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 » Sun May 01, 2022 2:20 pm

Curfew for Anniversary of Odessa Massacre That Sparked Rebellion
April 30, 2022

Odessa has imposed a two-day curfew on the anniversary of the burning alive of anti-Maidan protestors on May 2, 2014, reports Joe Lauria.

[youtube]http//youtu.be/vy-YrTdt7RE[/youtube]

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News


Authorities in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa have set a 24-hour curfew from May 1-3 to prevent protests commemorating the burning alive on May 2, 2014 of 48 people who had rejected the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev earlier that year.

The city, which is “(under the control of Ukrainian troops) announced the introduction of a ‘curfew’ in the city from 22-00 on May 1 to 5-00 on May 3. For the duration of the ‘curfew’ Odessans are not allowed to leave their homes,” said the group Repression of the Left and Dissenters in Ukraine in a Telegram post. “Obviously, this decision of the authorities is due to the fact that May 2 is a very important date for the inhabitants of Odessa.”

On that day eight years ago hooligans and far-right groups deliberately set fire to a labor union building where protestors against the coup had taken refuge. Police did not intervene. Video footage shows at least one police officer and others firing their guns into the building. The crowd is cheering as many of the people trapped inside jumped to their deaths.

The events of that day “have not yet been investigated by law enforcement agencies of Ukraine,” the group said. Pleas at the time from the United Nations and the European Union for Ukraine to investigate were ignored. Three Ukrainian local government probes were stymied by the withholding of secret documents.

A report on the incident from the European Council (EC) at the time makes clear it did not conduct its own investigation but relied on local probes, especially by the Verkhovna Rada’s Temporary Investigation Commission. The EC complains in its reports that it too was barred from viewing classified information. Relying on the local inquiries, the EC reports that pro-Russian, or pro-federalist, protestors attacked a pro-unity march in the afternoon, prompting street battles. Then:

“At around 6.50 p.m. pro-federalists broke down the door [of the trade union building] and brought inside various materials, including boxes containing Molotov cocktails and the products needed to make them. Using wooden pallets which had supported tents in the square, they blocked the entrances to the building from the inside and erected barricades. When they arrived at the square at around 7.20 p.m., the pro-unity protesters destroyed and set fire to the tents of the Anti-Maidan camp. The remaining pro-federalism protesters entered the Trade Union Building, from where they exchanged shots and Molotov cocktails with their opponents outside. …

At about 7.45 p.m. a fire broke out in the Trade Union Building. Forensic examinations subsequently indicated that the fire had started in five places, namely the lobby, on the staircases to the left and right of the building between the ground and first floors, in a room on the first floor and on the landing between the second and third floors. Other than the fire in the lobby, the fires could only have been started by the acts of those inside the building. The forensic reports did not find any evidence to suggest that the fire had been preplanned. The closed doors and the chimney effect caused by the stairwell resulted in the fire’s rapid spread to the upper floors and a fast and extreme rise in the temperature inside the building.”


The local investigation thus blamed the anti-Maidan protestors for starting the fire throughout the building. But this video, which shows events on that day leading to the fire, depicts the main blaze in the lobby. It shows Right Sector extremists lobbing Molotov cocktails into the building and a policeman firing his gun at it. It does not show any cocktails thrown from the building. It doesn’t show clashes earlier in the day, though one pro-unity protestor says they were attacked at Cathedral Square and they’ve come to burn the anti-Maidan protestors in the building for revenge:



The New York Times buried the first news of the massacre in a May 2, 2014 story, saying “dozens of people died in a fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists.”

The Times then published a video report that said dozens were killed in a fire, “and others were shot dead when fighting between pro- and anti-Russian groups broke out on the streets of Odessa.” The video narrator says “crowds did their best to save lives.” It quotes Ukrainian police saying a “pro-Kiev march was ambushed … petrol bombs were thrown” and gun battles erupted on the streets.

The late Robert Parry, who founded Consortium News, reported on Aug. 10, 2014:

“The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.

‘Burn, Colorado, burn’ went the chant.

As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading ‘Galician SS,’ a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.”


“Every year on May 2, residents of Odessa come to the House of Trade Unions, where the tragedy occurred, to honor the memory of the victims,” the Ukrainian leftist group said. “But also every year on this day they are attacked by representatives of ultra-right groups with the inaction of the police.”

“This year,” the group said, “the authorities decided to prevent any gathering on May 2nd. Everyone who leaves their home on May 2 will be detained under the terms of the ‘curfew.'”

Sparked Donbass Rebellion

“This event became the trigger for the uprising in the Donbass,” Repression of the Left and Dissenters in Ukraine said. Eight days after the Odessa massacre, coup resisters in the far eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, bordering on Russia, voted in a referendum to become independent from Ukraine.

The U.S.-backed coup government then launched a military attack against the breakaway provinces, which continued for nearly eight years, killing thousands of people before prompting Russian intervention in the civil conflict. Russia says it has proof that the Ukrainian military, which had amassed 60,000 of its troops at the line of contact, were on the verge of an offensive to retake the provinces. OSCE maps showed a dramatic increase of shelling from the government side into the rebel areas in the last week of February.

On Feb. 24 Russia invaded Ukraine with the stated purpose of “de-Nazifying” and “de-militarizing” Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers and the people of Donbass. In a televised address three days before the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin mentioned the events of May 2, 2014 in Odessa.

“One shudders at the memories of the terrible tragedy in Odessa, where peaceful protesters were brutally murdered, burned alive in the House of Trade Unions,” he said. “The criminals who committed that atrocity have never been punished, and no one is even looking for them. But we know their names and we will do everything to punish them, find them and bring them to justice.”

The demonstrators in Odessa that day were protesting the violent overthrow on Feb. 21, 2014 of the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych. U.S. involvement in the coup is revealed in a leaked telephone conversation between Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/30/c ... rebellion/

Yet they say there are no Nazis in Ukraine. Those who deny or ignore Nazis deserve an ass whooping.

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Three days in May to fight imperialist war and fascism
May 1, 2022 Greg Butterfield

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The struggle against imperialist war and white supremacy is global. Pictured: Brooklyn protest after the police murder of George Floyd, June 1, 2020; Victory Day 2016 in Lugansk. SLL photos: Greg Butterfield

This May, as U.S. imperialism wages a criminal proxy war against Russia on the territory of Ukraine and the Donbass republics, the workers’ movement should take steps toward organizing to defeat imperialist war and fascism. Three days of fight-back give us an opportunity to begin that urgent work.

May 1 is International Workers’ Day, commemorating the 1886 Haymarket protest and deadly police repression in Chicago. The day of international working-class solidarity is celebrated around the world. In the United States, anti-communism and anti-Sovietism nearly wiped out May Day for decades, until it was revitalized by the struggle of undocumented immigrant workers in the early 2000s.

May 2 marks the anniversary of another massacre: in Odessa, Ukraine, in 2014, carried out by U.S.-backed neo-Nazis. At least 48 anti-fascist protesters were killed when supporters of the illegal Maidan coup set fire to the House of Trade Unions and slaughtered those who tried to escape the burning building. This massacre isn’t yet well known in the U.S. but should be, since it illuminates the ugly reality behind Washington’s “Stand with Ukraine” war propaganda.

May 9, meanwhile, is recognized in the former Soviet countries and much of the world as Victory Day – marking the final defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. It’s no surprise that this day isn’t celebrated in the U.S., since it challenges the well-cultivated myth that the U.S. was the lynchpin in the defeat of the Third Reich. But in reality, the USSR and its partisan allies across Europe defeated German imperialism – at the cost of 30 million civilian and military lives and the destruction of much of the socialist country’s infrastructure.

In the Donbass people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, in Russia, and until eight years ago in Ukraine itself, the period from May 1 through 9 is an important holiday time when people remember those who sacrificed so much to defeat the 20th century fascist menace.

Since 2014, it has gained new meaning in Donbass, as people also honor those family members and neighbors who’ve died defending the republics from Ukraine’s NATO-armed military – including the neo-Nazi battalions that form the backbone of the current Ukrainian state.

This May 1-2, it’s been announced that Odessa will be under day-long curfews to prevent any expression of working-class struggle or opposition to the Zelensky/NATO regime. Ukrainian President Zelensky recently appointed the leader of the fascist Aidar Battalion as governor of the Odessa region.

Victory Day commemorations have been banned in Ukraine since 2014. Elders who have taken to the streets in defiance of the Ukrainian regime to mark Victory Day have been arrested by police and beaten by neo-Nazis.

War on workers

President Joe Biden has requested a $33-billion addition to the U.S. war budget to pump even more weapons into Ukraine to counter the Special Military Operation of the Donbass republics, Ukraine’s anti-fascist underground and the Russian Federation. The aim of the Special Military Operation is to denazify and disarm the NATO-controlled Ukrainian regime.

Given the eagerness of Democrats and Republicans alike to support the U.S. proxy war, there’s little doubt Biden’s request will be granted – if not more.

Along with the military-industrial complex, U.S. Big Oil and Big Banks will profit handsomely. A key motivation for launching a major European conflict was to cut off the supply of Russian fuel to Washington’s Western European allies, to ensure their money flows into U.S. coffers.

But the war drive is a disaster for working-class and oppressed people. While Washington pours a fortune into war, sacrificing the lives of Ukrainian and Donbass workers for Wall Street’s gain, people here are left holding the bag in the aftermath of the devastating pandemic.

Rents are skyrocketing and evictions alongside them. Inflation is slamming the lives of workers from the grocery store to the gas pump. Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress have reneged on every promise they made to their voter base: protecting the right to organize, stopping police brutality, defending reproductive rights, LGBTQ2S rights and Black voters’ rights, canceling student debt, action to stop climate change, and on and on.

An even more devastating economic crisis looms. On April 28, it was announced that the U.S. economy shrank and the Gross Domestic Product fell 1.4%, the first contraction since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Censorship and hate-crime propaganda have soared to new heights. The Biden administration and Big Tech have methodically censored workers’ access to factual information and alternative views on the conflict in Ukraine. Washington is setting up a “Disinformation Governance Board” under the Department of Homeland Security to deepen the war censorship.

At the same time, the recently announced buyout of Twitter by super-rich bigot Elon Musk with the backing of big banks indicates that, in tandem with the war censorship, the weak curbs introduced on social media fascists after Jan. 6, 2020, will be removed, giving white supremacists free reign to escalate their divide-and-conquer attacks that fuel violence against people of color, trans people and other oppressed sections of the working class.

Unite the working class

“During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government,” wrote Marxist leader V.I. Lenin in 1915. “This is axiomatic, and disputed only by conscious partisans or helpless satellites of the social-chauvinists. The opponents of the defeat slogan are simply afraid of themselves when they refuse to recognize the very obvious fact of the inseparable link between revolutionary agitation against the government and helping bring about its defeat.”

Unfortunately, in 2022, many of the socialist, communist and other organizations that claim to represent the working class have forgotten this critical lesson. Many anti-war and left groups have bent to the intense pressure of imperialist propaganda and thrown their support behind the U.S. proxy war directly or indirectly. Others are keeping their heads down, afraid to take to the streets or go to the working class to refute Washington’s war lies.

But there are signs of hope. Of particular significance are the powerful union-organizing drives at Amazon and Starbucks, fueled by young workers, Black and Brown workers, women and queer workers, including the ground-breaking victory of the Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island, New York. In Oakland, California, teachers and longshore workers united to shut down the city’s schools and ports April 29 to fight racist gentrification. Grassroots movements are fighting tooth-and-nail to defend trans youth and people who need abortions from repressive laws in Texas, Florida and other Republican-dominated states.

Despite the grim conditions facing our class, we must remind ourselves that it has been less than two years since the George Floyd uprising against racist police terror shook the ruling class with the biggest movement for social change in the country’s history. Today’s right-wing offensive from the top is a reaction to that powerful struggle.

We know that millions of people can and will fight back. The job of the revolutionary left is to connect the dots of the many struggles, to help the workers overcome the divide-and-conquer politics of the capitalists by building solidarity with the most oppressed, and to show how the bosses’ war against workers here and U.S. wars around the world are one and the same.

Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite – to defeat imperialist war and fascism!

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... d-fascism/

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Germany Drops Opposition To Russian Oil Embargo
By City A.M - Apr 30, 2022, 10:00 AM CDT

Oil prices are on the rise for the fourth consecutive day on renewed Russian supply concerns and potential demand destruction in China.
The EU is reportedly closer to announcing a potential full embargo on Russian oil following news that Germany has dropped its opposition to the measure.
Russian oil production could fall by as much as 17 percent this year as Western sanctions weigh on the industry.

Oil prices have risen for a fourth consecutive day with concerns over Russian supply disruptions trumping reduced demand expectations in China.

Brent Crude climbed 1.7 percent to $109.40 per barrel, while WTI Crude moved up 1.03 percent to $106.50 per barrel.

Both contracts are set to finish up on the week, and post their fifth straight monthly gains, buoyed by reports the European Union (EU) will phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year.

Germany – the bloc’s largest economy – has dropped its opposition to the measure, which is being considered for inclusion in the EU’s possible sixth package of sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February.

Prices have been on a volatile journey in the proceeding two months, peaking at 14-year highs at $139 per barrel in early March before plummeting below the $100 milestone later that month as developed economies grappled with the prospect of supply shortages.

The US and UK opting to impose sanctions on Russian energy supplies caused prices to spiral, exacerbated by tight markets amid OPEC+’s persistent failure to raise output production in line with its modest pledged increases of 400,000 extra barrels per day.

With pleas from the West to boost supplies falling on deaf ears, the US and members of the International Energy Agency (IEA) opted to flood the market with 240m barrels – causing prices to tumble as President Joe Biden desperately seeks to contain the cost-of-living crisis ahead of key mid-term elections this year.

The latest resurgence on both major benchmarks has been weighed down by continued Covid-19 lockdowns in China, the world’s biggest crude importer.

The country has shown no signs of easing lockdown measures in Shanghai, despite the impact on its economy and global supply chains.

However, prices are likely to remain elevated regardless, with fears of supply shortages continuing to escalate.

Russian oil production could fall by as much as 17 percent this year, according to documents seen by news agency Reuters, as Western sanctions hurt investments and exports.

Related: German Energy Giant To Pay For Russian Gas In Rubles

Reflecting this reality, Exxon Mobil revealed earlier this week that the Russian unit Exxon Neftegas has declared force majeure for its Sakhalin-1 operations.

The Sakhalin-1 project produces Sokol crude oil off the coast of Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, exporting about 273,000 barrels per day, mainly to South Korea, alongside Japan, Australia, Thailand, and the US.

The energy giant revealed last month it would exit about $4 billion in assets and discontinue all its Russia operations, including Sakhalin 1.

Meanwhile, OPEC+ is likely to stick to its existing deal and agree on another small output increase for June when it meets on May 5.

By CityAM

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/G ... bargo.html

Economic suicide...well, it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

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Militarized Europe is a storehouse of financial well-being of the US military-industrial complex
May 1, 1:11 p.m.

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Militarized Europe is a storehouse of financial well-being of the US military-industrial complex

It should not surprise anyone that large-scale deliveries of Western weapons have begun to Ukraine. In inciting the conflict in Ukraine, in addition to pursuing geopolitical goals, there is a large share of economic goals. The conflict is as multifaceted as possible, and the restart of the Western military-industrial complex is one of its facets. To restart it, you need to get rid of stocks, and the biggest conflict since the Second World War is a great place to do this.

The US military-industrial complex is extremely interested in the conflict in Ukraine and the endless duration, the fighting is deliberately dragged out by the lobbyists of the American arms companies. They are making every effort to ensure that the situation around the conflict remains uncertain for a long time, with the help of the Pentagon and the huge machine of Western information propaganda.

The first goal is to drain Ukraine of all obsolete Soviet weapons from the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. The countries of Eastern Europe in return will receive new counterparts from Western weapons.

The second goal is to drain Ukraine of stale stocks (including old ones) in Western warehouses and provoke the release of new and larger batches. For example, at the moment, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have received more than 7,000 anti-tank systems from the United States. According to various estimates, the United States had from 20,000 to 25,000 units in warehouses, which means that more than a third of the stocks went to the needs of Ukraine. Therefore, it is necessary to produce as many new ATGMs and ammunition as possible, which means installing new production lines, because the output per year is currently limited to 6480 units per year with a delivery time of 32 months.

Rub and the most important goal is the militarization of Europe. European countries are already making adjustments to their military budgets, against the backdrop of information hysteria and public fears, this is becoming a new need and lobbying by military companies is not even required. In parallel with this, NATO bases in Europe are increasing many times over and weapons depots are being replenished.

Militarized Europe is a storehouse of financial well-being of the US military-industrial complex. Yes, not all European countries rely on US products, but Washington's share is huge and will increase. Recently, the Pentagon posted a request for information (RFI) from industry on the federal contract website, the goal is to obtain the necessary information from all enterprises involved in the production of air defense systems and means, anti-tank and anti-personnel weapons, coastal defense equipment, counter-battery systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as communication equipment. In fact, the collection of information from young military companies begins, for their future stimulation from Washington. Ukraine is a great place to test new models - a military showcase.

The military-industrial complex has been one of the most important drivers of the dollar since the Second World War. And judging by the incoming information, a “gold rush” for arms companies is starting in the West. Everyone is lined up and waiting for new orders. Ukraine in this story is an important link that provokes a large-scale militarization of Europe, and it, in turn, will spur a new arms race and huge profits for military companies and their lobbyists.

https://t.me/togarma301/5385 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7589096.html

Sanctions against Russia brought down the existing world order
May 1, 12:10 p.m.

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Sanctions against Russia brought down the existing world order

After the end of the conflict in Ukraine, the question of organizing a new world order will arise, political scientist José Garzon is sure. As an expert writes in an article for Le Figaro, by isolating Russia in the international arena, the West brought down the existing order of the international system based on multilateral cooperation. It will probably be replaced by a system in which opposing camps will reappear, the author of the article predicts.

It can be assumed that the daily observation of hostilities in Ukraine has now obscured any reflection in the West about a general change in the world order, geopolitics specialist José Garzon writes in Le Figaro. However, when the crisis of action is over, it will be necessary to ask how the world will be organized, the author believes.

It's obvious thatsanctions dealt a severe, if not fatal, blow to multilateral cooperation. As the expert explains, without discussing the validity or effectiveness of the sanctions, it is obvious that their goal is to provoke Russia's withdrawal from the international system, and the effect of restrictive measures will undoubtedly be the final destruction of the international consensus that has been so slowly created over the past decades.

“The world order as we know it is really fragile,” Garson warns. In his opinion, it is based on the principle that all States, without exception, must have a place at the negotiating table.By excluding Russia from a number of multilateral structures (WTO, Human Rights Council, Council of Europe, and so on). The West has clearly abandoned this fundamental principle and struck at the heart of multilateralism. “We are allowing a now free Russia to establish its own camp, separate from ours ,” warns Garzon, noting that this camp will be stronger than the Western one, thanks to the likely entry of China and many other countries into it. Thus, the effect of sanctions against Russia is to completely collapse the multilateral market, despite the fact that the damage caused to this country was relatively small.

If earlier no one protested when the dollar assets of the central bank of Afghanistan were confiscated, today we are talking about the assets of a major power, the author notes.What country does not now think that its reserves in American bank accounts are not at risk , the author asks. The currency arbitrages that result from these fears will become more frequent and put severe pressure on the dollar — on top of the pressure that China and Russia have been putting on it for a decade to de-dollarize international trade, the expert predicts.

What is interesting to note against the backdrop of this slow collapse of the global multilateral order is that Russia and America seem to have long expected this, if not willing., the political scientist notes. For a long time, contemporary Russian philosophers and economists have speculated that Russia should break away from the multilateral system and create a new system with its allies. At a time when reflections on the problem of "restoring" multilateralism for more effective globalization were multiplying in the West, an alternative model of international relations based on the superiority of states was considered in Russia and China , the author explains.

The conclusion of these reflections was that the desired replacement was not possible in peacetime. According to the expert, with the help of military actions in Ukraine, Moscow can provoke changes that will lead to the fact that the multilateral approach will disappear in the form in which it exists now.

The United States, in turn, also did not stand aside from this "struggle of ideas." Feeling for the first time in its history that their existence was endangered by China's unstoppable rise, the United States is said to have realized its vulnerability, from which even nuclear weapons cannot save. They found it possible to compensate for this vulnerability by developing strategies to weaken competing countries. Engaging these countries in debilitating conflicts is likely to be an innovation worthy of testing both in Europe (with Ukraine and Russia) and in the Pacific (with Taiwan and China) , the expert suggests.

What is happening in the current conflict in Ukraine shows that the United States has decided to abandon multilateral cooperation and return to the old policy of the balance of power, the expert believes.“Tomorrow, if they want to find a common language, the United States and Russia will have to negotiate a new organization of the world ,” the political scientist is sure.

As the author recalls, during the debate about the organization of the future world during the Second World War, those who believed that the future world order should be organized on a “global” basis clashed with those who assured that the basis should be “regional”, while each "region" would represent a zone of influence in the world with its own structures and decision makers.

Churchill and Roosevelt were not against a regional basis. However, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull vehemently defended the idea of ​​globalization, which, in his opinion, could make the United States a world power after the end of the war. In the end, he won, resulting in the creation of the UN and other well-known "global" multilateral structures. And it is this model that is now threatened with extinction, emphasizes Garzon. “Indeed, what if now we return to an organization with zones of influence and “regions”? What if today it turns out that Cordell Hull was wrong? the author asks.

https://russian.rt.com/inotv/2022-05-01 ... tiv-Rossii - zinc
https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/apres ... s-20220428 - original in french

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7588815.html

Google Translator

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Will Washington’s seizure of $300 billion Russian assets end domination of dollar as global currency?
May 1, 2022 Gary Wilson

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In Kabul, Afghanistan, people lined up outside a bank to take out cash in October 2021, two months after the U.S. seized the Bank of Afghanistan’s $9.5 billion in dollar reserves.

On Feb. 26, the U.S. blocked Russia’s access to over $300 billion in foreign reserves held in banks in the U.S., the European Union and Japan. This was part of the sanctions U.S. President Joe Biden announced as part of the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia.

China did not freeze Russian assets. China’s banking regulator said it would not participate in sanctions against Russia, adding that the sanctions “have no legal grounds.”

Another way to put it is that the U.S. taking $300 billion in Russian assets is illegal – a robbery.

Russia responded with counter-sanctions, requiring all payments from “unfriendly countries” in rubles. The list of “unfriendlies” includes all G7 and EU nations, as well as Ukraine. Since assets in the form of dollars or euros might be seized by the U.S., requiring payment in rubles is reasonable.

What are foreign reserves?

Foreign reserves are a government’s holdings of gold, foreign treasury bills and foreign currency — dollars, euros, pounds, yen and yuan. Although a country can hold foreign reserves in its own banks, governments often choose to keep their reserves overseas to avoid costly cross-border transactions and gain direct access to foreign markets.

U.S. President Joe Biden has imposed severe sanctions on Russia, including the freezing of Russia’s foreign reserves. The impact of this U.S. economic and financial warfare is expected to raise the prices of oil, industrial metals, natural gas, fertilizer and food.

CNBC reported April 6: “A fertilizer shortage, worsened by war in Ukraine, is driving up global food prices and scarcity.” The shortage is not because of any military activity; it’s because of the sanctions. Sanctions are not an alternative to warfare, as some might claim. Sanctions are economic warfare.

Hidden for now is the potential impact the seizure of foreign assets will have on the dollar-dominated international monetary system.

The U.S. world empire consists of a series of institutions – military, financial, trade and political. These institutions, whose roles have evolved over the years, include NATO, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and even the U.S.-dominated United Nations Security Council. Plus, importantly, the U.S. dollar-centered international monetary system.

The world’s reserve currency

The U.S. dollar was designated as the world’s reserve currency by the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. The world’s central banks all operate on the dollar standard, holding their international monetary reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury bills, U.S. bank deposits and U.S. stocks and bonds.

More than a century ago, central banks had kept their reserves in the form of gold and silver. By the beginning of the 20th century, central banks started to hold some of their reserves in treasury bills of other countries, which enabled central banks to earn interest on their reserves, something they couldn’t do with gold bars.

However, both gold bars and treasury bills can be stolen, as fictionally dramatized in the James Bond “Goldfinger” story.

Venezuela’s central bank had about $2 billion “safely” deposited in the Bank of England, which was “frozen” (stolen) by the U.S./NATO imperialists as part of the economic and financial war (sanctions) against Caracas.

Turns out, central banks aren’t neutral or safe havens.

U.S./NATO defeat in Afghanistan

The war on Afghanistan was a U.S./NATO operation. The U.S. had 100,000 troops at 800 military bases in Afghanistan. In addition, under U.S. command, an additional 130,000 troops from other NATO countries were stationed at 400 NATO bases in Afghanistan.

The war was a major defeat of the imperialist forces. When the U.S./NATO withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, the U.S. government froze $9.5 billion in dollar reserves of the Bank of Afghanistan. This threw the economy of Afghanistan into a deep crisis, devastating the whole population.

The U.S./NATO war had already driven the country into total poverty. In July 2020, before the Taliban returned to power in Kabul, the Ministry of Economy in Afghanistan had said that 90% of the people in the country lived below the international poverty line of $2 a day.

The freezing of Afghanistan’s dollar reserves, according to the U.N. Development Program, “means only 5% of the population has enough to eat, while the number of those facing acute hunger is now estimated to have … reached a record 23 million. Almost 14 million children are likely to face crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity this winter, with 3.5 million children under the age of five expected to suffer from acute malnutrition, and 1 million children risk dying from hunger and low temperatures.”

Freezing bigger dollar assets

Until now, most assumed Washington’s freezing of monetary reserves held in U.S. Treasury bills or other dollar-denominated assets was confined to small countries like Venezuela or Afghanistan.

If other countries, like the People’s Republic of China, fear their central bank reserves might be frozen by the U.S./NATO imperialists, won’t they shift their reserves to gold?

The U.S. dollar domination of the world economy is already in decline. Will this lead to not just decline but destabilization?

As researchers working for the Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs cautioned: “The move by the U.S. and its allies to freeze Russia’s central bank out of much of its foreign currency reserves has raised concerns that countries could start moving away from using the dollar, due to worries about the power the currency grants the U.S.”

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... -currency/
"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 May 02, 2022 1:42 pm

8 years of Odessa Khatyn
May 2, 9:30 p.m.

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8 years ago, the Nazis killed several dozen residents of Odessa.
Together with the dead, the old post-Soviet Ukraine burned down with the House of Trade Unions.
After 8 years, full-fledged military operations are underway on the territory of the Nazi freak that arose on the site of the burned-out Ukraine. Attempts to coexist with Nazism or to negotiate with him, did not bring results. As usual, he brought war with him.

As usual, Nazism has sponsors in the West who use it to their advantage. Therefore, calls to think again and look at "whom you created and support" do not work. The instrumental approach to supporting Nazism does not require morality, but requires the most familiar hypocrisy and double standards. Therefore, turning a blind eye to the brutality of the Nazis then, all the more easily in the "civilized West" close their eyes to their crimes now.

Therefore, no one can carry out denazification in Ukraine, except for ourselves.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7589957.html

British defendants
May 2, 10:37

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The DPR has charged British mercenaries captured in Mariupol.

Since they committed crimes on the territory of the DPR, they will be judged in the DPR, where, among other things, there is the death penalty.
Somewhat earlier, these two were offered to be exchanged for Medvedchuk.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7590338.html

About the evacuation from Azovstal
May 2, 12:44

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About the evacuation from Azovstal

1. All evacuees from Azovstal go through a check of documents and personal data.
2. If there are questions, then such people are delayed until all points are clarified.
3. Nobody will let anyone go without verification. Filtration is a mandatory procedure for everyone who leaves Azovstal.
4. The attempts of the Nazis to dress up as civilians are well known, many of these have already been caught at checkpoints during the fighting in the city.
5. The special services are interested in catching such people - on the one hand, this is the replenishment of the exchange fund, on the other hand, the opportunity to catch those who have been prosecuted in the DPR for war crimes.
6. The official position on the military - either captured or in the ground.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/46435?single- zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7590713.html

Google Translator

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Russia affirms that it does not seek a change of government in Ukraine

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The Russian foreign minister reiterated that among the objectives of the military operation in eastern Ukraine is the denazification of that country. | Photo: EFE
Published May 2, 2022 (4 hours 47 minutes ago)

The Russian foreign minister warned that the joining of Ukraine to NATO represents a real threat to the security of his country.

The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, stated that the Government of his country is not seeking a presidential change in Ukraine, but to guarantee the safety of the population of the Ukrainian Donbas region.

"Our goal does not include regime change in Ukraine. It is the specialty of the United States. They do it all over the world," the Russian foreign minister said in an interview with the Italian network Mediaset.

The Russian diplomat reiterated that among the objectives of the military operation in eastern Ukraine is the demilitarization and denazification of that country, and that there are no threats to Russia's security from Ukrainian territory.


Lavrov warned that Ukraine's joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) represents a real threat to Moscow's security, hence his government's refusal to allow kyiv to join the military alliance.


In the opinion of the Russian foreign minister, instead of devoting his policies to resolving what was an internal conflict in Ukraine and normalizing relations in the Donbas region, President Volodimir Zelensky has chosen not to comply with the Minsk Agreements.


Lavrov denied Russian responsibility for the massacres in the Ukrainian city of Bucha and pointed out that his country's forces left the place on March 30, despite testimonies to the contrary.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/rusia-no ... -0004.html

Google Translator

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Russian FM Lavrov Outlines Who Can ‘Bring Peace’ to Ukraine

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Lifting sanctions on Russia is part of peace negotiations between Moscow and Ukraine, which are "difficult" but continue daily, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in remarks published early on Saturday. | Photo: Twitter @NewTRNewsAgency

Published 1 May 2022 (8 hours 11 minutes ago)

Lavrov reiterated that Russia does not seek a “regime change” in the neighboring country, and then stressed that such a measure is the specialty of the United States worldwide.

The Russian government urges Zelensky to order Ukrainian neo-Nazis to stop violence against civilians in order to bring about the circumstances for peace.

"Now, Zelensky can also bring peace, if he stops giving criminal orders to his neo-Nazi battalions, forces them to let all civilians go and ceases resistance," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed.

In statements made during an interview with the Italian Mediaset channel, published on Sunday, the Russian Foreign Minister called on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to allow all civilians to leave and stop resisting the Russian forces.

Lavrov reiterated that Russia does not seek a “regime change” in the neighboring country, and then stressed that such a measure is the specialty of the United States worldwide.

In this framework, he made it clear that the Russian operation is aimed at demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine in order to avoid threats to the security of Russia and eastern Ukraine.


He has then attributed the "collapse of the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian state" to the fact that Zelensky arrogantly declared in public that he will never fulfill the Minsk agreements. "All those who drafted and approved the Minsk agreements in the UN Security Council have remained silent," he has lamented.

He also emphasized that the pace of the Russian special operation in Ukraine will depend on the need to minimize the risks for the civilian population of the country and the Russian military, while he pointed out that the Russian forces do not adjust their mission to any date.


Since the beginning of the Russian military operation in Ukraine at the end of last February, the Ukrainian and Russian delegations have held several rounds of talks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also made it known on April 20 that the Russian government has delivered a proposal for an agreement with concrete wording to Ukraine to achieve peace and is awaiting the Ukrainian side's response.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rus ... -0008.html

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Kiev is Losing the Fight for the Donbass
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 1, 2022
Scott Ritter

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In this April 9, 2021, file photo, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian troops in a conflict. © (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP, File

Claims that Ukraine is set for victory on the ground are Kiev and Washington’s wishful thinking at best


Western media coverage of the Ukraine conflict has been so hysterically one-sided, and divorced from reality, that it’s probably only a matter of time before Iraq’s erstwhile ‘Comical Ali’ is brought out of retirement to insist that there are no Russians advancing towards the Ukrainian army’s front lines. Meanwhile, the actual fighting continues to result in a string of defeats for Kiev’s battered forces, who have already lost control of two major cities, despite unprecedented support from the US and its allies.

As American officials work with the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to craft a perception of Kiev’s victory against the Russian military, Moscow is preparing to counter with a harsh dose of reality.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on the heels of a dramatic visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev where, together with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, he met with Zelensky, testified before Congress that the goal of the Ukrainians in fighting their two-month-old conflict with Russia “would be to push the Russians out of the territory that they’re trying to occupy in eastern Ukraine.”

Blinken added that the administration of US President Joe Biden was providing “full support” to Kiev to achieve this goal. The Secretary of State added that Zelensky’s objective was to degrade the Russian military so that it would not be able to attack Ukraine in the “next month, next year or in five years,” echoing similar sentiments expressed by Lloyd Austin, who had declared that the goal of the US was to “see Russia weakened” so that it cannot “do the kinds of things that it has done [in Ukraine].”

The shared optimism of Blinken, Austin, and Zelensky comes from the joint embrace of a narrative of the Russian military operation against Ukraine which holds that the Russians are in the process of suffering a strategic defeat in Ukraine. But in a sign that this narrative may represent little more than wishful thinking on the part of these three leaders, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, had a more nuanced take, noting that if Russia were to get away with what he termed its “aggression” against Ukraine “cost-free,” then “the global international security order” that has been in place since the end of the Second World War would be put at risk.

Far from projecting a sense of optimism as to the outcome of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Milley’s statements reflected a sense of urgency that comes with the recognition that the war in Ukraine has reached a critical juncture.

The gap between perception and reality when it comes to assessing the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is a direct result of the confusing nature of the conflict itself, where a well-oiled propaganda campaign waged by Ukraine and its western partners, both government and media alike, contrasts with a Russian public relations effort which is reticent to delve deeply into Russian strategic goals and objectives, let alone the day-to-day details of the fighting on the ground. The result is an information war where two competing narratives wage an unequal conflict, and perception is ultimately trumped by reality.

Some harsh truths

As the military operation in Ukraine enters its third month, some harsh truths have emerged which are altering how both the Russian armed forces and modern warfare will be assessed going forward. Few analysts—including this author—expected serious resistance to last more than a month. Indeed, General Milley had briefed Congress during closed-door briefings in early February that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could result in the fall of Kiev within 72 hours.

There were several reasons for such an assessment. First and foremost was the extensive preparation that had been conducted by Russia in advance of the military incursion. The movement of hundreds of thousands of troops along with their equipment and the logistical means to sustain both men and material in combat is not a trivial exercise, and Russia had been engaged in military drills which stretched out over the course of several months, perfecting such logistics. The Russian military is led by officers who excel in staff work and preparation, and to assume that they had planned for every possibility that could be encountered on the battlefield is not an outlandish proposition.

Doctrinally, the Russian military was configured for the kind of warfare it had prepared for, where its overwhelming advantages in mass and firepower were optimized to produce the very battlefield results anticipated by most observers—the destruction of enemy defenses in depth with massed fire, followed by an aggressive armored assault that penetrated deep into the enemy rear areas, sowing confusion and disruption leading to the rapid loss of combat effectiveness on the part of those being attacked.

A Russian-Ukrainian war was always going to be primarily a ground war; neither the Ukrainian Air Force nor its Navy were expected to put up a sustained, viable resistance to their Russian counterparts. While the Ukrainian Army had been trained and equipped as a virtual NATO proxy force since 2015, the reality was that it had undergone a rapid expansion from 2014, when it could field some 6,000 combat-ready troops, to its pre- military operation composition of some 150,000 soldiers organized into 24 brigades. The expectation that Ukraine would be able to perfect anything more than basic battalion-sized combined arms operations (i.e., the coordinated employment of maneuver forces with artillery and air support) was wishful thinking.

While Ukraine had placed a great deal of effort in transitioning from an all-conscript military in 2014 to one where some 60% of its combat personnel were professional contract soldiers led by seasoned non-commissioned officers, one cannot create such a force in so short of time. Small unit leadership of the sort that represents the glue that holds a military force together under the strain and duress of sustained combat simply had not had enough time to take hold and mature in the Ukrainian army, leading many to assess that it would fold when placed under the stress of Russian doctrinal warfare.

The following analysis is sourced from publicly-available reporting by journalists embedded with the Russian military and the forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic, as well as Russian Ministry of Defense briefings and statements made by the Ukrainian side.

Within the first week of the Russian operation getting underway, it was clear to most that many of the assumptions that had been made were flawed and/or misplaced. First and foremost, Moscow had opted not to employ its forces according to standard doctrine, opting instead to take a light approach which appeared to be born from a concerted effort to minimize civilian casualties and harm to civilian infrastructure that itself was derived from a fundamental misunderstanding of the reality of the situation on the ground in Ukraine.

The reported purging of 150 officers from the 5th Department of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), responsible for operations in the so-called “near abroad” (which includes Ukraine), along with the arrest of Sergei Beseda, the former head of the department, suggests that Russia had suffered a failure of intelligence the likes of which has not been seen since the Israeli failure to predict the Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973.

While the Russian government has remained characteristically tight-lipped about any possible shortcomings regarding the work of the 5th Department prior to the start of the military operation, the statements by Russian leadership suggesting that the Ukrainian military might remain in its barracks and that civilian leadership would not interfere with Russia military operations suggest that these assumptions were made using intelligence provided by the 5th Department. That such assumptions, if indeed they were made, proved to be so fundamentally off target, when combined with the preparedness of the Ukrainian military to engage the initial columns of Russian forces, suggests that the work of the 5th Department had been disrupted by Ukrainian security services, who took control of Russian human networks and fed false reports back to the Russian leadership.

The fact is that columns of Russian troops, advancing boldly into Ukraine without the kind of attention to route security and flank protection that would normally accompany offensive operations, found themselves cut off and annihilated by well-prepared Ukrainian ambushes. Moreover, instead of folding under pressure, the Ukrainian Army—both regular and those from the territorial forces—stood their ground and fought, using hand-held anti-tank weapons—US-made Javelins and British-made NLAWs—to great effect. It was, to use an American colloquialism, a Turkey shoot, and the Ukrainian government made effective use of combat footage obtained from such encounters to great effect in shaping global public opinion about the effectiveness of Ukraine’s defenses.

However, the limitations of the Ukrainian armed forces did not allow it to turn its impressive tactical victories into positive operational and strategic outcomes. Despite costly initial setbacks, the Russian Army pressed home its attack, achieving impressive gains in the south, where Russian forces operating out of Crimea secured the strategic city of Kherson and advanced on the equally important city of Mariupol. There, they joined with Russian and allied forces from the Donetsk Republic to surround the Ukrainian forces defending Mariupol, eventually trapping the survivors, numbering several thousand strong, in the reinforced concrete underworld of the Azovstal steel factory. Further north, Russian forces, together with the forces of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, advanced westward to drive Ukrainian forces from their prepared defenses to gain control of the totality of the territory encompassing the Donbass region.

The “Battle for Kiev”

While securing the territorial integrity of the Donbass region was one of the primary objectives of the Russian special military operation, to accomplish this Russia carried out extensive supporting operations, which included a diversionary advance toward Kiev designed to fix Ukrainian forces in place and divert reinforcements away from the eastern front, as well as an amphibious feint off the coast of Odessa for the same purpose. For a diversionary attack and/or feint to be operationally viable, it must be believable, which means the forces carrying out the mission must be aggressive in the execution of the diversion, even under unfavorable conditions.

The Russian advance on Kiev was done by a force of some 40,000 men operating on two axes, one heading south, the other pushing southwest from the direction of Chernihiv. The ground advances were preceded by several air assaults targeting airfields in the vicinity of Kiev. Whether or not Russian intelligence had indicated that Kiev was ripe for a coup de main, or the Russian paratroopers and special forces conducting the assaults were too aggressive in selling the attack, or a combination of both, the reality was that Kiev was well defended by a mix of regular army and territorial forces who were not inclined to give up the Ukrainian capital without a fight. For over a month, the Russian forces advanced on Kiev, launching probing attacks that penetrated the northern suburbs and threatened to surround the city from both the east and west.

The fact of the matter remains, however, that a force of 40,000 men, no matter how aggressively employed, cannot take, and hold, a city of some three million inhabitants defended by a mix of 60,000 regular, reserve, and territorial soldiers. But this was never their task. “These actions [i.e., the advance on Kiev],” Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, the first deputy chief of Russia’s General Staff, announced during a briefing on March 26, “are carried out with the aim of causing such damage to military infrastructure, equipment, personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the results of which allow us not only to tie down their forces and prevent them from strengthening their grouping in the Donbass, but also will not allow them to do this until the Russian army completely liberates the territories of the [Donetsk People’s Republic] and [Lugansk People’s Republic].”

In an indication of both the intensity of the combat involved in the Kiev feint, and the importance of the assigned mission, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded the honorific title of ‘Guard’ to the 64th Detached Motor Rifle Brigade for its “astute and bold actions” during the Kiev fighting. “The unit’s staff became a role model in fulfilling its military duty, valor, dedication and professionalism,” Putin noted in the accompanying citation (the Ukrainian government has accused the 64th Brigade of committing war crimes in the town of Bucha, north of Kiev, a charge the Russian government vehemently denies.)

The so-called “Battle for Kiev” is a clear-cut example of the difference between perception and reality. The Ukrainian position is that its forces decisively defeated the Russian military on the approaches to Kiev, forcing not only a retreat, but also a complete re-design of the strategic objectives of the special military operation. This point of view has been echoed unquestioningly by a compliant western media, and embraced by political and military leaders in Europe, Canada, and the US.

One of the major outcomes of this Ukrainian “victory” was the ability of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to leverage this perception into a fundamental shift of thinking on the part of his supporters in the West, resulting in an increase in both the amount of money allocated to supplying Ukraine with weapons, as well as the quality of the weapons themselves, as the West shifted away from an emphasis on light anti-tank weapons to more conventional armor and artillery.

Left unspoken was the need for this dramatic change in weapons priority, especially given the fact that Ukraine had, according to its own narrative, decisively defeated Russia using these very same light anti-tank weapons. The reality, however, was that the Russian Phase One operations had inflicted near-fatal damage to the Ukrainian military, killing and wounding tens of thousands of soldiers while destroying the vast bulk of Ukraine’s heavy weaponry—the artillery, tanks, and armored fighting vehicles critical to waging modern combined arms warfare. The reason Ukraine requested more tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery from its Western suppliers is that it had depleted its available stocks.

But equipment was the least of Ukraine’s worries. A military is only as good as its ability to logistically sustain its forces while in combat, and one of the primary objectives of the Russian Phase One campaign was to destroy Ukraine’s fuel and ammunition storage facilities and degrade Ukrainian command and control. The result is that while Ukraine held onto Kiev, it did so at an enormous cost in overall combat effectiveness. And while Russia was able to withdraw from the Kiev front and undergo a period of rest, rearmament, and reorientation (a normal action for military units that had been engaged in virtually non-stop combat operations for a month), the Ukrainian military remained under pressure from incessant Russian aerial attack and bombardment from precision-guided cruise missiles and Russian artillery.

Perception, when subjected to the harsh light of reality, is exposed as little more than wishful thinking. This is very much the case regarding the so-called “Battle for Kiev,” where the Ukrainian military was left holding territory which no longer served any useful purpose for the Russians. Russia was able to redeploy its forces to better support its prime objective, the seizure of Donbass, leaving the Ukrainian forces in Kiev frozen in place.

Mariupol and the battle for Donbass

The battle for Mariupol is another example where perception management clashed with ground-truth reality. The narrative surrounding the present fate of Mariupol is very much a tale of two cities. From the Ukrainian perspective, the city continues to be held by a heroic cadre of fighters who are tying down tens of thousands of Russian forces who otherwise could be redeployed elsewhere, supporting the Russian main effort against Donbass. So long as these defenders hold out, the Ukrainians contend, the vital land bridge connecting Crimea and the Russian Federation will be at risk. Likewise, their continued resistance serves a major propaganda purpose, denying Russia the ability to declare victory prior to the Victory Day celebration of May 9.

Russia, however, has already declared victory in Mariupol. While conceding that a few thousand defenders remain dug into the Cold War-era bunkers underneath the Azovstal steel factory, Russia says that these forces serve no meaningful military value. Indeed, rather than sacrifice Russian troops to dig the Ukrainian forces from their underground lairs, President Putin directed the military to seal off the Azov facility and wait the defenders out.

There is no doubt that the presence of Ukrainians in the Azovstal factory represents a propaganda victory for Ukraine. But the reality is that the city of Mariupol has fallen to Russia; while the Ukrainian defenders, possibly accompanied by thousands of civilians, waste away as their food supplies diminish, the rest of Mariupol is beginning the task of rebuilding a shattered city where an estimated 90% of the buildings have been damaged or destroyed in brutal street-to-street fighting. The Russian land bridge is intact, and the Russian offensive against Donbass is proceeding without delay.

The statements in Kiev by Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin are a byproduct of the perception of Ukrainian victory shaped by the twin Ukrainian “victories” in Kiev and Mariupol. The reality, however, is that Kiev was a masterful Russian deception that shaped the overall strategic situation in Ukraine in favor of Russia, and the Mariupol battle is likewise finished in terms of any strategic impact on the overall campaign. What is left is the harsh truth of simple “military math” which, when projected onto a map, provides the kind of unyielding fact-based evidence that Ukraine is losing its war with Russia.

The fact of the matter is that the military aid being provided to Ukraine by the West will not have any discernable impact on a battlefield where Russia is asserting its dominance more and more each day. Not only is there not enough equipment being provided. Hundreds of armored vehicles cannot replace the more than 2,580 that have been lost by Ukraine to date, nor can dozens of artillery pieces offset the more that 1,410 artillery tubes and rocket launchers destroyed by the Russian military.

When two military forces of equal size and capability face off against one another, they seek to acquire an operational advantage through the attrition of their opponent’s capabilities which, in combination with effective maneuvering of their own forces, puts the opponent in an untenable situation. The transition from a battle of equals to decisive military victory is often rapid, representing as it does the culmination of acquired supremacy in the form of firepower and maneuver which is brought together in synchronistic fashion, creating a series of tactical and operational dilemmas for which the opponent has no viable solution.

This is the current situation with the Ukrainian military facing off against the Russians in Donbass today. The Ukrainians, lacking any meaningful artillery support of their own, are at the mercy of the Russian artillery and rocket launchers that pound their positions day in and day out, without respite. The Russian troops have taken a very deliberate approach to engaging with their Ukrainian opponents. Gone are the rapid advances by unprotected columns and convoys; now, the Russians isolate the Ukrainian defenders, pound them with artillery, and then carefully close in and destroy what remains with infantry supported by tanks and armored fighting vehicles. The casualty ratio in this fighting is unforgiving for Ukraine, with hundreds of soldiers lost each day in terms of killed, wounded and surrendered, while Russian casualties are measured in scores.

Not only can Russia maneuver virtually at will along the front as it closes with and destroys the Ukrainian defenders, but Russian troops also operate with absolute freedom in depth, meaning that they can pull back to refit, rearm, and rest without fear of Ukrainian artillery fire or counterattacking forces. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, remain pinned down, unable to move without fear of being detected and destroyed by Russian air power, and as such doomed to be isolated and destroyed by Russian troops in due course.

There is virtually no hope of reinforcement or relief for the Ukrainian forces operating on the front lines; Russia has interdicted the rail lines that had served as the conduit for resupply, and the likelihood of any Ukrainian forces which have received heavy weapons provided by the West reaching the frontlines in any discernable strength is virtually zero. The Battle for Donbass is reaching its culminating point, where the Ukrainian military rapidly transitions from a force capable of providing the semblance of resistance to one that has lost all meaningful combat capability.

This is the state of play entering the third month of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. While the termination of any conflict is aways a political question, one thing is for certain—if the operation extends into a fourth month, the battlefield will look vastly different from the one that the world currently sees. The battle for Donbass and eastern Ukraine is all but over. That is the hard reality, and no amount of wishful thinking or perception management by either Zelensky or his American partners can change that.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... e-donbass/

Elena: A Night in a Life Under Siege in Donetsk
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 30, 2022
Fergie Chambers

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A small grocery store on a residential boulevard was left in ruins by a direct hit from Ukrainian forces

DONETSK, DONETSK PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC, 30.04.2022- Last night, as the day unwound, and this author sat at dinner with other journalists in Central Donetsk, we received word through social media that the western Petrovsky district has just been hit with nearly 80 Ukrainian shells, and that there were casualties and deaths.

Three of us jumped into a taxi, and headed to the scene, where we first found a small grocery store, smoking from the roof, completely destroyed. A small clean-up crew was inside, and one old woman, possibly the shopkeeper, stood alone, bewildered, not ready to speak to anyone. We were told that just behind the store, in a group of residential buildings, a school had been hit, thankfully after school hours, and that many residences had been damaged as well.

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The dark hours made it difficult to capture the extent of the damage, the shrapnel and the smoke, but this image inside the grocery store illustrates how much destruction one hit can cause.

When we arrived at the apartment building, we found an older couple, husband and wife, slowly cleaning up pieces of glass and wreckage at the main entrance. They were initially spooked by our arrival, thinking we could be Ukrainian military operatives in plain clothes, but when we provided our press credentials, they were eager to share their story, not just of what had happened that night, but of the previous eight years. The woman identified herself, by first name only, Elena, and she provided the bulk of the interview.


The full interview is linked below, but many themes repeated themselves:

-That this kind of attack is a daily occurrence for the residents of Donbass, who considered themselves Ukrainians, and that this was the case years before Russia’s Special Operation began

-That US/EU arms shipments are the primary cause of the continued death and destruction

-That their lives have to continue, children and all, and that the horror of war has become normal

Elena and her husband were incredibly gracious; we toured their apartment, in a building of 60 units, which was indeed attached to a school. Their balcony had been destroyed, adjacent to a room where there grandchildren had slept just the night before.

Bruno Carvalho, a Socialist journalist from Portugal, and Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist with RT who had previously reported on similar scenarios in both Gaza and Syria, joined me on location.

As we parted, they saw us off warmly, they entreated us to share their stories with the West in any way we could, and they wished us Peace.

Here is the full video:(video at link)

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/04/ ... n-donetsk/

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These countries are willing to risk US ire over Russia-Ukraine

The Global South is not intimidated and has increasingly refused to ally with the West on sanctions and condemnations.

MAY 2, 2022
Written by
Stephen Kinzer

Americans are fervently cheering for Ukraine in a war that many believe is a decisive struggle for human freedom. The intensity of our infatuation makes it easy to assume that everyone in the world shares it. They don’t.

The impassioned American reaction is matched only in Europe, Canada, and the handful of U.S. allies in East Asia. For many people in the rest of the world, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is just another pointless Western war in which they have no stake.

The two biggest countries in Latin America, Mexico and Brazil, have refused to impose sanctions on Russia or to curtail trade. South Africa, the economic powerhouse of the African continent, has done the same. Asia, though, is where the resistance to joining the pro-Ukraine bloc appears most deliberate and widespread. This has alarmed Washington. To fight back, the United States is cracking its whip over several Asian nations.

China and India, where more than one-third of the world’s people live, are the most potent dissenters. Both abstained from the recent United Nations vote condemning Russia, and both reject U.S.-backed sanctions. There isn’t much more we can do to punish China, but India might seem more vulnerable. Soon after the UN vote, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States had begun “monitoring some recent concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses.” Then President Biden’s chief economic advisor, Brian Deese, warned India that it would face “significant and long-term consequences” if it does not reconsider its “strategic alignment.”

Pakistan, a nuclear power with 200 million people, did more than simply abstain from the UN vote. When the United States asked Prime Minister Imran Khan to join the anti-Russia coalition, he scoffed, “Are we your slaves…that whatever you say, we will do?” This came not long after he told the Pentagon: “Any bases, any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan, absolutely not.” On the day President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine, Khan was with him in the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu told a Congressional hearing that his people spoke to Sri Lankan and Pakistani officials on the phone to press them to vote for the resolution. He said he was “disappointed” with the results. On April 9 Khan was removed from office after some members of Parliament who had supported him changed sides and joined the opposition.

Pakistan’s pro-American military had let members of Parliament know that it favored a no-confidence vote. Khan had other problems, including a poor economic record. He has announced that he will seek to return to power in next year’s election, campaigning against an “arrogant and threatening” United States.

Washington is also in near-panic over a new security pact that the Solomon Islands (population 650,000) has signed with China. The White House said it would “have significant concerns and respond accordingly” if the pact gives China too much military influence in the Solomons. Prime Minster Manasseh Sogavare replied that he found it “very insulting” for the United States to brand his country “unfit to manage our sovereign affairs.” Media in the region have speculated about a possible coup, or even an invasion launched from Australia.

Other Asian countries are joining the drift away from America’s sphere of influence. Vietnam abstained from the UN vote condemning Russia and then announced a series of joint maneuvers with the Russian military. Indonesia, the world’s fourth-largest country, which will host this year’s G20 summit, insists that Putin will be invited despite U.S. and European efforts to isolate him.

At the other end of the continent, Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia reportedly refused to speak to President Biden about increasing oil production, but had a long call with Putin (according to the Kremlin), and has invited China’s President Xi Jinping to visit Riyadh soon. The United Arab Emirates refused to condemn Russia because, according to a presidential adviser, it “believes that taking sides would only lead to more violence.”

Few world leaders have endorsed Russia’s invasion. Some, however, might be forgiven for wondering how the United States, which bombed Serbia, invaded Iraq, occupied Afghanistan and attacked Libya, can claim that it opposes aggression. They are steeped in accounts of CIA kidnappings and torture in secret prisons, so calls from Washington to support the “rules-based order” ring hollow.

President Biden’s demand that Putin stand trial for war crimes might be justified by reported atrocities, but could be seen as hypocritical from a country that has refused to join the International Criminal Court in the Hague and even threatened to invade Holland if the court investigates American war crimes. The United States insists that Ukraine must be free to choose its own path, but sometimes objects when other countries seek to do so.

Forces in Asia, not Europe, will shape the coming century. Many Asian nations see their interests aligning with those of the continent’s giants, Russia and China. They are not as easily intimidated as they once were. The United States is betting that threats and warnings will bring them back into line. That could have the opposite result and alienate them further.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/ ... ia-ukraine
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Mon May 02, 2022 3:04 pm

Zelensky awards Pelosi the Order of Princess Olga, a Ukrainian civil honor
Jennifer Hassan - Yesterday 10:04 AM

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© Handout/Photographer: Handout/Getty Imag

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a Ukrainian civil honor — the Order of Princess Olga — following their meeting in Kyiv, a decoration given to women who have made outstanding contributions to the Ukrainian state.

Photos supplied by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service and published by Reuters show Zelensky presenting the award to the California Democrat, the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Kyiv since Russia’s invasion.

It is meant to highlight her “significant personal contribution” to strengthening America’s ties with Ukraine and “supporting sovereign, independent and democratic Ukraine,” the Ukrainian government said in a statement.

According to a 1997 presidential decree, both foreigners and citizens of Ukraine can be awarded the medal, which marks the achievements of women in various fields, including public service, science and education.

Pelosi, in surprise Kyiv trip, vows U.S. support ‘until the fight is done’

Pelosi said in a statement Sunday that she and members of the first official congressional delegation since the Ukraine war began met with Zelensky in Kyiv to “send an unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine.”

Pelosi, who is next in line to the presidency after the vice president, was pictured walking the streets of Kyiv in a video posted by Zelensky on Sunday, along with House Democrats including Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory W. Meeks (N.Y.), Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (Mass.) and Rep. Jason Crow (Colo.).

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ze ... 26010d8e89

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UKRAINE: The Real Zelensky
April 29, 2022

Natylie Baldwin interviews academic Olga Baysha about Ukraine’s president, a former TV actor who has become, since the start of the war, an A-list celebrity in the U.S.

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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Feb. 23, the eve of Russia’s invasion. At the time he was hosting the presidents of Lithuania and Poland in Kiev. (President of Ukraine, Flickr)

By Natylie Baldwin
The Grayzone

A comedic actor who rose to the country’s highest office in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was virtually unknown to the average American, except perhaps as a bit player in former U.S. President Donald Trump’s impeachment theater.

But when Russia attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24, Zelensky was suddenly transformed to an A-list celebrity in U.S. media. American news consumers were bombarded with images of a man who appeared overcome by the tragic events, possibly in over his head, but ultimately sympathetic. It didn’t take long for that image to evolve into the khaki-clad, tireless hero governing over a scrappy little democracy and single-handedly staving off the barbarians of autocracy from the east.

But beyond that carefully crafted Western media image is something much more complicated and less flattering. Zelensky was elected by 73 percent of the vote on a promise to pursue peace while the rest of his platform was vague. On the eve of the invasion, however, his approval rating had sunk to 31 percent due to the pursuit of deeply unpopular policies.

Ukrainian academic, Olga Baysha, author of Democracy, Populism, and Neoliberalism in Ukraine: On the Fringes of the Virtual and the Real, has studied Zelensky’s rise to power and how he has wielded that power since becoming president.

In the interview below, Baysha discusses Zelensky’s embrace of neoliberalism and increasing authoritarianism, how his actions contributed to the current war; his counterproductive and self-absorbed leadership throughout the war, the complex cultural and political views and identities of Ukrainians, the partnership between neoliberals and the radical right during and after the Maidan uprising and whether a Russian takeover of the entire Donbass region might be less popular among the local population than it would have been in 2014.

Tell us a bit about your background. Where are you from and how did you become interested in your current area of study?

I am an ethnic Ukrainian born in Kharkov, a Ukrainian city on the borderline with Russia, where my dad and other relatives are still living. Before the current war, Kharkov was one of Ukraine’s leading educational and scientific centers. The city’s residents pride themselves on living in the “intellectual capital” of Ukraine.

In 1990, the first television company free from party control was established there; soon, its first news program went on air. By that time, I had already graduated from Kharkov University, and one day, I was invited to work as a journalist in this program by a university friend. Next day, without prior experience, I started reporting. In a couple of months, I was a news presenter. My meteoric career was not an exception.

New uncontrolled media, the number of which was increasing at a huge rate daily, demanded more and more media workers. In the overwhelming majority of cases, they were young ambitious people without any journalistic education or life experience. What united us was the desire to Westernize, a lack of understanding of societal contradictions characterizing the post-Soviet transition, and deafness to the concerns of working people who opposed reforms. In our eyes, the latter were “retrograde”: they did not understand what civilization was about.

We saw [our]selves as a revolutionary vanguard and chosen progressive reformers. It is we — media workers —who created a favorable environment for Ukraine’s neoliberalization, presented as Westernization and civilization, with all disastrous consequences for society they brought. Only years after, I realized this.

Later, while supervising the production of historical documentaries in a Kiev television company, I recognized that the mythology of unidirectional historical progress and inevitability of Westernization for “barbarians” provided an ideological ground for neoliberal experiments not only in the former Soviet states but around the globe. It is this interest in the global hegemony of the ideology of Westernization that led me first to the doctoral program in critical media studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and then to the research I am doing now.

According to the academic work of some Ukrainian sociologists, polling showed in the recent past that most Ukrainians were not very interested in the issue of identity but were more concerned with issues like jobs, wages and prices. Your work focuses a lot on the neoliberal reforms that were enacted in Ukraine since 2019 – against the popular sentiment. Can you talk about what the view is on economic issues for most Ukrainians and why?

In the social milieus [in which] I lived — the east of Ukraine, Crimea and Kiev — there were very few people concerned with the issue of ethnic identity.

I do not in vain emphasize “my social milieus.” Ukraine is a complex and divided country with its far east and far west holding diametrically different views on all socially significant issues. Since the declaration of Ukraine’s independence in 1991, two ideas of national identity have been competing in Ukraine: “ethnic Ukrainian” versus “eastern Slavic.”

The ethnic Ukrainian national idea, based on the notion that Ukrainian culture, language, and ethnicity-centered history should be the dominant integrating forces in the Ukrainian nation-state, has been much more popular in the west of Ukraine. The eastern Slavic idea, which envisages the Ukrainian nation as founded on two primary ethnic groups, languages and cultures — Ukrainian and Russian — has been accepted as normal in the Ukrainian southeast. However, in general, I can agree that most Ukrainians are much more concerned with economic issues, which has always been the case.

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Sunset at the train station in Kharkov, Ukraine, 2007. (Trey Ratcliff, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

As a matter of fact, Ukraine’s independence of 1991 was to a big extent also a matter of economic concerns. Many Ukrainians supported the idea of political divorce from Russia because of an expectation that Ukraine would be better off economically — this is what propagandistic leaflets promised us.

This economic hope was not realized. In many ways, the collapse of the Soviet Union radically changed people’s lives for the worse because of Ukraine’s neoliberalization — the marketization of the social sphere and ruination of the Soviet welfare state.

What about neoliberal reforms initiated by Zelensky? You can judge on their popularity by opinion polls – up to 72 percent of Ukrainians did not support his land reform, the flagship of Zelensky’s neoliberal program. After his party approved it despite people’s indignation, Zelensky’s rating fell from 73 percent in Spring 2019 to 23 percent in January 2022. The reason is simple: a deep sense of betrayal.

In his unofficial election platform — the show “Servant of the People” — Zelesnky-Holoborodko [Holoborodko was Zelensky’s character in the television show – NB] promised that if he could rule the country for just one week, he would “make the teacher live as the president, and the president live as the teacher.” To put it mildly, this promise was not fulfilled. People realized that they were duped once again — the reforms have been carried out in the interests of not Ukrainians but global capital.

To what extent do you think that prioritizing of economic security versus identity issues has changed with the Russian invasion? How do you think that will work out for the political fortunes of the nationalists/ultranationalists versus moderates or leftists?

That is an interesting question. On the one hand, people’s priority now is to survive, which makes security their primary concern. To save their lives, millions of Ukrainians, including my mom and my sister with children, have left Ukraine for Europe. Many of them are ready to stay there forever, to learn foreign languages, and to adopt to a foreign way of life — all these developments can hardly prioritize identity concerns.

On the other hand, however, the intensification of ethnic sentiments and the consolidation of the nation in the face of the invasion is also evident. I can judge on this from public discussions in social media — some Kharkovites whom I know personally even started making posts in Ukrainian [language], which they had never used before, to highlight their national identity and signal that they are against any foreign invasion.

This is another tragic aspect of this war. The Maidan revolution of 2014, which many people in the southeast did not support, transformed these people into “slaves,” “sovki” and “vatniki” — derogatory terms to denote their backwardness and barbarism.

This is how Maidan revolutionaries, who considered themselves the progressive force of history, saw anti-Maidan “others” because of their adherence to Russian language and culture. Never ever could this pro-Russian population imagine Russia shelling their cities and ruining their lives. The tragedy of these people is twofold: first, their world was ruined symbolically by the Maidan, now, it is being destroyed physically by Russia.

The outcomes of these developments are unclear so far as it is unclear how the war will end. If the southeastern regions remain in Ukraine, the ruination of everything resisting aggressive nationalism will most likely be completed.

“ … first, their world was ruined symbolically by the Maidan, now, it is being destroyed physically by Russia.”

This will be probably the end of this unique borderline culture that has never wanted to be either completely Ukrainized or Russified. If Russia establishes control over these regions, as it boasts now, I can hardly predict how it will be dealing with mass resentment — at least, in the cities that are damaged significantly, as in Kharkov.

Moving to Zelensky specifically – one thing you point out in your book is how Zelensky served as this sort of Pied Piper figure in that he used his celebrity and acting skills to get people to support him on behalf of this vague, feel-good agenda (peace, democracy, progress, anticorruption) but that really obscured another agenda that would not have been popular, specifically a neoliberal economic agenda. Can you talk about how he did that – how did he run his campaign and what were his priorities after he got into office?

The basic argument presented in my recent book is that the astonishing victory of Zelensky and his party, later transformed into a parliamentary machine to churn out and rubber-stamp neoliberal reforms (in a “turbo regime,” as they called it), cannot be explained apart from the success of his television series, which, as many observers believe, served as Zelensky’s informal election platform.

Unlike his official platform, which ran only 1,601 words in length and contained few policy specifics, the 51 half-hour episodes of his show provided Ukrainians with a detailed vision of what should be done so that Ukraine could progress.

The message delivered by Zelensky to Ukrainians through his show is clearly populist. The people of Ukraine are portrayed in it as an unproblematic totality devoid of internal splits, from which only oligarchs and corrupted politicians/officials are excluded. The country becomes healthy only after getting rid of both oligarchs and their puppets. Some of them are imprisoned or flee the country; their property is confiscated without any regard to legality. Later, Zelensky-the-president will do the same towards his political rivals.

Interestingly, the show ignores the theme of the Donbass war, which erupted in 2014, a year before the series started being broadcast. As the Maidan and Russia-Ukraine relations are very divisive issues in Ukrainian society, Zelensky ignored them so as not to jeopardize the unity of his virtual nation, his viewers and ultimately his voters.

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Volodymyr Zelensky in 2016, in an episode of Ukrainian TV comedy “Servant of the People.” (YouTube)

Zelensky’s election promises, made on the fringes of the virtual and the real, were predominantly about Ukraine’s “progress,” understood as “modernization,” “Westernization,” “civilization” and “normalization.”

It is this progressive modernizing discourse that allowed Zelensky to camouflage his plans for neoliberal reforms, launched just three days after the new government came to power. Throughout the campaign, the idea of “progress” highlighted by Zelensky was never linked to privatization, land sales, budget cuts, etc.

Only after Zelensky had consolidated his presidential power by establishing full control over the legislative and executive branches of power did he make it clear that the “normalization” and “civilization” of Ukraine meant the privatization of land and state/public property, the deregulation of labor relations, a reduction of power for trade unions an increase in utility tariffs, and so on.

You’ve pointed out that many foreigners were appointed to important economic and social posts after the 2014 coup and before Zelensky’s term. Similarly, many of Zelensky’s officials have close ties to global neoliberal institutions and you’ve suggested there is evidence that they manipulate Zelensky who has an unsophisticated understanding of economics/finance. Can you discuss that aspect of the ramifications of the pro-Western change of government in 2014? What are the larger interests at play here and do they have the interests of the general Ukrainian population in mind at all?

Yes, the Maidan change of power in 2014 marked the beginning of a completely new era in the history of Ukraine in terms of Western influence on its sovereign decisions.

To be sure, since Ukraine declared its independence in 1991, this influence has always existed. The American Chamber of Commerce, Center for US-Ukraine relations, US-Ukraine Business Council, European Business Association, IMF, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, WTO, the EU — all these lobbying and regulating institutions have been significantly affect[ing] Ukrainian political decisions.

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Mustafa Nayyem, one of the first activists to urge Ukrainians to gather on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, speaking on Nov. 23, 2013. (Aleksandr Andreiko, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

However, never in the pre-Maidan history of Ukraine had the country appointed foreign citizens to top ministerial posts — this became possible only after the Maidan.

In 2014, Natalie Jaresko, a citizen of the U.S., was appointed Ukraine’s minister of finance; Aivaras Abromavicius, a citizen of Lithuania, became Ukraine’s minister of economy and trade; Alexander Kvitashvili, a citizen of Georgia, the minister of healthcare. In 2016, Ulana Suprun, a citizen of the U.S., was appointed the acting minister of healthcare.

Other foreigners assumed offices of lower ranks. Needless to say, all these appointments resulted not from the will of Ukrainians but from the recommendations of the global neoliberal institutions, which is not surprising given that the Maidan itself was not supported by half of Ukraine’s population.

As already mentioned, the majority of these anti-Maidan “others” reside in the southeastern regions. The farther east one looked, the stronger and more unified a rejection of the Maidan with its European agenda one would find. More than 75 percent of those living in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (two eastern regions of Ukraine predominantly populated by Russian-speakers) did not support the Maidan, while only 20 percent of people living in Crimea supported it.

These statistical figures, provided by Kiev Institute of Sociology in April 2014, did not prevent Western institutions of power from arguing that the Maidan was the uprising of “Ukrainian people” presented as an unproblematic totality — a very powerful ideological trick. When visiting the Maidan Square and encouraging its revolutionaries to protest, members of the “international community” disrespected millions of Ukrainians who held anti-Maidan views, thus contributing to the escalation of the civil conflict, which at the end of the day led to the disaster that we are helplessly observing today.

“… members of the ‘international community’ … contributed to the escalation of the civil conflict.”

What about foreign interests invested in Ukraine’s neoliberalization, carried out in the name of the Ukrainian people? [T]hey are diverse, but behind the land reform, which I have been analyzing carefully, there were financial lobbies in the West. Western pension funds and investment funds wanted to invest money that was depreciating. Looking for assets to invest in, they enlisted support of the IMF, the World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and various lobbying groups to promote their interests and lay out all necessary groundwork. This has nothing to do with the interests of Ukrainians, of course.

How has Zelensky’s record been on democracy – freedom of speech and press, political pluralism and treatment of different political parties? How does it compare to past presidents of post-Soviet Ukraine?

I agree with Jodi Dean who argues that democracy is a neoliberal fantasy in a sense that it cannot exist in neoliberal systems of government controlled not by people but by supranational institutions. As mentioned earlier, this became especially evident after the Maidan when foreign ministers were appointed by these institutions to present their interests in Ukraine.

However, in his reforming zeal, Zelensky went further. In early February 2021, first three oppositional television channels — NewsOne, Zik and 112 Ukraine — were shut down. Another oppositional channel Nash was banned in the beginning of 2022, before the beginning of the war.

After the war broke out, in March, dozens of independent journalists, bloggers and analysts were arrested; most of them are of leftist views. In April, television channels of right-wing leaning — Channel 5 and Pryamiy — were shut down as well. Moreover, Zelensky signed a decree obliging all Ukrainian channels to broadcast a single telethon, presenting only one pro-governmental view on the war.

All these developments are unprecedented for the history of independent Ukraine. Zelensky’s proponents argue that all the arrests and media bans should be written off for military expediency, ignoring the fact that the first media closures happened one year before the Russian invasion. As for me, Zelensky only uses this war to strengthen dictatorial tendencies within his regime of government, which started being formed right after Zelensky came to power — when he created a party machine to control the parliament and rubber-stamp neoliberal reforms without regard to public mood.

The National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) was used by Zelensky in 2021 to sanction certain people – mostly political rivals. Can you explain what the NSDC is and why Zelensky was doing it and whether it was legal or not.

After his popular support plummeted in 2021, Zelensky launched the unconstitutional process of extrajudicial sanctions against his political opponents, imposed by the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC).

These sanctions involved the extrajudicial seizure of property without any evidence of illegal activities of the relevant individuals and legal entities. Among the first to be sanctioned by the NSDC were two parliamentary deputies from the Opposition Platform — For Life (OPZZh) — Victor Medvedchuk (later arrested and shown on TV with his face beaten up after interrogation) and Taras Kozak (who managed to escape from Ukraine), as well as members of their families. This happened in February 2021; in March 2022, 11 oppositional parties were banned. The decisions to ban oppositional parties and sanction oppositional leaders were taken by NSDC; they were put into effect by presidential decrees.

The Constitution of Ukraine states that The Council of National Security and Defense is a coordinating body: it “co-ordinates and controls the activity of bodies of executive power in the sphere of national security and defense.”

This has nothing to do with prosecuting political opponents and confiscating their property — something the NSDC has been doing since 2021. It goes without saying that this know-how of Zelensky’s regime is unconstitutional — only courts may decide on who is guilty or not and confiscate property.

But the problem is that Ukrainian courts turned out to be unprepared to serve as Zelensky’s puppets. After the head of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court, Oleksandr Tupytskyi, called Zelensky’s unconstitutional reforms a “coup,” Zelensky had nothing to do but to rely on NSDC to push forward his unpopular policies. What about the “dissident” Tupytskyi? On March 27, 2021 — also in violation of the Ukrainian Constitution — Zelensky signed a decree canceling his appointment as a judge of the court.

Under Joseph Stalin’s rule, the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) created “troikas” to issue sentences to people after simplified, speedy investigations and without a public and fair trial. What we observe in the case of NSDC is a very similar development, only NSDC unconstitutional trials have a bigger number of participants — all the key figures of the state, including the president, the prime minister, the head of Ukrainian security service, prosecutor general of Ukraine, etc.

One NSDC meeting can decide destinies of hundreds of people. In June 2021 alone, Zelensky put into effect an NSDC decision to impose sanctions against 538 individuals and 540 companies.

I’d like to ask you about the “Peacemaker” (Myrotvorets) list that is reportedly affiliated with the Ukrainian government and SBU intelligence service. My understanding is that this is a list of “enemies of the state” and publishes said enemies’ personal information. Several of those who appeared on it have been subsequently murdered. Can you talk about this list, how do people end up on it, and how does it fit into a government that we’ve been told is democratic?

The nationalistic Myrotvorets website was launched in 2015 “by a people’s deputy holding a position of adviser to the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine” — this is how the U.N. report describes this. The name of this people’s deputy is Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to the former Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov. It is under Avakov’s patronage in 2014 [that] nationalistic punitive battalions were created to be sent to Donbass for suppressing people’s resistance against the Maidan.

Myrotvorets has been part of the general strategy of intimidating the opponents of the coup. Any “enemy of the people” — anybody who dares to express publicly anti-Maidan views or challenge Ukraine’s nationalistic agenda — may occur on this website.

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Oles Buzina. (CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The addresses of Oles Buzina, a famous publicist [journalist], shot dead by nationalists near his apartment building in Kiev, and Oleg Kalashnikov, an oppositional deputy killed by nationalists in his house, were also on Myrotvorets, which helped the killers to find their victims. The names of the murderers are well known; however, they are not imprisoned because in contemporary Ukraine, whose political life is controlled by radicals, they are considered heroes.

The site was not shut down even after an international scandal when Myrotvorets published the personal data of well-known foreign politicians, including the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. But, in contrast to Mr. Schröder residing in Germany, thousands of Ukrainians whose data are on Myrotvorets, cannot feel safe. All those arrested in March 2022 had been on Myrotvorets as well. Some of them I know personally — Yuri Tkachev, the editor of Odessa newspaper Timer and Dmitry Dzhangirov, the editor of Capital, a YouTube channel.

Many of those whose names are on Myrotvorets, managed to flee Ukraine after the Maidan; some were able to do it after mass arrests this March. One of them is Tarik Nezalezhko, Dzhangirov’s colleague. On April 12, 2022, already being safe outside of Ukraine, he made a post on YouTube, calling Ukraine’s Security Service “Gestapo” and giving advice to his viewers on how to avoid being captured by its agents.

That said, Ukraine is not a democratic country. The more I observe what is going on there, the more I think about the modernization path of Augusto Pinochet, who, as a matter of fact, is admired by our neoliberals. For a long period of time, the crimes of Pinochet’s regime had not been investigated. But in the end, humanity discovered the truth. I only hope that in Ukraine this will happen earlier.

Ukrainian academic Volodymyr Ishchenko said in a recent interview with New Left Review that, unlike in Western Europe, there is more of a partnership between nationalism and neoliberalism in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. This was even observed in the Donbass among the more affluent. Do you agree with that? If so, can you explain how that combination evolved?

I agree with Volodymyr. What we observe in Ukraine is an alliance of nationalists and liberals based on their common intolerance to Russia and, respectively, to all who advocate for cooperation with it.

In the light of the current war, this unity of liberals and nationalists may appear as justified. However, the alliance was created long before this war — in 2013, during the formation of the Maidan movement. By liberals, the Association Agreement with the European Union, advocated by the Maidan, was seen predominantly in terms of democratization, modernization and civilization — it was imagined as a means of bringing Ukraine up to European standards of government.

In contrast, the Eurasian Economic Union, led by Russia, was associated with civilizational regression to Soviet statism and Asian despotism. It is here that the positions of liberals and nationalists converged: The latter actively supported the Maidan not because of democratization, but due to its clear anti-Russia stance.

From the first days of the protests, radical nationalists were the most active Maidan fighters. The unity between liberals associating the Euromaidan with progress, modernization, human rights, etc., and radicals co-opting the movement for their nationalistic agenda was an important prerequisite for the transformation of the civic protest into an armed struggle resulting in an unconstitutional overturning of power.

The decisive role of radicals in the revolution also became a crucial factor in the formation of a mass anti-Maidan movement in the east of Ukraine against the “coup d’etat,” as the hegemonic anti-Maidan discourse dubbed the change of power in Kiev. At least partly, what we observe today, is a tragic outcome of this shortsighted and unfortunate alliance, formed during the Maidan.

Can you explain what Zelensky’s relationship has been with the far-right in Ukraine?

Zelensky himself has never expressed far-right views. In his series “Servant of the People,” which was used as an unofficial election platform, Ukrainian nationalists are portrayed negatively: they appear as nothing else but stupid oligarchs’ marionettes.

As a presidential candidate, Zelensky criticized the language law signed by his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, which made the knowledge of Ukrainian language a mandatory requirement for civil servants, soldiers, doctors and teachers. “We must initiate and adopt laws and decisions that consolidate society, and not vice versa,” Zelensky-the-candidate claimed in 2019.

However, after assuming the presidential office, Zelensky turned to the nationalistic agenda of his predecessor. On May 19, 2021, his government approved an action plan for the promotion of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of public life strictly in line with Poroshenko’s language law, to the delight of nationalists and dismay of Russophones.

Zelensky has done nothing to prosecute radicals for all their crimes against political opponents and the people of Donbass. The symbol of Zelensky’s right-wing transformation was his endorsement by nationalist Medvedko — one of those accused of murdering Buzina —who publicly approved Zelensky’s ban of Russian-language oppositional channels in 2021.

“After assuming the presidential office, Zelensky turned to the nationalistic agenda of his predecessor.”

The question is why? Why did Zelensky make a U-turn to nationalism despite people’s hopes that he would pursue the politics of reconciliation?

As many analysts believe, this is because radicals, although representing the minority of the Ukrainian population, do not hesitate to use force against politicians, courts, law enforcement agencies, media workers, and so forth—in other words, they are simply good at intimidating society, including all the branches of power.

Propagandists may repeat the mantra “Zelensky is a Jew, so he cannot be a Nazi” as often as they want, but the truth is that radicals control the political process in Ukraine through violence against those who dare confront their nationalistic and supremacist agendas.

The case of Anatoliy Shariy — one of the most popular bloggers in Ukraine living in exile — is a good example to illustrate this point. Not only does he, along with his family members, permanently receive death threats, radicals constantly intimidate the activists of his party (banned by Zelensky in March 2022), beating and humiliating them. This is what Ukrainian radicals call “political safari.”

Right now, Zelensky is the most influential figure on the world stage with respect to a conflict that has grave implications if it escalates. I’m concerned that he’s using those same manipulative show biz skills to rally support behind this image of some personal incarnation of democracy and righteousness against the forces of evil and autocracy. It’s like a movie based on a Marvel comic book world. It’s precisely the kind of framing that seems antithetical to diplomacy. Do you think Zelensky is playing a constructive role as the wartime leader of Ukraine or not?

I follow Zelensky’s war speeches on a regular basis, and I can confidently say that the way he frames the conflict can hardly lead to any diplomatic resolution as he permanently repeats that the forces of good are attacked by the forces of evil. Clearly, there can be no political solution for such an Armageddon.

What falls out of this mythical frame of reference for the war is the broader context of the situation: the fact that for years Ukraine has been refusing to implement the Minsk peace agreements, which were signed in 2015 after the defeat of the Ukrainian army in the Donbass war.

According to these agreements, Donbass had to receive a political autonomy within Ukraine — a point inconceivable and unacceptable for radicals. Instead of implementing the document, which was ratified by the U.N., Kiev has been fighting with Donbass along the line of demarcation for eight long years. The life of Ukrainians living in these territories has been transformed into a nightmare. For radicals, whose battalions have been fighting there, Donbass people — imagined as sovki and vatniki—do not deserve mercy and indulgence.

The current war is a prolongation of the war of 2014, which started when Kiev sent troops to Donbass to suppress anti-Maidan rebellion under the premise of the so-called “anti-terrorist operation.” The acknowledgement of this broader context does not presuppose the approval of Russia’s “military operation,” but it implies the acknowledgement that Ukraine is also responsible for what is going on.

Framing the issue of the current war in terms of a fight of civilization against barbarism or democracy against autocracy is nothing else but manipulation, and this is essential for understanding the situation. Former U.S. President George W. Bush’s formula “you are either with us or with terrorists,” propagated by Zelensky in his appeals to the “civilized world,” has turned out to be very convenient in terms of avoiding personal responsibility for the ongoing disaster.

In terms of selling this one-dimensional story to the world, Zelensky’s artistic skills appear invaluable. He is finally on the global stage, and the world is applauding. The former comedian does not even try to hide his satisfaction. Answering the question of a French reporter on March 5, 2022 — the 10th day of the Russian invasion — on how his life had changed with the beginning of the war, Zelensky replied with a smile of delight: “Today, my life is beautiful. I believe that I am needed. I feel it is the most important meaning in life – to be needed. To feel that you are not just an emptiness that is just breathing, walking, and eating something. You live.”

For me, this construction is alarming: it implies that Zelensky enjoys the unique opportunity to perform on a global stage provided by the war. It made his life beautiful; he lives. In contrast to millions of Ukrainians whose life is not nice at all and thousands of those who are not alive any longer.

Alexander Gabuev has suggested that the Russian leadership has a lack of expertise about the country that was a contributing factor to this conflict. I have also heard Russian commentators suggest that Ukraine has a superior attitude with regard to being pro-Western versus pro-Russian. Do you think this is a significant contributing factor for either side?

I am inclined to agree with the claim regarding the lack of an adequate understanding on the part of Russian leadership of social processes that have been going on in Ukraine since the Maidan. Indeed, half of Ukraine’s population did not welcome it, and millions living in the southeast wanted Russia to intervene. I know this for sure as all my relatives and old friends reside in these territories.

However, what was true in 2014 may not be necessarily the case now. Eight years have passed; a new generation of young people, raised within a new social environment, has grown; and many people simply accustomed themselves to new realities. Finally, even if most of them despise radicals and the politics of Ukrainization, they hate the war even more. The reality on the ground has turned out to be more complex than decision-makers expected.

What about the sense of superiority among those Ukrainians who identify themselves with Westerners rather than with Russians?

This is true, and, as for me, this is the most tragic part of the whole post-Maidan story, because it is exactly this sense of superiority that prevented the “progressive” pro-Maidan forces from finding common language with their “backward” pro-Russian compatriots. This led to the Donbass uprising, the “anti-terrorist operation” of the Ukrainian army against Donbass, Russia’s intervention, Minsk peace agreements, their non-fulfillment, and, finally, the current war.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/29/u ... -zelensky/

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Peace deal remains out of reach given Washington's fanning flames of conflict: China Daily editorial
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-04-28 19:57

More than two months into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, there is still no end in sight.

It is heartrending to see the humanitarian crisis unfolding, with millions of refugees having fled their homes and countless towns and cities left in complete ruins.

Indeed, nothing is more important right now than a negotiated settlement to end the fighting. The parties involved must try to reach a deal as soon as possible so that peace can be restored, and all war-induced suffering put to an end.

It was to push the two belligerents in that direction that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres traveled to Moscow on Tuesday and Kyiv a day later for talks.

His peace mission came at a time when safe humanitarian corridors are urgently needed to evacuate civilians from the Azovstal steel complex in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol where heavy fighting is still going on, and one positive outcome from his visit was that Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in principle that the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross should be involved in the evacuation of civilians from the steel complex.

Another positive to take from the talks between Putin and Guterres in the Kremlin on Tuesday is that Putin told the UN chief that "we still hope that we will be able to reach agreements on the diplomatic track … We are negotiating, we do not reject (talks)", which offers hope that the discussions will yield some fruit.

Yet rather than negotiated peace, the United States and its NATO allies seem more interested in achieving a complete victory in their proxy war against Russia. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin convened a meeting on Tuesday of officials from about 40 countries at the US air base at Ramstein, Germany, pledging more military aid for Ukraine, including heavier and more sophisticated equipment. He promised that NATO will "keep moving heaven and earth" to meet Ukraine's "security requirements".

Actually, the US has left no doubt about its agenda. During a trip to Kyiv on Monday, Austin made it clear the US aims to "weaken" Russia's military capabilities.

That involves providing Ukraine with an endless supply of weapons systems. Such a strategy goes against the world's hopes for peace, and risks causing an escalation in the conflict. Not to mention the high possibility that Ukraine will be devastated in the process, as well as grave consequences to the world's political and economic stability, even the possibility of a third world war.

Rather than fanning the flames of Washington's fire, the international community should make concerted efforts to promote a negotiated settlement of the crisis.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202204/2 ... 59fb8.html

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From Cassad's Telegram Account:.

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War on fakes
Fake : A Russian tank shot up a house in Mariupol where civilians were hiding. The video was posted by the telegram channel of the Azov National Battalion, after which it was widely distributed in the pro-Ukrainian media and TG channels, including UNIAN.

True : The video was filmed at the site of the battle between Russian units and soldiers of the National Battalion, who equipped a firing point in one of the residential buildings. Already in the second second, you can see how a Russian tank was hit, presumably from a grenade launcher. Further, the combat vehicle rolls back and constantly maneuvers to protect itself from new shots. It makes no sense to perform such maneuvers if the crew is not in danger.

The active phase of the collision is also supported by the number of damaged Russian vehicles, some of which are still burning down — for example, the damaged Typhoon, which is not in service with Ukraine, cannot be confused with anything.

The video was actually edited in two parts: an episode with a shootout between a tank and the Nazis who sat in the house, and the moment when people, supposedly civilians, leave the building.

At the same time, you can notice (from 2:14) that only 4 people come out, and all of them have white armbands - most likely the soldiers of the RF Armed Forces were checking the building for the presence of the remaining snipers. If you look closely, you can also find civilians, including elderly women, leaning on sticks. However, they do not leave the building: for the entire second part of the video, they hide behind Russian equipment and the backs of Russian soldiers. After the building is checked by military personnel and it is determined that the firing point is suppressed, people are taken to a safe place under cover.

Most likely, the specified video was filmed by a Ukrainian drone - this can be understood by the fact that the Azov telegram channel acted as the primary source, two pieces were edited, as well as the constant snatching of the right moments. The full video in good quality was not uploaded for an obvious reason - even this craft can establish the nature of the fake.

Earlier, we analyzed a fake that the Russian military fired tanks at a nursing home in Kremennaya. In fact, the Ukrainian military disbanded the staff and equipped the building with a firing point. All patients living in the house were taken hostage.

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Denazification UA
No removal of corpses - no losses. Such a dubious rule is followed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which leave the bodies of their dead after the fighting in the Izyum region. The Ukrainian side does not enter into negotiations on this sad issue, as if denying what is happening.

As a result, Russian units are engaged in transporting the bodies of the Ukrainian military from the battlefields. And relatives and friends of Ukrainian militants will receive stupid excuses from their Ministry of Defense.

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Rybar
🇬🇧🇺🇦🌉That is, it is possible to damage the railway track with this , but the RF Armed Forces cannot, because it is not humane / will intensify the humanitarian catastrophe / will disable the necessary infrastructure?

Let's do some simple arithmetic.

On the night of April 30 to May 1, along one of the bridges across the Dnieper, which are still functioning , a young replenishment arrived at the Zalyutino railway station in western Kharkov .

Up to two thousand recruits and up to 50 units of military equipment. Unloaded before five in the morning and transferred to the front. You can dream up and say in a jingoistic vein, "they came to die, we will grind them." And how long will we grind the enemy at close approaches, where there is a threat to the life and health of the RF Armed Forces?

Could this have been prevented? Can.

Particularly smart people are now saying that it is necessary to take and fill up the tunnels in the Carpathian mountains. Can you imagine the expenditure of manpower and resources for this? Conditional "Caliber" have already learned how to produce 24/7 and put it on stream, but the destruction of tunnels is not quite a task for them.

In the absence of the opportunity to work out something like ODABs with strategic aviation against area targets (yes, Ukrainian air defense still exists as a class), the question arises: how? Destroying a tunnel with a missile strike is even more difficult than bridges.

We once again publish a list of important objects of the railway network of Ukraine:
▪️List of all bridges across the Dnieper
▪️List of railway bridges in the west of Ukraine
▪️Traction substations: part 1 and part 2
▪️Critical substations on the border with Poland
▪️Depot: list 1 and list 2
▪️Recovery trains

First, deprive the Armed Forces of Ukraine of the ability to quickly deploy reinforcements on the territory of Ukraine, disablingcritical facilities with pinpoint strikes . And then eliminate the possibility of repair. The railroads will stop. In the context of a shortage of fuel for road transport, the logistical capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be undermined .

#railroads #bridges #Russia #Ukraine @rybar *Support us:

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Rybar

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Losses of the Ukrainian side as a result of a special military operation of the RF Armed Forces as of May 2, 2022

▪️During the day, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost 648 people killed, wounded and captured. The total losses in killed, wounded and captured in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, NGU and State Border Service are over 48 thousand people .

▪️9 tanks , 28 armored vehicles, 24 field artillery and mortar guns, 3 MLRS, 1 aircraft, 4 long-range and medium-range air defense systems, 1 short-range air defense system, 4 5 units of automotive and special equipment and 10 UAVs were lost.

All data are predictable: the Ukrainian side in internal reports does not have the exact number of casualties for each category. Therefore, in internal reports, the tendency is always to underestimate the real number of losses .

High resolution infographic English version La version française

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Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts on the evening of May 1, 2022 The

key events were new attacks on the border areas with Ukraine. There was an arrival at the ammunition depot in Belgorod . “On the border of three municipalities - the Borisov and Belgorod regions and the Yakovlevsky urban district, a fire broke out at the facility of the Ministry of Defense,” said the Governor of the Belgorod Region.

A support of a railway bridge in the Kursk Oblast was also destroyed . Governor Roman Starovoit confirmed the version of sabotage, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under the article "terrorist act". Currently, investigators and recovery teams are working at the site of the explosion.

In the Ukrainian canals, the destruction of the bridge was turned into a whole event, and they have already begun to discuss what to do with the captured Belgorod region. As it is not difficult to guess, these blows did not deliver serious damage to us. TsIPSO needs at least some victories to hide the monstrous losses at the front.

For the same purpose, fakes are dispersed. Today, Ukrainian propaganda threw in another tale about “the wounding of the head of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces Gerasimov near Izyum”,and in the evening she herself denied her own fake. By the way, all these ukrosmi post fakes every day - their audience is not pretentious. It must be understood that without such “ghosts of Kyiv”, Ukrainian society will start to panic, because there are no real victories. But there are serious losses and the deplorable state of the army. After all, it is not so much foreign weapons that decide on the front line, but the hands that control them.

The front continues to seethe. Yes, just roar. In some places there is an advance, local breakthroughs of the enemy defense, but in general, the enemy is being crushed at pre-occupied lines. Good activity in the Slavic direction, where the front moves from north to south. The enemy suffered serious losses near Yampol and was forced to retreat. There are active battles in the Krasny Liman area. At the same time, the front is moving from the side of Izyum to the north, in the area of ​​​​n. n. Dolgenkoe. If these movements continue in a northerly direction, then Slavyansk will be in a semicircle. After the breakthrough of Yampol and the cleansing of Krasny Liman, the troops, most likely, will move to n. Nikolaevka settlement. According to the relief, this village is located on a hill in relation to Slavyansk, said First Deputy Minister of Information of the DPR Daniil Bezsonov.

On the Donetsk directionour troops continue to crush the enemy on the previously broken section of the front between Gorlovka and Yasinovataya, bypassing the grouping defending in Avdiivka on the left flank. At the same time, they managed to break through the enemy's defensive lines in the area of ​​Avdiivka itself . Fighting also continues in the village of Marinka. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are randomly striking, in the morning under heavy fire Donetsk, Gorlovka, Yasinovataya and Yenakiyevo. Ukrainian troops are hitting residential areas and infrastructure from large-caliber mortars and MLRS "GRAD". There are victims. The railway infrastructure of Yasinovataya was once again at the epicenter of Ukrainian fire.

In the Zaporozhye region, in the area of ​​​​Ugledar, Velikaya Novosyolka and Gulyaipol there are no special advances, but at the same time as we are grinding the enemy, we are accumulating forces in several sectors of the front for a breakthrough to the north. At night, the Armed Forces of Ukraine beat on Tokmak, which came under the control of the Russian troops. Two Ukrainian S-300 systems were destroyed in the area of ​​Artemovsk and Zaporozhye.

Mariupol is gradually returning to normal life. Today, the evacuation of civilians from the territory of the Azovstal plant continued . It is reported that 80 people left in the new group .

On the southern front , positional battles on the border of the Nikolaev region. Arrivals in Nikolaev.

From interesting: The Russian special forces are capable of not only valiantly and selflessly doing their job of clearing and holding important objects, but they are also very creative in retrofitting entrusted military equipment.

Also, our military sent a video review of the destroyed S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a missile guidance radar.

Image

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Dnepropetrovsk Partisans
Operational report from the Dnepropetrovsk Partisans (30.04. - 01.05.2022)

[30.04. - 05/01/2022] On April 30, in Dnepropetrovsk, the air raid siren sounded from 09:20 to 09:36, from 10:59 to 11:10, from 13:35 to 14:14, from 15:44 to 16:35, from 22:34 to 23:09; May 1 - from 05:32 to 06:12, from 06:40 to 07:04, from 07:50 to 08:18, from 14:09 to 15:04.

[05/01/2022] [20:23] Over the past two weeks, the 93rd Motorized Brigade "Kholodny Yar" has suffered heavy losses in the area of ​​Bolshaya Kamyshevakhi. Captured servicemen from the 93rd Motorized Brigade confirm that there are many dead and wounded in the brigade. The mood in the brigade is very depressed. Many refuse to go on the offensive or stand in position.

[05/01/2022] [16:08] Mayor of Dnepropetrovsk, war criminal Borya Filatov, on his Facebook page, began to expose cheap fakes slapped by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine: "But today I have to say. GUR (!) MO (!!) on his official (!!!) resource, he posted a conversation between a separatist, “whose unit is stationed in Zelenodolsk, Dnepropetrovsk region.” And that they would allegedly “storm the Dnepropetrovsk region.” This “information” was immediately picked up by our free media and it went to the top news on all of Ukraine. And only on the UE it gained more than a quarter of a million views!!! Dear colleagues from the Main Intelligence Directorate, I want to inform you that there are no separatists in Zelenodolsk," writes Borenka. All this frankly smacks of collective insanity: some Ukronazis publicly expose the fakes of other Ukronazis. We, of course,

[05/01/2022] [11:07] In Dnepropetrovsk, in one of the parks of the Industrial District, shooting is heard again. As it turned out, the culprits were a 48-year-old man and a 39-year-old woman, who decided to test the strength of the body armor plates. They didn’t come up with anything better than shooting plates from an AK-74 in the middle of the park. This is another example of the fact that the circulation of weapons in the Dnepropetrovsk region has not been controlled by anyone for a long time. Uncontrollably distributed by the Ukronazis, bought on the "black market", stolen from the troops or brought from the places of hostilities, weapons either massively end up in private bandit arsenals, or fall into the hands of various inadequacies who can easily arrange shooting in the middle of the city.

[05/01/2022] [03:15] The head of the Dnepropetrovsk regional military administration, war criminal Valya Reznichenko, announced that buildings of the agro-industrial complex were destroyed as a result of two Russian missiles hit in the Sinelnikovsky district of the Dnipropetrovsk region. One supposedly empty, and the other with grain. True, on one of the photos published by Valya from the place of impact, there were fragments of a howitzer and burnt caps of artillery shells, and on the other - a stack of army boxes. Of course, the photos were promptly corrected, but nevertheless managed to disperse over the network. From this situation, it should be concluded that if the occupation authorities of the Dnipropetrovsk region write that Russian missiles destroyed an abandoned or civilian object, this means that Russian missiles once again destroyed military warehouses or equipment,

[04/30/2022] [20:00] High-precision air-launched missiles destroyed a command post and a depot of missile and artillery weapons near the settlement of Pokrovskoye, Dnepropetrovsk region.

[30.04.2022] [14:38] Another demonstrative case of fraud: a 42-year-old man was detained in Dnepropetrovsk, who paid with a bank card of a missing serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The man managed to spend about 20 thousand hryvnias from the card.

@dnepr_partizani

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Сolonelcassad
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Rybar
❗️🇬🇧🇺🇦The situation in Eastern Ukraine by the end of May 1, 2022

🔻The situation near Kharkov

▪️Near Kharkov there are fights in Russian Lozova and Kutuzovka . The units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried to drive the RF Armed Forces out of the fortified area in Tsirkuny and Cherkasy Tishki two days earlier, but suffered losses.

Now the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is making every effort to gain a foothold at the achieved milestone, but the Armed Forces of Ukraine are suffering heavy losses. To date, the loss of territorial defense detachments, the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Battalions reaches several hundred people killed and wounded.

▪️The withdrawal of forces to Russkaya Lozovaya and Tsirkuny exposed the front in Kazachya Lopan: the RF Armed Forces managed to recapture two villages of Turovo and Makarovo south of the settlement.

▪️The transfer of the most combat-ready units to carry out sabotage continues in Kharkov. According to our information, the tasks of coordinating the DRG and sabotage operations in the zone bordering Russia are assigned to officers of the British Special Airborne Service (SAS).

At the same time, reinforcements of mercenaries from the "International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine" arrived in the regional center. This time we are talking about the German unit.

🔻The situation near Liman

▪️Allied forces entrenched themselves in Aleksandrovka and Stavki . The capture of Yampol made it possible to bypass Liman from the southeastern outskirts and occupy the triangle of roads Slavyansk - Liman - Seversk. The small villages of Dibrova and Ozernoye are in the gray zone.

▪️Near Oskol , in the area of ​​the reservoir, for several days now, a group of 1,000 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been “boiling in a cauldron”.

▪️There are battles near Svyatogorsk , but no one has yet entered the city itself. After the capture of Alexandrovka, the fighting shifted to the forest belt at the turn of Borogodichnaya - Pine - Yarovaya . The fiercest of all skirmishes near Bogorodichny.

🔻The situation near Popasna and Bakhmut

▪️Fierce battles continue in Popasna: the allied forces are exhausting the enemy, methodically breaking the suitable reinforcements. On average, the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine per day reach 50-70 people killed and wounded, and the morale of the military personnel is falling.

High resolution

map #map #Donetsk #Zaporozhye #Izyum #Lugansk #Liman #Russia #Ukraine #Kharkov @rybar *Support us: 4377 7278 0407

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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 May 02, 2022 10:55 pm

Ukraine's Army Is In Very Bad Shape - More Fighting Will Only Destroy It

The French news agency AFP has published a report by Daphne Rousseau from near the Ukrainian frontline. It allows us to gain some realistic view of the state of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Exhausted Ukrainian soldiers return from eastern front

Here is a current map of the frontline. Kiev is in the upper left corner.

Image

I will quote the AFP report piecemeal and add my observations:

Packed with exhausted Ukrainian soldiers with clenched jaws, the truck drives away at full speed. The troops from the 81st brigade have just received an order to withdraw from the eastern front where Russian forces advance.
The brigade walked 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) Saturday, camouflaged in the woods and under crossfire, until their point of retreat at Sviatoguirsk.


The 81st Airmobile Brigade consists of 3 infantry battalions equipped with BTR-70 armored personnel carriers that can be loaded onto a plane. It also has a strong artillery group with 3 gun and missile battalions, and the usual hodgepodge of support units.

As the Ukrainian troops had to walk 12 kilometers a question arises. Where are their armored carriers? Even when infantry is deployed in dugouts and trenches its transport should always be nearby (~3 km) to be able to quickly pick it up when necessary.

The most likely answer is that those BTR-70, as well as the brigade's artillery, no longer exist. From today's 'clobber list' as published by the Defense Ministry of Russia (emphasis added):

In total, 146 aircraft and 112 helicopters, 683 unmanned aerial vehicles, 281 anti-aircraft missile systems, 2,756 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 316 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,234 field artillery and mortars, as well as 2,563 units of special military vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed during the operation.

Those numbers will be, like all such counts, somewhat exaggerated. But they do tell a story.

Sviatoguirsk, the extraction point for the troops, is some 10 kilometers southeast of Izium which the Russian forces have taken a while ago.

More from the AFP piece:

For a month, the 81st -- whose motto is "always first" -- battled to push back the Russian advance in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region where Moscow's troops move forward slowly, taking villages one by one.
"Everyone understands that we must guard the line here, we cannot let the enemy move closer, we try to hold it with all our force," says lieutenant Yevgen Samoylov, anxious that the unit could be hit by Russian fire at any point.

"As you can hear, the enemy is very, very near," he says, pointing to the sky. The line of Russian tanks is on the other side of a hill, around seven kilometres (4.3 miles) away.


The troops walked 12 kilometers and are now on trucks. The enemy is currently 7 kilometers away. Simple math will explain that with a 5 kilometer deep gain by the Russian forces.

At 21 years old, Samoylov, an officer from the Odessa military academy, finds himself managing 130 conscripts, often twice his age.
"It's my first war. I was supposed to graduate in four months, but they sent me here," says the baby-faced officer with a short black beard.


What a disaster. 130 conscripts up to age 40+. These ain't well trained warriors but teachers and car mechanics or farmers drafted into the war. With 130 troops the unit has about the size of a company. Infantry companies in the Soviet/Russian/Ukrainian army are relative big:

[T]he strength of a tank company is 31-40 people, and the number of servicemen of a motorized rifle company ranges from 150 people. Often a company is commanded by an officer with the rank of captain, and only in some units this position is occupied by a major.
The junior lieutenant Samoylov, who did not even finish his officer course, is leading a unit that is usually led by an officer two to three ranks higher than his. Where are the higher officers?

More from AFP:

The unit swung into action on February 23, a day before Russia launched the invasion.
At the start of the war, they spent a month defending Izium, which fell on April 1, before joining the fighting around the village of Oleksandrivka.

"Some really difficult battles," says the quiet Samoylov.


Izium is at the northern front where Russian force press towards the south. There are several Oleksandrivka (Alexandrovka) named settlements in the Ukraine, three of them in the Donetsk oblast. There may be more unofficial ones with that name. Two of the known ones are in the north west of Donetzk Oblast some 20 kilometer southwest and southeast of Izium respectively.

The map shows Izium in the north, the western Oleksandrivka is on the bottom left. The other Oleksandrivka lies on the west periphery of Kramatorsk city, to which it practically belongs. It is not named on the map.

Neither town is directly on the current frontline which runs about 10 kilometer to the north. Sviatoguirsk, the extraction point, is much nearer to the front. That is where the troops likely were before they walked towards the trucks.

Image

The AFP piece continues:

In this brigade, like the others, they don't say how many people have been killed.
When the subject comes up, Samoylov's gaze becomes misty. The pain is raw.

A deadly silence takes over the military truck during the drive to the abandoned building where the soldiers will stay during their week of rest.


Samoylov's 130 men are unlikely to be from one original company. They are probably all what is left from a battalion that originally had three companies and more than 400 men.

When the convoy passes a truck loaded with long-range missiles dashing to the front, the soldiers automatically make a "V" sign for victory with their fingers before fixing their gaze once more on their feet or the horizon in silence.

Is there still some morale in these men or is that just a routine gesture? I believe it is the later.

On arrival at the base, the soldiers unload their weapons, remove their kit and immediately go into one of the dilapidated rooms without electricity where they undergo a medical examination after returning from the front.
For the survivors, "there are small injuries on the forehead, those who were buried under the rubble during a bombing have fractures and (injuries) linked to shrapnel," says Vadym Kyrylov, the brigade's doctor.

"But we mainly see somatic problems, like hypertension or chronic illnesses that have worsened," the 25-year-old adds.

Each battalion of the 81st brigade should have a doctor with a more senior one serving in the brigade's headquarter company. That a 25 year old one is in the brigade's doctor role again points to a lack of men.

- 'Trench foot' -
The men also greatly suffer from "trench foot" syndrome caused by prolonged exposure to moisture, unsanitary conditions or the cold.

"For a month they are not able to dry their shoes... so there are many feet-related injuries, mainly fungi and infections," the doctor says.


Military boots should be watertight. During my time in the military we trained in some very muddy areas but I never got my feet wet. One wonders what quality Ukrainian army boots have.

After the medical visit, they all have the same reflex: to isolate and use their phone to call a female partner, a child or a parent.
Soldiers cannot use their phones on the front, and any application that requires geolocation is banned.


How strict is the control of those policies? Experience says that if soldiers are allowed to have phones with them they will inevitably use them. That is why Russia prohibits its soldiers to carry phones.

Four soldiers reassemble the rusty metal bed frames and sweep the floor coated with dust to make a semblance of a room.

That does not sound like a fun place for rest and recreation. Are there even mattresses for those metal frames?

"It's the moment for the guys to relax, to take care of their physical and psychological injuries, to regain their strength before returning to battle," Samoylov says.
"They'll sleep warm, eat normal food and try to more or less get back on their feet."


Those troops were nine weeks on the frontline and now only get one week of rest in a miserable place. Samoylov is an optimist. None of those injuries, especially not the psychological ones, will heal within a week. It takes years to overcome the cruelties of war and sometimes more than a lifetime.

The Ukrainian army is obviously in a very bad shape as it pushes barely trained conscripts to the frontline where Russian artillery will eat them up. That it is in such a state is not astonishing though.

The Swiss military intelligence officer Jacques Baud has worked in the Ukraine and has written about the current war (here, here and here). He describes the sorry state the Ukrainian military was in from the get-go:

The Ukrainian army was then in a deplorable state. In October 2018, after four years of war, the chief Ukrainian military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios, stated that Ukraine had lost 2,700 men in the Donbass: 891 from illnesses, 318 from road accidents, 177 from other accidents, 175 from poisonings (alcohol, drugs), 172 from careless handling of weapons, 101 from breaches of security regulations, 228 from murders and 615 from suicides.

In fact, the army was undermined by the corruption of its cadres and no longer enjoyed the support of the population. According to a British Home Office report, in the March/April 2014 recall of reservists, 70 percent did not show up for the first session, 80 percent for the second, 90 percent for the third, and 95 percent for the fourth. In October/November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up for the “Fall 2017” recall campaign. This is not counting suicides and desertions (often over to the autonomists), which reached up to 30 percent of the workforce in the ATO area. Young Ukrainians refused to go and fight in the Donbass and preferred emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense then turned to NATO to help make its armed forces more “attractive.” Having already worked on similar projects within the framework of the United Nations, I was asked by NATO to participate in a program to restore the image of the Ukrainian armed forces. But this is a long-term process and the Ukrainians wanted to move quickly.

So, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias. They are essentially composed of foreign mercenaries, often extreme right-wing militants. In 2020, they constituted about 40 percent of the Ukrainian forces and numbered about 102,000 men, according to Reuters. They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities—including Swiss.


The Ukrainian army will not win the war nor will the fascist militias. The country simply has no chance.

'Western' governments are abusing the Ukraine and its soldiers. They want to 'weaken Russia' and do not allow the Ukraine to sue for peace.

That is criminal.

Jacques Baud again:

[D]espite [President Zelensky's] probable willingness to achieve a political settlement for the crisis with Russia, Zelensky is not allowed to do so. Just after he indicated his readiness to talk with Russia, on 25 February, the European Union decided two days later to provide €450M in arms to Ukraine. The same happened in March. As soon as Zelensky indicated he wanted to have talks with Vladimir Putin on 21 March, the European Union decided to double its military aid to €1 billion on 23 March. End of March, Zelensky made an interesting offer that was retracted shortly after.

Apparently, Zelensky is trying to navigate between Western pressure and his far right on the one hand and his concern to find a solution on the other, and is forced into a ” back-and-forth,” which discourages the Russian negotiators.
...
Today, Zelensky must lead his country under the sword of Damocles, with the blessing of Western politicians and unethical media. His lack of political experience made him an easy prey for those who were trying to exploit Ukraine against Russia, and in the hands of extreme right-wing movements. As he acknowledges in an interview with CNN, he was obviously lured into believing that Ukraine would enter NATO more easily after an open conflict with Russia, as Oleksey Arestovich, his adviser, confirmed in 2019.


The Ukraine has lost the war. All the weapons systems the 'west' is now pushing into it are of no use as the Ukraine obviously lacks the men to field them. They will likely get pilfered and in future some of them may well be used against the 'west' itself.

They would do some bloody justice.

Posted by b on May 2, 2022 at 17:32 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/u ... .html#more

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From Cassad's Telegram Account:

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Fake Cemetery
Lies: The RF Armed Forces and the NM of the L-DPR cannot advance in the Donetsk region, the Armed Forces of Ukraine stand on their positions.

Truth: Our troops are crushing the enemy on the broken section of the front between Gorlovka and Yasinovataya, bypassing the grouping defending in Avdiivka on the left flank.
The enemy suffered heavy losses near Yampol and was forced to retreat. The fighting is going on in the Krasny Liman area.

Also, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced the attempts of Russian troops to storm the village of Ozernoe, Donetsk region. And, according to the Institute for the Study of War (USA), the assault on the settlement. Ozernoe is possible only with full control over Yampol.

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ANNA NEWS
🇺🇦🇬🇧The Armed Forces of Ukraine are destroying their equipment for propaganda

Kamrad Kloch from the lostarmour forum found a funny detail on one of the videos published by the Ukrainian agtiprop.

In short, the enemy announced the destruction of the position of the armed forces of the Russian Federation as a result of artillery shelling.

True, the video posted by the enemy shows a Rapira anti-tank gun being towed by a ZIL-131 vehicle.

And here's the bad luck, a couple of days ago, exactly the same spark appeared on the video from the Russian military.

But the destroyed position of the Ukrainian artillery was filmed on video.

The cunning Ukrainian propaganda simply decided to finish off its own position and pass it off as a successful strike against the enemy.

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Rybar
🇬🇧🇺🇦Briefing by the official representative of the RF Ministry of Defense Igor Konashenkov as of 19.00 on May 2, 2022 on the progress of the special operation in Ukraine

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation in Ukraine.

▪️During the day, 36 military facilities of Ukraine were hit by high-precision air-based missiles .

Among them: five command and control posts, including the command and observation posts of the battalions of the 95th air assault and 81st airmobile brigades; 25 strongholds, areas of concentration of manpower and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including in the ALEKSANDROVKA area of ​​the Nazi formation "Aidar".

In the Dnepropetrovsk region, near the village of POKROVSKOE , a warehouse of rocket and artillery weapons and ammunition was destroyed. Also, in the area of ​​​​the settlement MEZHEVA , fourlaunchers of the S-300 air defense system and a reconnaissance and guidance radar station.

▪️Operational-tactical and army aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces hit 13 strongholds and areas of concentration of manpower and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

▪️During the day, missile forces hit four areas of concentration of manpower and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as two command posts, including the command post of the Ukrainian 93rd mechanized brigade in the PODALOVKA area.

▪️Artillery units hit two command posts, eight artillery batteries, 12 strongholds and 28 areas of concentration of manpower and military equipment. Up to 170 nationalists were

destroyed , as well as 36 units of weapons and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

▪️Three unmanned aerial vehicles "Bayraktar-TB2" were destroyed by Russian air defense systems in the area of ​​​​Snake Island . Also , four Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down in the areas of the settlements of CHERVONY OSKOL and NEVSKOE of the Kharkiv region, as well as VESELOE of the Donetsk People's Republic. In addition, five Smerch rockets were intercepted in the areas of IZYUM , TOPOLSKOYE and MALAYA KAMYSHEVAKHA .



▪️In total , since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 146 aircraft, 112 helicopters, 690 unmanned aerial vehicles, 285 anti-aircraft missile systems, 2,760 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 316 multiple rocket launchers, 1,246 field artillery pieces and mortars, as well as 2,578 units of special military vehicles.
#Russia #Ukraine

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War on fakes
Fake : A Russian tank shot up a house in Mariupol where civilians were hiding. The video was posted by the telegram channel of the Azov National Battalion, after which it was widely distributed in the pro-Ukrainian media and TG channels, including UNIAN.

True : The video was filmed at the site of the battle between Russian units and soldiers of the National Battalion, who equipped a firing point in one of the residential buildings. Already in the second second, you can see how a Russian tank was hit, presumably from a grenade launcher. Further, the combat vehicle rolls back and constantly maneuvers to protect itself from new shots. It makes no sense to perform such maneuvers if the crew is not in danger.

The active phase of the collision is also supported by the number of damaged Russian vehicles, some of which are still burning down — for example, the damaged Typhoon, which is not in service with Ukraine, cannot be confused with anything.

The video was actually edited in two parts: an episode with a shootout between a tank and the Nazis who sat in the house, and the moment when people, supposedly civilians, leave the building.

At the same time, you can notice (from 2:14) that only 4 people come out, and all of them have white armbands - most likely the soldiers of the RF Armed Forces were checking the building for the presence of the remaining snipers. If you look closely, you can also find civilians, including elderly women, leaning on sticks. However, they do not leave the building: for the entire second part of the video, they hide behind Russian equipment and the backs of Russian soldiers. After the building is checked by military personnel and it is determined that the firing point is suppressed, people are taken to a safe place under cover.

Most likely, the specified video was filmed by a Ukrainian drone - this can be understood by the fact that the Azov telegram channel acted as the primary source, two pieces were edited, as well as the constant snatching of the right moments. The full video in good quality was not uploaded for an obvious reason - even this craft can establish the nature of the fake.

Earlier, we analyzed a fake that the Russian military fired tanks at a nursing home in Kremennaya. In fact, the Ukrainian military disbanded the staff and equipped the building with a firing point. All patients living in the house were taken hostage.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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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 May 03, 2022 1:20 pm

Russia destroys weapons logistics center in Odessa, Ukraine

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The Russian Defense Ministry reported that they attacked a military airfield near Odessa from which weapons from abroad were distributed. | Photo: @rianru
Published May 3, 2022 (1 hour 5 minutes ago)

Russian air defense systems also shot down six Ukrainian drones and a Tochka-U missile.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov reported Tuesday that its high-precision missiles hit a logistics center near Odessa that supplied weapons from abroad to Ukrainian troops.

According to the official, the bombardment was carried out with Onyx missiles. “An attack launched with high-precision Onyx missiles at a military airfield near Odessa destroyed a logistics center through which the supply of foreign weapons was carried out,” he stated.

In addition, several hangars with Bayraktar TB2 drones, missiles and ammunition from the United States and European countries were destroyed.


Konashenkov specified that on Monday night, air-to-ground missiles destroyed six Ukrainian military objects,

“The missile troops hit the command posts of the 81st airmobile brigade in the Dolina settlement area and the 77th territorial defense brigade in the Podolovka region of the Kharkov region. Also, in the Kulbakino region of the Nikolaev region, the launcher of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system was destroyed," added the spokesman for the military entity.

On the other hand, the Russian tactical aviation bombed 69 military objects and the air defense razed six Ukrainian drones, a Tochka U ballistic missile and two shells from the Smerch multiple rocket launcher system.

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

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Deliveries of American weapons to Ukraine
May 3, 12:49

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The total volume of deliveries of American equipment and weapons to Ukraine by the beginning of May 2022.
Of course, this is only what was shown openly. Certainly, non-public supply channels through the CIA are also working.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7591922.html

no peace treaty needed
May 3, 11:22 am

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no peace treaty needed

Zelensky does not need any peace treaty.

For him, the world is the END.

Or a quick one - from the Nazis, who will hang him "on a gillyaku" for conspiring with Muscovites.
Or a slower one - from competitors who will achieve his removal as a president who lost the war.
This is confirmed by various mongrels around him, who yelp that there will be no peace treaty.

Therefore, Zelensky will continue to:
1. Beg for money and weapons from the West, proving that he is in the game, that he is the hope of the liberal world, that he is the last bastion of European democracy that a bear in a padded jacket wants to tear to pieces.
2. Simulate concern for the Ukrainians, periodically exposing them as a human shield in front of Bandera.
3. Send assassins to Russian journalists, posing as a cool liquidator.
4. Produce criminal fakes about the Russian military operation, using unfortunate citizens as consumables.
5. To act unshaven on camera and carry nonsense with eyes burning from stimulants.

Zelensky has no other way to stay in office.

If, of course, the position itself remains.


(c) Medvedev

https://t.me/medvedev_telegram/68

The recent statements by the Zelensky gang on the topic of war to the end, which simply broadcasts American narratives, perfectly show that negotiations with Ukraine have value somewhere in the region of zero. For those who did not understand this after Minsk-2, everything was clearly shown on the example of Gomel and Istanbul.

As has been repeatedly said - Ukraine is a tool in the hands of the United States, which they intend to use. The tool has no subjectivity and will, so that it can decide something about its own destiny.

Well, the United States does not need a peace treaty, first of all.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7591561.html

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Imperialism
May 2, 2022
By John Parker – Apr 27, 2022

The word imperialism has been used and misused often as the crisis in Ukraine continues. An understanding of its meaning is important in any analysis.

Disinformation and misdirection abound. Why? To sell the public U.S. imperialist wars. The mislabeling as “imperialist” towards any enemy of U.S. imperialism is one tactic used to deceive. This especially occurs when a country is trying to defend itself or assist in the defense of an ally against a nation that actually is imperialist. We’re told by the U.S. government that the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 was an imperialist “invasion.” But the newly formed revolutionary government of Afghanistan in 1978, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, asked for the assistance of the Soviet Union, and, for good reason. The Carter Administration, ten months before the Soviet intervention, began a covert war arming a small grouping of local warlords known as the Mujahideen. State Department documents released three years ago show that this war of millions turned into billions of dollars in weapons and training.

The U.S. successfully pulled the Soviet Union into Afghanistan, then National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezenski said that this was the point, to get the Soviet Union bogged down in a Vietnam type scenario. Sound familiar? The al-Qaeda network emerged from the Mujahideen, and the effort to fight them and the Taliban began a 20-year long war with the U.S. that took thousands of lives. That’s what happens when the U.S. “wins.”

The Soviet Union, then, and Russia now is not an imperialist country in the scientific and practical sense of the term. The technological development of its productive forces are qualitatively below that of western Europe and the U.S. Meaning, in global trade they lose out when trading with imperialist countries. They export raw materials, not capital. They’re economy is closer to a neo-colonial economy than to an imperialist one. Their GDP is smaller than South Korea’s or India’s.

That’s an important distinction because it allows us to understand the motivations of Russia without the “good guy, bad guy” distortions. Although Russia is no longer a socialist country, it is aligned with Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria and other targets of U.S. imperialism because they have no choice. And, their alliance with these forces alleviates the economic damage of U.S. sanctions and limits military interventions by the U.S. and its imperialist cabal. It would be tremendously harmful to our working class globally and domestically, if NATO is successful in winning this proxy war in the Ukraine.

In spite of what Biden claims, this war is not about the sovereignty of Ukrainians. Even if that were true, a sovereign country cannot endanger the entire world by promoting World War III, as President Zelensky of Ukraine did when he not only wanted membership into NATO, the most violent military alliance in history, but threatened to renounce the country’s non-nuclear status, with the implication being Ukraine was ready to house nuclear weapons again. As Dr. Martin Luther King alluded, the greatest threat to humanity today is U.S. imperialism. Anything that allows continued expansion of U.S.-led NATO threatens our entire world – and must be stopped, as Malcolm X said – by any means necessary.

However, Ukraine is not a sovereign country. The National Endowment for Democracy’s manipulation of elections, or Blackwater’s (now Academy) military training of Nazis there, or the $22.4 billion in U.S. dollars spent since 2004 for regime change, and the jailing of journalists and criminalizing of communist parties are not acts representing the Ukrainian people’s will.

Then there is the magic trick of misdirection – don’t look there, don’t speak of Donbas. The media and ruling class play a trick too familiar to people of African ethnicity – disappearing a people.

The Donbas region exists. After the 2014 coup orchestrated by the U.S. their people refused, and rightly so, to go along with reactionary Ukrainian nationalism that once collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. When monuments to fascists began appearing and street names glorifying these folks with the introduction of Nazi battalions and Nazis in government, they decided to become independent. The independent regions of Lugansk and Donetsk were met with bombings, rapes, torture and daily terrorism for 8 years. Biden said nothing then. And, like the revolutionary government of Afghanistan, they pleaded for help, this time from Russia to save their children from being murdered by the fascist Azov Battalion – an offical wing of the Ukrainian military.

The only thing that stopped those Nazis from taking away the sovereignty of those people was the assistance by the Russian military. And, they had every right to ask for that help. And, Russia has every right to defend itself from another U.S.-led NATO member state on its borders, one which could potentially have nuclear weapons that would be in the hands of a military led by Nazis. Remember, the supreme commander of NATO is a U.S. military officer. Last February NATO announced the activation of the NATO Response Force, allowing the U.S. to arm NATO member states any way they deem necessary, preparing the way for a nuclear horror show.

We have to look at the big picture and the class perspective of who’s side we are on – otherwise we might be enabling one of the most destructive, racist, violent, genocidal entities today – NATO.

https://orinocotribune.com/imperialism/

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Poseidon: One of the Weapons of the Russian Federation
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 2, 2022
Yoselina Guevara

In a speech in St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that “if someone intends to intervene from outside in the ongoing events in Ukraine, creating unacceptable threats to us, he should know that our response to counterattacks will be lightning fast”. The Russian Federation president stressed that he possesses “instruments (weapons) that no one can boast of and that we are ready to use if necessary.” The Foreign Ministry echoed his words through spokeswoman Maria Zakharova “The West is openly asking Kiev to attack Russia with the weapons they have provided it with; we do not recommend testing our patience.”

These statements by the Russian Federation should be of concern especially to Washington, which is well known to be pulling the strings in Kiev, and that this conflict is primarily between the United States and Russia. Indeed on Thursday, US President Joe Biden asked the US Congress to authorize an outlay of some $33 billion for Ukraine, including $20 billion between now and September for military aid. These are exorbitant figures; they are far more than countries like Spain, Turkey and Brazil spend in a year on their defense systems.

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But, what worries the United States about President Putin’s statements, is probably the assumption that the Head of State is referring to a nuclear super torpedo called Poseidon 2M39, equipped with a nuclear reactor, of which the Federation conducted tests last year in the Arctic, and is capable of creating radioactive tsunamis. That is to say, it is a weapon undetectable by radar systems and can generate large waves that could in minutes sweep away the coastal cities of the United States, including kilometers of land, but also because of the radioactive load could leave the American coasts uninhabitable for decades. On the positive side, the damage caused to other nations would be considerably less; this could be Putin’s ace up his sleeve.

The chess game continues

For now, Moscow remains neither desperate nor in a hurry to achieve greater results on the Ukrainian battlefield. Those who gambled that a protracted conflict could weaken Russia seem to have been wrong. The shortage of fuel, ammunition and combat personnel in Kiev’s ranks is playing in Moscow’s favor, yet the West continues to act on the premise of sending weapons to Ukraine. This is something that evidently irritates the Kremlin; because the reading is that the weaponry is not intended for a quick victory of Kiev, but for the continuation of the conflict against Russia. President Putin is playing his pieces, and proof of this is that he kept his word and suspended gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, with which Moscow is testing European unity in terms of sanctions.

The Kremlin’s bet is that the countries most dependent on Russian gas, such as Italy and above all Germany, will put their own economic interests before Washington’s orders. If Berlin gives in, it would call into question the eventual unity of the European Union, it would no longer be within the fold of the White House, which is leading them into an abyss of economic crisis, loss of companies, etc. It is in the best interest of the United States not to tempt the fearsome Greek god of the seas, however, its lack of wisdom and negotiation has been evident, its conceited belief and eagerness for the world to continue being unipolar could cost it dearly, not only for America, but for all of humanity.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... ederation/

Ukraine Hunts Down “Traitors Helping Russia”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 2, 2022
Jeremy Kuzmarov

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State terror operations that follow from CIA playbook contradict saintly image of Zelensky promoted in the U.S. media.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s saintly image in the media is contradicted by state terror operations being conducted under his orders against political dissidents and Ukrainian civilians accused of collaboration with Russia.

The Associated Press reported last week that nearly 400 people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv alone have been detained under anti-collaboration laws enacted by Ukraine’s parliament and signed by Zelensky after Russia’s February 24 invasion.

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A YouTube video accompanying the short article juxtaposed a speech by Zelensky saying that “collaborators will be brought to justice” with the arrest of a middle-aged Kharkiv man named Viktor by the Ukrainian Security Services (SBU) because of a social media post praising Vladimir Putin, calling for secession and insulting the Ukrainian flag—which Viktor called a “symbol of death.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/OR_E8dvyaOI[/img]

The SBU agent showed Viktor his social media post and asked: “You supported Putin? Are you supporting the Russian army. You are not speaking very nicely about the Ukrainian flag, are you?”

Viktor responded, before being taken away: “I am sorry. Yes I commented a lot. I told you. I changed my mind.”

The video shows another raid by the SBU on an apartment in Kharkiv where the SBU arrested a former Ukrainian army officer who had contacts with the Russians on his phone in the days after the city had been shelled.

An SBU agent says that the man had “put us in danger and civilians [in danger].”

The man’s father, Volodymyr Radnenko, asked the SBU agent: “Who is shelling us? It’s not our (people). It’s your fascists. And he [the son] just gets angry at that. So you understand. That’s all.”

Mr. Radnenko’s comments sum up the injustice of the SBU sweeps. Ukrainian citizens are being criminalized for expressing anger at Ukrainian army practices.

“Registry of Collaborators”

Roman Dudin, head of the Kharkiv branch of the SBU, in an interview with the Associated Press, said that the purpose of the SBU raids was to “have no one stab our armed forces in the back.”

Dudin ominously spoke in a dark basement where the SBU moved its operations after its building in central Kharkiv was shelled.

According to Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s Security Council, a “registry of collaborators” by Ukraine is currently being compiled and will be released to the public as part of martial law programs that have resulted in the banning of 11 political parties.

Under the current regulations, offenders face up to 15 years in prison for collaborating with Russian forces, making public denials about Russian aggression or supporting Moscow. Anyone whose actions result in deaths could face life in prison.

The governor of the Nikolaev region, Vitaly Kim, a member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, openly called for the assassination of any Ukrainian citizen who supports Russia.

Phoenix Redux

A previous CAM exposé pointed to the ominous parallels between the SBU operations in Ukraine and the Phoenix program in Vietnam, which resulted in the killing, imprisonment and torture of thousands of South Vietnamese, including civilian officials accused of being loyal to the left-wing, anti-imperialist National Liberation Front (NLF).

In both cases, the CIA is a key coordinator behind the scenes and helps in the compiling of blacklists that result in the detainment, and often torture and murder of civilians. .

Vasily Prozorov, a former officer with the SBU, stated soon after his defection to Russia in 2018 that the SBU had been advised by the CIA since 2014. “CIA employees [who have been present in Kyiv since 2014] are residing in clandestine apartments and suburban houses,” he said. “However, they frequently come to the SBU’s central office for holding specific meetings or plotting secret operations.”

According to Valentine, on January 6, 1969, New York Times reporter Drummond Ayres offered a favorable commentary on Operation Phoenix, saying that “more than 15,000 of the 80,000 VC [Vietcong] political agents thought to be in South Vietnam are said to have been captured or killed.”

Ayres further expressed the belief that “the general course of the war…now appears to favor the Government” and predicted that Phoenix would “achieve much greater success as the center’s files grow.”

Despite the good reviews, Valentine said that the surfacing of Phoenix in the press sent the publicity-shy CIA running for cover, and led to new legislation designed to legitimate its activities.

Similarly today, as more information comes to light, we may see renewed CIA efforts to try to legitimate its undercover operations and to burnish the image of its proxy forces in Ukraine whose modus operandi—like that of its predecessors in Vietnam—is morally abhorrent.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... ng-russia/

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Ukraine finally starts evacuation of civilians from Mariupol city
In the past, Ukraine has denied several Russian proposals to conduct the evacuation through humanitarian corridors, leading Russia to accuse it of using civilians as human shield

May 02, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense)

At least 100 civilians, mostly women, children and elderly, were evacuated from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol city on Saturday, April 20, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on Sunday. This was the first evacuation from the steel plant conducted in coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Most of those evacuated left the plant first to a Russian controlled-area before leaving for Zaporizhia in south Ukraine.

Several other Ukrainian officials confirmed the evacuation through tweets on Sunday. They claimed that more evacuations will be conducted on Monday.


According to Russian media, hundreds of Ukrainian fighters, including members of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment, are still present in the tunnels under the Azovstal steel plant.

Last week, after claiming complete Russian control over the southern port city, Russian president Vladimir Putin had called off the strikes at the steel plant and asked the Ukrainian soldiers and militias from the neo-Nazi Azov battalion to surrender. Putin had also promised “decent treatment under all international norms” to all those who did the same. However, Ukraine refused to ask its soldiers to surrender even after the city was completely captured by the Russians.

After Putin’s offer of amnesty on April 21, Ukrainians had demanded that people at the steel plant be allowed to leave under the supervision of a “third party” and that the Ukrainian soldiers and fighters should be allowed to keep their weapons.

Before Zelensky’s tweet, RT had reported the evacuation of 46 civilians from buildings near the steel plant on Saturday, April 30. According to RT, civilians left the area in two different groups and were halted at a Russian camp before leaving for Ukrainian-controlled areas.

Russia has claimed to have offered humanitarian corridors on several occasions in the past for all civilians who wanted to leave the plant. Ukraine refused to use the corridors claiming that they are not safe.

Ukraine’s refusal to evacuate civilians from the steel plant led Russia to accuse Ukrainian soldiers at the plant of using civilians as human shields against its advances. It alleged that the Ukrainian government wanted to make their own soldiers martyrs.

The current deal to evacuate civilians from Mariupol was finalized after UN secretary general Antonio Guterres visited Moscow last week.

Possibility of fresh talks
Meanwhile, Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed on Sunday that president Recep Tayyib Erdogan is constantly in touch with Ukrainian president Zelensky and Russian president Putin in order to get them to agree to meet in order to resolve the issues and end the war.

Russia earlier claimed that there will be no meeting between the two heads of states until some formal agreement is finalized. However, recently, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov expressed the possibility of such a meeting in case there are enough indications of it being fruitful, Tass reported.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on several occasions has blamed the West for pressuring Ukraine to derail the talks and prolong the war.


Turkey has hosted several rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine in March in which both the parties claimed to have made advances. However, talks are hampered since the Ukrainian accusation of mass killing of civilians at Bucha allegedly by the retreating Russian forces in the first week of April. Russia has denied the allegations and demanded an international inquiry into the matter, claiming that the killings were faked to halt progress in the talks.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/05/02/ ... upol-city/

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The West is very afraid of a Russian victory in Ukraine
By Vladimir Kornilov, columnist in RIA Novosti, translation to English by A Socialist In Canada, April 25, 2022 (original in Russian here)

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(Image from Facebook)

Only a lazy observer fails to recognize that Russia will emerge victorious in its political/military conflict with Ukraine. And the West is panicking.

First, the German chancellor issued a panicky statement on April 19: “Together with our partners in the EU and NATO, we are completely united in the opinion that Russia must not win this war.” He repeated this thesis several times during the day.

He was followed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who doesn’t hide the fact that he is one of the main inspirers of Ukraine ‘s adventurous actions. Speaking in Delhi on April 22, he squeezed out a terrible confession with a tragic expression on his face in response to a question about the possibility of a Russian victory: “The saddest thing is that this is a realistic possibility. Yes, of course. Putin has a huge army…We must be realistic.”

At the same time, Johnson mumbled something about “creating a land corridor in Mariupol”, without explaining where this corridor should lead. He clearly had heard something about the success of the Russian army in battling the neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ paramilitaries in the city. (A criminal investigation by Russia against ‘Azov’ is ongoing.) But as usual, Johnson did not look at a map. Humanitarian corridors in and around Mariupol have already been created and have been working for some time now.

Johnson’s words caused a real shock in Ukraine. They were not expected from the ‘best friend’ of Vladimir Zelensky. After all, Johnson was triumphantly received recently in Kiev and such a ‘betrayal’, as the Ukrainians put it, was not expected.

Officials in Kiev are still trying not to notice other seditious words of their London favorite, these ones concerning the “security guarantees for Ukraine” sought by Kiev. These cannot directly mirror the mutual obligations of the NATO countries on collective defense as provided for by the infamous Article 5 of the NATO pact. But this is exactly how Ukrainian propagandists painted the ‘guarantees’ which they proposed to enshrine in a peace agreement with Russia at talks in Istanbul [late March]. As you may recall, in Istanbul they presented their idea of creating a “pool of security guarantors” as a sort of ‘alternative NATO’, created specifically for the defense of Ukraine.

Representatives of Zelensky’s office–Mikhail Podolyak and Aleksey Arestovich–have spoken breathlessly about the fact that Ukraine will receives ‘guarantees’ much better, even, than NATO’s Article 5. The Ukrainian population, overcome with joy, was then told, “As a result of our negotiations, Ukraine will enter the European Union, will not host NATO offensive weapons (which weren’t here anyway), will receive guarantees better than Article 5, and will not be required to pay for all this. NATO will pay for the Ukraine’s participation, and for better guarantees, to boot.”

Now Boris Johnson’s appearance at a press conference in Delhi has completely dispelled all these wet dreams of Ukrainian officials. He reduced all the ‘security guarantees’ for Ukraine to three points: supply of weapons, training the military, and provision of intelligence data. But this is what the West has been doing all along, without any agreements and ‘guarantees’. As you can see, the thinking of Kyiv’s main ally [in London] resembles nothing like the earlier fairy tales of Zelensky’s spokesperson Oleksiy Arestovich to the effect that the NATO countries would gather within three days following any “Russian aggression against Ukraine” and would undertake bombing of the “aggressor”.

But let us return to Johnson’s terrible assumptions about the possibility of a Russian victory. The Financial Times admitted on April 22, “His statement was the first admission by a major Western leader that Russia could triumphantly win the war. It marks a significant shift in his own rhetoric from what he was saying just a few weeks ago.”

A senior EU official, according to the FT, called Johnson’s statement “shameful” and predicted that it would provoke the wrath of Kyiv. In reality, the British Prime Minister has repeatedly stated, “Putin must lose, and he will lose.” Even more, many Western figures, politicians, analysts–Russophobes of all stripes–have repeatedly declared, ‘Russia has already lost.’

These statements were especially spurred on by the actions of the Russian army to de-escalate the situation in the Kiev and Chernigov directions, undertaken by Moscow as a gesture of goodwill just after the above-mentioned negotiations in Istanbul. Joyful reports about the “defeat of Russia” then followed, one after another.

“Putin has already lost this war,” former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul said happily on MSNBC. He even listed points to support his conclusion: “Russia didn’t take Kyiv, didn’t kill Zelensky, didn’t change the regime and didn’t take Kharkiv.” As though Russia had actually set a goal to kill Zelensky or had announced the imminent fall of Kyiv.

The West has presumed to come up with some ‘objectives’ for Russia’s special operation in Ukraine and is now rejoicing that these have not been achieved. It doesn’t matter that Moscow has repeatedly refuted the Western tales, clearly outlining its goals and objectives of the special operation in the Donbass and Ukraine. [See: Russia’s six conditions for peace in Ukraine, by Roger Annis, in A Socialist In Canada, March 11, 2022.]

Just a few weeks ago, New Eastern Europe, a magazine published in Poland, proclaimed: “Russia has definitely already lost the chance to win… It cannot win… Ukrainians have already realized this fact and now elites both in the East and in the West recognize it.” [See also this April 22 editorial from Germany’s Der Speigel magazine.]

Yet after all this, the voices of the idea of the ‘inevitable defeat of Russia’ have begun to recognize the possibility of a Russian victory.

It’s not just about Johnson who has let the cat out of the bag. Reuters cited unnamed Western official in a report on April 21 saying that Russia had the potential to win. One official said, “Command and control has become more effective… it’s clear that they’re being smarter about how they’re using UAVs and integrating those into their forces as they advance, and how they’re using artillery.” [See also this report in Business Insider, April 21.]

The Times headlined an April 21 article ‘A revived Russia can still win’. It, too, cited Western intelligence services, again unnamed, who explained that the Russian army has every opportunity to surround the Ukrainian units [in eastern Ukraine and Donbass] and “over time, grind them down”.

You understand, such confessions shock the Western public. It has been celebrating for weeks the “defeat of Russia”. Panicked letters from readers are appearing in European newspapers, so commentators in the Financial Times are begging the British prime minister to keep quiet about the victory of Russia: One writes, “Johnson is simply outrageously not watching his tongue. His words will give strength to Putin’s troops and undermine the morale of Ukrainian defenders. Doesn’t he know that in wartime a talker is a godsend for the enemy?”

The Daily Telegraph quotes a letter from a reader from The Hague: “This conflict is about the survival of the West… If Ukraine is allowed to fall, then everything that the Western world stands for will also fall. And despots like Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko and Xi Jinping will rubbing their hands with glee… The moment has come for the West to fight or forever give up trying to carry the torch of freedom.”

Let us leave aside the pathos of carrying torches and ask ourselves the question: What has happened during Russia’s special operation that has led the West to change its jubilation over the ‘defeat of Russia’ into panic over Russia’s ability to win? What does the liberation of Mariupol from the neo-Nazi paramilitaries signify? After all, the Western public has been assured that the city is almost entirely under the control of the Ukrainians. Similarly, how to explain the confident advancement of the armies of Russia and the Donetsk and Lugansk republics?

Western media is happy to repeat Zelensky’s statements that Ukraine has allegedly “recaptured from the enemy” about 1,000 settlements. We recall the earlier assurances by Kyiv to its public–and the same assurances from the West–of the ‘frivolous’ claims of Russia’s successes. They say Russia did not succeed in occupying a large number of cities and villages. So where do the 1,000′ ‘liberated’ settlements now come from? When did Ukraine lose them if, prior to that, Russia had not managed to take anything?

It is obvious that Boris Johnson, officials of the European Union and, even more so, Western intelligence agencies did not draw their information from Arestovich’s reports of victory and not even from Ukraine’s Russophobia-obsessed propaganda media. As they are forced to publicly acknowledge the military capabilities of Russia, they understand that the successes of the Russian army are significant and the defeats of Ukraine on the battlefield looks more and more obvious.

This is assuredly not the end of the story. Following the stage of depression that these confessions will cause amongst the Western public will come the stage of acceptance of the inevitable. As a result, even the most notorious Russophobes will be forced to understand that Russia has only one path: to victory. There is no alternative outcome, whether the Johnsons and the Bidens want it or not.

If, after the end of the Cold War, the West had not disbanded its rather powerful institutions of Sovietology, where really knowledgeable specialists on Russia worked, then Russians would be much better understood there today. The West would know that our people in years of severe trials always live by the principle: ‘We fight for victory, and victory for all. We are ready to pay the price for that.”

If they looked and understood, they would stop joyfully celebrating ‘Russian defeats’ and start talking about ‘Russia’s ability to win’. A Russian victory is not only possible, it is inevitable.

https://socialistincanada.ca/the-west-i ... n-ukraine/

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America’s ideological blinkers and the Ukraine war
gilbertdoctorow Uncategorized May 2, 2022

Ideological blinkers prevent a correct U.S. assessment of the Russian successes in the Ukraine war, of the likely outcomes and of what to do now

Yesterday’s edition of the premier Sunday news wrap-up on Russian state television, Vesti nedeli, hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov, marked a turning point in what the Russians are saying officially about their achievements on the ground in Ukraine. It set me to thinking over why Washington is getting it all wrong and how America’s ideological blinkers may lead to very unfortunate consequences on a global level.

Up until now, Russian news has been very quiet about the country’s military achievements in Ukraine. The daily briefings of Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov have only given summary figures on the planes, tanks and other armored vehicles, command centers in Ukraine that were destroyed by high precision Russian missiles plus the names of towns that were taken, without elaborating on their strategic or other value. Otherwise, Russian television programming has been showing only the damage inflicted daily by Ukrainian forces on the city of Donetsk and its suburbs from artillery and Tochka U missile strikes. There is a steady toll of destroyed homes, hospitals, schools and loss of civilian lives. The sense of this programming is clear: explaining again and again to the Russian audience why we are there.

Yesterday’s News of the Week devoted more than 45 minutes to Russian military operations on the ground. The message has changed to what we are doing there. Television viewers were led by the Rossiya team of war zone reporters through the wrecked forests and fields of the Kharkov oblast in northeastern Ukraine as well as in newly liberated parts of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Filming from an armored all-terrain vehicle, they showed us kilometers long stretches of burned out Ukrainian tanks and other heavy military gear as well as dozens and dozens of corpses of Ukrainian soldiers “killed in action” and left behind to rot by their fast retreating comrades and deserters. Then came interviews with Ukrainian prisoners of war, whose faces and words tell a very different story from the heroic encomiums raining down from Zelensky and his entourage. Finally, there were interviews with some of the civilians who were let out of the Azovstal underground complex these past couple of days and made their way to freedom via the humanitarian corridor which the Russians set up each afternoon.

I will deal briefly with each of these segments from last night’s News of the Week. But first, allow me to offer two overall generalizations.

First, the Russian ‘special military operation’ is a millstone that grinds slowly but grinds fine. It is working. The Russians are crushing the Ukrainian forces. It is improbable that any amount of deliveries of foreign equipment to Kiev can make a difference on the outcome of this conflict. Indeed, while critics of the US-led intervention in the conflict claim, correctly, that the deliveries are drawing out the war by encouraging Kiev to fight on, it is also true that the Russians have no problem with that: the longer it goes on, the more territory they can seize, with a view to controlling and ultimately annexing the entire Black Sea littoral. They would thereby ensure that what survives of the Ukrainian state can never again pose a military threat to Russia, with or without NATO help.

Second, the Ukrainian army indeed has NATO trained officers and skilled professionals who may be admirable fighters, as the Western media insist. But it also has a lot of cannon fodder. By cannon fodder I mean overaged recruits dragooned into the forces and also volunteers who are useless to any modern military and are no longer trainable. Most of the prisoners of war shown on Russian television were in their late 50s and even late 60s; they had no prior military experience. One of the latter, with haggard face and scraggly beard down to his chest was asked why he enlisted to fight. The answer came back: “There was no work. So I signed up just to make some money.” After seeing their mates shot dead, is it any wonder that such soldiers raise their arms to surrender at the first opportunity?

The question not being asked is where are all the young and able Ukrainian males? How have they evaded the draft? Given the widely acknowledged corruption in Ukrainian government and society, would it not be strange if some just buy their way out of the war? Are they among the 5 million Ukrainians who have gone abroad since the start of the hostilities? Are they the ones now driving their high priced Mercedes with Ukrainian license plates around the streets of Hamburg? Who in the West records this or really cares about it?

The testimony of the prisoners of war shows that they were misled by their officers. They were told that the Russians would simply slaughter them if they showed the white flag. The testimony of the several women who walked to freedom from the Azovstal catacombs supports the official Russian version of the situation there: they were intimidated by the nationalist warriors who used them as human shields. They were barely fed and were warned that the way out was mined so that they would die in any attempt at escape.

The advance of the Russians on the ground as they finish preparations of the cauldron or total encirclement of the major part of Ukrainian forces in the Donbas is slow, only a couple of kilometers per day. The reason was clear from the reporting last night: apart from the open fields and forests mentioned above, the Ukrainians are in well-fortified bunkers that they constructed over the past eight years and they are situated in the midst of small towns where they have to be flushed out street by street, house by house. Carpet bombing or unlimited shelling would result in heavy loss of life among the civilian population, many of whom are Russian speakers, precisely the people whom the Russians are seeking to liberate.

The reasoning underlying the Russian Way of War in Ukraine has been wholly overlooked or dismissed out of hand by official Washington. American media and senior politicians speak only of Russia’s supposed logistical problems and poor implementation of its war plans. This is so is not because Biden’s advisers are lame-brained. It is so because of the ideological blinkers that the whole foreign policy establishment in the United States wears. The ideology may be called (Wilsonian) Idealism. It stands in contrast to Realism, which is espoused by a tiny minority of American academics.

The distinction is not mere words. It is how foreign policy issues are analyzed. It is about the creation in the United States of a post-factual world that might just as well be called a virtual world.

Idealism in foreign policy rests on the assumption that universal principles shape societies everywhere. It systematically ignores national peculiarities, such as history, language, culture and will. By contrast, Realism is based precisely on knowledge of such specifics, which define national interests and priorities.

Under these conditions, the think tank scholars in the United States can sit at their computers and write up their evaluations of the Russian prosecution of the war in Ukraine solely on what they, the Americans and their allies, would do if they were directing the Russian military effort. They would fight the American way, meaning a start with “shock and awe” followed by vast destruction of everything in the way of their march on the capital of the enemy state to bring about total capitulation in short order. The reasoning of the men in the Kremlin holds no interest for them. Hence, the dead wrong conclusion that the Russians are losing the war, that Russia is not the strong military force that we feared, and that Russia can be successfully challenged and beaten down until it submits to American directions and American definitions of its national interest.

The same problem of a “virtual world” approach comes up now in the discussion among American experts of the likelihood that Putin will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine and how the US-led West should respond. The possibility that the Russians are winning and have no need for extreme solutions is excluded. The possibility that non-nuclear solutions like carpet bombing might be applied if the Russians genuinely were stymied is excluded.

The latest variation on Russia’s possibly escalating towards WWIII by using tactical nuclear weapons is a reaction to President Putin’s vague threat of a ‘lightning quick’ response to any sign of Western powers becoming co-belligerents by their deeds in support of Ukraine. Curiously, the threat was deemed to mean precisely tactical nuclear attacks, not the launch of the new Sarmat hypersonic and ABM-evading ICBMs, or the dispatch of the deep-sea drone Poseidon to wash away Washington, D.C. in a nuclear explosion caused tidal wave. In any case, the assortment of devastating new weapons systems at Russia’s disposal seems to be ignored by our policy experts. They have settled on just one, about which they speculate endlessly.

The virtual world bubble in which the U.S. foreign policy community exists and flourishes is a disaster waiting to happen. Who will heed the wake-up call of John Mearsheimer and the few policy experts who hold up the Realpolitik standard?

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/05/02/ ... raine-war/
"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 May 03, 2022 10:44 pm

Not an inch more
May 3, 17:00

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As smart people, the Chinese have learned from our mistakes.
And they build their attitude to the promises of the US and NATO, taking into account our sad experience.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7592273.html

Google Translator

Correct. So-called leftists cannot see this, or perhaps their Eurocentric delicacies are offended by the means, probably the only formulation that would work, that the Chinese used to avoid getting sucked down the plughole like the USSR. If I understand their intent properly their tactics are both effective and elegant. It is a strategy not without risks, but all other options were and are worse.

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How the Ukrainian Conflict Could Affect Europe

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Military on Ukrainian territory, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @anadoluagency

Published 3 May 2022

The main channel through which the conflict in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia affect the euro area economy is raising global energy prices and energy security.

As the Russia-Ukraine conflict rages into the third month with no sign of truce any time soon, the entire European continent is bearing the brunt of the crisis.

Against the backdrop of an economic slowdown, supply chain disruptions and weak consumer morale after over two years into COVID-19, sanctions on Russia are wreaking more havoc in Europe, causing widespread panic over regional security, soaring food and energy prices and a looming drop in the standard of living.

ECONOMIC WOES

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised down its eurozone growth forecast for 2022 to 2.8 percent from 3.9 percent in its January estimate, with the region's biggest economy, Germany, taking a heavy hit. The main channel through which the conflict in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia affect the euro area economy is raising global energy prices and energy security, the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook report in April.

The shockwaves of the conflict hurt countries like Italy and Germany more than other European nations because they had relatively large manufacturing sectors and greater dependence on energy imports from Russia. Germany's economy is now expected to grow by 2.1 percent this year, down from the previous forecast of 3.8 percent. Italy will also drop, with a growth rate of 2.3 percent compared to an earlier forecast of 3.8 percent.

Ever since the Russia-Ukraine conflict erupted in February, the West, including eurozone countries, has imposed several rounds of sanctions aiming at crippling Russia's economy. However, some of these measures are feared to have backfired and jeopardized the overall European economy.

Two months into the conflict, prices are rising. Oil hovers over US$100 a barrel after reaching historic highs in March, while the prices of gas, wheat, aluminum, nickel and other raw materials have soared. As a result, the euro area's annual inflation reached an all-time high of 7.5 percent in April, according to Eurostat. Energy is expected to have the highest annual rate in April, followed by food, alcohol and tobacco, non-energy industrial goods and services.

The estimate shows high inflation is ubiquitous among all 19 countries in the euro area, and the inflation rates in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands and Slovakia have topped 10 percent.


SANCTIONS BACKFIRE, CALLS FOR DIALOGUE

By slapping sanctions on Moscow, most EU officials hold to an end of dependence on Russia for energy and other supplies. Yet some analysts think otherwise. Italian economist Michele Geraci warned the Russia-Ukraine conflict could lead to a weaker Europe because the economy there could take a serious hit.

"We are imposing sanctions on energy products thinking that these would hurt the Russian economy. However, they would hurt the EU's economy more," said Geraci, former undersecretary of state at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development.

As a result of this, Germany and a number of smaller countries in Eastern Europe would be stranded. The EU's export ban on luxury goods to Russia, for example, would hurt such brands as Gucci and Prada. Russia was the EU's fifth-largest partner for exports and third largest for imports last year, with two-way trade in goods totaling US$279.4 billion, according to Eurostat.

In 30 years, NATO has gone through five rounds of enlargement, moving eastward more than 1,000 km to somewhere near the Russian border, pushing the country into a corner step by step. The conflict is in a way a proxy one between Russia and the U.S. which is being fought in Europe and for which the Europeans are paying a heavy price, whereas the cost for the United States is minimal. NATO's eastward expansion has not only triggered the crisis in Ukraine, but also threatened peace, security and cooperation worldwide, said Zivadin Jovanovic, former minister of foreign affairs of Yugoslavia.

Jovanovic, who currently presides over the think-tank Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, said that instead of fueling the conflict further, the West should engage in a global high-level dialogue for peace and security, which would be vital to ending the crisis.


LIVELIHOOD IN JEOPARDY

Rising energy prices and subsequent inflation are already jeopardizing the livelihood of the people and causing widespread concern over regional economic development. Countries like Hungary could not possibly end energy imports from Russia anytime soon and would therefore suffer more from the sanctions than Russia, said Moldicz, research director at the Eurasian Center of the John Neumann University in Budapest.

About 85 percent of Hungarian households rely on natural gas from Russia for heating, he said. "We rely heavily on natural gas. Even if we replace gas with wood and coal, it will be technically impossible to change the entire heating system shortly."

In addition to an energy crunch, Moldicz said the ongoing conflict and sanctions would cause a food crisis in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world. Ukraine and Russia are among the world's leading exporters of wheat. Disruptions of wheat exports will drive up grain prices and harm the low-income population worldwide.

The IMF has warned that "increases in food and fuel prices may also significantly increase the prospect of social unrest in poorer countries." World food commodity prices soared in March to the highest levels ever, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported earlier in April.

The UN has allocated US$100 million to fight hunger in Africa and the Middle East as the spillover effects of the military operation in Ukraine threaten to push millions even closer to famine. In addition, the conflict has forced more than 11 million people to leave their homes in Ukraine so far.

About 5.3 million of them have left for neighboring countries, while 6.5 million others are now internally displaced in their home country, according to the UN. The UN's children agency has said that two-thirds of all Ukrainian children have fled their homes. The conflict "has led to extensive loss of life, triggered the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II, and severely set back the global recovery," said the IMF.

"If the Ukrainian refugee crisis continues, it would clearly put a lot of stress on facilities like schools and hospitals," said Lorenzo Codogno, founder and chief economist of LC Macro Advisors Ltd and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/How ... -0004.html

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President Putin signs decree on economic retaliation against hostile states

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The Kremlin has a period of 10 ten days to determine the list of affected subjects. | Photo: TASS
Published May 3, 2022 (1 hour 13 minutes ago)

The law prevents the export of Russian products and raw materials to sanctioned natural and legal persons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Tuesday that includes a set of measures in response to the sanctions imposed by several Western countries and international organizations.

The initialed document states that: "As a result of hostile actions contrary to international law by the United States and countries and international organizations that supported them, aimed at illegally depriving the Russian Federation (...) in order to To protect national interests, I have to guarantee the implementation of special economic measures".

Likewise, the president added that the sanctions of the West constitute an illegal deprivation of the right of property to Russian companies and citizens.


From this, the head of state ordered a period of 10 days for the Kremlin to execute a list of natural and legal persons who will be sanctioned.

The regulation imposes a ban on natural persons and entities under Russia's jurisdiction "conducting transactions, including international contracts, with legal entities, individuals and organizations under sanctions by Moscow."

Similarly, the decree prevents these subjects from "the export of products and raw materials manufactured in Russia and destined for those affected by punitive measures."

The set of measures that will come into force from the moment of its publication, comes after the head of the Kremlin ordered the reinforcement of cybersecurity measures.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/presiden ... -0010.html

Google Translator

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Fighting in Popasna.
May 3, 23:23

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Fighting in Popasna

In Popasna itself, progress is still rather slow. Since the beginning of the assault, both sides have suffered significant losses here. The enemy clung to Popasnaya with all his strength, since its loss will open up opportunities for our troops to further advance in the direction of Artemovsk.
All this determines the severity of the battles for Popasnaya.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7593117.html

Order for the restoration of Mariupol
May 4, 0:48

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Order for the restoration of Mariupol - 4-5 thousand people.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7593261.html

The age-old struggle of Russians and the reorganization of the world order
May 3, 21:51

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Chinese view of the special operation of the RF Armed Forces in Ukraine.

The age-old struggle of Russians and the reorganization of the world order

For a hundred years, the Russians fought against a world order dominated by Britain and the United States. This time they launched a "special operation" to protect their national security and oppose the entire Western world, the author of "Guancha" believes.

Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, the West has imposed a number of sanctions against Russia. But, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, this just marks the end of an era, and from now on the West will lose its global dominance both politically and economically. And the Russian initiative is also seen as a challenge to the world order established by the West. In my opinion, the Russian struggle did not begin with the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, but has been going on for a century. And this time, European countries and the US will pay a new price.
Russia is a principality that, over centuries of fighting, has grown into an empire with the largest territory in the world. At the turn of the 20th century, its constant expansion came to a standstill - the Anglo-Saxons created a world system, and the position of the Russians was changed - they turned from conquerors into "rebels".

For the past century, Russians have been fighting against the capitalist world system created by white Anglo-Saxon Christians. This world political history was not planned in advance, and the result of the changes in the world order is a centuries-long history of struggle between the Slavs - the Russians - and the Anglo-Saxons. The Russian-Ukrainian crisis, of course, is not the end of this story.

Around 1875, the capitalist economic world system, led by Great Britain as a whole, completed its formation. That is, it took the British 200 years to establish their own hegemonic order, and after the end of World War II, the banner of leadership was transferred to the Americans. For 300 years the Anglo-Saxons dominated the world order.
The peculiarity of this system, first of all, is its cruelty . According to William McNeill, the founder of world macrohistory, among the expanding nations, the Anglo-Saxons were the most warlike, the most bloody and the most cruel.
The second feature of this system is inequality. Capitalism is an economy based on an uneven distribution of capital.
The third feature is the military base. The political and economic system that took shape during World War II is what Americans call the military-industrial complex. The basis of the viability of such a system is war.
The fourth feature is that the above characteristics prove that expansion is the nature of this system and war is the main way of life.

Not everyone was happy with the domination of the Anglo-Saxons in the world. First, there were dissenters within Western civilization. At the beginning of the 19th century, the French emperor Napoleon fought for Western hegemony. The Germans, having survived "a hundred years of peace", competed with the British in two world wars. The Japanese in the East also entered the struggle for leadership. But after the defeat, they were all forced to submit to the world system under the leadership of the Anglo-Saxons. Of course, the French, the Germans, the Japanese fought for a leadership position, and not for the overthrow of the world capitalist economy.
It has often been said in the past that the struggle of the "second superpower", the Soviet Union, also failed, but this is obviously a matter of historical perspective. From the point of view of the world political system, the emergence of the Soviet Union with the Russian nation as the main driving force is undoubtedly a great success that shook the world political system dominated by the Anglo-Saxons.

The Soviet regime, established in the First World War, became the first system created after the Paris Commune, which opposed the world capitalist system. Therefore, from the very beginning (1917-1920), the new regime was besieged and suppressed by the White Army, supported by England, France and Germany, but ultimately ended with the victory of the Red Army.
However, the severity of the "economic sanctions" imposed on the new regime was not inferior to the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and the West because of the current Russian-Ukrainian crisis. In this ominous international environment, the Russians doubted "whether the country could build socialism." After the completion of the "economic reformation of war communism", the victory of the Soviet Union in the anti-fascist war in World War II proved that after decades of single-handed struggle, the USSR had turned from a backward agricultural country into a developed industrial power second only to the United States.Due to the highly hostile capitalist international environment, the Soviet Union also committed such catastrophic mistakes as the "Great Terror", and due to the state of siege in the world, the tragedy of the Great Famine in Ukraine occurred.

The Soviet Union paid a heavy price for resisting the world capitalist system, but ultimately survived. Not only that, "the October Revolution brought Marxism-Leninism to China under the volleys of cannons", and in China, located outside the periphery of the Western capitalist world, a new regime aimed against "oppression" was established. Equally important, thanks to the "right to national self-determination" movement advocated by Vladimir Lenin and promoted by the Soviet Union, democratic liberation movements flourished among the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America after World War II, and many developing countries were born.

Thus, in the period from World War I to World War II, the Soviet Union not only tore apart the capitalist world system, but also established a socialist world regime in opposition to the capitalist system, changing the situation in which the Anglo-Saxons dominated the world from 1700 to 1900. The Soviet Union reorganized the world order, so who can say that the Soviet challenge failed?

The Russians, being the main driving force of the Soviet Union, paid a huge price for this - they went through not only the "Great Terror" and the Great Famine, but also eventually through the collapse of the country in 1991. However, all this does not at all negate the importance of the "resistance" itself and does not speak of its failure.Under the leadership of the USSR, a cell of the Third International - the Communist Party of China - made a revolution, and it made great achievements in the construction and management of China during the "policy of reform and opening up." The scale and success of socialist China is sufficient to equalize the imbalance in the prevalence of capitalism in the world order , and more importantly, socialism can bring about a great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

These are the conclusions of comparative political studies. After World War II, many developing countries, big and small, joined the world capitalist system, but developing countries with more than 100 million people such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia in Asia, Nigeria and Ethiopia in Africa, and Mexico and Brazil in South America - how many of them have developed to the level of European countries? Which of the backward developing countries does not want to become a developed country?

The most typical example is Mexico, which borders the United States, and when the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994, Mexican intellectuals loudly proclaimed that Mexico would soon be as rich as the United States. As a result, political and economic development followed the path of the United States: land was privatized, and farmers who lost land either went to the mountains to grow drugs or immigrated to the United States en masse. The drug economy caused a great collapse of Mexican politics, local politicians were drugged, and violence flourished. With such a large neighbor who simply lay down and pretended to be dead, Americans could naturally sleep peacefully.

Although this is already a separate topic of conversation, but it has a close connection with the struggle of the Russians.Without the October Revolution, would there have been socialism in China? Without socialism, would there be such a difference between China and other developing countries? At best, it would just become a larger developing country , and maybe even worse, because American-style democracy in general is a party democracy, where parties squabble among themselves, and party democracy is ultimately an institutional mechanism for splitting countries - all we know that the Soviet Union broke up into 15 countries. For the vast majority of developing countries, party democracy is a model of government that destroys the country from the inside, and the United States does not even need to start "competition of the great powers" with such countries.

The "integration" of the USSR into the capitalist world system began not after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but under Mikhail Gorbachev. Twice the attempt at "integration" ended in failure, and as a result, the Russians had to fight the United States through Ukraine.

First there was an attempt at institutional integration. In 1986, the emergence of "young reformers" in the economy in the person of Anatoly Chubais made the top echelons of the CPSU believe that only a neoliberal economy could save the Soviet (Russian) economic situation. In the realm of politics, Gorbachev's 1987 book Perestroika and New Thinking charted the path to representative democracy.This project was aimed at integration with the West, but led to the rapid destruction of the Soviet empire. Russia, which inherited the resources of the Soviet Union, carried out large-scale privatization, and as a result, the economic losses were more severe than during the Great Depression in the United States. It was a major defeat for the country, caused by institutional failure . Left with no other choice, in 1999, tormented in body and spirit, addicted to alcohol, Boris Yeltsin found Vladimir Putin, the political leader who was supposed to save Russia. But Yeltsin-Putin's Russia continued to remain in blockade.

Then there was an attempt to join NATO. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia once wanted to join the camp of the West and wholeheartedly strove for development. And the US also promised Russia that NATO would not expand eastward and both sides would live in peace with each other. As a result, not only was Russia not allowed to join NATO, but the Alliance expanded five times in succession, over and over again, until it came to the borders with Ukraine. The Ukrainians, who never had an independent state, are an extremely immature nation, their political leaders easily become followers and are willing to act as pawns in an attack on Russia, thereby directly threatening the national territorial security of Russia, as a result of which they first of all brought to sacrifice only the Ukrainians themselves.

This is the second major confrontation organized by the socialist camp since the October Revolution - the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. This struggle is not really institutional - Russia is still an elective democracy - but in the eyes of the Western countries, Russia is built on a civilization that has its own religion and its own national characteristics, different from the Western world.

The Anglo-Saxons have always believed that Russians are Orthodox Tatars with a white appearance, that is, strangers. From this we can conclude that a non-Anglo-Saxon large state, no matter what regime is established in it, as long as it develops, it poses a threat - a threat to the world order that has dominated the last 300 years, where the Anglo-Saxons are at the top of the food chain.After all, even the first black president, Barack Obama, said bluntly that if 1.4 billion Chinese reached the American standard of living, then Americans would only have to chew grass. Therefore, America uses all means to suppress China, not even shunning the kidnapping of people (for example, the case of Meng Wanzhou). In the current world order, only Americans can eat meat, and the Chinese must eat grass.

For a hundred years, the Russians have been fighting, and once they hit the world, changed the world order, which was dominated by Great Britain and the USA, and conquered half the world. This time, they launched a "special operation" to protect their national security and directly oppose the entire Western world, and Russia will inevitably be greatly weakened by military spending and ruthless economic sanctions. Years of struggle have given the Russians a strong national character (for which they are jokingly called a "belligerent nation"), their rich resources are sufficient to support themselves, and the largest territory in the world has significantly reduced the Russians' desire for "globalization". These factors are an integral part of understanding Russia's position after the end of this crisis.

Looking at Russia's resistance from a Chinese perspective, the first act of its struggle brought Marxism-Leninism to the PRC, and the emergence of socialist China fundamentally changed the world order. While the Russian-Ukrainian crisis will greatly weaken Russia, the United States and the West have already formed a security model that is completely incompatible with Russia, which is tantamount to sticking a sharp knife into the very heart of the Western world.

Thus, the impact of this crisis on Sino-US relations is that,while the United States will continue to regard China as its main strategic adversary, Russia, which has the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal and exists outside of a Western-dominated political and economic order, may be much more dangerous to them than Russia "inside the system" . And Russia will become the main headache for the United States and the West, which will inevitably greatly change the conditions and redistribute the energy of the United States to fight China in the Asia-Pacific region.

The impact of this crisis on China-EU relations is that Europe, which is in direct confrontation with Russia, will also have to deal more rationally with China so that the EU, which does not have a direct security confrontation with China, can cooperate more effectively. with Beijing in the economy and trade. For more than a thousand years, the bloody history of Europe has been full of "states at war and countries starting wars," and Europeans are far more hungry for peace than Americans. However, we should also pay attention to the "Lithuanian phenomenon" in European politics - this crazy idea to endlessly test the "lower limit" of China's patience.

What is the state of the "profit and loss balance" of the United States?The Russo-Ukrainian crisis seems to have allowed the United States to win a "hard power" victory in the military and economic sectors and earn a lot of money, but at the cost of the decline of "soft power". A hegemonic country cannot maintain its hegemony by relying only on "hard power" because the cost of doing so is too high, and dominance must be complemented by the support of "soft power".

After this crisis, the "soft power" of the United States will return to its original form. What other rule of law, what other human rights and the sacred inviolability of private property - all this is just a layer of a thin veil that America has covered itself with as it has developed. Her ascension process was full of murder, robbery and banditry.Where was the rule of law and human rights during the Indian genocide? When the Eight Power Alliance sacked Yuanmingyuan (Gardens of Perfect Clarity, a palace and park complex in Beijing, approx. per.), Why did no one talk about protecting the right of property or even the most fundamental "national right" of the country's sovereignty? All this was ruthlessly trampled on. From the beginning of the Donald Trump administration to the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, the US and the West allow themselves to kidnap people and confiscate the property of Russians at will. Even the dollar has become a risky currency. How much "soft power" does the US have left?

America has lost moral superiority over the world. When the myth is destroyed, the concepts underlying the world order also cease to exist, and the world needs a new direction, so we should look forward to how the global order will change as a result of current events. The United States, which profited from "hard power" and lost its "soft power", still cannot give up its military adventurism.

Finally, I should note that the Russian-Ukrainian crisis will also change the structure of Sino-Russian relations. Russia, under US and Western sanctions, will inevitably rely more on "yuan trading". Russia's external economy used to be concentrated in the West, but will inevitably turn to the East. China will become a valuable source of resources for the recovery and development of the Russian economy.

All this undoubtedly represents an excellent strategic opportunity for China's development. The PRC needs to adhere to the strategic roadmap for rebuilding the world through its own development. The scale of China is too large, and as the country develops, the world will naturally change with it. Of course, states at the top of the food chain will not wait for China to develop into a world-class power.

Look at history - for the last 300 years the Anglo-Saxons, Russians and Chinese have had the opportunity to build and transform the world order. Because of the fundamental differences between civilizations, they sought to change the world for themselves. In the face of bloody world politics, the peace-loving Chinese must have the courage and peace of mind to resist US aggression and help their country rebuild.

Yang Guangbin (杨光斌) - Rector of the Institute of International Relations, Renmin University of China

https://inosmi.ru/20220503/politika-254038991.html - zinc
https://www.guancha.cn/YangGuangBin/202 ... 19_s.shtml - original in Chinese

https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/at ... 31ab8.jpeg


On the situation in the uranium market
May 3, 17:49

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On the situation in the uranium market

We all remember very well the Russian-American agreement on the processing and supply of uranium, which was signed in February 1993 by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Vice President Al Gore. Russia pledged to supply the United States with low-enriched uranium (LEU) obtained from 500 tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) for 20 years. The Americans also pledged to accept, place on the market, pay for the work of separation and the natural uranium component of LEU. The first delivery of low-enriched uranium to the United States was made in May 1995, and the last on November 14, 2013. In total, 14,446 tons of LEU were exported under the Gor-Chernomyrdin deal. This far exceeds the total amount of uranium produced in the United States in history.

An agreement was also signed between the Russian Federation and the United States on processing part of weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear power plants. At the time of its conclusion, there were 125 tons of plutonium in the Russian Federation, and 100 tons in the USA. It was supposed to process 34 tons on each side. The Russian side fulfilled its part of the agreement, and the United States, in violation of the agreements, changed the technology and retained the possibility of "recovering" reprocessed plutonium into weapons-grade plutonium, in connection with which Russia withdrew from the agreement.
The situation led to huge financial losses, approximately $8 trillion. Russia lost its position in the uranium market for decades.

Sanctions have not yet affected uranium supplies from Russia. The United States continues to want to receive this raw material. If supplies stop, all US nuclear power will have to stop in a year. The consequences will be catastrophic for the States. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that by the end of 2020, about 90% of the uranium used in the United States is imported. Of these, 47% - for supplies from Kazakhstan, Russia and Uzbekistan. For American nuclear power plants, 48.9 million pounds of uranium oxide U3O8 were purchased. Of this volume, the United States produced only 5 million pounds on its own.

The uranium market in the US is controlled by two large groups of suppliers. Canada and Australia supply 34%. Russia and Kazakhstan 38.6%. In the state corporation Kazatomprom, controlling stakes in uranium mines in Kazakhstan belong to Rosatom. Kazakh uranium is enriched at Russian plants.

Of the 440 power units in the world, 93 are located in the United States. And the only commercial uranium enrichment facility in New Mexico was commissioned in 2010. It is owned by Urenco ( https://www.urenco.com/contact ) headquartered in the UK. Most of the uranium processed for industrial use in the United States is supplied by Urenco. It is impossible to promptly increase production and enrichment of uranium.

The officially explored uranium reserves in America are only 1% of the world's, although some of the reserves may not be "declared". The prospect of imposing sanctions on uranium supplies could cut off the EU and the US from nuclear fuel from Russia.

Fuel for nuclear power plants in the United States will last for about a year. What's next? Only an uncontrolled rise in the cost of uranium on the "free" market. Rosatom accounts for 35% of the world production of enriched uranium. 55 American nuclear power plants with a total capacity of 95.5 GW generate 19.7% of electricity in the United States. There is nothing to compensate for this volume, since there are no spare capacities in the USA. For the time needed to increase production and enrichment, nuclear power plants will still have to be closed. And stopping so many reactors at the same time and safely is a very difficult task.

Since a full-scale economic war is now being waged against Russia, it is necessary to consider all possibilities for protection, including cutting off uranium supplies to the US and the EU. Of course, for Russia this will mean the loss of a large market. But one should not repeat Chernomyrdin's mistakes for the sake of short-term gain. A new market will be formed on more favorable terms for Russia, among the potential participants of which are India, China and Iran.

(c) "Econopocalypse"

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7592556.html

Google Translator

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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 in the evening of May 3, 2022 The

main delight of today is the mass evening “calibration” of the Lviv, Dnepropetrovsk, Kirovograd, Vinnitsa, Odessa and Kiev regions. During the evening , six railway stations in the central and western regions of Ukraine, and other strategically important objects were subjected to missile strikes . According to the head of Ukrzaliznytsia Alexander Kamyshin, the damage is severe, the movement of 14 trains has been delayed. There were no injuries among railway workers and passengers. A missile attack was also carried out on an infrastructure facility in the mountainous region of Transcarpathia . Directly on the fronts, the picture, unfortunately, is not changing as quickly as we would like:



It is restless in Kharkov. The enemy has drawn and continues to draw large forces here. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, after an unsuccessful attempt to attack Cossack Lopan, switched to the tactics of shelling this settlement using nomadic self-propelled guns and mortars. Our gunners do not remain in debt either. Also, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, northeast of the city, are making attempts to push through our flank, and in some places they succeed, which, of course, creates a threat to our rear and supplies. So far, the situation seems to be under control.

Izyum direction - Russian troops and units of the People's Militia of the DPR and LPR are strengthening the bridgehead for the offensive on Barvenkovo, and are fighting successfully in the Krasny Liman area. And we remind you that in Yatskovka and Rubtsy, about a thousand servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine remain surrounded.

In Popasoythe united group of allies continues to break the enemy with heavy battles. The excellent work of the attack aircraft of the PMC "Wagner" during the assault on the village was captured on video.

In Mariupol today was not up to the holidays. In the morning, intensive work began on the demilitarization of the remaining garrison of Ukrainian troops at the Azovstal plant. The units of the Azov Battalion and the Armed Forces of Ukraine took advantage of the silence to regroup the remaining fire weapons in order to strike at our allied forces. The result of these actions was the accompaniment of our artillery and aircraft guns. Our fighters continued to finish off the "center of evil." Terrorist attack prevented

in Transnistria using a quadrocopter carrying twenty kilograms of explosives in order to strike at a television and radio center in the village of Mayak.

In the border areas:
Traditionally, "pops" were heard in Belgorod at night . This time there were no official comments from senior officials, but the source of the sound was probably the same as the previous day. Also during the day, a video of the operation of the air defense system over the villages of Tavrovo and Nikolskoye appeared on the network. Residents of the Belgorod region report an incident in the sky near the city of Alekseevka. Suddenly, an unidentified aircraft appeared in the sky, firing off heat traps and flying from the border with Ukraine. After some time, two more aircraft appeared in the sky, which flew towards the first aircraft.

From the interesting:
Canadian General Trevor Kadier, according to unconfirmed reports , was arrested while trying to escape from the territory of Azovstal in Mariupol. According to rumors, the general was in charge of biolaboratory No. 1, where 18 people worked with deadly viruses.

In addition to foreign fighters in Ukraine, a video appeared on the network of an American mercenary hiding from the arrival of Russian shells and trying to hide fear behind a fake smile.

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forwarded from Rybar

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Today, the RF Armed Forces finally dealt a good blow to traction substations in Lvov.

Both AC and DC substations were put out of action.

We have repeatedly published lists of coordinates for point fire, which will prevent civilian casualties.

Yes, traction substations near the Carpathians have not yet been put out of action, but in Lviv, judging by the train delays, everything was done clearly.

At the moment, strikes on the following substations have been directly or indirectly confirmed:
➖Substation "Sknilov-transit" - 49.829456, 23.945272
➖Electrical substation SS "Kleparov-transitnaya" - 49.864689, 23.948731
➖Traction substation SS 110/27.5/10 kV "Podbortsy-T" - 49.847452, 24.123376 High resolution

infographics

We thank the General Staff of the Russian Ministry of Defense for the right decision.
#railroads #Lviv #Ukraine @rybar *Support us:

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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 May 04, 2022 1:38 pm

Briefly about Ukraine. 04.05.2022
May 4, 1:41 p.m.

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Briefly about Ukraine. 04.05.2022

1. Mariupol.
After the evacuation of some civilians, massive artillery shelling and aerial bombardment of Azovstal continued. Sporadic breakthroughs to test for seepage from the plant site are stopped. A full-fledged assault on the plant is not being undertaken. The encircled were told that they would either surrender or be destroyed on the territory of Azovstal. There will be no corridors for them. Information about the capture of the Canadian general has not yet been verified.

2. Zaporozhye.
There are no big changes on the Kamenskoye-Orekhov-Gulyaipole line. There were only battles south of Orekhovo. There are also battles on the outskirts of Gulyai-Polye. To the east of Gulyaipole, fighting continues for various villages. There is no significant progress. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine declares that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are just probing the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and are accumulating a strike force, including at the expense of the troops released in Mariupol.

3. Carbon.
On the line Novomikhailovka-Ugledar-Velikaya Novoselovka without significant changes. The RF Armed Forces entrenched themselves in the settlements south of Velikaya Novoselovka. The Ugledar fortified area continues to cover the Maryinka-Kurakhovo highway.

4. Marinka.
There are no significant advances here. As before, the battles are going on in the area of ​​the waste heap. The battles themselves are of a positional nature, especially since the enemy has the ability to throw reinforcements into Maryinka from the direction of Kurakhovo.

5. Avdiivka.
In the Avdeevka industrial zone, medium-intensity battles continue without serious advances. To the north, fighting is going on at Novoselka-2 and Novobakhmutovka. The troops of the DPR managed to enter Troitskoye - fighting continues in the area of ​​​​the village. Attempts to advance to New York from the east have not yet brought significant success. At the same time, the enemy continues to shell the settlements of the DPR - Donetsk, Makeevka, Yasinovataya, Yelenovka, etc. 122-152-mm cannon artillery, various types of MLRS + OTR "Tochka-U" are used.

6. LPR.
Fighting continues in the industrial zone of Rubizhne. Fighting also continues on the outskirts of Severodonetsk. In Popasna, the slow gnaw through of the fortified area of ​​the Armed Forces of Ukraine continues. The pace of progress is low. The enemy has the ability to throw up reserves here. There were significant losses on both sides in Popasnaya. Both sides understand the operational value of Popasna, so the battle for the city is going on with unrelenting bitterness.

7. Raisin.
Fighting continues north of the Barvenkovo-Slavyansk highway. It has not yet been possible to reach the highway, although it is already possible to carry out its fire defeat. The fighting is going on in the Kurulki-Pashkovo area. Fighting continues near Bolshaya Kamyshevakha. In the direction of Slavyansk, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, after the capture of Yampol, partially covered Krasny Liman, fighting is taking place on the outskirts of the city. The enemy is blowing up bridges and preparing a retreat to the next line of defense north of Slavyansk. In this direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to suffer the heaviest losses. The transfer of Volkssturm units here reflects the problem of the catastrophic loss of personnel in personnel brigades.

8. Kharkov.
After an unsuccessful attempt to advance on Kazachya Lopan and the loss of two villages, the Armed Forces of Ukraine changed tactics and started fighting for Russkaya Lozovaya, where fighting continues to this day, and also carried out an attack in the direction of Stary Saltov, pushing a light curtain of LPR reservists. After the transfer of reinforcements, the front again moved south, but due to the lack of forces in this direction on both sides, tactical shifts in one direction or another are possible here in the future. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are also trying to establish crossings across the Seversky Donets in order to create a more serious threat to the flank of the Izyum grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine south of Volchansk. The main task of all these battles is to divert part of the forces of the RF Armed Forces from the Izyum direction through harassing operations against the open flank.

9. Nikolaev.
Medium-intensity battles continue on the line between Kherson and Nikolaev. The front line has shifted somewhat in the direction of Nikolaev, the enemy admits serious losses, but continues to build up forces for possible counterattacks in this direction. On the Krivoy Rog direction without changes. Despite the statements of the Gauleiter of Krivoy Rog, the grouping of the RF Armed Forces did not go on the offensive in this direction. There is also no significant progress on the front south of Nikopol in the Novovorontsovka area.

10. Odessa.

Missile strikes on military and transport infrastructure continue. Part of the APU grouping is still kept in the Odessa area, fearing a sea landing, although its probability is not very high now. After the UAV raid on Zmeiny Island, attacks on the Shkolny airfield followed. Provocations also continue on the border with Transnistria. Until the situation with Nikolaev is resolved, direct operations against Odessa are unlikely.

The broadcast continues as usual in the Telegram channel - https://t.me/boris_rozhin (if you are interested, subscribe)

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7594284.html

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Europe Sacrifices Its Economy for US Interests, Says Analyst

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Basem Tajeldine says U.S.-sponsored proxy war against Russia sacrifices Europe's economy. May. 3, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@calbert_14

Published 3 May 2022 (8 hours 53 minutes ago)

"The proxy war" being promoted by the United States against Russia sacrifices the European economy, international analyst and former official of the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, Basem Tajeldine, told Sputnik Agency.

"The whole of Europe is serving this proxy war because, in this case, the economy of Europe is being sacrificed in favor of the interests of the United States," Tajeldine said.

The internationalist also stressed that this modality of war is not new and assured that the participation of third parties is implemented to avoid a direct confrontation between powers. "It is a proxy war to avoid confronting a nuclear power such as Russia, to confront it directly, where there would be no other weapons when it is a war between powers than to use nuclear weapons to cause the necessary damage to a power such as Russia, so third parties are used for that purpose," he said.

He explained that a proxy war is carried out when one state fights another without using its military forces directly but instead uses another country to develop its war plans. This form of warfare, Tajeldine added, was frequently implemented by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and implied support in all its forms, except the sending of troops, since this would become a military intervention.

In a statement, the Kremlin detailed that the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, urged the West to stop sending arms to Ukraine after holding a conversation with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. In this regard, Tajeldine regretted that Ukraine serves as a "pawn" of the United States. "Ukraine, unfortunately, lent the Ukrainian political leadership; it lent itself to sacrifice its country to benefit U.S. interests," he said.


US VS RUSSIA: the European economy is being sacrificed, said analyst Basem Tajeldine. "Europe as a whole is serving this war because it is sacrificing, in this case, the economy of Europe in favor of U.S. interests," he said.

Tajeldine considered that the one who benefits from the Ukraine-Russia crisis is the United States. "The European Union is trapped in a game that is not benefiting it at all, in a geopolitical game motivated by the United States and that benefits the U.S. military complex, that benefits the large U.S. oil and gas industry and that does not particularly benefit it at all," he emphasized.

The researcher pointed out that, in his opinion, the inflation caused by the crisis between Russia and Ukraine is not being suffered by this European political class; he considered that it is the European people who have been affected. "There is a reality as well, who is suffering from all these grievances is the European people in addition to the Russian people, it is the people, the great affluent, European political class, is like this, it is calm, it is comfortable, they are not suffering the onslaught," he said.

The sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union countries against Russia have harmed their economies, and the rise in food and energy prices has reached historic levels. According to data from Eurostat, the European statistics office, annual inflation in the 19 countries of the Euro Zone climbed to 7.5 percent in March, a historical maximum since records have been kept.


According to the Venezuelan analyst, the international community knows that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a provocation by the U.S. government for geopolitical, military, and economic reasons.

Russia announced last February 24 the launching of a special military operation in Ukraine, alleging that the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, previously recognized by Moscow as sovereign states, needed help in the face of "genocide" by Kiev.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Eur ... -0026.html

Thousands Evacuated to Russia From High-Risk Areas in Ukraine

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Russian troops have evacuated thousands of people from high-risk zones in Ukraine. May. 3, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@anadoluagency

Published 3 May 2022

On Tuesday, the Russian national defense command center announced that Russian troops had cleared about 11 500 people out in high-risk zones in Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Mikhail Mizintsev, chief of Russia’s national defense command center, announced that Russian military forces had evacuated at least 1 103 701 people since the beginning of a special military operation in Ukrainian territory.

Russian troops have cleared people out of the high risks zones in Ukraine and the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, about 11 564 civilians were evacuated to Russia, according to the communique released on Tuesday by the Russian official, head of the inter-departmental coordination center for humanitarian response in Ukraine.

"In defiance of the obstructions being created by Kiev, a total of 11,564 people, including 1,571 children, have been evacuated from high-risk areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics and Ukraine to Russia over the past day," Mizintsev told.

Chief Mizintsev said that among the total evacuated people from Ukraine, about 197 927 were children.


Last March 21, the head of the Russian National Defense Control Center announced the opening of humanitarian corridors in the east and west of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. At the same time, the Center called on the Ukrainian nationalists to allow the corridors to function and lay down their weapons.

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

Russia: Military Finds Torture Chamber Near Kherson

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Russian troops have found evidence of a torture chamber in the Ukrainian village of Zelenovka. May. 3, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@RStatecraft

Published 3 May 2022 (13 hours 0 minutes ago)

Crimes from back to 2014 by Ukrainian neo-Nazi formations have emerged in light of the investigations conducted after the beginning of the Russian special military operation.

Russian forces operating in the Kherson region in Ukraine have found evidence of a makeshift torture chamber used either by neo-Nazi fighters or the Ukrainian military. According to the information released by a security service source, the installations contained the body of a man wearing a Russian military uniform, with evidence of having suffered torture.

The source has said that the facility has been found in the Zelenovka village, about 7 km northeast of the city of Kherson, adding that "the rigged body, presumably that of a Russian serviceman, was found in the basement of the 'Old Oak' roadside cafe along the M-14 highway in Zelenovka. The body has remnants of special military clothing used by the Russian Armed Forces. The body has no legs, shows signs of torture, and has a slit larynx."

The body was found lying on an anti-tank mine, where TNT was also placed in the area, allegedly intended to kill whoever found it. Among the evidence found by the Russian military, there were Syringes, presumably for narcotics, and a large number of plastic boxes used to store US-made Javelin anti-tank systems.

For many years authorities from Russia and the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics have been collecting data on suspected war crimes by Ukrainian ultranationalist battalions and the regular troops in the Donbass. They were suspected of crimes such as torture and murder of civilians and Donbass militiamen in a network of secret prisons. New evidence has been found on neo-Nazi battalions after the Russian special military operation beginning last February 24. The evidence reveals crimes committed against Russian troops.


Late last month, a video was reportedly released by Ukrainian or Ukrainian-allied forces. They appeared with Russian prisoners of war in a blood bath with their hands tied, with one soldier shot dead on camera. This act confirmed to Danish media that Ukrainian forces were killing Russian POWs.

Nationalists in Ukrainian army formations are accused of committing inhumane acts against their own, which was confirmed by a Ukrainian serviceman captured by Russian and Lugansk People's Militia forces last month when he admitted that the Right Sector battalion had formed a blocking detachment in his unit saying they would kill anyone who runs in the wrong direction when troops began to surrender en masse.

Western media have repeatedly ignored those criminal acts against Russian troops and Donbass civilians and militiamen, and they have worked to derail information that implicated Ukrainian forces in these activities.


The U.S. and EU heads of state have been emphasizing the alleged Russian war crimes, as they were accused of the 300 dead civilians found in the Kiev suburb of Bucha after the Russian military's withdrawal from the region.

Although independent investigations have been calling into question Russia's responsibility for the incident, all evidence dropped that the crime occurred after the Russian withdrawal and when Ukrainian military police units and neo-Nazi national guard formations showed up and promised to punish "Russian collaborators."

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

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Russia destroys railway traction substations in Donbas

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The Russian Aerospace Forces used high-precision missiles to destroy the launcher of Ukraine's Tochka-U tactical missile system. | Photo: @rianru
Published May 4, 2022 (1 hour 35 minutes ago)

Air defense units destroyed nine Ukrainian drones, including the Bayraktar attack drone.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov announced on Wednesday that Russian forces destroyed six traction substations near the Podbortsi, Lvov, Volonets, Timkovo and Piatijatka railway stations, with which weapons and ammunition made in the USA were shipped. US and European countries for the Ukrainian forces.

According to the official, as a result of the attack, up to 310 soldiers were killed and up to 53 Ukrainian military equipment was destroyed.

Summarizing the operations during the last day, the spokesman specified that Russian aviation neutralized 40 Ukrainian military objects, in addition to bombing 13 targets with air-to-ground missiles, including the launcher of a Tochka U ballistic missile.


In turn, Russian missile forces hit two Ukrainian command points, three artillery batteries and four military assembly areas.

Russian artillerymen destroyed 16 checkpoints, two fuel depots and 476 defense points of the Ukrainian troops.

Meanwhile, Russian air defense shot down four reactive shells from the Smerch multiple missile launcher system.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/rusia-de ... -0005.html

Google Translator

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Gaza’s youth come to the aid of their community, amid a burgeoning food crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

Cost of the Ukraine War felt in Africa, Global South
Posted May 04, 2022 by Ramzy Baroud

Originally published: Palestine Chronicle on May 1, 2022 (more by Palestine Chronicle)

While international news headlines remain largely focused on the war in Ukraine, little attention is given to the horrific consequences of the war which are felt in many regions around the world. Even when these repercussions are discussed, disproportionate coverage is allocated to European countries, like Germany and Austria, due to their heavy reliance on Russian energy sources.

The horrific scenario, however, awaits countries in the Global South which, unlike Germany, will not be able to eventually substitute Russian raw material from elsewhere. Countries like Tunisia, Sri Lanka and Ghana and numerous others, are facing serious food shortages in the short, medium and long term.

The World Bank is warning of a “human catastrophe” as a result of a burgeoning food crisis, itself resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war. The World Bank President, David Malpass, told the BBC that his institution estimates a “huge” jump in food prices, reaching as high as 37%, which would mean that the poorest of people would be forced to “eat less and have less money for anything else such as schooling.”

This foreboding crisis is now compounding an existing global food crisis, resulting from major disruptions in the global supply chains, as a direct outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as pre-existing problems, resulting from wars and civil unrest, corruption, economic mismanagement, social inequality and more.

Even prior to the war in Ukraine, the world was already getting hungrier. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 811 million people in the world “faced hunger in 2020”, with a massive jump of 118 million compared to the previous year. Considering the continued deterioration of global economies, especially in the developing world, and the subsequent and unprecedented inflation worldwide, the number must have made several large jumps since the publishing of FAO’s report in July 2021, reporting on the previous year.

Indeed, inflation is now a global phenomenon. The consumer price index in the United States has increased by 8.5% from a year earlier, according to the financial media company, Bloomberg. In Europe, “inflation (reached) record 7.5%”, according to the latest data released by Eurostat. As troubling as these numbers are, western societies with relatively healthy economies and potential room for government subsidies, are more likely to weather the inflation storm, if compared to countries in Africa, South America, the Middle East and many parts of Asia.

The war in Ukraine has immediately impacted food supplies to many parts of the world. Russia and Ukraine combined contribute 30% of global wheat exports. Millions of tons of these exports find their way to food-import-dependent countries in the Global South–mainly the regions of South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Considering that some of these regions, comprising some of the poorest countries in the world, have already been struggling under the weight of pre-existing food crises, it is safe to say that tens of millions of people already are, or are likely to go, hungry in the coming months and years.

Another factor resulting from the war is the severe U.S.-led western sanctions on Russia. The harm of these sanctions is likely to be felt more in other countries than in Russia itself, due to the fact that the latter is largely food and energy independent.

Although the overall size of the Russian economy is comparatively smaller than that of leading global economic powers like the U.S. and China, its contributions to the world economy make it absolutely critical. For example, Russia accounts for a quarter of the world’s natural gas exports, according to the World Bank, and 18% of coal and wheat exports, 14% of fertilizers and platinum shipments, and 11% of crude oil. Cutting off the world from such a massive wealth of natural resources while it is desperately trying to recover from the horrendous impact of the pandemic is equivalent to an act of economic self-mutilation.

Of course, some are likely to suffer more than others. While economic growth is estimated to shrink by a large margin–up to 50% in some cases–in countries that fuel regional and international growth such as Turkey, South Africa and Indonesia, the crisis is expected to be much more severe in countries that aim for mere economic subsistence, including many African countries.

An April report published by the humanitarian group, Oxfam, citing an alert issued by 11 international humanitarian organizations, warned that “West Africa is hit by its worst food crisis in a decade.” Currently, there are 27 million people going hungry in that region, a number that may rise to 38 million in June if nothing is done to stave off the crisis. According to the report, this number would represent “a new historic level”, as it would be an increase by more than a third compared to last year. Like other struggling regions, the massive food shortage is a result of the war in Ukraine, in addition to pre-existing problems, lead amongst them the pandemic and climate change.

While the thousands of sanctions imposed on Russia are yet to achieve any of their intended purpose, it is poor countries that are already feeling the burden of the war, sanctions and geopolitical tussle between great powers. As the west is busy dealing with its own economic woes, little heed is being paid to those suffering most. And as the world is forced to transition to a new global economic order, it will take years for small economies to successfully make that adjustment.

While it is important that we acknowledge the vast changes to the world’s geopolitical map, let us not forget that millions of people are going hungry, paying the price for a global conflict of which they are not part.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/04/cost-of ... bal-south/

Do not forget for one second that this conflict and it's continuation was and is of US making. The starvation of millions 'collateral damage' of imperialism.

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How Deadly are Turkish Bayraktar TB2 Drones in Ukrainian Hands?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 3, 2022



Ukrainian-operated Bayraktar TB2 Turkish drones are back in the news having taken out 2 Russian patrol boats in the Black Sea. While it is passed off as a major victory, it actually proves just how limited the Bayraktar’s capabilities are in a conflict with an opponent fielding superior air defense systems. Ukrainian Bayraktar drones have been limited to targeting poorly protected logistic convoys, weapon systems in transit, and the occasional military unit operating behind the protection of Russian air defense systems – tempering the near-legendary status the Western media has given it since hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020. While the Bayraktar drone is a capable platform, because of Russia’s advantage in air defense, it has been downgraded from a war-winning weapon to a nuisance along the fringes of Russian-controlled territory.

References:

CNN – Ukrainian drone destroys two Russian patrol ships, says defense ministry: https://youtu.be/btnBwUd3Fjw

DW – How useful are Turkish-made drones fighting in Ukraine?: https://www.dw.com/en/how-useful-are-

Al Jazeera – What do we know about Ukraine’s use of Turkish Bayraktar drones?: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3

Foreign Policy – The U.S. Army Goes to School on Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/30/… CSIS –

Russian Air and Missile Defense: https://missilethreat.csis.org/system

ORYX (pro-Western “OSINT”) – List Of Aircraft Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine (lists 7 Bayraktar drones as downed by Russia): https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/03

Forbes – Russia Has Shot Down A Second TB-2. It’s Too Little, Too Late To Stop Ukraine’s Killer Drones (March 31, 2022): https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe

The Jamestown Foundation – A Dangerous Drone for All Seasons: Assessing the Ukrainian Military’s Use of the Bayraktar TB-2: https://jamestown.org/program/a-dange

Forbes – Ukraine Is Losing Several S-300 Anti-Air Launchers A Week. But It Still Has Hundreds Left.: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe

South Front – UKRAINIAN BAYRAKTAR STRUCK RUSSIAN BOATS. RESPONSE WAS NOT LONG TO WAIT (VIDEOS): https://southfront.org/ukrainian-bayr

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... ian-hands/

Russian Ops in Ukraine Update: Pentagon Sends Old Vehicles & Ukraine’s True Colors Begin to Show
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 1, 2022

Developments include:

1. US continues sending old equipment including M113 tracked armored transports; 2. US is not discussing sending US-made air defense systems – likely because it is so impractical; 3. Pentagon is providing crash-courses, unable to replace the loss of trained personnel created over the last 8 years; 4. US narrative continues to center on Russian “war of aggression;” 5. US also continues to ignore Russian security concerns; 6. US media admits Ukrainian security forces are dragging Russian-speakers away to prison for political speech.

References:

US Department of Defense – Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby Holds a Press Briefing APRIL 29, 2022:

https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcript ... -briefing/

Xinhua – Friends of Syria recognizes opposition coalition as legitimate representative of Syrian people (2012):

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world ... 036841.htm

Al Monitor – Friends of Syria Deliver Nothing New (2013):
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origina ... -arms.html

BBC – Neo-Nazi threat in new Ukraine: NEWSNIGHT (2014):

https://youtu.be/5SBo0akeDMY

BBC – Ukraine conflict: ‘White power’ warrior from Sweden (2014):

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329

BBC – Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict (2014):

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30414955

BBC – The far-right group threatening to overthrow Ukraine’s government – Newsnight (2015):

https://youtu.be/sEKQsnRGv7s

The Hill – The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda (2017):

https://thehill.com/opinion/internation ... ropaganda/

BBC – Ukraine: On patrol with the far-right National Militia – BBC Newsnight (2018):

https://youtu.be/hE6b4ao8gAQ

Al Jazeera – Profile: Who are Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment? (2022):

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1 ... v-regiment

Business Insider – Video appears to show Ukrainian soldiers executing Russian soldier captured in an ambush outside Kyiv, New York Times reports:

https://www.businessinsider.com/video-a ... nyt-2022-4

US Department of Defense – Senior Defense Official Holds a Background Briefing APRIL 29, 2022:

https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcript ... -briefing/

CSIS – Russian Air and Missile Defense:

https://missilethreat.csis.org/system/r ... r-defense/

TASS – Territorial defense militants torture pro-Russian residents of Nikolayev – top brass:

https://tass.com/defense/1445987

AP – Ukraine hunts down ‘traitors’ helping Russia:

https://youtu.be/OR_E8dvyaOI

NPR – The view from border city Kharkiv, Ukraine, as Russian troops appear ready to invade:

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/10728674 ... dy-to-inva

Financial Times – ‘Don’t confuse patriotism and Nazism’: Ukraine’s Azov forces face scrutiny: https://www.ft.com/content/7191ec30-967 ... 2b64725c2d

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... n-to-show/

How the 2014 Odessa Massacre Became a Turning Point for Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 2, 2022
Evgeny Norin
RT

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Eight years ago this Monday, something significant happened in Odessa, a historically important city in the southwest of Ukraine. Although the West didn’t see it as such, for Russia and the newly formed Donbass republics, what transpired there became a symbolic episode.

Provincial revolution

From late 2013 into early 2014, a conflict between the government of President Viktor Yanukovich and the pro-Western opposition was unfolding in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The series of events that would ensue were dubbed the ‘Euromaidan’. Meanwhile, Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea, was of course affected by these events too, albeit to a lesser extent.

Occasional clashes with police and scuffles between supporters of Euromaidan and those aligned with the government, which became known as the ‘Anti-Maidan’ movement, were nothing compared to the bloodshed in Kiev, where people were being killed.

Many Ukrainians didn’t welcome the Euromaidan, and they had their reasons. Lots of Odessa residents had strong ties with Russia, and still do. When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, a large number of ethnic Russians were living in Odessa and many had relatives in the old country. The city was built during the reign of Catherine the Great and has always been seen as an integral part of Russia’s history.

Thus, the aggressive nationalism of Euromaidan was largely unpopular there and plenty of locals were frightened by what seemed to be a passion for forming militant units. Euromaidan and Anti-Maidan in Odessa began to form parallel paramilitary organizations. Armed with a primitive array of sticks, biker helmets, and homemade weapons, these groups trained for street fighting. At first, nobody sought a fight to the death – the radicals hadn’t yet gained the leading role in either movement.

In Odessa, Anti-Maidan activists had begun gathering at Kulikovo Field, a square near Odessa’s House of Trade Unions in the city’s historical center. This became the site of an ongoing protest – it could also be described as a forum in the classical sense. People came to hang out, discuss the news, and even sing together. It was a very diverse crowd, from energetic youngsters to the elderly. Those who assembled there weren’t officially united by any specific ideology. One could run into Russian Orthodox activists, Cossacks, and a number of smaller groups.

The movement was led by local pro-Russian and leftist politicians, such as activist Anton Davidchenko and his brother Artyom. Their demands were very moderate – to protect the Russian language, grant the eastern regions economic autonomy, protect Russian and Soviet historical heritage, ensure monuments weren’t vandalized, let the East elect its own judges, etc. But Ukraine was in turmoil, and this program seemed extremely confrontational to the nationalists.

On the third of March 2014, after Yanukovich had already fled to Russia and Moscow had reabsorbed Crimea, Vladimir Nemirovsky, a nationalist politician, became head of the Odessa Region. He intended to harshly crack down on any form of protest. Dispersing the Kulikovo Field camp was a key point in his platform.

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People hold up flares as thousands of Ukrainian nationalists, veterans and local residents march to commemorate the 2014 clashes between pro-Kyiv and Russia-backed groups on May 2, 2021 in Odessa, Ukraine. © Pierre Crom / Getty Images

Tensions had been gradually rising throughout March and April. After an armed uprising broke out in Donetsk and Lugansk, Euromaidan activists set up checkpoints on all roads leading to Odessa. Nobody knew who or what they were guarding, but about 500 people, not all of whom were even from Odessa, manned these very strange checkpoints. At the end of April, Nemirovsky announced that ‘Territorial Defense’ units, which are essentially military reserves, had been bussed into Odessa:

“‘Territorial Defense’ buses were arriving in the region at that time. A lot of them. We tried to keep them away from Odessa whenever possible, but they went to Belgorod-Dnestrovsky and other places. They spread throughout the region. They were coming from the direction of Kiev. The police stayed away from them, the officers were demoralized.”

Even back then, these nationalist units were dangerous. They were arming themselves: we know of at least one case when a Euromaidan activist accidentally blew up a hand grenade. Molotov cocktails were also manufactured at these checkpoints.

Anti-Maidan found itself in a difficult situation. The initial excitement was winding down. There was a feeling that the struggle against the nationalists had been lost and nobody wanted to take a step toward violent conflict. In fact, the Kulikovo Field camp would have disappeared on its own in a few weeks. The Anti-Maidan leaders were already discussing the subject with the local authorities. They had even reached an agreement to shift it from the city center to the World War II memorial, which is in a less central location. The move was scheduled for May.

However, a less peaceful transition was also in the works. Though the police and governor didn’t want to get their hands dirty, there were enough ‘volunteers’ willing to take matters into their own hands. A football match against a team from Kharkov, a city in northeastern Ukraine, was scheduled for May 2, and Odessa was flooded with radical football fans. Rumors of potential violence began to circulate in April, and the Anti-Maidan activists had reason to be concerned about a possible raid on their camp. Some anticipated the future clashes with fear, others with excitement, but everybody knew that the Anti-Maidan camp would be destroyed. It was a perfect solution for everyone, except the activists themselves.

While rebels took over one city after another in the Donbass, and people in Crimea enthusiastically welcomed the Russian military, an easy victory for the nationalists in Odessa would give them the opportunity to demonstrate their strength. It would also allow the governor to show that he had the city under control. At this point, though, nobody was thinking that what was going to occur would take a lethal turn. A few Anti-Maidan activists wanted to remain in the central part of the city. Their idea was just to intimidate the nationalists.

On May 2, the football fans were to march through Odessa to the stadium under the slogan “for unity in Ukraine.” Euromaidan activists declared that this was to be a peaceful demonstration, but adherents of Anti-Maidan were convinced that the march would just be a cover for violent tactics.

Early in the morning of May 2, Sergey Dolzhenkov, the leader of the Anti-Maidan security group and a former police officer, contacted a member of the local parliament to request that the march be canceled:

“People saw what happened in Kharkov, Kherson, and Donetsk. The football fans were out of control. We need to make sure there is no bloodshed. No march – no bloodshed,” he said.

“I was on Kulikovo Field on May 1, and Artyom Davidchenko {the leader of Anti-Maidan in Odessa} announced from the stage that Right Sector {an ultra-nationalist Ukrainian organization whose name has become synonymous with all Ukrainian nationalists} was coming to town, and they would destroy the Kulikovo Field camp. We have to fight them off,” remembers Maxim Firsov, an activist from the left-wing Borotba movement.


Dolzhenkov and his Anti-Maidan group had limited forces. Officially, there were a lot of people at the camp, but the majority were women and elderly, who would not be able to fight. In fact, they themselves needed to be protected. That’s why Dolzhenkov decided to accompany the march with some of his men, while keeping a distance. Not everybody in the Anti-Maidan camp liked this plan, but Dolzhenkov was a man of action and thought it was better to meet the opponent head on and block them if they decided to walk toward the Kulikovo Field camp.

The police and Ukraine’s Security Service knew what was afoot but had no plans to interfere. On May 2, Artyom Davidchenko met with both agencies and was informed that detentions and arrests would start only when there were dead bodies, and there “would definitely be bodies.”

On May 1, activists from both groups were anticipating a fight, but nobody expected what actually happened.

Fighting on Grecheskaya Street

On the morning of May 2, an off-schedule train took around 500 Kharkov football fans to Odessa. Along with them, there arrived Pro-Euromaidan groups having nothing to do with football but who were armed with street fighting equipment, including personal armor and weapons. In the afternoon, they began to gather on Cathedral Square in the center of Odessa.

An Anti-Maidan group 150-to-300-strong departed from Kulikovo Field, which is about a 30-minute walk away. Although vastly outnumbered by the 2,000-3,000 Euromaidan fighters and fans, Dolzhenkov guided it in the direction of Cathedral Square anyway.

The Odessa police refused to intervene in the events. Its main forces of around 700 officers guarded the stadium, while around 80 followed the Anti-Maidan activists and 60 kept watch over Kulikovo Field. High-ranking police officers had been summoned for a meeting and were ordered to turn off their phones.

A small police unit tried to block Dolzhenkov’s group, but it simply circumvented the officers.

Meanwhile, an excited crowd had already gathered on Cathedral Square armed with clubs, shields, helmets, Molotov cocktails, and rubber-bullet handguns.

At around 3 pm, the Anti-Maidan activists from Kulikovo reached Cathedral Square via the adjacent Grecheskaya Street. Many accounts describe the arrival of Dolzhenkov’s group as an all-out assault resulting in a breakthrough. This is often referred to as an Anti-Maidan attack on the ultras. At first glance, a group of 300 charging a mob ten times its size would appear to be folly. But if you scratch the surface, new details emerge.

Some football fans saw the Anti-Maidan activists approaching and engaged them. The actual fight was initiated by two small groups of Dolzhenkov’s men and a crowd of Euromaidan activists. The main contingents did nothing at first, keeping their distance, but this was enough to spark the conflict.

With a thin line of police officers between them, at first the sides threw stones at each other. But the numerical advantage of Euromaidan was overwhelming and Anti-Maidan was quickly put on the defensive. Most of the officers were facing the Euromaidan side, which was throwing bricks, stones, and Molotov cocktails. The police began firing air and rubber-bullet guns almost from the beginning.

For Euromaidan, the altercation on Grecheskaya Street was amusing but accomplished nothing, so some activists went to the parallel Deribasovskaya Street on a flanking maneuver. This is where the first real blood was spilled.

The fight was already on when the Anti-Maidan supporters began shooting their firearms. A Euromaidan activist and nationalist named Igor Ivanov was killed by a bullet. He was likely killed by Kulikovo activist Vitaly Budko (Boatswain), who had arrived at the scene quite late – around 4 pm – with a civilian rifle, and opened fire as soon as he joined his companions. Neither he nor his weapon was ever found in the aftermath, and information on the bullet that killed Ivanov disappeared from the police database. However, several videos and photos show him having been firing his weapon before himself being shot. Another Maidan activist was shot dead with an air gun.

Anti-Maidan protesters soon came under fire too, and some were wounded. The subsequent investigation was conducted so poorly that none of the guns involved in the shootout were identified afterwards. There is footage of at least one injured protester.

The fighting went on for several hours. Reinforcements periodically came to bolster the Euromaidan activists, and they soon blocked all approaches to Grecheskaya Street. The Kulikovo group found itself surrounded at the Athena shopping mall, while well-coordinated Euromaidan teams were cutting off any reinforcements or avenues for retreat. Around 4 pm, the Euromaidan side captured a fire engine and drove it into a small barricade the defenders had built. Around 5:30 pm, a group went out onto the balcony of a nearby building and opened fire on their adversaries. Bullets and pellets extracted from the bodies revealed that at least three guns were involved. Four men died instantly, and several more were wounded, including a journalist, a police colonel, and a couple of officers. The defense crumbled. Some retreated to the shopping mall, barricaded themselves inside, and eventually surrendered to the police. Among them was Sergey Dolzhenkov, who had suffered a bullet wound. It seemed as if everything was over.

Death by fire

The Maidan activists had essentially already won the battle. The Kulikovo Field activists were defeated. By this time, people were simply roaming around aimlessly. Some sports fans from the stadium had joined the commotion after the game ended. But events were about to take a completely different turn.

Mark Gordienko, one of the leaders of Odessa’s Euromaidan movement, was one of those who began shouting, ‘Kulikovo!’ encouraging the crowd to go to the site where the Anti-Maidan protesters had put up their camp. In March of 2014, he was known to have said that he “would shoot down all separatists.” That day, he had an opportunity to fulfill his promise. Later, he seemed to have conveniently forgotten that he had spearheaded the violence.

Gordienko and a number of others managed to reignite the cooling crowd. Later, a recording of a conversation between Odessa Deputy Mayor Igor Bolyansky and one of the Euromaidan commanders was leaked, during which Bolyansky not only suggested that the commanders lead the crowd on the 30-minute walk from Grecheskaya Street to Kulikovo, but even discussed the logistics of how this should be done. In other words, this wasn’t a case of a crowd spontaneously moving in a certain direction but of one being steered there by leaders who made sure it arrived at the destination.

Meanwhile, the people at Kulikovo were confused and disoriented. Most were civilians with no military training whatsoever, and they weren’t particularly keen on participating in any battles. There were many women among them. Artyom Davidchenko had already briefly told them what had just transpired, while some people who had managed to escape Grecheskaya Street returned to give them a run-down of events. Many who had been on the square had already gone home, yet a number of them returned when they heard a crowd was on its way to attack their camp and fellow protesters.

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According to official information, 38 people died in a fire and 30 others were poisoned by carbon monoxide, in a building, during a clash in Odessa, Ukraine, on May 2, 2014. © Maksym Voytenko / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

That’s why a sizable number of the protesters who ended up at Kulikovo knew an attack was coming. Someone suggested taking cover in the massive Trade Unions building on the square, and people began to move their belongings from the camp into the building. They set up an improvised first aid station there, brought in supplies and built a small barricade in front of the building. They also had a couple of hunting rifles and a few Molotov cocktails. Davidchenko then left the square. Aleksey Albu, a low-level local politician, stayed in the building. At the time, he was not the kind who would be eager to participate in any fighting. In fact, he had learned about the clashes from the news.

The Trade Unions House had around 300 people inside that evening.

At 7:20 pm, the angry Euromaidan crowd entered the square. They moved through the abandoned camp and started throwing Molotov cocktails at the barricade in front of the Trade Unions building. Those inside responded by lobbing a few Molotov cocktails back at the attackers from the roof. It was then that a reporter who was filming everything said, “Now, they’ll definitely kill them.”

The attackers kept throwing rocks and improvised bombs at the barricade, which mostly consisted of wooden furniture and crates, and finally set it on fire. The protesters behind it retreated into the hall of the building. Later, many reports exaggerated the scope of the resistance put up by those in the Trade Unions building. Available footage shows that the attackers freely moved around the square, not needing to duck or take cover because there was no fire coming back at them.

The barricade was in flames and the attackers had set fire to the tents on the square. The whole square was full of smoke and flames. The attackers continued to hurl cocktail bombs filled with a home-made napalm mixture consisting of gasoline, acetone, and Styrofoam at the building. The holed-up protesters called the fire brigade, but no one came. The few policemen on the scene did nothing to interfere and just watched as the events unfolded.

The attackers made sure the fire didn’t die out, throwing more and more cocktail bombs into it. They even tossed in a burning car tire, while firing at the windows with anti-riot guns.

Then tragedy struck.

Independent expert Vladislav Balisnsky explained that the fire raging at the building’s entrance ignited the paint and varnish on the hall’s walls and ceiling. The burning entrance door collapsed, and the window panes were broken one by one by gunfire, creating a powerful draft. The resulting chimney effect turned the central staircase into a huge incinerator, with temperatures at the center rising to 600–700 degrees Celsius. The fire spread nearly instantly and everything that could burn was consumed in the fire. The people in the vicinity were essentially burnt alive. Others tried to save themselves by taking refuge in rooms further from the blaze. The draft continued to pull large clouds of smoke down the building’s corridors, killing more and more people on its way.

That’s when people began to jump out of the windows, which seemed a better alternative than being burnt alive or suffocating.

But for some leaping turned out not to be the lesser of two evils. Those who jumped ended up injuring themselves badly, sometimes fatally. But surviving the hazardous jump did not mean the end of the suffering. One activist was captured on camera running up to a person who had jumped out of a window, injured by the fall but still alive and moving, in order to beat the victim with a baton. Later, local journalist Sergey Dibrov spent some time studying footage and images from the incident and concluded that the victim ultimately received medical assistance and survived.

It was at this point that some people in the mob started to feel remorse and tried to help those caught in the burning building. Some threw a rope to those on the upper floors. Others dragged scaffolding to the building to help those trapped inside escape. These acts helped quite a number of people get out of the building alive, although some emerged only to be beaten on the ground. The last cocktail bomb was thrown into the building at 8:08 pm. The police reinforcements finally arrived and pushed the most belligerent attackers back. The fire squad arrived at 8:15 – despite being stationed just 400 meters away, it took them 30 minutes to arrive on the scene – and started to rescue the last survivors.

As it turned out, quite a lot of people survived the fire. The havoc subsided, and the fire squad and police restored order. Some people had been rescued from the roof, while others were found in rooms untouched by fire or smoke. The last survivors, who had been hiding in the attic, left the building in the early hours of May 3.

Elena was among those from the Kulikovo Field camp who had helped set up the first aid station before the attack. Later, she told reporters that she had been harassed by the people outside after escaping the fire. They shouted insults at her and even roughed her up, while the police paid no attention at all. During the fire in the building, those on the winning side displayed quite contradictory behavior. Some made genuine attempts to save people from the conflagration they had just started, and even risked their lives to do so, while others were happy to take advantage of the opportunity to continue to assault and humiliate the survivors.

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Pro-Russian residents gather outside the House of Trade Union to commemorate the 2014 clashes between pro-Kyiv and Russia-backed groups on May 2, 2021 in Odessa, Ukraine. © Pierre Crom / Getty Images

A total of 48 people died: two Maidan activists and 46 Kulikovo Field Anti-Maidan protesters – two on Grecheskaya Street, and 42 at Kulikovo Field Square. Eight people jumped from the building to their deaths, while others suffocated or died from burns. All were citizens of Ukraine. A total of 247 people requested medical help following the incident, of whom 27 had been wounded by gunfire.

Albu, the local politician and one of the leaders of the group, was among those who had taken cover in the building but survived. He later joined the LPR’s Prizrak Brigade in Donbass. Another leader, local MP Vyacheslav Markin, died the next morning from injuries sustained after jumping from the building to escape the fire.

Ashes

In the following years, not a single person responsible for the killings in Odessa was punished in any way. Many of the murderers acted openly, wearing no masks or disguises, and were very straightforward about their intentions. Only a handful even faced criminal investigation. But ultimately, not a single one was brought before the courts to answer for the crimes committed. Whatever hearings did manage to be scheduled were derailed by the so-called ‘patriots’. A number of judges were forced to recuse themselves from the cases after receiving threats from militants.

Meanwhile, high-ranking Ukrainian politicians were quick to identify the ‘culprits’. Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchinov said that the disturbances in Odessa “were coordinated from a single center located in Russia.” Sergey Pashinsky, acting head of the presidential administration, said that it was “an FSB provocation to divert attention from the [so-called] anti-terrorist operation [in the Donbass]”. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry declared that “the tragedy was a pre-planned and well-financed operation by the Russian special services.”

From the very beginning, the authorities in Odessa seemed to deliberately obstruct the investigation. By the morning of May 3, the area around Grecheskaya Street had been cleared by municipal workers, who quickly disposed of all the physical evidence. The Trade Unions building remained open to the public for the following month. Citizens could watch live streams from the smoldering ruins, with one cameraman referring to the corpses of a young pair as “Romeo and Juliet.” No attempt was made to preserve the crime scene. The weapons used to kill people were never found. And these are just a few examples of the investigation’s dismissive and negligent attitude toward the case. In September 2015, UN Special Rapporteur Christof Heyns acknowledged that the bulk of the evidence relating to the May 2 events was destroyed immediately after the crime.

Euromaidan activist Sergei Khodiyak, who fired at people with a hunting rifle, was released from custody, and the judge recused himself from the case under pressure from a group of Maidan activists led by Igor Mosiychuk, an MP from the nationalist Radical Party. Vsevolod Goncharevsky, who used a club to beat and finish off Kulikovo activists who had jumped out of the windows of the burning building, was released due to a “lack of evidence.”

Dolzhenkov and a number of other Anti-Maidan activists remained in custody. In 2017, after many delays, the court acquitted Dolzhenkov in connection with the case. But he was immediately arrested again on the trumped-up charge of chanting illegal slogans at a political rally that had taken place a month before the tragedy. In December 2017, the last pro-Russian activists were released from custody as part of an exchange of detainees and prisoners from the Donbass conflict.

Ukrainian society reacted to the events in Odessa in a very peculiar way. Naturally, the majority of the population sympathized with the victims. Flowers would be brought to the Trade Unions building every year on May 2. The public realm and the media, however, were dominated by nationalists. For a few months after the events, social media platforms were overflowing with ‘jokes’ about the ‘Odessa barbecue’, the ‘burning of vatniks’ (a typical Soviet-era wool-padded jacket that became used to refer to Ukrainians espousing pro-Russian views and to Russians themselves), as well as slogans eerily reminiscent of those employed by Nazis about the Jews that they murdered in World War Two. The Ukrainian internet was flooded with pictures of burnt corpses accompanied by derisive comments. Many of the people who took part in the Odessa event soon thereafter ended up in the Donbass, fighting in the volunteer battalions of the Ukrainian army. “All it takes is to kill fifty ‘vatniks’ in every city, and then we shall have peace, then the war will end,” remarked Maksim Mazur, a member of the Aidar Battalion – a statement that was eagerly endorsed by many of those who had attacked people in Odessa.

In fact, Ukrainian social media did exactly what is commonly attributed to Russian propaganda. The piles of burnt corpses evoked feelings of horror, but also of rage. May 2014 was a breaking point: volunteers from Russia started to arrive in the breakaway republics en masse and even some men from Western Europe came to fight on their side. Slogans about autonomous status and the need to engage in talks with Kiev gave way to an unwavering resolve and determination to stand and fight to the bitter end. Just a few days after May 2, a Donbass rebel wrote on a destroyed and burned-out Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicle: “This is for Odessa, you bastards.”


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Flowers and the word ‘Genocide’ outside the burnt trade union building in Odessa, Ukraine, Wednesday May 7, 2014. © Zacharie Scheurer / NurPhoto / Corbis via Getty Images

The voice of those who were horrified by the events from the very beginning and understood what had really happened was simply not heard. But they were probably worth listening to. Two years later, Artem Sushchevsky, from the Donbass town of Makeevka, wrote:

“I can repeat all I want that not everyone is crazy and that most Ukrainians are still the good and sensible people they always have been. I’m convinced this is true, and I’m not contradicting myself by saying this. But there’s one ‘but’: these good and sensible people can live peacefully with the events that transpired on May 2 in Odessa, already two years ago. And they also somehow live with the shelling of Donetsk. And in general, they have to put up with this shameful war, consoling themselves with fairy tales about a Russian invasion. But I can’t live with those who can live with this. I don’t care how I live – as long as it’s not with you.”

Alexander Topilov, an Odessa musician and Euromaidan supporter, wrote a few days after the tragic events:

“…there were boys born in 1994. There were young girls, university professors, mechanics. I don’t know. Not all were quick enough to jump. Not all survived the landing. It’s not a victory, like hell it is! Don’t cheer us. I saw some exalted comments. Who the f*ck wants a victory like that? And who can even call it a victory? That’s a f*cking fiasco. It’s civil war. Odessa residents at each other’s throats. Who’s the winner here? I don’t need victories like that, the f*ck I do. Some people are like animals and some beasts are humane, that’s what I’m talking about. The line between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I lost mine on May 2. I don’t know where to draw it. I see people. And I see animals. Animals on my side, people against me. So, what do I do next? Damned if I know, boyo, as they say on the other side… And there are not less real people there than animals here…”

That desperate cry fell on deaf ears. On the same day that the Trade Unions building was burning, there was intense fighting in Slaviansk in the Donbass. The Ukrainian army was trying to enter the city. Soon, the militias armed with a motley assortment of hunting rifles, handguns stolen from police officers and Molotov cocktails were replaced by battalions and brigades equipped with artillery and tanks. Eastern Ukraine quaked with the blasts of howitzers and the rumbling of tanks.

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

Post by blindpig » Wed May 04, 2022 10:07 pm

To honor Odessa anti-fascists, stop weapons to Ukraine!
May 4, 2022 John Parker

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On May 2, John Parker joined Ukrainian political exiles and allies gathered in Moscow to remember the victims of the 2014 Odessa Massacre. SLL photo

Statement by John Parker, Socialist Unity Party candidate for U.S. Senate in California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket, at a memorial in Moscow for victims of the 2014 Odessa Massacre on May 2. Parker is on a fact-finding trip to uncover the truth about the U.S./NATO proxy war on Donbass and Russia.

Now more than ever, we must raise the reality of the nature of the Ukrainian government, to alert our class to the danger of U.S.-led NATO expansion, the greatest danger to humanity today.

The massacre at the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, was a war crime by proxy, with Nazi and other fascist gangsters following the script written for them by U.S. imperialism before 2014.

But instead of being tried in the International Criminal Court – because they were doing the bidding of U.S. and European imperialists – they received the de facto immunity for war crimes enjoyed by all U.S. forces committing murder and genocide spread across the globe.

Instead of being tried in Ukraine, the Nazi forces were emboldened by the fact that the evil that was done was rewarded with the jailing of the anti-fascist victims of the terror.

Following President Petrenko before him, President Zelensky not only rewarded the perpetrators by not charging them, he appointed a fascist as governor of Odessa to put salt in the wound.

That refusal to act in the name of justice and that most unjust appointment of a Nazi sealed the historical designation of Zelensky as not only a traitor to the working class but also a traitor to Jewish people around the world.

Is this the person, is this the regime of serial killers, that deserves the sophisticated weapons of mass destruction the U.S. has been sending to Ukraine?

People should not dismiss Zelensky’s suggestion that he should now be allowed to accept nuclear weapons in Ukraine. No one should underestimate U.S. imperialism’s willingness to commit any murder, genocide or war crime. The over 200,000 civilians killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima by atomic bombs, used even on children, makes that clear.

The best way to honor the martyrs, the anti-fascists and courageous comrades who were willing to risk their lives to defeat the fascists, who risked their lives to protect humanity from that scourge, is to ensure that the fascist movement in Ukraine receive no more weapons, money or political support from the imperialist powers, who hypocritically talk about imaginary war crimes while excusing the elephant in the room with blood on its tusks.

How can we do this? By raising and highlighting the events on May 2, 2014, so every individual in the working class in every imperialist country knows what their governments did in enabling the rise of fascism in Ukraine.

In various U.S. cities, our comrades are holding picket lines and vigils to honor this anniversary.

We must speak louder than the corporate media – we can and we shall. They may have the propaganda apparatus, but we have the people, whose potential, if organized, could easily overwhelm them.

We have the truth – whose containment is not sustainable – and most important, like our comrades who died knowing they were on the right side of history, we have the moral fiber, integrity and love for humanity that resists fire, resists bullets and keeps coming back until every last vestige of fascism is finally thrown into the dustbin of history.

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Photo: Communist Dawn

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... o-ukraine/

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Canadian general arrested in Mariupol
VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 3 MAY 2022

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The Russian armed forces arrested Canadian General Trevor Cadieu in Mariupol on the night of 2-3 May 2022. He is currently in Moscow awaiting to stand trial.

General Trevor Kadier was apparently not on a mission for his government, but was in charge of biolaboratory No. 1, with 18 staff working under his command.

The National Pulse reported that Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, and Christopher Heinz, John Kerry’s son-in-law, had organized subcontracting arrangements for Ukrainian research laboratories through their firm Rosemont Capital, on behalf of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

The Chinese Foreign Ministry revealed that the United States operates 336 biological and chemical weapons research laboratories abroad.

The Security Council held a meeting on this matter on March 11, 2022.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article216731.html

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Pope says NATO may have caused Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Francis says transatlantic military alliance was ‘barking’ at Russia’s door.

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Since the invasion of Ukraine, Francis has repeatedly criticized the invasion, while avoiding naming Putin explicitly | Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images
BY HANNAH ROBERTS
May 3, 2022 4:16 pm

ROME — Pope Francis said that NATO “barking” at Russia’s door may have led to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — and said he has offered to meet the Russian president in Moscow.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Francis reflected on Russia’s lethal aggression toward its neighbor and said while he might not go as far as saying NATO’s presence in nearby countries “provoked” Moscow, it “perhaps facilitated” the invasion.

Francis also condemned the “brutality” of the war and compared it to Rwanda’s civil war in the 1990s, which resulted in a genocide of the Tutsi minority.

The Holy See has been asking since mid-March for a meeting between Francis and Putin in Moscow, the pope said. “Of course we needed the leader of the Kremlin to allocate a window of time. We haven’t yet had any response, and we are still trying, even if I fear that Putin can’t and doesn’t want to have this meeting at this time.”

In the interview, Francis ruled out going to Kyiv for now: “First I have to go to Moscow, first I have to meet Putin.”

Francis said he had canceled a meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a key backer of Putin who has justified the war, as they both thought it would look “ambiguous” — but in a phone call said he warned Kirill not to “turn himself into Putin’s altar boy.”

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Francis has repeatedly criticized the invasion, while avoiding naming Putin explicitly, in line with the Vatican’s foreign policy of keeping the door open for possible dialogue.

The Russian embassy to the Holy See did not immediately respond to phone calls or an emailed request for comment. A spokesman for the Vatican did not respond to request for comment.

https://www.politico.eu/article/pope-fr ... on-russia/

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Ukraine may put neutral status on referendum: Zelensky
Xinhua | Updated: 2022-05-03 23:14

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. [Photo/Agencies]

KYIV - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country may put the issue of neutral status on a nationwide referendum, the Ukrinform news agency reported Tuesday.

If Russia's desire for Ukraine's neutral status is one of the provisions of the agreements on ending the conflict, "we are ready to consider this neutral status for Ukraine," Zelensky said.

However, the referendum would be possible only after Ukraine receives security guarantees from "specific countries", he added.

At the peace talks with Russia in Istanbul, Turkey in March, Kyiv proposed to sign a new international treaty on security guarantees, which enshrines obligations for the guarantor countries to provide Ukraine with military assistance in the event of an attack.

In 2014, the Ukrainian parliament renounced Ukraine's "non-aligned" status with the aim of deepening cooperation with NATO.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 5a7e5.html

Delay and distraction. The great majority of Ukrainians have no say, being cowed into silence and then some are Nazi assholes. These decisions are made in Washington. Ya gotta wonder how many Ukrainians will be left as they are being killed for the sake of US imperialism.

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From Cassad's Telegram Account:

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south tower
One of the important consequences of the unblocking of the North Crimean Canal - the supply of water to the Crimea made it possible to start a rice sowing campaign in the North Crimea. Let's see how this will affect retail prices for rice in Crimea this year.

https://t.me/crimeainform/36589?single
Telegram
Kryminform
For the first time in eight years, rice was planted in Crimea. The sown areas are now small - only 632 hectares in three municipalities of the republic (in 2013, for example, rice was sown on an area of ​​13.5 thousand hectares), but they plan to reach the previous volumes in the next ...

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War on fakes
Fake : On May 9, Russia will announce a general mobilization of men to be sent to Ukraine. This is reported by CNN with reference to "British and American high-ranking military."

Truth : Rumors of a general mobilization appear almost from the very beginning of a special military operation. We have already refuted them in February , March and April . The new stuffing is not much different from similar fakes. Even presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, who is usually cautious in his wording, bluntly called such reports “nonsense and untrue.”

Recall that Vladimir Putin previously ruled outthe participation of reservists and conscripts in a special military operation - only contract soldiers are involved there. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also confirmed that Russian conscripts drafted this spring will not be sent to hot spots. “The assigned tasks are solved only by professional military men, ” he said .

Earlier, we analyzed the fake about the “accelerated spring conscription”. This is another wave of provocations aimed at creating panic. All calls are made from American numbers starting with +1 and have nothing to do with Russia or the military registration and enlistment offices.

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Kotsnews
Washington reassured that what is happening in Ukraine cannot be regarded as a war between Russia and the United States.

How should this be considered? How can one consider the deployment of NATO facilities on the territory of Ukraine over the past eight years? And the training of Ukrainian specialists on them for specific actions against Russia?

How to consider the long-term pumping of Ukraine by NATO intelligence assets, which are primarily aimed at Russia?

How to consider now the supply of weapons to Kyiv, which are supposed to be used against Russian troops? And the decision to transfer them was made a month before the start of the Special Military Operation.

Indirectly, we are now at war with the entire NATO infrastructure. And that is also why the offensive is not going with the cavalry charge that many would like to see.

The chevron in the photo was discovered by servicemen of the "O" group in the Kolodezi area.

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Poddubny |Z|О|V| edition
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, about seven thousand mercenaries from 63 countries of the world are currently in Ukraine.

All of them are objects of denazification.

The supply of “wild geese” to Nezalezhna, among others, is carried out by the well-known American PMCs
BlackWater and Black Water Security Consulting (aka Academy). It is not for nothing that they are called "America's second army", about 90% of the company's revenue is government orders. The main customer is the Pentagon.

England has its own, no less large, PMC - G4S, whose branches are located in more than 100 countries.

One can imagine the scale of deliveries of "soldiers of fortune" to be sent to Ukraine. And it is worth noting that, for the most part, not only professional active or retired military men go for adrenaline, but also all kinds of asocial elements who in their homeland have the prospect of being behind bars or catching a bullet in local gang wars.

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Dnepropetrovsk Partisans
Operational report from the Dnepropetrovsk Partisans (02.05. - 03.05.2022)

[02.05. - 05/03/2022] On May 2, in Dnepropetrovsk, the air raid siren sounded from 01:49 to 02:26, ​​from 05:01 to 06:03, from 08:14 to 08:21, from 08:24 to 08:35, from 16:33 to 16:59; May 3 - from 05:12 to 05:52, from 07:59 to 08:22, from 08:47 to 09:12, from 18:15 to 18:20, from 18:22 to 21:37.

[02.05. - 05/03/2022] Another cases were added to the collection of "looting which does not exist". So, in Dnepropetrovsk, on Geroev Avenue, two robbers tore off a gold chain from a man, after which they handed it over to a pawnshop; at the Red Stone f/m in one of the stores, a man stole a cake while his girlfriend was distracting the seller; in the Dolgintsevsky district of Krivoy Rog, another thief stole a bicycle from a local resident.

[03.05.2022] [22.35] Two missile strikes of the Russian Armed Forces in the Kamensky district of the Dnepropetrovsk region destroyed the railway infrastructure. Train traffic has been stopped. The head of the Dnepropetrovsk regional military administration, war criminal Valya Reznichenko, reported one wounded.

[05/03/2022] [13:03] In the Dnepropetrovsk region, slave owners abducted the homeless and forced them to work on their farms in the Petrikovsky and Magdalinsky districts. People literally worked for food and were in labor slavery. Future slaves, mostly socially unprotected people, were found by slave owners at railway stations or bazaars in various regional centers. Then they soldered people and took them to the Dnepropetrovsk region. There people lived in terrible conditions and worked for food. In total, about 60 people ended up in slavery in this way. The Ukrainian State (UG), in the process of its rapid and inevitable degradation, has already reached the Middle Ages and continues to march by leaps and bounds into the Stone Age.

[02.05.2022] [22.35] High-precision strikes by the Russian Armed Forces in the area of ​​the settlement of Mezhevaya destroyed four launchers of the S-300 air defense system and a reconnaissance and guidance radar station.

[05/02/2022] [11:19 and 13:57] In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a Ukrainian warehouse with rocket and artillery weapons was destroyed by high-precision weapons of the Russian Armed Forces. The head of the Dnepropetrovsk regional military administration, war criminal Valya Reznichenko, is trying to tell fairy tales for housewives that “just an elevator, just a warehouse with grain, just a pig complex” was destroyed, which, by the way, is quite expected: the Head of the military administration cannot publicly admit that his " zahistnyki" hide like rats in barns and pigsties ...

@dnepr_partizani
#BrainSquad #WarZ #CountryZ #Reports

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WarGonzo
4:12
⚡️How a group of Ukrainian Armed Forces tried to break into a biological laboratory in Mariupol⚡️

Watch right now a special inclusion of the @wargonzo project from the chemical and biological laboratory in Mariupol, which was used in the interests of NATO and where an attack by a sabotage and reconnaissance group that tried to penetrate the territory of a classified facility was repulsed three days ago.

Apparently, the tasks of the saboteurs included the destruction of evidence left by Western curators or local laboratory staff under NATO wards. During the attack, Western weapons were used and extremely highly qualified fighters worked.

In general, it is obvious that the object, located in the rear for a long time, is still of great interest to Kyiv. We have all the details.

@wargonzo

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SIGNAL
❗️Exclusive. This diary belonged to one of the Azov fighters. Probably a young guy who joined the ranks of the Nazis found him at school. Presumably, in Mariupol, where they held the defense. The diary belonged to a certain girl Sofya Kovalenko, whose fate is unknown to us, and the “Azovian” began to write it instead of her.

The described events took place from March 2 to March 15, when the operation to liberate Mariupol was just beginning. "Azovets" describes his life, the course of battles, trips to "Azovstal", what he ate and drank, who was wounded, who died, and who "resurrected". He says that he felt like a hero of the Stalker game, he provided medical assistance for the first time, that the morale of the Nazis was low, and what funnels the FAB-500 leaves.

A few excerpts:

"Commanders don't care what the soldiers say"
"I hope no one else will be injured from our unit and from the entire Azov in general"
"The morning does not start with coffee, but with the Air team
" because of this, we will not have problems during the battle"
"Let's go to the defense line near the residential buildings. People started saying that their house would be shelled because of us. They started saying that they had children. Ah, I can understand ordinary citizens, but by their actions they interfere with our work "
" Now a plane is circling, which will fly and bomb us until it is shot down. Well, I won't talk about the bad"
"Let's go to Azovstal. There is practically nothing left of it. Near the main entrance there is a pit, which is 8 meters in diameter. They said that it was a 500-kilogram bomb, and 4 such bombs were dropped throughout the plant"

The records break off with a remark: "08: 17 They entered the room and said to be ready to leave. Perhaps we will go to free "the man who destroyed as many tanks as no one else destroyed in the entire war," they say. "Fizruk" is the call sign of this man." Perhaps, during the operation to rescue the "Fizruk" "Azov" and was eliminated.

In this significant document of the era, we practically did not change the text and minimally accompanied it with notes. There may be inaccuracies in the translation.

Full text with photos here
Telegram
signal-jpg

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Vladislav Coal
Summary of hostilities on May 4, 2022 from Vladislav

Ugolny

🎯Kharkov direction - the Ukrainians launched a counter-attack and took several settlements: Russian Lozovaya and Stary Saltov. The bridge in the latter has been blown up and the Armed Forces of Ukraine are not capable of developing an offensive against Volchansk. Russians continue to strengthen their positions in the area of ​​Kazachya Lopan and Tsirkuny. Also, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to force the Seversky Donets between Balakliya and Izyum - in the area of ​​​​the village of Protopopovka.

🎯PAVLOGRAD ARCH:

🏹The northern flank of the arc (from Balakleya to Popasnaya) - on the Izyum bridgehead, fighting continues along the entire front line, in particular for the villages of Velikaya Komyshevakha, Pashkovo, Dolgenkoe. In the area of ​​the Oskol River, about a thousand soldiers of the National Guard were surrounded, communication was provided between Izyum and the group advancing to the east. The front line lies on the line Sosnovoe - Shandrigolovo - Drobyshevo - Krasny Liman. Yampol has been liberated, fighting is underway for access to the Seversky Donets. The Ukrainian grouping on the right bank, due to the undermining of bridges across the river, does not have the possibility of an organized retreat. In Rubizhnoye , the cleansing of the southern industrial zone continues, there are reports of battles for the Voevodovka settlement lying between Rubizhnoye and Severodonetsk. On Bakhmutka, advancement in the Orekhovo region.

🏹Central Front (from Popasnaya to Marinka) - the assault on Popasnaya in the LPR continues. In the Avdeevka area, the NM of the DPR advances on Troitskoye and Novoselovka in order to reach New York. In Maryinka - no change.

🏹The southern flank of the arc (from the Dnieper River to Marinka) - fighting continues along the entire front line. According to preliminary information, it was possible to expand the control zone west of Velikaya Novoselka to the village of Temirovka.

🎯Mariupol cauldron - humanitarian corridors from Azovstal, the last center of resistance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the city, have been launched to release civilians held by Ukrainian militants.

🎯Kherson-Nikolaev direction - the front line is unchanged along the line of the Black Sea - Aleksandrovka - Snigirevka - Velikaya Aleksandrovka - Ivanovka - the Dnieper River. Previous

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Rybar
🇺🇦Composition of the offensive grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Izyum

For several days now, the Ukrainian command has been trying to force the Seversky Donets River and gain a foothold in this position for a subsequent offensive.

▪️Today we have already written about the pulling together of personnel and equipment in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe settlements of Protopopovka , Zavgorodnee and Petrovskoye .

▪️Moreover, in Pervomaisky and Razdolie , additional units from the 14th Ombre and 4th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were deployed.

▪️In total , more than 2,500 people and 80 armored vehicles, as well as several dozen artillery mounts and MLRS, are involved in the attack on Izyum .

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Rybar
🇮🇱🇺🇦💀 Israeli mercenary in the ranks of Ukrainian nationalists

Today's statement by Maria Zakharova about Israeli mercenaries fighting side by side with Ukrainian radicals at Azovstal is not without meaning. Even according to the most conservative estimates, there are now dozens of mercenaries with Israeli citizenship in various units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Ukraine.

One of the recruited Israelis from the "Kim Lists" named Askold Smogorzhevsky is currently in the "Freedom" unit .

▪️Smogorzhevsky was born in Chernivtsi, after repatriation he lived in Ashdod, served in the IDF.

▪️He worked for the airsoft company Guns and Cookies and real estate company ERRA Investments.

▪️The 27-year-old airsoft player returned to Ukraine on March 2, in the Svoboda unit he received the call sign Burger. He actively poses with the flags of the "Right Sector" and calls the fighting "a dream job."

❗️"Svoboda" pretends to be a unit of the 112th Territorial Defense Brigade.

In reality, this is an ordinary national battalion created by Ukrainian nationalist Petro Kuzik . He is known to the general public as a member of the right-wing anti-Semitic party "Freedom" (political allies of the "Right Sector") and a former fighter of the national battalion "Carpathian Sich" .

The story of Smogorzhevsky, who did not hesitate to join the notorious anti-Semites, is just the tip of the iceberg . According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, there are up to 400 foreign mercenaries on the territory of the Azovstal plant, and there are no guarantees that there are no Israeli citizens among them.
#Israel #mercenaries #Ukraine
@rybar

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Rybar
🇮🇱🇺🇦💀 Israeli mercenary in the ranks of Ukrainian nationalists

Today's statement by Maria Zakharova about Israeli mercenaries fighting side by side with Ukrainian radicals at Azovstal is not without meaning. Even according to the most conservative estimates, there are now dozens of mercenaries with Israeli citizenship in various units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Ukraine.

One of the recruited Israelis from the "Kim Lists" named Askold Smogorzhevsky is currently in the "Freedom" unit .

▪️Smogorzhevsky was born in Chernivtsi, after repatriation he lived in Ashdod, served in the IDF.

▪️He worked for the airsoft company Guns and Cookies and real estate company ERRA Investments.

▪️The 27-year-old airsoft player returned to Ukraine on March 2, in the Svoboda unit he received the call sign Burger. He actively poses with the flags of the "Right Sector" and calls the fighting "a dream job."

❗️"Svoboda" pretends to be a unit of the 112th Territorial Defense Brigade.

In reality, this is an ordinary national battalion created by Ukrainian nationalist Petro Kuzik . He is known to the general public as a member of the right-wing anti-Semitic party "Freedom" (political allies of the "Right Sector") and a former fighter of the national battalion "Carpathian Sich" .

The story of Smogorzhevsky, who did not hesitate to join the notorious anti-Semites, is just the tip of the iceberg . According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, there are up to 400 foreign mercenaries on the territory of the Azovstal plant, and there are no guarantees that there are no Israeli citizens among them.
#Israel #mercenaries #Ukraine
@rybar

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PerspectiveVa
🇩🇪🇮🇩Germany no longer gives gas to Poland, Warsaw takes it herself.


Gazprom reported that on May 2, Germany stopped supplying Russian gas to Poland, and now Warsaw is taking Russian gas destined for Italy and France (virtual reverse) and storing it in its storage facilities.


According to Gazprom, Polish underground gas storage facilities are 80% full, while the European average is 34%.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

Post by blindpig » Thu May 05, 2022 2:20 pm

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This is the real face of the Ukraine war – weekly briefing
Posted May 04, 2022 by Lindsey German

Originally published: Counterfire on May 2, 2022 (more by Counterfire)

This was the week the war in Ukraine changed. Until now, as the New York Times put it: ‘President Biden and his Western allies have warned against any attempts to frame the conflict as a direct confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. But no longer.’ The signs have been particularly clear, from Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin’s declaration that the U.S. goal was to ‘weaken Russia’ to Liz Truss’s speech when she declared that full defeat of Russia is a ‘strategic imperative’, the message has been that this is not just about ending the war in Ukraine but about going much further including regime change in Russia.

The huge increase in arms and aid proposed by Biden–to a whacking $33 billion–is another indicator, as is the clamour to send more and more arms to Ukraine. NATO now believes that Russia can be pushed back from the whole of Ukraine. Nancy Pelosi and Angelina Jolie have given the liberal seal of approval to this conflict by their visits to Kyiv, where Pelosi frames it as a conflict for freedom.

This is now a proxy war between NATO and Russia and one which can very quickly escalate further. Indeed the alternatives in this war are fairly simple: it either escalates rapidly so that NATO forces threaten war with Russia with an understanding that they are prepared to do so, or they accept that Ukraine is going to have to make some sort of deal with Russia, which will of course not mean the full defeat for Russia that Truss demands. You would be foolish to bet that the latter is likely to happen any time soon, given that Biden, Johnson, Truss and other politicians have been dismissing talks with Putin as unrealistic.

So a bigger war is now on the agenda. There will be terrible costs, not least to the Ukrainian people who have already suffered war and who may be faced with a much more prolonged conflict where they will lose lives, homes and any sense of stability. Russian casualties–at least 15,000 troops dead according to estimated figures–are astonishingly high for such a short period of conflict and will go higher. But there will be costs further afield. This is most obvious in the threat of greater conflict, in Moldova for example, but also a growing prospect of direct war between nuclear powers which must alarm us all.

There are also economic costs. Food and energy prices were already rising rapidly before the war in Ukraine, but war has pushed them higher still. There are now shortages of sunflower oil and wheat, and the sanctions on energy. The EU is likely to tighten existing sanctions which will mean shortages of gas or much higher prices, possibly both. This will be an immediate problem for central Europe but will have a knock-on effect here.

Already we are being told that we have to expect hard times: that we need to ‘take the hit’, tighten our belts, be prepared for war. Why should anyone accept this from Johnson, or Biden, or Macron or Schulz, who have presided over a COVID pandemic, where responses were too often dictated by profit, a cost of living crisis unprecedented for decades, and whose neoliberal system is now descending into war?

Those on the left who urge more arms to Ukraine are presumably delighted with this turn in the conflict. They should not be. It will prolong and worsen the situation and it will also further economic crisis and attacks on working people here.

(more, not relevant to thread)

https://mronline.org/2022/05/04/this-is ... -briefing/

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The Left and its Deplorable Role in Ukraine’s War
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 4, 2022
Juanlu González

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In 1964, Marcuse warned about the loss of revolutionary capacity in the West due to the triumph of repressive measures implemented by advanced industrial societies to silence any kind of intellectual dissent through the media, advertising, propaganda, and the most unbridled consumerism. At that time, it heralded the birth of the One-Dimensional Man, an individual with no critical capacity, extremely docile and malleable to the whims of the powerful.

Despite the time elapsed, this process has not abated. On the contrary, since the second half of the last century, the systems of control and social domination have been refined to unimaginable extremes that would shock the German philosopher and sociologist. European citizenship is no longer, nor is it expected to be, in the vanguard of anything. The degree of decadence, of submission, of accommodation to the dominant thinking is such that there is no critical thinking and any kind of intellectual dissent is immediately crushed by the system itself, and also by an intellectuality that was never previously linked to power and is now its most useful instrument.

Today, with the war in Ukraine, writers and experts are emerging as fungi whose mission is precisely to attack the bastions of free thought that may be on the European and Spanish left. They are the kind of organic intellectuals who believe that their discourse is far above that held by the rest of mortals and who, moreover, claim to enjoy an indisputable moral superiority, although they are nothing more than transmission belts for a decadent, impoverished, and diseased one-dimensionalism. Armed with platitudes, empty language, and tons of naive infantilism, they play out their pseudo-democratic totalitarianism against any kind of dissent, especially when it comes to the left, which they consider their private hunting ground.

But in spite of everything, there remains a proud, uncomplicated, free-thinking left that surpasses the mainstream media’s argument and tries to bring the light of reason to the table against the emotional blindness whose war propagandists have deployed in order to avoid any kind of analysis that might spoil the propaganda campaign they have so carefully set in motion. As Fidel said, the main goal of those who run the narrative is to make the public lose its ability to think, through conditioned reflexes. And they are certainly succeeding.

Psychological warfare, an inseparable part of 4th Generation warfare, requires the intensive use of propaganda and lies to direct thoughts and behavior as a method of “peaceful” social control. It was Winston Churchill who said that “in times of war, truth is so precious that it must be guarded by a bodyguard of lies,” although already Sun Tzu, in the Art of War, in 500 BC, said that “all warfare is based on deception.” However, our left-wing intellectuals, it seems, have not yet figured out how these things work. Perhaps they need another two and a half thousand years to become aware of it….

Walter Lippmann initially, followed later by Hartman and Chomsky, defined manufactured consensus – or consent – as a weapon for controlling public opinion, in nominally democratic societies, so that their populations allow themselves to be led by the ruling classes under the guise of an apparent confluence of discourses, goals, and interests. The consensus-building phase is absolutely necessary before the beginning of any armed conflict, especially those that may require certain sacrifices from the populations involved. We have reached a point where today’s wars no longer begin when the first shot is fired, but the moment the first newspaper loaded with propaganda against the future enemy leaves the printing presses.

To be penetrated by war propaganda, to internalize it, amounts to unconditional support for the war for which one has been prepared, even though the very concept of war may be intellectually or morally repugnant to us. Thus, we have seen leftists or pacifists calling for military action against Qaddafi, for example, for massacring – falsely – his population, even though they openly called for bombs to be dropped by Arab armies, because calling on NATO to do so might generate a certain insurmountable rejection or cognitive dissonance.

NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine ultimately opened and tore at the seams of much of the European left, to the point where it exposed its true self and its unwavering adherence to the Atlanticist bloc. Some authors suggest that there is simply no longer a true left on the Old Continent. Be that as it may, Europe’s self-complex left seems to ignore a number of clear and undeniable issues:

– Although the invasion of Ukraine is ultimately Russia’s responsibility, the previous strategic aggressor is the United States with its expansive NATO policy, which has clashed with the security requirements repeatedly expressed by Russia to ensure its survival in a Cold War context that has never ceased to exist since 1947.
– Moscow has every right to defend the Russian population of the Donbass, under attack since 2014 by the regime that emerged from the Maidan fascist coup d’état, organized by the US and the EU.
– Ukraine, doped up by Western weapons, had been preparing for an all-out war against Donetsk and Lugansk since the end of 2021, documents seized from the National Guard show that the invasion would take place in early March.
– It is written that Washington was seeking a war of attrition in Ukraine against Russia starting in 2019 (Rand Corporation), such a war was also planned by the Ukrainian government, as stated in an interview by Arestovich, Zelensky’s chief advisor and spokesman.
– Ukraine’s ceasefire violations monitored by the OSCE in February 2022 suggested a “softening” by bombing the Donbass front lines before proceeding with a ground offensive. Knowing this accumulation of proven facts, aligning with the policies of the U.S., NATO and Ukraine means knowingly supporting a real Russian genocide in the region, which is exactly what was about to happen.

So has Russia fallen into a trap? This is the thesis put forward by some authors. The Rand report, analyzing the possible variables of its interventionist strategy, stated that there was a danger that the Russian response to Kiev’s intention to take the Donbass would not be limited to the now secessionist provinces but would extend to other regions of Ukraine and that additional permanent territorial losses would discredit the United States as the instigator of the conflict.

Much remains to be seen, but one might point out that the Donbass will be joined by other republics and that, looking at the positive evolution of the ruble against the dollar, Russia is also winning the economic war. In the end, it is possible that Russia will not come out of the onslaught as weakened as planned. In this sense, even if Russia had no choice but to make the decision it did, even if it knew it would not be a good solution, it might even come out of the crisis unscathed.

Anyway, for our organic analysts, talking about this kind of thing is tantamount to being Putin’s “offspring,” as is the case when mentioning the WMD bio-labs found in Ukraine. Pentagon labs which, by the way, our free press describes as “alleged” even though they have been recognized by the American authorities as Pentagon activities. For much less than that, the United States and other NATO countries have launched invasions with millions of direct and indirect deaths.

Another thing that irritates the left or the peace movement is to point out the neo-Nazi nature of the regime that emerged from the Maidan coup. A number of ministers, governors, military or battalion of Nazi ideology can be cited, and their only response is to underestimate its strength and influence. It doesn’t matter if Reuters or Amnesty say that there are more than 20 battalions in the National Guard, that there are more than 100,000 paramilitaries, or that they make up almost half of the Ukrainian army. Never mind that some countries consider them to be terrorist networks or that they have a multitude of war crimes documented in their name. They will say that it is a Russian invention to justify an invasion and that similar things can happen even in Spain and that nobody invades us for that reason. Their accommodation to the Atlanticist argument, their Stockholm syndrome is absolute, whether they recognize it or not. Incidentally, it is something commonly found from the parliamentary left to the far right across Europe, who have unequivocally condemned both Russia and Putin in the first person.

In their counterattacks, they always argue that we are the ones imbued with Russian propaganda. They attempt to equate the West’s ability to dominate the narrative with Moscow’s, which would be like equating 98% of the world’s press with a scant 2%, which is still censored by law. Russian media has been kicked off the airwaves, off satellites, and banned from social media, in what is the most brutal censorship operation known in the contemporary world, and in the face of which the systemic left has maintained a resounding complicit silence for which it will pay in the immediate future.

Most seem unaware of what is at stake on Ukrainian soil. Nothing less than the advent of a new world order, which the defeat of NATO could accelerate. The fall of the American empire, the emergence of new political, economic and military alliances… in essence, a multipolar world where power is shared in a more collegial and democratic way. Where spaces of freedom can arise so that many countries, in a sovereign way, can freely organize themselves outside the dictates of capitalism and its military impositions. Where we can stop hearing that this or that system is the best possible, simply because others never cease to exist. The global tyranny of information, of capitalism, of the dollar, of cultural hegemony, in short, of Marcusian unidimensionalism, will be thrown into the trash can of history. We have already seen how the ill-fated international community was just a propagandistic trap that does not even represent 25% of the world’s population.

We were positively aware that this moment would come, but we also thought that we would not see it in person. In this crazy world, much of what we thought would be forever is destined to disappear in the near or intermediate future. Ukraine – and Russia – are suffering the birth pangs of this new world order, as desired by the United States and NATO, who like to wage their wars on other peoples’ soil.

Of course, if in the end the European left prefers the current unipolar world order established by the United States to the one that may come, forgetting perhaps the six million deaths caused by the empire after 9/11 or who triggered more than 80% of the world conflicts from 1945 to today, then they have a serious problem and need to have a hard look at it.

Or perhaps they changed sides long ago.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/05/ ... aines-war/

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Proxy War in Ukraine is for Western Loans
May 4, 2022
By Dmitri Kovalevich – Apr 30, 2022

The narrative surrounding the conflict in Ukraine changes according to who is speaking, some of it lacking any substance or rationality. Also, an inevitable indebtedness will afflict Ukraine for decades to come, due the lend-lease program the US approved in April.

For two months now, hostilities have been continuing in Ukraine, which the Russian Federation calls a special operation and Ukraine calls a war, although neither side has formally declared war.

Blinken’s propaganda and captured western weapons

In April, according to the statements of the Russian leadership, the second stage of the operation began. According to the agreements in Istanbul, Russian troops left the northern regions of Ukraine at the end of March, concentrating on the southeastern regions. Anthony Blinken said that Ukraine had won the battle for Kyiv, [1] although it is obvious that it would be impossible to storm the big city with forces of just 20-30 thousand. But Blinken’s propaganda requires at least some “victories.”

In the second stage of their operation, the Russians engaged in the targeted destruction of fuel bases and military depots. Air raid alerts were heard daily throughout Ukraine. Ukrainian air defenses bring down part of the missiles, exploding fragments of which often fall on residential buildings. At the same time, the West is stepping up arms supplies to Ukraine, as much of the previous supply has either been destroyed or become a trophy. Since Russian aircraft are bombing military trains, deliveries are usually made in small batches on civilian transport. The Russian media publish daily footage of captured Western weapons being handed over to the militias of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Ukrainian and Russian media change rhetoric

There have also been some changes in the rhetoric of the Ukrainian and Russian media. Naturally, the media on both sides say that “our troops are only hitting military targets,” while the enemy is “hitting only humanitarian and civilian targets.” The Ukrainian media daily promises an imminent counteroffensive as soon as Western weapons reach the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Russian media say that their army is methodically and determinedly breaking through the fortifications of the Ukrainian troops, capturing new villages and cities daily in the Donbas direction, as well as thousands of POWs. It is not possible to verify the reality of these statements, since both sides have a ban on filming the results of strikes or troop movements.

In April, the Ukrainian media began to make more absurd statements about the “poverty of Russians,” who allegedly steal even toilet bowls from captured houses. Even President Zelensky is spreading such misinformation [2]. According to him, the Russians allegedly want “to see a normal life in Ukraine, steal a toilet bowl and die there.” The absurdity of such statements is beyond all criticism, but in military propaganda logic always suffers.

Ukraine’s refugees and escapees, Russia’s liberation

Ukrainian TV channels say every day that all Russians are allegedly poor beggars who came to rob “rich Ukraine”, although Ukraine is officially the poorest country in Europe. In the Russian media, on the other hand, they emphasize that the Ukrainian people became “hostages of a Nazi gang,” and in the Russian media the assault on Ukrainian cities by the Russian army is officially called liberation.

In most cities that are heavily fought over, there remained few untouched buildings. Even after being captured by the Russian army, they are being fired upon by the Ukrainian army. These cities often lack water and electricity. Refugees continue to leave the country. From the territories controlled by Kyiv—to the EU and Moldova, and from the territories controlled by the Russian Federation—to Russia and Belarus. Overall, about five million people have already left the country. Furthermore, seven to nine million are internal migrants, who settled mainly in western Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities are not letting males aged 18 to 60 out of the country, so men who do not want to fight are forced to either pay thousands of dollars in bribes to Ukrainian border guards [3], or illegally cross border rivers or trek through the mountains, hiring smugglers, risking being robbed and killed on their way out.

For “financial injections from the West,” read “loans”

There are few working enterprises left in the country, but even here workers’ wages are being cut [4]. In fact, the Ukrainian economy lives on financial injections from Western countries; however, these are mostly loans, which will will need to be repaid. In other words, almost everything that is presented in the West as assistance or aid to Ukraine is an opportunity to earn money for Western bankers and arms traders.

Ukrainian economist Oleksiy Kushch emphasizes that even in the context of the war in Ukraine, no one plans to write off its debts. He writes: “Two messages from our Ministry of Finance. First, Ukraine is entering the peak period of public debt repayment. In April-June 2022, UAH 167 billion will have to be paid. Second, in the context of the budget crisis, social spending will have to be reviewed in May. In normal logic, the combination of the first and second gives the only correct answer—debt restructuring. After all, war = force majeure. When people have nowhere to live and no money to buy even a minimal number of products, debts are not repaid” [5]. According to Kushch, in March Ukraine received $3.5 billion from the IMF and World Bank and now must repay $5 billion.

In the United States, they decided in April to approve the lend-lease program for Ukraine, but it is worth recalling that in a similar lend-lease situation for the USSR in World War II, the debts for this assistance remained a heavy burden for the Soviet economy. Russia, as the successor to the USSR, paid the last payments on these debts only in 2006 [6].

Ukrainian economists estimate that the restoration of the country will require from $200–500 billion. Economist Yuriy Gorodnichenko hopes only for gratuitous aid from Western countries, on behalf of which Ukraine is fighting. He writes: “Financial assistance can come from anywhere and in any form, but the main thing it is [for it] to be free. The key principle is that post-war reconstruction should not be financed by loans—Ukraine is already in a very difficult position” [7]. Even so, it is unlikely that Western bankers will be so generous.

Transnistria and Moldova

At the end of April, there were signs that Transnistria and Moldova could also become involved in the conflict. In Transnistria, the building of the Ministry of Security [8] and the airfield were shelled, two TV towers were blown up, then there were skirmishes in the area of ​​a military warehouse in the village of Kolbasnaya [9], where the largest military ammunition depot has been located since Soviet times. The Transnistrian authorities have blamed Ukraine for what is happening there [10].

Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the head of the Zelensky Office, said on April 26 that Kyiv could seize Transnistria very quickly if there was a request from Chisinau [11]. Against the background of these disturbing rumors, columns of refugees (many of whom only recently fled from Ukraine) have been lining up in Transnistria and Moldova since April 26, trying to leave this region as well. However, the Moldovan President Maia Sandu has not yet decided whether or not to enter into the conflict, complaining about the lack of a combat-ready army [12].

Escalations expected in May

Nevertheless, escalations should be expected at the beginning of May, especially around May 8-9 (victory over Nazism in Europe), which is a very important anniversary for the Russian side and the LPR/DPR. And conversely it is a date that is loathed to the same extent by the Kyiv regime—as well as a number of Eastern European states. In cities controlled by the Russian Federation, the DPR and LPR are now actively restoring monuments to V. Lenin and hanging red flags on administration buildings [13]. Plans were announced to hold a victory parade in the city of Mariupol, which now lies in ruins. At the same time, Andrey Biletsky, the leader of the Azov neo-Nazis, threatened to launch a missile attack on the parade in the city center [14]. The Transnistrian authorities were also forced to cancel the May 9 victory parade due to possible terrorist attacks on the crowds [15].

Thus, the line of confrontation between the forces that supported the Soviet Union during the Second World War and the forces that collaborated with Nazi Germany throughout the region is becoming more and more clear, even if in the Western media they are trying in every possible way to whitewash and justify neo-Nazis as defenders of Ukraine.



Sources
[1] https://day.kyiv.ua/ru/news/260422-ukra ... ev-blinken

[2] https://www.segodnya.ua/strana/podrobno ... 16719.html

[3] https://economics.segodnya.ua/economics ... 08831.html

[4] https://www.unian.net/war/v-nikolaeve-s ... 82689.html

[5] https://ctrana.online/opinions/386731-m ... intsa.html#

[6] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D0 ... 1%82%D0%B0

[7] https://finance.liga.net/ekonomika/inte ... odnichenko

[8] https://ctrana.online/news/388312-pojav ... rovja.html

[9] https://www.kp.md/daily/27385/4579077/

[10] https://strana.today/news/388101-v-prid ... e-smi.html

[11] https://www.unian.net/politics/ukraina- ... 02855.html

[12] https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2022/04/27/7342451/

[13] https://focus.ua/ukraine/512680-nostalg ... eninu-foto

[14] https://www.mk.ru/politics/2022/04/22/k ... upole.html

[15] https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5328189


Dmitri Kovalevich is a Ukrainian journalist, and resident of Kiev. He is a communist and member of the banned Ukrainian Communist organization Borotba.

https://orinocotribune.com/proxy-war-in ... ern-loans/

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Former CIA Contract Pilot Tosh Plumlee: “There are many more American soldiers like Willy Joseph Cancel already in Ukraine”
By Phillip F. Nelson - May 4, 2022 0

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Willy Joseph Cancel in Ukraine in an undated photograph. [Source: nytimes.com]

According to Plumlee, the operation to recruit mercenaries to fight the Russians in Ukraine is similar to an old 1983-86 Iran-Contra project run by Ollie North.

Willy Joseph Cancel, a native of Orange County, New York, became the first U.S. casualty of the Ukraine War last week.

The U.S. Marine veteran was killed fighting alongside Ukrainian forces while working for a private U.S. military contractor. He was ambushed by Russian forces during a night-time patrol—though his body has not yet been recovered.

Cancel served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2017 to 2021; he received a bad conduct discharge in November after serving time in the brig for an undisclosed criminal offense.

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Willy Cancel [Source: nypost.com]

His mother, Rebecca Cabrera, said that her son went over to fight in Ukraine because “he believed in what Ukraine was fighting for and he wanted to be a part of it to contain it there so it didn’t come here, and that maybe our American soldiers wouldn’t have to be involved in it.”

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Mr. and Mrs. Cancel, on their wedding day. [Source: nypost.com]

William “Tosh” Plumlee, a CIA contract pilot who participated in arms and drug smuggling missions into Nicaragua during the 1980s, said that “there are many more American soldiers like Willy Joseph Cancel already in Ukraine.”[1]

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Tosh Plumlee [Source: texashistory.unt.edu]

Indeed, The New York Times reported last week that, around the time of Cancel’s death, two other Americans, Paul K. Gray, 42, of Tyler, Texas, and Manus E. McCaffery, 20, of Parma, Ohio, both of whom had served in the U.S. Army, were injured when a Russian artillery shell hit their fighting position in Zolote in eastern Ukraine.

The two were waiting to launch an ambush on a Russian tank using Javelin anti-tank missiles when shrapnel hit Mr. McCaffery in the face and collapsed a concrete block wall onto Mr. Gray, injuring his leg, according to Twitter posts by American journalist Nolan Peterson. Video and photos recorded by Mr. Gray show the two camouflage-clad fighters receiving first aid and riding in a military ambulance a short time later, with Mr. McCaffery’s face and head covered in bloody bandages.

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Manus McCaffery and Paul Gray, two American mercenaries who were wounded fighting the Russians. [Source: reddit.com]

The Times report gives substance to the claims of Plumlee who is clearly in the know. For multiple decades, the CIA contract pilot personally engaged in the CIA’s use of such programs beginning in the 1950s and, for the next five decades, continuing on part-time consulting work to the present day.

In January 2022, Newsweek published a revealing article about the large number of foreign fighters in Ukraine’s army, and how Ukraine had evolved into a mecca for white supremacists who wanted to spill Russian blood.

One of these white supremacists, Craig Lang, was even wanted for a double-murder of a Florida couple in the U.S.

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Craig Lang in interview with ABC News. [Source: abcnews.go.com]
In line with a general blackout on the topic, the mainstream media predictably underplayed Cancel’s employment with a private military contractor which is what accounted for his death.

One must ask whether that might be a project that anyone, or any entity, in their right mind would take on merely because they favored one side or another in wartime conditions? The risk to a private corporation’s continued solvency would be in constant jeopardy given the potential costs of recruiting personnel, and losing them; I will leave it to the reader to work through what that might entail.

The obvious answer to this puzzle is that such a creation might only exist with the financial backing of one or more of the “Alphabet Agencies,” maybe the one located in Northern Virginia, across the Potomac River and the George Washington Parkway from Washington, D.C.

___________________________________________

The following information comes directly from William “Tosh” Plumlee and has been edited for proper context. Tosh explained how he had been contacted by a person, whom he wants to remain anonymous, who is currently employed within the Pentagon. The narrative below came from an email dated February 3, 2022, three weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was not due to anyone’s clairvoyance that a prediction was stated by this person who knew that the military and intelligence services were already taking many steps to ramp up calls for “soldiers of fortune.”

ANONYMOUS SOURCE: “Private contractors were currently hiring mercenaries and ex-U..S military S.O.F. [Soldier of Fortune] for Ukraine service; also, as I told you it would only be a matter of time before we lost an American citizen-fighter in a Ukraine-Russian war.”

TOSH PLUMLEE: “Yes, it was an old operation which had been used many times before.”

ANONYMOUS SOURCE: “Do you know of any American military personnel operating in Ukraine?”

TOSH PLUMLEE: Explaining that he hadn’t, he stated: “This operation is similar to an old 1983-86 Iran-contra project run by Ollie North, the White House, and the Pentagon: [Iran-Contra hearings. Senator John Kerry, Senator Gary Hart, Senate Arms Service Committee. Senate Foreign Relations Committee; documented]. These are cut-out companies financed by the U.S. Government, Pentagon, and U.S. State Department. It is an old CIA, Pentagon, operation; a very hush-hush operation that has been in force for decades- “Private armies-private contractors.”

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Tosh Plumlee with plane that was used to supply Nicaraguan Contras, right-wing counter-revolutionaries who fought the left-wing Sandinistas. [Source: tpaak.com]

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Oliver North testifies before Iran-Contra hearing. [Source: britannica.com]

ANONYMOUS SOURCE: “Currently, there are 168 ex-U.S. servicemen in the Ukraine training and being active fighters on the front line. We, the U.S, are active and have U.S. citizens, ex-servicemen, participating in this Ukraine-Russian war. These ex-servicemen are employed by private U.S. companies [‘Cut-Outs’] that have been awarded secret U.S. State Department contracts.”

TOSH PLUMLEE: This procedure effectively extends the Pentagon’s reach into the middle of conflicts that the U. S. military has never been authorized to participate. Yet, through the privately run-publicly financed arrangement, can put their “boots on the ground.” This has been a decades-old [covert-CIA-Pentagon] practice. These private [classified] contracts—to private American companies—total millions of taxpayer monies. It is a very hush-hush, ongoing, CIA/Pentagon, White House, operation. Remember “Black-Water” and the “School of the Americas”? An example of this is illustrated in a 1987 CBS News broadcast with Connie Chung, then hosting the Eye to Eye news program, with Bernard Goldberg reporting on the suspected murder of Marine Colonel James E. Sabow (the video is shown below).

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Colonel James E. Sabow [Source: salem-news.com]

A fellow whistleblower friend of Tosh’s, Gene Wheaton, a former military investigator retained by the Sabow family, was quoted in a 1994 Newsweek magazine article as to what happened:

Image
Gene Wheaton [Source: evans-brownmortuary.com]

Specifying that the Navy’s criminal-investigation service is notably less competent than those of other armed services, Wheaton said “They don’t think like cops—they think like bureaucrats. They want to go in and close the whole thing out.” Wheaton also claimed the Marine brass is concealing a pattern of covert arms smuggling that is “a continuation of Iran-Contra”—and implied that Sabow must have known something illegal was going on.

Someone evidently decided that Col. Sabow was getting too close to a major national scandal in his on-going investigation into the use of the El Toro Marine Air Base for the importation of massive amounts of drugs from Central America. Bernie Goldberg introduced the Sabow matter on Connie Chung’s program after interviewing Tosh and Gene Wheaton.

https://youtu.be/dGduXN-JaZM

Also, presented below is a video of Morley Safer interviewing Tosh Plumlee (circa 1986) on 60 Minutes about this very subject:



[Tosh]: “I believe the media [U.S. MSM] will be breaking this story very soon . . . until then you have it first, and it too is ‘before the fact.’”

As always, the White House, U.S. State Department and CIA will take issue and say they know nothing about those current operations. However, previous documentation and interviews state otherwise. The CBS 60 Minutes interview with Marine Col. James Sabow, and the 60 Minutes segment “Our Planes are Missing,” are but two references that support the ongoing operations.


For more on Tosh’s legendary background as a swashbuckling pilot flying arms into Nicaragua, then returning the aircraft, now laden with drugs, back into U.S. military airbases, see HERE. Despite all of that, even as this was all playing out, he was making repeated efforts to testify to Congress as a “whistleblower” (wishing to report the crimes in which he was forced* (before the law recognizing their legal rights—which is not always equitably followed-Ed.) to participate, and for many years his reputation was forever “blemished” by the gaslighting done by the CIA and FBI as a result. *through the circumstances of his contracted employment, forced to participate. ↑

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/0 ... n-ukraine/

Ha!, mebbe there is something to be said for 'cancel culture'. All Nazis should be similarly 'Cancelled'.

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Pentagon details U.S. training of Ukrainian forces
Zachary Basu

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Ukrainian forces rapel from a Russian-made helicopter while training with U.S. and NATO forces in 2018. Photo: Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

U.S. military officials overseeing the training of Ukrainian troops say the evolution of their mission since 2015 helps explain "to a significant degree" why Ukraine has had so much success against Russian forces on the battlefield.

Why it matters: The willingness of top Pentagon brass to speak — on the record — about training the Ukrainian military is the latest evidence of the sea change in how the U.S. views and discusses its role in the war.

*As recently as late March, the Pentagon walked back President Biden's claims the U.S. was "helping train the Ukrainian troops that are in Poland," insisting no physical drills were taking place.
*The shift to openly training troops in Germany, and publicizing the mission, came soon after Biden's watershed decision last month to begin providing Ukraine with artillery and other heavy weapons Kyiv had long requested.

Driving the news: Brigadier Gen. Joseph Hilbert told reporters on Wednesday the decision to withdraw the 150 U.S. troops at a facility inside Ukraine during the Russian military buildup in February was the "lowest point" of the mission.

*"But probably one of the high points was the absolute excitement when we knew we were going to put them back to work training Ukrainians" at a U.S. base in Grafenwoehr, Germany, he said.
*More than 200 Ukrainian troops have since been trained on U.S. howitzer artillery systems now being used in combat operations in the Donbas, a senior U.S. Defense official confirmed.
*Dozens more have been trained at Grafenwoehr and other undisclosed locations in Europe on the radars, armored vehicles, drones and other sophisticated weaponry included in the latest tranches of U.S. military aid.

The big picture: Beginning in 2015, after Russia's annexation of Crimea, the U.S. invested about $126 million to train more than 23,000 Ukrainians troops at the Yavoriv military base in western Ukraine, Hilbert said.

*By January, the role of the Americans had evolved from "hands-on training" to advising on Ukrainian-led strategy and preparing for "large-scale combat operations."
*"Incrementally, over time, all of that investment in their capabilities and their forces — I think you can see just how it's paid off," Hilbert said.

Between the lines: Hilbert and his chief of staff, Lt. Col. Jeremy "Todd" Hopkins, praised their Ukrainian students, branding them as "amazing warriors" who've proved to be "extremely competent" and "absolutely focused."

*Hopkins shared a story of one Ukrainian finding out during a lunch break that his hometown had been shelled by Russian forces — prompting him and his team to drop their food and immediately return to training.
*"The biggest mistake that the Russians made was giving us eight years to prepare for this," Hopkins quoted another Ukrainian officer as saying.

https://www.axios.com/2022/05/05/pentag ... ian-forces

That last line...indeed, indeed. If Russia had 'given Donbass it's head' and a bit of help(nothing like this) then the Nazi problem could have been solved. Donbass had entered Mariopol from which the Nazis had fled, the south was wide open. Combined with the two 'cauldrons' in which the Ukrainian attempts to double envelop Donbass were annihilated, there was little to stop them. Except for the Russians, who demanded a halt to the advance and even the withdrawal from Mariopol, under threat of withholding fuel and ammunition from Donbass militias. But no, those currently inhabiting the Kremlin thought they could deal with the US in an honest manner, despite the continued treachery of NATO expansion. After all, 'weren't we all capitalists now'? Fools. When the thieving oligarchs took control of the former USSR they expected to be peers of the Western capitalists but it turns out they were prey and had been considered such from day 1.

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Spiegel: EU will have to stop the industry for the sake of abandoning Russian gas
05/05/2022

May 1, 2022

European Union will be able to meet the targets for filling gas storage facilities only if two-thirds of the Russian gas only if industrial enterprises are disconnected from blue fuel in the spring and summer. This information was shared by the German magazine Der Spiegel.

According to the model of the Jülich Research Center, such a scenario can only be realized if a “tough step” is implemented: the EU will need to limit gas supplies to industry in the spring and summer. Based on the statements of the publication, experts agreed that with a decrease in the transit of blue fuel from Russia it is not possible to fill the storage facilities by two thirds with volumes that will be sufficient for the passage of the winter period.

According to scientists, under the condition of compressing supplies from the Russian Federation to fill storage Europe by 63 percent by August 1, all steel, chemical or cement plants in the European Union must be disconnected from gas from now until the end of July, and gas-fired power plants will have to suspend work for almost all of July.

“Filling (gas. – Note) storage facilities in accordance with the planned volumes and at the same time such a serious reduction in supplies from Russia will only be possible subject to significant restrictions on industry and power plants,” said Jochen Linsen, professor at the Julich Center.

As the Public News Service reported earlier, the Tagesspiegel agency in its material reported that in most Berlin pools, in order to savings electricity, the water temperature will be maintained at a lower level than before.

The newspaper quoted the head of Berliner Bäderbetriebe pool operator Johannes Kleinsorg. According to him, the network wants to contribute to reducing dependence on the supply of Russian natural gas.

http://www.defenddemocracy.press/spiege ... ssian-gas/

That's a turd in the German capitalist punchbowl. In the meantime US and Chinese industry would take up the slack , German business lost.Chances of that scenario coming to pass are slim to none. As always the capitalists will point to jobs lost but all they care about is profits lost, it's one of their euphemisms, like substituting 'democracy' for capitalism'. Were I in Germany I'd be looking into a wood stove, those winters are cold.

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Information from 'the front' is slim, which suggests that the situation is fluid.

The 24/7 Nazi propaganda barrage from Kiev makes it hard to discern when they rarely do tell some truth. Today I heard claims that the Russian interdiction of Ukrainian rail service was ineffective, which is a baldfaced lie, service is being degraded continually, witnessed by the mountain of service delays announced by Uke rail authorities. More than the weapons the US and it's vassals are sending ammunition and fuel are the real necessities and those supplies are being constricted as a boa does a mouse.

Funny thing about those weapons and the massive propaganda reporting thereof. Haven't we seen this scenario before? Hmm, when did fascists on the shit end of the stick proclaim that their technical superiority and 'secret weapons' would change the tide and assure victory? O yeah, that was Nazi Germany. And how did that work out for them?

And when these super weapons can't reach the front, do not have qualified operators, they serve no good and possibly very bad as some will be diverted to people the West will have cause to regret. Except for the arms manufacturers themselves, who will bill the US government which will respond by printing ever more dollars, pouring gasoline on that fire.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

Post by blindpig » Thu May 05, 2022 10:51 pm

System of Information Operations for Military Support of NATO Member States in Ukraine
May 5, 4:01 p.m.

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System of Information Operations for Military Support of NATO Member States in Ukraine

The course of the Special Military Operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to protect the DPR and LPR, which has already become the largest interspecific military action of the last decade, has revealed all the “spheres” of the modern conflict. At the same time, along with the "classic" means of confrontation, the information-psychological or cognitive sphere, which is not limited to the territories of states directly involved in the conflict, but affects all existing military-political alliances, through the so-called "gray zones" with participation of special operations forces.

A system of centers focused on conducting information operations in the post-Soviet space has been deployed on the territory of Ukraine today. Its infrastructure includes both structures of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and special services (for example, the 16th - military unit A1182 (settlement Guiva, Zhytomyr), the 72nd - military unit A4398 (Brovary, Kyiv), the 74th - military unit A1277 (Lvov), 83rd - military unit A2455 (Odessa) Centers for Information and Psychological Operations of the SSO of Ukraine), as well as associations of various foundations, humanitarian, non-governmental organizations. At the same time, deployed since 2014. the activities of the United States, Great Britain and Germany in support of the “allied” political system, de facto, integrated Ukrainian resources into the structure of the Information Operations of military support of the countries participating in the North Atlantic Alliance.

Military and other government departments of the United States and European countries

Today, to support the coordination and support of the structure of the Centers for Information and Psychological Operations of the SSO and the SBU of Ukraine, a number of battalions of information and psychological operations of the US Armed Forces have been involved, formed into a group called Military Informational Support Operations Group consisting of 7 battalions and 2 separate groups. The consolidated unit unites: the 4th, 8th Troop Information Support Groups, the 3rd Battalion for the preparation and distribution of PsyOp materials, the 6th Battalion of regional support of PsyOp in Europe, the 7th Battalion of regional support of PsyO in Europe and Africa, the 8th 2nd and 9th Battalions of the PsyOp Central Command, 1st PsyOp Battalion of the Southern Command and 5th PsyOp Battalion of the Pacific Command.

It is the Military Informational Support Operations Group and the United States Intelligence Community (IC) that ensure the interaction of the Centers for Information and Psychological Operations of the SSO and the SBU of Ukraine with the infrastructure of cognitive operations of the North Atlantic Alliance - the Intelligence and Situation Center of the EU (EC INTCEN, EU), Cyber ​​Operations Center (COCN, Warsaw), Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (NATO StartCom, Latvia), European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE, Finland), NATO Cyber ​​Defense Center of Excellence (CCDCOE, Estonia), the Central group of psychological actions (Centralna Grupa Dzialan Psychologiczhych, Poland).

“The mission of the Military Information Support Operations Command is to provide a fully capable Military Information Support (MIS) force to combat commanders, U.S. ambassadors, and other agencies to synchronize plans and implement information and influence (IIA) activities across the full spectrum of military operations. The ultimate goal of the US MISSION is to persuade hostile, neutral and friendly nations and forces to take action favorable to the United States and its allies. MISOC's ranks include regional experts and linguists who understand political, cultural, ethnic and religious intricacies and use persuasion to influence perceptions and encourage desired behavior."

On the European side, with the support of the Secret Intelligence Service of the British Foreign Office (SIS, MI6), there is a separate joint "group of intermediaries" that unites the organizations PR Network (UK), Government Informational Cell (UK), The Voice Project (UK).

In addition, a number of projects are currently operating in Ukraine that train civil activists, humanitarian mission specialists, opposition politicians and journalists. Training takes place both in Ukraine itself and in the USA, European countries - Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and the UK. At the same time, the coordination of the military-political and civilian components is provided by private contractors of the notorious United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Among the latter, an impressive share of processes falls on Chemonics International Inc, Edelman, ICCO Worldwide.

Chemonics International Inc. is currently helping to implement a USAID project called Democratic Governance of the East in Ukraine, aimed at “increasing citizen participation through communication and outreach, uniting Ukrainian citizens around common values ​​such as social responsibility, innovation and tolerance”[ one]. At the same time, along with the formation of information campaigns to popularize the unitary state model, contractors in Ukraine have been actively promoting neo-Nazi symbols through PR and booking since 2015. in the East of Ukraine. In addition to the famous comics, educational and didactic literature for educational and "educational" institutions and public associations,

Among the project consultants, along with personnel in PR technologies, printing and education, one can meet specialists in counterguerrilla work and military indoctrination, participating in the “accompaniment” of work with detainees who do not share the new political reality. One of the latest is Eric Burtch, a US citizen and contractor for the private company Lightning Arrow.

At the same time, the latter suspended and resumed its activities 7 times, changing names in Belgium, Great Britain, Sweden and the USA, in addition to recent events in Ukraine, actively promoted the “Initiative to Strengthen Local Administrations” on the territory of the then Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. However, in fact, it ensured the legalization in local councils of the assets necessary for the American side from the independent Taliban groups, the revisionist movement of Takhar (which does not recognize Shura-e-Quetta), which deny cooperation with Pakistan, Iran, China and the Russian Federation.

ICCO PR (Worldwide) in March 2022 initiated the "Ukrainian Communication Support Network" (UCSN). This is an initiative of the "International Communications Consultants Organization" (ICCO) and the "Public Relations and Communications Association" (PRCA), designed to coordinate volunteer communication activities for Ukrainian residents. UCSN's co-chairs are Ukrainian PR chief Natalia Popovych (former ICCO resident) and David Gallagher (PRCA chair). At the same time, each of the co-chairs has impressive experience working with the US Intelligence Community (United States Intelligence Community, IC) and the Secret Intelligence Service of the British Foreign Office (SIS, MI6) in Eastern Europe.

The categories of support provided include:

1. Raising public awareness - projects to attract / support public attention, including pickets, demonstrations and other events;

2. Digital, web support support and provision of developers;

3. Social networks and content production;

4. Countering disinformation - campaigns and resources to promote "reliable" sources of news and information;

5. Projects and resources to counter disinformation.

UCSN has deployed an open social infrastructure for public relations specialists, information and PR agencies, civil platforms ready to provide comprehensive support to promote the agenda developed by the above-mentioned Centers for Information and Psychological Operations of the SSO and SBU of Ukraine in the civil sphere. At the same time, this association acts not only as a propaganda tool within the country and on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, but is also actively involved in information campaigns and expert support for opposition associations in the post-Soviet space. The platform's assets were involved in creating an anti-war and protest agenda on the territory of the Russian Federation, the Republics of Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

To date, about 1 thousand organizations are associated with UCSN, including agencies with impressive experience in interacting with the military-political and diplomatic institutions of the United States and European countries, including:

1. Publicis Groupe Ukraine, head. Elena Bakum-​Ramola;

2. Golin, hands. Alexandra Bell;

3. Don't Cry Wolf, hands. John Brown;

4. Rod Cartwright Consulting, Rev. Rod Cartwright;

5. DG Advisory, head. David Gallagher;

6. MSL Sofia, hands. Iva Grigorova;

7. Avia WE, hands. Nitin Mantry;

8. Manifest, hands. Alex Myers;

9. Ukraine Crisis Media Center, head. Natalya Popoviya;

10. MSL Ukraine, hands. Elena Sukhanova;

11. Hill + Knowlton Strategies, hands. Grzegorz Szczepanski.

With the development of the Special Military Operation of the RF Armed Forces to protect the DPR and LPR, the disabling of infrastructures on the territory of Ukraine since March 2022. owners of PR associations and involved professionals who continue to work with ICCO and the Centers for Information and Psychological Operations of the SSO and the SBU of Ukraine are offered to move to Poland “for the safe continuation of their activities” with compensation for lost property, increased salaries. At the same time, individual organizations are offered reorganization and support through extraordinary grants from Western funds for a period of 3 to 8 years.

The organizations and projects represented have their own lobby and support in the US Congress. CII, Edelman, ICCO associations are accompanied by consulting agencies SKDKnickerbrocker, Yorktown Solutions and Your Global Strategy, each of which supports the interests of politicians of the US Democratic Party. At the same time, the amount of contracts since March 2022. exceed $50 million.

Other major non-profit and non-government organizations that provide support to CIPSO include the International Renaissance Foundation, Atlantic Council, Soros Foudation, Center for Public Integrity, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, National Endowment for Democracy. The pool of organizations represented is directly funded by the Ukrainian projects "StopFake" and "Stop the War", whose content is from the end of February 2022. published well-known materials on the territory of the post-Soviet countries, including the Russian segment of the Internet. At the same time, both projects are directly coordinated by the Centers for Information and Psychological Operations of the SSO and the SBU of Ukraine.

International Renaissance Foundation

From March 2022 Ukrainian charitable public organization IRF, which is part of the international network of foundations "Open Society Foundation" (George Soros Foundation), launched a number of projects aimed at supporting the Armed Forces of Ukraine, covering the entire military-political sphere. In addition to legal, humanitarian positions and supplies, "informing and journalism" became a separate area.

At the same time, the association of UCSN and IRF was involved in the information promotion of the Liberation Front of Kazakhstan during the January protests. Four masked men with machine guns pose in front of the flag of Kazakhstan. And a voice-over with a Ukrainian accent calls for fighting the CSTO troops and the Tokayev government.

“In this nomination, we support projects that help tell the truth about the war to foreign audiences, both in the West and behind enemy lines. We also support the work of some media outlets that were left without funds for advertising and whose work in documenting the war is important: Military Portal, Ukrainer, Slidstvo.Info and others. We plan to launch support for more media in the near future."

At the same time, each of the represented organizations is integrated into the structure of the Centers for Information and Psychological Operations of the SSO and the SBU of Ukraine. And the total amount of working capital for projects exceeded $ 1.1 billion. At the same time, the organization plans to aggregate part of the funds allocated by Western European countries for “point financing.

(c) M. Alexandrov

https://maksalexandrov.livejournal.com/6542.html

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7597035.html

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram Account:

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forwarded from
Old England
🇬🇧The international information campaign for the rehabilitation of the Nazis of the Azov Regiment continues. Sky News

today published an interview with British mercenary Mark Ayres, serving in the Azov Regiment, in which he describes the representatives of the unit as follows: “They are not such monsters and psychos as I imagined neo-Nazis - I mean, they not all are like that . Many of them are decent guys, just with stupid looks . I tell my buddy, "I don't understand how you can say you're a neo-Nazi when you're a damn decent guy with decent views. And he says, "Well, I'm not really..." .

At the same time, the moral character of the mercenary corresponds to his brothers in arms: Mark Ayres previously served in the Green Jackets infantry regiment , but was fired due to a robbery. The militant went to Ukraine " to become a soldier again ".

It is worth noting another interesting statement by the British. Upon his return from Syria, where the mercenary also participated in the hostilities, he was arrested three times, since, in accordance with the law, it is prohibited to be in a foreign army or in an illegal armed formation . But Mark Ayres declares the inaction of the investigation and the court when considering such cases. After a while its just every timereleased to freedom .

According to the mercenary, after the statement by Foreign Minister Liz Truss on February 27 about supporting the British struggle for "democracy" on the territory of Ukraine, those who seek the prosecution of militants " will not have a firm footing ", so he is not afraid to return to his homeland after the war.

@oldGBR
sky news
Ukraine war: Briton who joined Azov Regiment with far-right origins says they're not 'monsters and psychos'
Mark Ayres has spent the past two months in Ukraine after joining the Azov Regiment, which originated as a far-right paramilitary unit. The British Army veteran insists he has challenged some Azov fighters over their beliefs and those he has met are not "monsters…

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Denazification UA
❗️The Pentagon recommended the Zelensky administration and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine "to use the experience of Mariupol for the defense of Nikolaev / Odessa / Dnipro / Zaporozhye / Kharkov" - Ukrainian sources

To do this, the Americans advise Zelensky to identify several factories on the territory of these cities, and use them as outposts to take cities.

Zelensky accepted this order for execution!

***

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Rybar
❗️🇬🇧🇺🇦 The situation in Kharkov by 12:00 on May 5, 2022

Against the backdrop of violent clashes in the Izyum direction, the outskirts of Kharkov are a secondary sector of the front with a relatively lower intensity of fighting.

▪️Reservist units of the DPR and LPR, as well as the National Guard, left Russkaya Lozovaya and neighboring villages. The half-empty village of Stary Saltov was occupied by militants of the Kraken special unit of the Azov National Regiment.

▪️In Odnorobovka , members of the Aidar nationalist battalion prevent local residents from leaving the village. They use people as a "human shield" in order to cover themselves from Russian artillery strikes.

▪️Under Vesely , a supply column of the RF Armed Forces was hit.

The Ukrainian command is trying to take maximum advantage of the low concentration of units of the Allied Forces in the area near Kharkov and is actively trying to recapture the liberated settlements.

Large resolution

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War on fakes
“In 2015 , having exchanged a microphone for a Kalash”: who was the “journalist” Alexander Makhov, whose death Zelensky announced in a video message , really?

Yesterday, Timofey Vi in his telegram channel drew attention to a video message from Zelensky , who mourned the " famous journalist" Alexander Makhov, who died as a result of artillery shelling on May 4. This message is apparently issued to raise a wave of indignation in the international and Ukrainian media. However, even a superficial fact-checking makes it clear that in fact no Makhov is a journalist.

Back in 2015, Makhov fought in the Donbas as part of the 95th Separate Air Assault Brigade. This is confirmed by Zelensky himself invideo , and Makhov's wife, who posted a post on her Instagram: "In 2015, he exchanged a microphone for a Kalash." Another confirmation that Makhov again took up arms . It is absolutely certain that he joined the armed forces from the first days of the special operation in Ukraine. At the same time, Makhov not only fought, but killed for fascist ideas and even got a tattoo on his chest - the slogan of the Ukrainian Nazis ("Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!").

Until recently, Makhov appeared in battlefields with weapons and military uniforms and did not act as a journalist, which is confirmed by numerous photos from his Instagram account, as well as in the account of his wife. For example, in a March 2 post, she writesabout how “Sasha and his brothers fuck” Russian military personnel. Alexander himself stated the same, for example, in this video .

Taking up arms, Makhov turned from a journalist into a combatant , and the status of a media employee cannot be applied to him. The Geneva Convention refers to the combatants who are subject to the rules for the treatment of prisoners of war, including the civilian population, which “spontaneously, on their own initiative, takes up arms before they have had time to form into regular troops, if they openly carry weapons and observe the laws and customs of war” ( Article 4 of the Geneva Convention ). And that means - and a legitimate military target. One can only guess how many innocent victims have been in the hands of the “journalist Makhov” since 2015.

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Сolonelcassad
2 wounded American mercenaries. Reclaimed.

Wounded American mercenary Manus McCaffery shares his sad combat experience in a hospital in Zaporozhye. On April 27, Manus McCaffery, a former soldier of the 75th Airborne Reconnaissance Regiment of the US Army, and his accomplice Paul Gray, who served in the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army, were wounded while trying to fire a Russian tank with a Javelin during the battles for the settlement of Orekhov Zaporizhzhya areas. Manus received multiple shrapnel and penetrating wounds to the head, torso, lower extremities, and Paul's left leg was torn off. Both Americans served as instructors in the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces.

https://t.me/ChDambiev/16401

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Readovka
Map of hostilities and the situation on the fronts on the evening of May 4, 2022

Traditionally, the Russian Army continues to destroy transport infrastructure in the evening in order to impede the supply of weapons and fuel from the West and “calibrate” strategic facilities. So, after 20:00 there were reports of a strike on the Amur bridge in the Dnieper . Strikes were confirmed in the Kiev region (Brovary district of the village of Trebukhov), Kherson region, Odessa region and in Nikolaev . And also in Volyn, Kovel, Kirovograd and Zaporozhye regions.

The situation on the fronts in a nutshell:

▫️Near Kharkov there are "butting" for Russian Lozovaya, the fighting continues to this day. They also carried out a successful attack in the direction of Stary Saltov, pushing a light curtain of LPR reservists, there is a threat of a breakthrough further to Volchansk and Kupyansk;

▫️In the Izyum direction, the RF Armed Forces are carrying out offensive operations in the direction of Barvenkovo. Fighting continues north of the Barvenkovo-Slavyansk highway. It has not yet been possible to reach the highway, although it is already possible to carry out its fire defeat. The fighting is going on in the Kurulki-Pashkovo area. Fighting continues near Bolshaya Kamyshevakha. The most successful offensive is shown by the "O" grouping in the Liman area.

▫️LPR: During the shelling of the village of Mikhailovka (near New Astrakhan) from Smerchi , Father Parthenius, the rector of the local Temple , who has already sheltered more than 300 refugees, was killed. The temple itself was also heavily damaged. Rubizhne is regularly fired upon by the temporarily occupied Severodonetsk and Lysichansk Armed Forces; Tough battles are going on for Orekhovo, today they took Svetlichnoe and Nizhnee.

▫️On the Donetsk front, in the Avdeevka industrial zone, medium-intensity battles continue without serious advances. To the north, fighting is going on at Novoselka-2 and Novobakhmutovka. The troops of the DPR managed to enter Troitskoye - fighting continues in the area of ​​​​the village. Attempts to advance to New York from the east have not yet brought significant success. At the same time, the enemy continues to shell the settlements of the DPR - Donetsk, Makeevka, Yasinovataya, Yelenovka, etc.;

▫️Zaporizhzhya region on the line Kamianske-Orekhov-Gulyaipole no big changes. There were only battles south of Orekhovo. There are also battles on the outskirts of Gulyai-Pole. To the east of Gulyaipole, fighting continues for various villages. There is no significant progress. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine declares that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are just probing the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and are accumulating a strike force, including at the expense of the troops released in Mariupol;

▫️In Mariupol, fighting continues in Azovstal, the neutralization of militants by means of artillery continues. The leader of "Azov" said that the troops of Russia and the DPR broke through to "Azovstal" yesterday, there are heavy bloody battles , the situation is critical;

▫️In the Yuzhnobuzh and Tauride directions, Russian troops are conducting military operations in order to hold the occupied territories and create conditions for intensifying offensive operations in the Kherson-Nikolaev and Kherson-Krivoy Rog directions. The head of Nikolaevshchina Vitaliy Kim who announced today preparation of the region for a holiday season does not cease to amaze, and already in the evening accepted missile strikes on the fiefdom.

Our border areas are unusually quiet today. The bridge, damaged a couple of days ago in the Belgorod region, has been restored.

The classic shelling of civilians continued: the Armed Forces of Ukraine shelled Donetsk twice after midnight, firing a total of nine shells. Again today the city of Yasinovataya has been under fire all day. And the Nazishit on residential areas with the use of MLRS BM-21 Grad. As a result of the attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the oil depot in Makeevka, 4 tanks of 5 thousand tons each burned.

👁From the interesting: According to their own sources, at the moment a group of Ukrainian pilots is being trained at the German Laupheim airbase . Training flights are carried out every day, including at night. It may seem that we are talking about the very cadets of the Kharkov school sent for retraining on the F-16 , but this is not so.

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Ukraine's Forces Are Told To Hold The Line Where Russian Artillery Is Pulverizing Them

The Russian military forces are grinding down Ukrainian ground forces by extensive use of heavy artillery. The Ukrainian artillery has been destroyed or lacks ammunition.The Ukrainian forces have orders to stay in their position and to hold the line. That only makes sure that Russian artillery strikes will destroy them.

The order was given because the 'west' has pushed the Ukrainian president to not make peace with Russia. The consequence will be the assured destruction of the Ukrainian military.

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There are claims that the Russian progress in Ukraine has been slow or has even come to a halt:


The United States assessed last week that Russian troops were making “slow and uneven” progress in the Donbas, often of no more than “several kilometers ... on any given day, just because they don’t want to run out too far ahead of their logistics and sustainment lines,” one senior U.S. official told journalists.
But in its daily reports, the Institute for the Study of War noted that Russian forces made no confirmed ground attacks on Monday or Tuesday. It said a Ukrainian artillery strike April 30 on a Russian command headquarters near Izium has slowed the Russian push, and noted that, farther north, a Ukrainian counterattack Monday pushed Russian forces back 25 miles east of Kharkiv.


Those claims do not hold up to reality. As Clausewitz wrote about the Schwerpunkt in 'On War':

[N]o matter what the central feature of the enemy's power may be—the point on which your efforts must converge—the defeat and destruction of his fighting force remains the best way to begin, and in every case will be a very significant feature of the campaign.
Basing our comments on general experience, the acts we consider most important for the defeat of the enemy are the following:

1.Destruction of his army, if it is at all significant.
2.Seizure of his capital if it is not only the center of administration but also that of social, professional, and political activity.
3.Delivery of an effective blow against his principal ally if that ally is more powerful than he.


Accordingly the Russian military is tasked with demilitarizing the Ukraine, Clausewitz' task one, and that is what it is doing.

Russia is using the best available means to destroy the Ukrainian military. On the ground that means ruthless systematic mass use of artillery.

Reports about the high morale of the Ukrainian soldiers who halt Russian advances are copium when compared with the reality of the battlefield.

From the preface of the book King of Battle: Artillery in World War I (also here):

Artillery dominated the battlefields of World War I. That was seen in various ways, from wounding patterns and doctors’ clinical data, to memoirs, diaries, and letters, through to changed military doctrine after the war. No nation that had experienced significant ground combat would blithely assume morale could replace firepower. Artillery even holds the dubious distinction of causing a new diagnosis, shellshock.

Morale can not replace firepower. Morale gets destroyed when soldiers come under concentrated artillery fire. Russia has plenty of the later.

As I wrote a week ago after reading the Russian military report for that day:

The nearly 1,000 artillery missions in the last 24 hours and on the days before speak of intense preparations for upcoming attacks by Russian mechanized forces. Over all artillery will do the most damage to the Ukrainian troops. In World War II and other modern mechanized wars some 65% of all casualties were caused by artillery strikes. The recent rate on the Ukrainian side will likely be higher.

There were at that time few reports about the artillery situation at the frontline. I have now found three which have since come out. They convey what the power of artillery does to an army and confirm my previous take.

First a Politico piece that was published on the same day I wrote the above and was added to its update. The starkest quotes:

“The situation is very bad, [Russian forces] are using scorched- earth tactics,” the 31-year-old married father of two said via text. “They simply destroy everything with artillery, shelling day and night,” [First Lt. Ivan Skuratovsky] said via text.
...
The day before, he told POLITICO his soldiers were being bombarded with Russian howitzers, mortars and multiple-launch rocket systems “at the same time.” Just hours earlier, he said, they had been attacked by two Su-25 warplanes, “and our day became hell.”


From an AFP piece, published on April 30, we have this:

Russian troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region have shifted from a steamroller strategy to one of relentlessly chipping away at their opponents in the hope of grinding them down.
Ukraine’s army has little option but to try to stall their larger and better-equipped enemy in the sprawling plains of Donbas, where artillery is king.
...
Pessimism about the chances of pushing back the Russians appears to be spreading.
...
Although they are holding their ground on the battlefield, many of Ukraine’s infantry soldiers admit to feeling overwhelmed.

“Viking”, a 27-year-old staff sergeant who fought in Kreminna said his comrades are exhausted and waiting for the order to pull back.

“If it was a war between infantry forces, we would have a chance. But in this area, it’s first and foremost an artillery war and we don’t have enough artillery,” he says.

“For every 300 shells they fire, we fire three.”


And from yesterday's Christian Science Monitor this:

The Ukrainian artillery team was moving into position in the northern Donbas region, along the front line near Izium. The soldiers did not even have time to orient their guns before they were found by a Russian drone.
The first Russian 152 mm shells – fired by howitzers more than 10 miles away – landed near the Ukrainian guns. As the artillery team ran for safety, its vehicle was hit and set on fire.

The driver, badly wounded, veered straight into bushes as shells rained down. The survivors escaped on foot, across open fields.

Roman, a young artilleryman with a short patchy beard, recalled the events from a darkened military hospital room in Kramatorsk, his eyes glazed and an intravenous drip in his left arm, as he recovered from blast concussion. He gave only his first name, in keeping with Ukrainian military rules for wounded soldiers.

The biggest surprise for him? “That I am still alive here, after that shelling,” he says listlessly, closing his eyes and lying back on his bed.
...
Russia has escalated its shelling in an apparent bid to advance on the eastern region both from the Izium axis in the north and up from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. The pincers movement seeks to cut off some of Ukraine’s most battle-hardened forces ..
...
In Roman’s unit the driver is dead, the commander is in intensive care, another artilleryman has shrapnel wounds, and the rest are concussed, like Roman.
...
“Their artillery never, never stops,” says the deputy commander of Ukraine’s Donbas Battalion, a major who only gave the nickname Kot (Cat). He spoke in Sloviansk with a balaclava covering his face, as an air raid siren wailed across the city.

“They are changing their strategy, but it is still what we would expect from Russia,” says Major Kot. There are no more long, vulnerable columns: “They are sending recon units, then shell with artillery, and then send tanks,” he says. “If those tanks are destroyed, they send more tanks.”
...
“We really have a lack of heavy artillery,” says Ukrainian Sgt. Viktor Davydov, still wired and speaking quickly of Ukraine’s needs, after returning to the town of Druzhkivka from the front, where he says Russian artillery strikes continue “24/7.”

“When Russia sends incoming 200 shells, we send back 10 shells,” says Sergeant Davydov, who wears sunglasses, a pistol on his thigh, and a skull shoulder patch in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag.

His job is to take freshly mobilized men to the front “to show them not to be afraid,” and to teach them “how to dig in and make very effective defensive positions” to compensate for the firepower imbalance with Russia.

“I tell them that all they have to do is hold our line, and not retreat,” says Sergeant Davydov. The cost can be high. The sergeant recalls 10 recruits in late April being sent to him one night at 11 p.m. By 6 a.m. two were dead and three wounded by Russian artillery.


The Ukrainian parliament recently change the law so that the Ukrainian territorial defense forces, comparable to the German Volkssturm, can now be used throughout the country. The locals in west Ukraine who volunteered for these units hoping to avoid being drafted into the army will now be send to the Donbas frontline where Russian artillery will eat them up.

The U.S. has send about 100 howitzer to Ukraine and a similar number of various artillery pieces will come from other NATO countries. There are several problems with these.

The first issue is training. Howitzer can not be used by newbies. How many Ukrainians with artillery experience are still alive?

Delivered to the west-Ukrainian border the guns will need to be transported 1,000 kilometer (600 miles) to the east. Their heavy ammunition, and artillery needs a lot, will have to come the same way.

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Russia has now destroyed a total of 16 electric substations along the railway lines. Yesterday Russia damaged a major railway bridge over the Dnieper. Another railway bridge on the line from Romania to Odessa was completely destroyed.

The Ukraine can therefore only use its few diesel locomotives to transport the guns and ammunition. Whatever will come through to the eastern front will be too little too late.

For some time Russia had made it a priority to destroy Ukrainian artillery. Yesterday's evening briefing by the Russian Defense Ministry noted:

High-precision air-based missiles of the Russian Aerospace Forces during the day destroyed: 4 artillery batteries at firing positions, 3 ammunition depots near Mirnaya Dolina, Bakhmutskaya and Tashkovka, 20 areas of manpower and military equipment concentration, and 1 US-made counter-battery radar station near Popasnaya.
...
Missile troops and artillery have hit 1 Ukrainian battery of BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers at firing positions, as well as 83 areas of manpower and military equipment concentration.


A battery is a company sized (~100 men) artillery unit with usually 6 guns. The battery is used as a firing unit which means that all its guns fire at the same time and onto the same target.

Today's morning briefing claimed more Ukrainian artillery losses:

Missile troops have hit 2 AFU command posts, 1 artillery battery at a firing position, as well as 2 launchers and 1 transport and loading vehicle of Tochka-U tactical missile system during the night.
Artillery units have hit 32 command posts, 5 ammunition depots, 403 strongholds, areas of manpower and military equipment concentration, and 51 Ukrainian artillery positions.


Those are six Ukrainian batteries, each most likely with 6 guns or multiple rocket launchers, destroyed in just 24 hours. Those U.S. guns that reach the frontline will have a similar fate.

In total the Russian military claims to have destroyed "325 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,306 field artillery and mortars" during the war.

A new participant in artillery fights are drones which are used on both sides to direct artillery fire onto enemy positions. The Russian military claims that it took down 20 of the Ukrainian ones during the last 24 hours for a total of 726.

The briefings claim that Russian forces 'eliminated' up to 900 'nationalists' over the last 24 hours. That number may be too high but with all the mass use of artillery it is entirely plausible.

Without artillery support in good quantity the Ukrainian military has no chance to hold the line and to stop Russian moves. Any unit which attempts is hold the line will simply be mauled by Russian artillery until it is no longer able to fight. That is happening now. As the Ukrainians have orders not to leave or move their defense lines they either have to give up or die defending them.

By giving 'hold the line' orders the Ukrainian leadership is contributing to the Russian demilitarization of the Ukraine.

Why is it doing that? The situation for the Ukraine is hopeless and has been for some time. Why has its President Zelensky not given up? Why does he not agree to Russia's peace conditions?

We can find the answer in a piece published today in Ukraine's Pravda (machine translation):

Potential Zelensky-Putin talks paused after Johnson's arrival - sources

After the arrival of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Kyiv, a possible meeting between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin has become less likely.
...
According to UP sources close to Zelensky, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.
The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he needs to be squeezed, and not negotiated with him.

And secondly, if Ukraine is ready to sign any agreements on guarantees with him, then they are not.

This position of Johnson testified: the collective West, which back in February offered Zelensky to surrender and run away, now felt that Putin was actually not at all as omnipotent as he was imagined, and that right now there was a chance to squeeze him.

Three days after Johnson left for the UK, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine "have reached an impasse."


It is the 'west' that is preventing Zelensky from suing for peace.

The 'west' has fallen for its own propaganda. It believes that the Russian troops near Kiev were defeated by Ukrainian forces. In reality they retreated in good order after the diversion they constituted was no longer needed. The 'western' fairytale that they were 'defeated' gave hope that Russia could be 'weakened', as the U.S. Secretary of State said.

The war will hardly 'weaken' Russia. But the war will destroy the Ukrainian military and many, many of its men.

Posted by b on May 5, 2022 at 16:59 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/u ... .html#more

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How Finland is being drawn into NATO
May 5, 11:40 p.m.

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How Finland is being drawn into NATO

The Finnish publication Uusi MV-Lehti told how the decision was made by the deputies of the Finnish Parliament on the country's entry into NATO. The preliminary hearings were held under conditions of confidentiality of the results of expert consultations with specialized specialists and in the peremptory context of Russia's attack on Finland. It is noted that the deputies were intimidated.

The decision was made under the influence from outside by imposing an imaginary threat of an attack on Russia. As a result, it was possible to form the opinion of parliamentarians that "Russia seeks to expand the scope of its interests, does not respect sovereign countries with their borders and independent decision-making rights."

The behind-the-scenes discussions in the Finnish parliament on the issue of joining NATO complement the closed nature of some of the defense provisions of Finland's forthcoming treaty with NATO. Only the political declarations of the main allies, as well as the Alliance itself, will remain public, reports the Financial Times.

The fear of a possible attack by Russia and the secrecy of preparatory and organizational measures in the face of ignoring the opinion of the common people of Finland is not a characteristic feature of a democratic state. Obviously, the Finnish deputies are influenced.

Given the activity and support from abroad, it is possible that the European Center for Combating Hybrid Threats, located in Helsinki, was involved in shaping the opinion of the deputies of the Finnish Parliament. This is an international organization that promotes cooperation between the EU and NATO countries in the field of combating hybrid threats. The Center itself and its staff enjoy legal immunity in Finland. At the same time, according to Finnish law, all information collected by the Center is inviolable. Correspondence addressed to the Center or its employees cannot be subject to preliminary screening or supervision.

Recall that in the course of the survey, 62% of Finnish citizens spoke out against joining NATO. But despite the will of the Finnish people, the frightened people's representatives are underground trying to achieve entry into the North Atlantic Alliance in order to please their overseas patrons. For what? And this is a good question, the answer to which will give only time.

https://verumreactor.ru/2022/05/%d0%b2% ... d%d0%b8%d0 %b5-%d1%84%d0%b8%d0%bd%d0%bb%d1%8f%d0%bd%d0%b4%d0%b8%d0%b8-%d0%b2-%d0%bd% d0%b0%d1%82%d0%be-%d0%b8%d0%bd%d0%b8%d1%86%d0%b8%d0%b8%d1%80%d0%be/ - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7 ... tml#cutid1

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

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