeted housing subsidies have resulted in landlords simply raising rents and thus pocketing public money meant to give tenants more room to rent.

Refugee policy in the mid-twenties or measures to combat the pandemic provide a lot of material that clearly shows how ineffective many measures are, what disappointment they generate among the population and how many people have lost confidence in the state crisis policy. Not surprisingly, the government is accused of "losing control."

But the bad news doesn't end there. The German model is also under pressure from snowball effects in world politics. The long and incredibly successful German foreign trade strategy was based on selling domestically produced goods and services abroad.
America paid the money, and Germany counted the profits. This is a short description of what the economic miracle and then the successful development of the German export economy was based on. The US funded a defense shield for Western Europe. During the Cold War, he ensured the security of European allies not only militarily.

This shield was the basis and guarantor of the world economic order, where the force of law prevailed, and the right of the strong was condemned. But at least during the presidency of Donald Trump, that time is over.
The one who made the demand "America first" could not and did not want to convincingly explain to the Americans why the United States bears most of the costs of the defense of Western Europe, while Germany did not fulfill its promises to make a significantly larger contribution to armaments and the army for years. Therefore, the current 100 billion euros in a special fund for the modernization of the Bundeswehr is just a drop on a hot stone.
Anyone who wants security and free trade will henceforth have to pay for it himself. Because of this, many things will become much more expensive for Germany. In all other respects, the principle "the one who created the problem pays" becomes dominant in the world economic order.

It will be used in terms of climate and environment, working conditions and social standards.The time to gloss over or pass on spending to weaker economies or future generations is over. For decades we have exploited countries where labor was cheap and where it was just as cheap to rest in complete comfort. It was an unworthy deception, which had nothing in common with the beautiful words about democracy with which we covered up reality.

For Germany, there will no longer be a policy of unlimited possibilities. The US will present the Europeans with a choice. Or they choose the US as a strategic ally and turn into China's worst enemies. Or they take the side of the People's Republic of China and refuse transatlantic alliances (including the US military shield).
Snowball effects, with their unpredictable consequences, provoke a change of eras. What this means for Germany and what follows from this is difficult to predict. But striving for greater resilience can be a sensible course of action.

This fashionable concept means quick and efficient adaptability to a variety of new circumstances. Achieving sustainability does not mean preserving what is already known and existing. Sustainability must ensure the functioning of the economy, society and politics in new times.
Resilience is a strategy, not a tactic. It assumes that politicians will proceed from the end result, as successful enterprises do. A sustainable policy focuses on setting goals, but leaves open all paths leading to those goals.

She leaves the choice of path to competition as a generator of smart ideas. This will give you the best chance of dealing with snowball effects. "More sustainability for Germany!" - this is the requirement that will help to effectively resist chain reactions, and where this cannot be done, it is best to protect yourself from their, as a rule, unknown and unpredictable consequences.

Thomas Staubhaar

https://inosmi.ru/20220727/ekonomika-255211426.html - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7762541.html

Melitopol University returned its symbol
July 27, 18:33

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Melitopol State University has returned its native symbol - the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.
Video return https://t.me/boris_rozhin/58483

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7763182.html

Google Translator

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

From Cassad's Telegram account:

***

Forwarded from
Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts on the evening of July 27

⚔️The situation on the fronts for the past day:

▫️The Kharkiv direction was marked by success in the denazification of a large number of Armed Forces of Ukraine, including foreign mercenaries on the territory of the Ukrainian Energy Machines plant.

▫️In the Slavic direction, fighting is already taking place on the outskirts of Soledar - in the coming days, units of the 2nd corps, most likely, will get close to its outskirts. Videos also appeared confirming the successes in Pokrovsky .

▫️One of the companies of the 10th mountain assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was completely destroyed in the Artemovsky (Bakhmutovsky) direction . There is an active offensive of the Russian army in the direction of Bakhmut (Artemovsk) .

▫️In the southern direction in Nikolaev , up to 200 Ukrainian soldiers were eliminated at the former reinforced concrete products plant "Nikolaevstroytrans" . There are positional battles and reflection of counterattacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

▫️The act of terrorism was committed today by Ukrainian militants in Kherson . An improvised explosive device was disguised in the garbage near the roadway on Admiral Senyavin Avenue. The explosion occurred when a car with a crew of local traffic police officers was passing by. Both employees survived, but were injured by shrapnel, they are receiving medical care.

🚀"Arrivals". Despite the information about its destruction of the Antonovsky Bridge , which was actively disseminated in the Ukrainian Telegram channels, which was subjected to artillery fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces yesterday, remained intact. Shelling by Ukrainian armed formations on peaceful cities also continued. Today the Donetsk and Lugansk agglomerations were shelled. In particular, heavy shelling took place in Gorlovka , Yasynuvata and Makeevka .

🎯Rocket strikes by our VKS were inflicted on warehouses with weapons and ammunition in Odessa, Nikolaev, Zaporozhye and Bakhmut (Artemovsk) . In the Chuguevsky district of the Kharkiv region, a blow was struck on the location of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in a three-story administrative building of the college.

🌎In the world. Iran will export aircraft equipment to Russia and repair Russian aircraft. In addition, Moscow and Tehran agreed to increase passenger flights to 35 per week.

👁From the interesting: Official Kiev announced the receipt of British Stormer HVM anti-aircraft missile systems and German Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery systems. To what extent these deliveries can change the situation at the front , Readovka explained .

Image

***

Сolonelcassad

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❗️Offensive on Donbass: the situation in the east of Ukraine
by the end of July 27, 2022

▪️At around 4 am, Ukrainian formations tried to shell Belgorod. All missiles were shot down by air defense systems.

▪️Russian artillery struck at the identified accumulations of AFU manpower in Senkovka , Chernihiv region, as well as Volfino and Nikolaevka , Sumy region.

▪️There are no significant changes in the front line in the Kharkov direction :
➖The RF Armed Forces hit targets in the Industrial and Novobavar districts of Kharkov, as well as other settlements in the region.
➖In the area of ​​Borshcheva, Sosnovka and Petrovka , Russian special forces carried out a successful raid on the positions of the 92nd brigade.
➖In a forest area west of Izyum , units of the Russian Armed Forces ambushed the DRG 81 oambr.

▪️In the Donbass , allied forces continue to gradually break into the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) direction:
➖The units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the NM of the DPR established control over Novolugansk.
➖In the previously taken Pokrovsky , the Wagner PMC units repulsed the counterattack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
➖The Ukrainian command continues preparations for the defense of Soledar and Bakhmut. Engineering units are equipping firing points, reinforcements are arriving in the cities.

▪️In the Donetsk direction, the artillery of the allied forces, with the support of aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces, made a massive raid on the identified targets. A large ammunition depot of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was destroyed in Avdiivka .
➖In response, Ukrainian formations fired on the cities of the Donetsk agglomeration: there are casualties among civilians in Yasinovataya and Donetsk .

▪️In the Zaporozhye direction, the RF Armed Forces hit the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Gulyaipol.

▪️In the Krivoy Rog direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to prepare for the offensive. Technical means of 138 zrbr were deployed to the area of ​​Apostolovo and Krivoy Rog .

***

Forwarded from
Denazification UA
"I have trained more than 2,000 soldiers. At least half of them are already dead"

American journalist visited Ukraine and talked to foreign mercenaries

Sam from the UK: military experience to fight against the Russians is a pretty shitty idea"

US military medical instructor Steve: "I fought in the Middle East and Africa and never saw such a level of corruption. [Handicraft] steel plates were issued to soldiers who underwent three days one rifle for two and gave 120 rounds. I have trained more than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers, and I think at least half of them are already dead"

British volunteer instructor Mike: "There is a problem of corruption in this country, which will inevitably affect the outcome of the war. Absolutely everything - Javelins, other missiles, cars, rifles, ammunition, grenades - everything is stolen"

***

Forwarded from
Turned on the Z war🇷🇺
The offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine towards the village of Andreevka across the Ingulets River failed.

Airborne and aviation forces multiplied the attackers by zero.

According to radio and mobile interception, the enemy will continue to attempt an offensive, also one soldier talking to his father said that they had to steal an excavator from a local ATP for faster burial of the fallen in battle, complains about a wild stench and that the bodies of brothers are heavily fragmented, well and at the end of the dialogue, he noted that payments for participation in the database had ceased to arrive at all

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 28, 2022 1:38 pm

A victory to guarantee more war
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 07/28/2022

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As time goes by and the war between Russia and Ukraine threatens to drag on indefinitely given the zero chances of success in political negotiations, the difficulties arising from the very nature of the conflict also increase. The front, which stretches over a thousand kilometers, implies supply needs, which are complicated by the increase in the destruction of infrastructure and the fatigue of the troops and the shortage of reserves. Despite the generous supply of Western weapons, the Russian troops maintain material superiority, while the Ukrainian troops have a superiority in number of troops, in part due to the low number of troops that Russia has committed to what it continues to call a special military operation .

The certainty that peace talks are not possible in the short term, at least without one of the two armies having been militarily defeated, implies the need to prioritize objectives. As was the case with the Russian side, which withdrew from the northern areas, where progress was scant and the number of casualties excessively high, Ukraine now finds it necessary to favor some areas of the front over others. Ukraine continues to insist on the idea that Russia has suffered very high casualties and provides figures that hardly correspond to reality. However, as international media have also confirmed, Ukrainian casualties are also high, many of them in the battle for Donbass, where the best units of the Ukrainian Army were until now.

Lost all territory of the former oblastfrom Luhansk - though not the ability to attack it with long-range artillery obtained from its Western partners - Ukraine maintains resistance in the former Donetsk region. In recent weeks, Russian troops have not made great progress, although they have taken the Uglegorsk power plant, the second largest power plant in Ukraine and where Ukrainian troops have been resisting for weeks, and have prepared the ground for the assaults on Seversk , Soledar and Artyomovsk, necessary for the subsequent battle for Slavyansk-Kramatorsk. Although the Ukrainian resistance continues, there has also been, according to Ukrainian sources, a certain withdrawal of some units. While Ukraine sends untrained recruits to Donbass,

Ukraine, in the mouth of its Defense Minister and also other representatives of the Government and the Office of the President, has repeated on numerous occasions that it is preparing for an imminent counter-offensive. The objective, as it has declared since practically the beginning of the Russian intervention, has always been to return to the existing borders on February 24. However, as Russian and Republican troops advance in Donbass, that option is less and less feasible. Russia has already begun the process of building infrastructure and housing in destroyed Mariupol, a sign that Moscow will not afford to risk losing a city it worked so hard to capture. The objective is to recover the electricity, water and gas supply services and to be able to accommodate the population that still remains in the city in view of winter,

Winter is also a factor to consider for Ukraine. President Zelensky, who in recent days has even had time to pose for Vogue magazine , has repeatedly stated that the war must be ended before the arrival of winter, although everything indicates that both Ukraine and its partners take it for granted that the war will last beyond next fall. This is proven by the promises of long-term delivery of weapons and also the contingency plans that both kyiv and Brussels are preparing in terms of energy. This week, in which the Ukrainian national company Naftogaz has suspended payments, Ukraine has asked its main partner, the United States, for a lend-lease schemeto guarantee the gas supply in view of the heating season.

The agreement announced this week by the European Union to reduce the use of gas due to the reduction in Russian gas supply also heralds a winter in conditions of severe energy crisis, a serious setback especially for the German economy, but also for the rest of the countries members. Hence, more and more Ukrainian sources take it for granted that the fear of war fatigue in the countries that provide weapons and financing will be compounded over the coming months by an economic crisis that will leave Ukraine off the list of priorities. of some of its most important partners.

Completely dependent on its partners to keep its army operational with the constant supply of weapons and training, but especially in financial terms, kyiv cannot afford to lose suppliers, which would seriously damage its combat capacity and call into question the stability of the state. Hence, a victory over the Russian forces, even a partial one, is seen as a necessary incentive to guarantee more weapons and more funding to continue the war. With this, Ukraine is not only seeking a symbolic victory to celebrate on Independence Day on August 24, but also to prevent a possible referendum on entry into Russia that is scheduled for next September. The idea that time is against Ukraine,

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As an area further away from mainland Russia, with fewer troops than in Donbass, which for Russia remains the main theater of the war, and more prone to attack as it lies on the right bank of the Dnieper, Ukraine seems to have chosen the city ​​of Kherson as a place to show himself capable of defeating the Russian troops. Hence, it has been to Kherson where Ukraine has transferred its reserves, according to Ukrainian sources, units prepared for combat withdrawn from Donbass, which for kyiv is now in the background. This also explains why the Antonovsky Bridge, one of the main accesses to Kherson, has become the main target of Ukrainian missiles. Yesterday, Ukraine claimed to have destroyed the bridge, which had already been damaged in attacks in previous days. According to the images published from the place, the bridge is still standing, although it has suffered serious damage and is closed to traffic. Russia, aware that the attacks will be repeated until the bridge is brought down, will have to prepare additional steps to ensure that the main Ukrainian city under its control is not isolated from the areas on the left bank of the river and from Crimea. For now, Russia has quickly put ferries into circulation to ensure transportation.

However, the breakthroughs that Ukrainian sources, social media followers and Oleskiy Arestovich boasted about last weekend have turned out to be false. According to these sources, up to 2,000 Russian troops had been isolated in the Kherson region and "their own Ilovaisk" was being prepared for them. Although it was evident from the first moment that it was false information, even Arestovich was forced to qualify his statements. Of course, that attempted attack, if it really happened, was only a preview of what is yet to come. Shortly after, the Ukrainian troops launched another attempt to start the counteroffensive, crossing the Ingulets River and gaining a bridgehead in the Andreevka area on this section of the front between Krivoy Rog and Kherson which, according to Russian sources, they had lost again yesterday. Fighting in the open field involves the risk of being left at the expense of enemy artillery.

Weeks after the announcements about the great offensive began and although this week it has been insisted that "Kherson will be liberated before September", the Ukrainian attack has not yet begun. However, it has become clear that this section of the front, more conducive to some partial victory (at least a dangerous approach towards the city of Kherson), has been chosen as the place to present itself as a capable military force and in the that it is necessary to continue investing. In this task, the city of Nikolaev, a few kilometers from Kherson and where its smiling governor, who last week announced his intention to "close the city" in search of Russian collaborators and spies, will have special importance, affirmed yesterday that "the situation in the region is controlled. The Ukrainian Army is preparing for a counteroffensive and is effectively inflicting fire damage.” General Marchenko has also traveled to the area, who announced a few days ago that Ukraine will attack the bridge linking mainland Russia and Crimea as soon as possible.

The Ukrainian offensive in Kherson, which will have to take place with greater or lesser force, will mean a new phase in the war, in which Ukraine hopes to divert troops and attention from Donbass, an area that it knows is lost, to focus on the most vulnerable place and on the one that hopes to defeat, at least partially, Russia. If successful, Ukraine could forget its defeats in Donbass and justify the need to continue the foreign supply of weapons for a fight to the end or to be able to negotiate under force. However, being defeated in this uncertain offensive would be a severe setback for Ukraine, which would leave it without its main arguments to continue demanding more support from its foreign partners.

https://slavyangrad.es/2022/07/28/una-v ... more-25146

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On the supply of weapons to Ukraine
July 28, 13:09

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On the supply of weapons to Ukraine

With regard to the history of https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7762081.html , with emerging documents on the purchase of old Soviet military equipment for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a number of points should be noted.

1. Despite many years of talk about the growth of the Ukrainian defense industry, most of its "know-how" remained in single-exhibition copies, which is why they do not have a significant impact on the course of hostilities. At the current stage, the main problems for the RF Armed Forces come in the vast majority of cases from foreign weapons.

2. Ukraine has not been able to ensure the development of a full-fledged military industry, which could ensure the mass production of weapons for the mobilized army. In addition, what was available was destroyed by the strikes of the RF Armed Forces. It can be assumed that the pre-war purchases of old weapons, as well as the current supply of old weapons, initially proceeded from the premise that, from a production point of view, Ukraine would not be able to pull out a long conflict in any way and weapons would have to be purchased abroad, despite all the victorious reports about “Ukrainian ultimate weapons”. This is how it happens in practice.

3. Since modern weapons are expensive, the stake was initially placed on the purchase of old Soviet and NATO weapons, which are not so pitiful to lose and which are cheap enough to ensure mass supplies for arming the mobilized population.

4. Since 2014, Ukraine has been actively trying to purchase various old Soviet and NATO weapons to compensate for losses in the campaigns of 2014-2015, where the issue of compensating for losses in armored vehicles and artillery, as well as restoring aviation, was particularly acute.

5. The search was conducted not only in the countries of Eastern Europe. In the Middle East, they tried to buy components for helicopters. The scheme for the purchase of armored vehicles in Kazakhstan is well described in the material. Bought even in Russia. Until 2015, I YaDZ received components for military armored vehicles from the Russian Federation. Later, a scheme was built with the delivery of components through Pridnestrovie, which was covered by the FSB. There have been attempts to gain access to purchases of blades for helicopter engines, as well as blades. All this was a reflection of Ukraine's inability to replace the basic models of weapons, therefore, the replacement of losses or the current plugging of holes proceeds according to the principle - if only it were, regardless of the issue of quality, unification, maintainability, etc.

6. Western intelligence services and companies affiliated with them knew very well how such schemes work back in the Syrian war, and therefore various gray schemes for the supply of weapons and ammunition, bypassing European legal procedures, were carried out like clockwork. Eastern Europe, as in the case of Syria, acted as the main logistics hub, where not only reserves were accumulated from the warehouses of the Internal Affairs Directorate, but also weapons that could be purchased in other regions. The fact that they have been actively engaged in this since 2014 once again indicates that Ukraine was being prepared for a war with Russia long before the NVO, and now the process has simply come to a finalization. However, the West does not hide the very fact of such preparations for unleashing a war in Ukraine.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7764527.html

Why the scandalous service station in Crimea was not demolished
July 28, 11:31 am

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To the question of why it was not possible to quickly demolish the scandalous service station in the Crimea.

July 26, 2022 in the evening in the village. Krasnogvardeyskoye, Valery Legkov, chief specialist of the municipal control of the administration of the Krasnogvardeysky district, was detained by the FSB Department for the Republic of Crimea.

Legkov is a subordinate of the head of administration, chairman of the Krasnogvardeisky district council, Shataev Roman Sergeevich. He was detained by law enforcement officers on the fact of receiving a bribe on an especially large scale. The official intended to receive money for the suspension of the dismantling of the service station in the village of Vidnoe.

Recall that on June 11 at 23:00 in the village of Vidnoye, Krasnogvardeisky district, this service station was denied service to servicemen who arrived in a car with the “Z” symbol. According to the servicemen, this was done on the orders of the owner, a supporter of the Nazi regime in Ukraine. The owner of the technical station claims that he refused the military because he did not have the necessary technical equipment.

Later it was found that the service station was operating illegally and should be dismantled, which was what the owner of the service station tried to avoid with the help of a bribe.


https://www.sevastopol.kp.ru/online/news/4849876/ - zinc (link video of detention)

I hope the process will now be accelerated. But there is undoubtedly one plus from the delay - a corrupt official was revealed.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7764463.html

Stable export of grain
July 28, 10:17

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The Germans are steadily exporting grain from Ukraine.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7764019.html

Google Translator

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The Western Narrative on Russia’s Isolation Has Failed
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 27, 2022
Ahmed Adel

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Western media and leaders have encouraged the idea of an “isolated” Russia since the country launched its military operation against Ukraine on February 24. However, now more than five months since the start of the war, segments of the West are now finally acknowledging the narrative of an “isolated” Russia as a distorted view.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price could only say that Russia is “a pariah” state when a journalist on July 25 highlighted that Moscow is not exactly isolated since Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was touring Africa. The same journalist hit back by saying that recent dialogues with Turkey and Iran “doesn’t really compute” as a demonstration of Russia’s “desperation” to break its isolation.

It is recalled that in late June, US National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby stated that the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Iran “shows the degree to which Mr. Putin and Russia are increasingly isolated. Now they have to turn to Iran for help.”

In response to this claim, the Russian Embassy in the US said in a social media statement: “Attempts to present our country as isolated are the result of the ‘inflamed imagination’ of US officials who are increasingly losing touch with reality and it causes confusion among the American media as well.”

World economists agree that the complete economic isolation of Russia is impossible. Russia’s economy is obviously being affected by the strengthening of sanctions due to the military operation in Ukraine and the effects of previous measures. However, not only is a complete blockade of the country’s economy impossible, even in theory, but economically aggressive states are now facing their own financial and industrial crises due to inflation and energy issues.

According to Italian newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano, in terms of purchasing power parity, currency illusion aside, China is the country with the highest annual production, followed by the US, India, Japan, Germany, Russia and Indonesia. In real terms, the Russian economy is comparable in size to Germany, a GDP higher than that of the United Kingdom, France and Italy.

Spanish newspaper Público highlighted the false claims that Russia is isolated: “The EU insists that Russia is isolated, the same refrain that the Joe Biden Administration repeats on the other side of the Atlantic. However, the summit just held in Tehran with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counterparts from Iran and Turkey seems to point the other way.”

In turn, Germany’s Die Welt writes that the West’s strategy to isolate Russia and President Vladimir Putin is not working, with the article concluding that the Russian leader enjoys more support across the world than the West expected:

“It is a sad experience for the free world. Who, in fact, stands firm with the Europeans and the United States? Who supports the sanctions, the effects of which on the Russian economy have so far been much weaker than anticipated? Canada, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia. That’s it. Moscow has the support of China, Brazil, India and South Africa, four countries that, together with Russia, account for a third of the world’s production.”

Europe’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, already admitted that Russia cannot be isolated from the world community, writing in a July 10 European External Action Service (EEAS) article. “The G7 and like-minded countries are united in condemning and sanctioning Russia and in trying to hold the regime accountable. But other countries, and we can speak here of the majority of the ‘Global South’, often take a different perspective. The global battle of narratives is in full swing and, for now, we are not winning.”

The National Interest columnist Mark Episkopos wrote: “Though Russia has been increasingly isolated from the West and certain Western-led institutions, Putin’s meetings in Tehran point to a different and altogether more unsettling phenomenon: despite ongoing attempts by European and US policymakers to marshal a united global front against the Kremlin, a substantial part of the non-Western world has maintained neutrality or, as in the case of China and Iran, explicitly endorsed Russia’s framing of the conflict.”

The Western propaganda campaign to create an image of Russia’s political isolation internationally has effectively failed. Although most Western leaders will continue with a false narrative that Russia is isolated, it is unlikely to deter Moscow from its relationship building with the majority of humanity.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... as-failed/

Washington’s Russian Drone Fantasy
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 27, 2022
Scott Ritter

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U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, center, with NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana, left, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Oct. 7, 2021. (NATO)

The information warfare campaign by the U.S. and its allies on behalf of Ukraine appeared to engulf Putin’s visit to Iran last week.

According to the official U.S. government narrative, a “desperate” Russia — suffering significant battlefield reversals in Ukraine including the loss of “large numbers” of reconnaissance drones while its own military industrial capacity lacks the ability to provide adequate replacements due to Russia’s “economic isolation” — has turned to Iran for assistance.

“Our information,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan declared, “indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAV’s [unmanned aerial vehicles], including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline.” Sullivan said. “It’s unclear whether Iran has delivered any of these UAVs to Russia already.”

Sullivan’s assessment was drawn from U.S. intelligence reports indicating that Russian officials had twice visited Iran — on June 8 and July 5 — for the purpose of observing at least two versions of Iranian UAVs in operation.

Both visits took place at Kashan Airbase, in central Iran. The Kashan facility has been publicly identified by Israel as the main training facility for Iran’s UAV program. According to Sullivan, these visits represent the first by Russian officials. “This suggests ongoing Russian interest in acquiring Iranian attack-capable UAVs,” Sullivan noted.

The Biden administration believes that Russia is seeking to acquire “hundreds” of the Iranian UAVs and that Iran is prepared to begin training Russian operators on their use in the near future.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby put the final spin on the story: “It was important to make it clear to the world that we know that Russia needs these additional capabilities,” Kirby said. “They are expanding their resources at an accelerated rate.”

C.I.A. Director William Burns echoed this assessment during a recent presentation at the Aspen Institute. “It’s important to remind ourselves,” Burns told attendees, speaking about the alleged Russian effort to procure Iranian UAVs, “that it’s a reflection, in some ways, of the deficiencies of Russia’s defense industry today, and the difficulties they’re having after significant losses so far in the war against Ukraine.”


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William Burns in 2019, while president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
(World Economic Forum, Ciaran McCrickard, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Information Warfare

The announcements by Sullivan, Kirby and Burns appear to be part of an ongoing information warfare campaign being waged by the United States and its allies on behalf of Ukraine, where, according to NBC News, the National Security Council “deploys” declassified intelligence — “even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high” — in order to “undermine Moscow’s propaganda and prevent Russia from defining how the war is perceived in the world,” or, more simply put, “to get inside [Russia President Vladimir] Putin’s head.”

The timing of the release of the drone intelligence, coming as it did on the eve of Putin’s visit to Tehran to meet with the Iranian leadership and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, suggests that Sullivan was applying the information warfare template to this trip in an attempt to shift the narrative away from Putin’s real goals — addressing the ongoing Syrian crisis and expanding diplomatic, military and economic ties with two of the region’s most critical state actors. Putin’s Tehran visit, taken at face value, undermined U.S. policy objectives in so far as it showed Russia to be confidently assertive and actively engaged in regional security and economic affairs.

By releasing the drone intelligence, the Biden administration sought to show the Russian leader as weakened and desperate for outside assistance to offset a looming military defeat in Ukraine. Based upon the results of Putin’s Tehran visit — furtherance of a political versus a military solution to the Syrian crises and the signing of a series of oil-and-gas development projects worth some $40 billion in total — the U.S. goal was not met. This is especially the case when the strong showing of Putin is contrasted with the relatively weak performance of U.S. President Joe Biden during his four-day sojourn through Israel and Saudi Arabia, which took place on the eve of Putin’s Tehran jaunt.

The issue of UAVs as a symbol of Russian military weakness has been a centerpiece of anti-Russian propaganda promulgated by Western intelligence services for some time now. Back in May, the British Defense Intelligence Service published a report detailing its assessment of the role played by UAV technology in the Russian military operation. “The Russia-Ukraine war has seen Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) playing a pivotal role for both sides,” the report noted, “although they have suffered a high rate of attrition. UAVs have proved vulnerable both to being shot down and to electronic jamming.”

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U.S. government satellite imagery of Russian delegation viewing Iranian drones, including the Shahed 129 and the Shahed Saegheh, at Kashan Airfield in June. (U.S. government, Wikimedia Commons)

The British highlighted their assessment that Russia was seeking to replicate an operational concept known as “Reconnaissance Strike” that had been developed and refined by its forces in Syria. This concept, the British declared, “uses reconnaissance UAVs to identify targets to be struck by combat jets or artillery.” What worked well in Syria, the British assessed, wasn’t working in Ukraine, due to the high casualty rate that the British alleged Russia to be suffering.

“Russia is likely experiencing a shortage of appropriate reconnaissance UAVs for this task, which is exacerbated by limitations in its domestic manufacturing capacity resulting from sanctions.”

Russia’s Orion UAV

The main problem with the British assessment, however, is that it hasn’t withstood the test of time, which is the ultimate discriminator when it comes to the quality of intelligence analysis. “Reconnaissance Strike,” it seems, is alive and well and living in Ukraine, courtesy of the very tool — the Orion medium-altitude, long-duration UAV — tested in Syria since 2019.

While the Ukrainian air defense forces appear to have shot down an Orion UAV on April 7, the system continues to fly over Ukraine, providing critical reconnaissance and strike capability for the Russians.

The Orion, it seems, has been very effective in tracking down the various heavy weapons — French-made Caesar howitzers, U.S.-made M777 howitzers and HIMARS rocket systems —that have been provided to Ukraine in an effort to help reverse Ukrainian military fortunes on the battlefield. (U.S. officials deny that any HIMARS systems have been destroyed by Russia.) The Orion has also been used to great effect to strike other targets as well.

Russia has also made extensive (and effective) use of “loitering UAVs” — “suicide drones” —in Ukraine. Two models in wide use are both made by a subsidiary of the Kalashnikov arms factory. These UAVs — the KUB and the Lancett-3 — are state of the art, capable of autonomous targeting (i.e., they seek out targets by themselves) and are ubiquitous over the Ukrainian battlefield.

The British intelligence assessment, echoed in turn by the U.S. intelligence and national security establishment, was and is flat-out wrong. But what makes the error even more egregious is that neither intelligence service — the U.K. nor the U.S. — seemed bothered by trying to at least craft a logical narrative to back-up their erroneous claims.

The Iranian drones that were imaged by U.S. satellites at Kashan air base — the Shahid-129 and Shahid-191 — are both derivatives of U.S. UAV technology, and do not in any way, shape, or form advance Russia’s demonstrated UAV prowess. The Russian drones are newer and more advanced than the drones alleged to have been demonstrated by Iran.

Moreover, the Russia drones have been built according to Russian needs and specifications and adapted to developing Russian UAV doctrine that has been extensively tested under combat conditions in Syria.

By all indications, Russia has readily adapted both the doctrine and the weapons systems involved to the new realities of the Ukrainian battlefield. Unless Russia was facing a catastrophic shortfall in the availability of drones (and no hard evidence has been provided by either the U.K. or U.S. to sustain such a premise), there is absolutely no reason for the Russian Ministry of Defense to undertake a crash program to acquire foreign-made UAVs that could not be readily integrated into the operational forces of the Russian military under combat conditions.

Then there is the issue of verification of the U.S. claims. For its part, Iran has denied the American allegations, with Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian declaring that while Iran has “defense agreements with Russia,” it “will not help any of the parties involved in this conflict,” which includes providing weapons to either side.

For its part, Russia has remained characteristically silent on the issue, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov noting, prior to Putin’s arrival in Tehran, that the Russian president would not be discussing Iranian drones while in Iran.

So, what is behind the Russian interest in Iranian drones? The answer may lie in their U.S. origins. As the U.S. increases the scope and scale of its military assistance to Ukraine, and as Russia confronts the all-too-real possibility of a wider conflict in Europe where its forces would be compelled to face off against U.S.-manufactured drone technology, Russia would be foolish not to take advantage of its improving ties with Iran to gain invaluable insights into U.S. drone technology, as well as how Iran has adapted this technology to the modern battlefield, to include successful operations against U.S.-designed air defense systems.

This scenario makes far more sense that the fanciful “Russia is losing the drone war” narrative being pushed by U.S. and British intelligence and parroted without any real effort at anything that remotely resembles sound analysis by the compliant stenographers in the mainstream Western media. All any reporter had to do was ask the Ukrainian military about what was happening all along the frontlines in Ukraine — or at least, ask those who had not been killed at the hands of Russia’s very dangerous, and very active, UAV force.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... e-fantasy/

Col Cassad and Scott Ritter disagree on this point. As stated, the recon drones suffer a high attrition rate and when you consider that Ukraine has the technical prowess of NATO behind it one could see that Russia might come up comparatively short. Cassad thinks so and lusts for those Iranian drones. Boris(Cassad) reminds me the sort of general who is never satisfied with the forces available, the Civil War general McClellan comes to mind.(He also believes that Russia should fully mobilize, which makes military sense but the political calculations disagree.) The Donbass forces have been largely using 'Radio Shack' quad-copters off the shelf and donated by the citizenry of Donbass and Russia to very good effect. Apparently for the relatively close tactical work that's all you need but you need a bunch of them. I suspect that if Putin is talking to Iran about drones that it is on a contingency basis and the US propaganda is a gratuitous 'twofer' swatting at both Russia and Iran.

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THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR RUSSIAN GAS THAT CAN SAVE THE WEST FROM ITS MISTAKES
Jul 27, 2022 , 11:05 a.m.

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The "sanctions" war has meant for Russia a significant decrease in the participation of the West in its foreign economic relations, however, this has been offset by the increased participation of partners from other latitudes due, among other things, to to the correct reading that Moscow has had of global geopolitical trends and how it has taken advantage of its territory.

The same cannot be said regarding the consequences that have fallen on Europe, and we have reviewed it on many occasions , but it is striking that the United States is taking advantage of it, since apparently both blocs are helping each other to be able to contain the boomerang effect produced by the siege on the Russian economy.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF "ALLIES"

There is no doubt that the nations that make up NATO do not know which direction to take to avoid admitting that they were wrong in the war against Russia. While that internal debate continues to stall, Washington takes advantage of the critical energy circumstances of European countries to bill higher profits.

The United States Energy Information Administration reported a few weeks ago that the country became, for the first time in history, the world's leading exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). As is known, this type of gas is the one that is processed to be transported in liquid form.

"US LNG exports increased 12% in the first half of 2022 compared to the second half of 2021, averaging 11.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) between January and June 2022 "said the American institution.

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With the excuse of the war against Russia, the United States won a market in Europe's energy sector, but the facts show that this commercial relationship will be in chaos (Photo: Reuters)

The urgency of European Union (EU) countries to fill storage facilities in time for the winter, coupled with self-inflicted limitations on Russian gas supply, are clearly linked to the United States' position as the number one seller of LNG.

The EU is the world's largest importer of natural gas. In order to supply more than half of the demand for the item, it needs foreign production. In 2016 , the main exporter was Russia (39%), followed by Norway (30%) and Algeria (13%). Most of it is transported by pipeline, but at least 10% of imports that year were LNG.

THE CLOCK IS TICKING, RESOURCES ARE DEPLETED, AND THE ENERGY TRANSITION SCAM IS EXPOSED
The objective of the European Union is to complete 80% of the gas reserves for the month of November, before the start of winter. However, the bloc does not have an infrastructure that can handle the increase in LNG imports, so large investments would have to be made in this area if shortages are to be avoided. Network operators have already been issuing warnings about it.

That is another point at which the war, which is supposed to have been launched to harm Russia, will be generating economic benefits for the United States to the detriment of the European situation. Says a study prepared by the Wood Mackenzie company that evaluates the scenarios in the EU for the next decade, assuming that it prohibits all products from Russia in 2024.

"The rapid increase in demand for LNG in Europe is contributing to a large increase in investment in LNG projects, and US developers are already looking to fill the gap," said Massimo Di-Odoardo, vice president of gas and LNG research. of the company.

In other words, with its high LNG export capacities, the United States has great influence over the energy investment decisions that will be made in Europe in the next two years, and it could increase if the sanction war against Moscow intensifies.

But the European Union has to deal with the fact that it is not in its best financial moment to make investments. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned EU countries of a severe recession due to Russian gas bans. According to the fund's experts, the GDP of Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic will fall by an average of 6%, while Italy, Germany and Austria will also be greatly affected.

The fund assumes that Europe lacks a comprehensive plan to deal with the deficit, the further increase in energy prices and the impact on economic growth. In the event of a complete cut off of gas supplies from Russia, the EU could face a drop in economic output of nearly 3% over the next 12 months.

And under these conditions the European Union has to compete with other countries for the purchase of liquefied gas, surpassing them.

In addition, there are problems in the deliveries on the US side. In June, there was an accident at the second largest LNG plant in the United States, resulting in the country's export capacity being reduced by the equivalent of about 60 million cubic meters of gas per day. The consequences of the emergency will be eliminated only by the end of 2022, the operators estimate.

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The use of coal is increasing in Europe, although it emits more carbon dioxide than any other source of electricity (Photo: Bloomberg)

Continuing with Russia's zero gas plan also calls into question the "fight against climate change" that the EU is apparently waging, with the transition to clean energy.

For the first time since 2017, coal consumption increased by 12%. And the crisis is forcing the main economies in the region, such as France, Germany, Italy and Austria, to reactivate coal-fired power plants as an alternative to the supply of gas from Russia, thus confirming that no serious calculations have been made on the feasibility of the green transition to which they claim to bet so much. Is a gotcha.

The European Union will hardly be able to cut all ties with Russia and switch to LNG, but if they do, the Eurasian country will have no problem redirecting its production to other markets or for domestic consumption, while the European bloc will have to continue sailing between cost increases and potential supply shortages.

BLAME RUSSIA FOR NOT ADMITTING OWN MISTAKES

The United States does not escape the energy crisis. According to a survey conducted last month, high fuel costs have caused 64% of Americans to change their lifestyle and how often they use cars, an issue that responds to the pressure against the Russian energy sector. On average, a gallon of gasoline is sold for 4 dollars, being 38% more expensive than last year.

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The Biden government is running out of ideas to deal with the high costs of gasoline. Stopping the war against Russia does not seem to be among the options (Photo: Bloomberg)

To deal with rising prices, 88% of Americans surveyed said they used the car less to get around, and more than half said they cut down on shopping and restaurant visits.

In Europe, the effects are more dramatic. Germany, for example, made it clear that all the economic prosperity of the last decades was mainly related to Russian energy resources at affordable prices, and now the country is on the verge of a serious emergency.

"Due to gas shortages, entire branches of industry are threatened with permanent collapse: aluminium, glass, chemical industry. Such a collapse would have massive consequences for the entire economy and employment in Germany," says Yasmin Fahimi, director of the main German union DGB, to the media on July 3.

It is clear that the restrictions against one of the main players in the world energy market have played a role in the energy crisis, but Western propaganda has tried to displace reality by introducing the idea that it is Russia that wants to limit gas supplies for political reasons. Some circumstances in Nord Stream 1 are being misrepresented for that purpose.

In July, the pipeline stopped operating for ten days due to equipment maintenance scheduled in advance. Gazprom, the company that runs Nord Stream, had had to cut supplies through the pipeline to around 40% of capacity because a turbine was stranded in Canada due to Western "sanctions."

Operations resumed on July 21, as scheduled, but the turbine had not yet arrived in Russia. With special permission from the Canadian authorities, it was returned to the German equipment manufacturer Siemens. The latter claims to have granted Gazprom an export license for the unit to be delivered to Moscow and that allows other parts to be sent for repair until the end of 2024. But the Russian company pointed out that, although it received some documents, these do not indicate any evidence. of the lifting of the coercive measures "and raise additional doubts", so the turbine remains in Germany.

On July 26, Gazprom announced that another Siemens gas turbine engine stopped operations for scheduled repairs. Since this happened before the retained turbine in Canada came back online, pumping was reduced to 33 million cubic meters of the hydrocarbon, which is equivalent to 20% of the pipeline's capacity.

In this context, and amid scarcity fears, at the close of this note, the price of gas in Europe broke a record, reaching 223.85 euros per megawatt-hour today.

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The table compares gas prices in Europe from April 27 to July 27, 2022 (Photo: Disclose.tv)

It is necessary to emphasize how absurd and cynical it means to blame Russia for the energy crisis that the West has unleashed in its attempt to stop the process of decline of its hegemony.

Since before the Russian military operation in Ukraine, American and European leaders have been vociferating threats to launch bans against Russia, as well as arrogantly saying that they could do without its participation in the international economy. Now their opportunity is one step away, but of course the abyss ahead has stopped them in their tracks.

For now.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/no ... us-errores

Google Translator

We should note that this crisis is greatly aggravated by the anarchic, avarice driven nature of capitalism. A planned, socialist economy would much more successfully deal with the situation, as China has proven in spades in it's COVID response. But then, a socialist nation would not have engaged in the serial aggressions of NATO expansion either. Ya get what ya voted for.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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