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

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

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 10, 2023 12:18 pm

"NATO's Mission"
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/10/2023

Image

The war has completely changed the political, economic and social circumstances for Ukraine. It was like this with the outbreak of the war in Donbass and it is even more so now since the beginning of the Russian military intervention. In 2014, instead of negotiating, Kiev ordered an anti-terrorist operation to justify the use of the army in the national territory and against the population of the Donbass regions, which had risen up against what it perceived as a coup that threatened the status whatIn all aspects of life. This step, which gave rise to the open war that caused thousands of victims and enormous destruction in Donbass, meant for Ukraine the loss of access to raw materials such as coal and control of the industry from the moment kyiv decreed the blockade. region of.

For years, the war justified cuts in the social sphere and also a first attempt to reduce political and, above all, economic relations with Russia. The discourse of the "war with Russia", "the aggressor country" or the "Russian invasion", which kyiv used since the beginning of the war, has facilitated for Ukraine the transition from the war contained in Donbass to the war extended to all the country and in which it does not stop trying to involve NATO as well. But, above all, the war has been a useful tool to advance towards the construction of the anti-Russian country and directly linked to the European Union and NATO that a part of the country's elites have wanted to build since independence in 1991. In that In a sense, events, especially since the Russian invasion, have only accelerated trends already underway.

In the military field, Ukraine has been actively trying to be integrated into the Western supply chain for almost nine years. Despite having inherited a powerful military industry from the Soviet Union and having developed weapons of Soviet origin or later of Ukrainian design, the outbreak of the war was used as an argument to achieve the supply of Western weapons. With little subtlety in its requests for weapons, Ukraine has always shown that, beyond the objective of reinforcing its army, it also sought to replace weapons of Soviet origin with Western weapons. The Russian military intervention brought about a qualitative change.

The destruction of the industry, the energy crisis and Ukraine's disinterest in maintaining independence from any of its partners has caused enormous needs for arms supplies. The intensity of the conflict, a land war with a very high use of artillery, has increased even more that dependency. With the supply of weapons of Soviet origin from the former Warsaw Pact countries exhausted, Ukraine has been rewarded for its work as an army in this common war against Russia with a growing supply of Western material that it had coveted so much in previous years. It must be remembered that Ukraine took years to get the United States, specifically Donald Trump, to authorize the shipment of the long-awaited Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Things have changed and Ukraine's needs do not go through weapons for the trench warfare that it waged in Donbass, but rather an air shield with which to replace its own, of Soviet origin, and thus fight against Russian missiles; artillery and long-range missiles with which to discard old weapons and be able to take the war to Russian territory and heavy equipment such as tanks with which to continue their offensive on the southern front towards Crimea.

Just days after the announcement of the shipment of US Patriot anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine, France, which has recently outpaced the UK in meeting Ukrainian wishes, confirmed that it will deliver light main battle tanks. Such French material is not likely to change the course of events at the front. However, the trend of Western arms deliveries portends that kyiv will continue to push for the heavy main battle tanks it craves. And in the face of the war fatigue that Russia wants to see in the countries that have supplied war material to Ukraine in recent months, the reality is that these deliveries have not only grown, but have increased in quantity and offensive power. It is not to be expected that the situation will be reversed in the short or medium term.

Everything that was not possible a few months ago is now. As recently declared by the Ukrainian Defense Minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, in the past one of the representatives of Ukraine in the Minsk talks that kyiv never stopped sabotaging, Western promises go through constant supply throughout 2023. For For this reason, the arms companies have already signed the corresponding contracts. In his statements, in which he claimed to already know the volume of projectiles and missiles that will be produced by the West for later delivery to kyiv, Reznikov also insisted on the material on the wish list still in the impossible category: heavy battle tanks. and aviation. Those will be Ukraine's demands in the coming weeks. Until that material, too, passes into the category of previously impossible dreams that come true. After all, his actions seem to support the perception that Oleksiy Reznikov expressed this week: “Ukraine today fulfills NATO's mission without their shedding their blood, but shedding our blood. So they must put up their arms."

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/10/la-mi ... more-26392

Google Translator

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

“I Speak for the Georgian Legion – We Don’t Take Russian Soldiers Prisoner!”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 9, 2023
Henry Kamens

Image

Reports of Georgian soldiers dying in the fight for Ukraine’s independence are at first impression heartwarming, at least for the naïve. BUT when you dig deeper into this story, you soon realise that their plight is of their own choice, and motivated by financial considerations, not solidarity or standing up for a fledgling democracy.

As one recent headline in Georgia reads, Five Georgian Fighters Killed in Ukraine, on or around 3rd December while fighting near the city of Bakhmut, marking the deadliest day for Georgian fighters since Russia went in to Ukraine on 24 February. Since then, approximately 40 Georgians have died in the fighting. Prior to this one, other headlines, which were later removed or met with denials, claimed that the Georgian Legion had summarily executed captured Russian POWs.

Georgian Legion Commander Denies Involvement in Russian PoW Incident

The work of the Georgian Legion is highly suspect, as is its Commander, Mamuka Mamulashvili. He told Civil.ge that the Legion “has nothing to do” with the filmed incident [execution] involving Russian prisoners of war in Makiivka village, in the Luhansk region of Ukraine.

Mamulashvili stated that the claim represents “Russian disinformation”, and that this is “not the first such case.” However, a few days prior Mamulashvli had bragged in a video that executing prisoners was standard practice amongst the Georgian Legion.

The day after, he confirmed that they had committed the executions. The IDs of some of those involved, including a confession from Mamuka, are in the above-linked.

Yes, we tie the hands and feet of Russian soldiers. I speak for the Georgian Legion – we don’t take Russian soldiers as prisoners, nor Kadyrovites (Chechens) – not one!

The New York Times reported the veracity of the videos, but tried to dismiss them and claimed that they showed grisly before-and-after scenes of the encounter earlier this month, in which at least 11 Russians, most of whom are seen lying on the ground, appear to have been shot dead at close range after one of their fellow fighters suddenly opened fire on Ukrainian soldiers standing nearby. There are other allegations of those units, and the regular Ukrainian army, routinely executing POWS, which as Russian media outlets have written, “Are being ignored by international institutions”…

It is also reported that a representative of the United Nations Office for Human Rights asked Kyiv to ensure that such allegations were “promptly, fully and effectively” investigated, adding that the UN was looking into the available evidence. The UN Human Rights Commission has stated that “prisoners of war must be treated humanely at all times – from capture until release & repatriation.

We call for an end to torture & ill-treatment, full access to prisoners of wars & accountability.” Its Twitter page also shows human rights abuses consisting of civilians being duct taped to utility poles, although such instances of blatant violation are being ignored by the mainstream Western media.

Is Georgia directly involved?

Recent media reports have lamented the deaths of the most recent group of Georgian mercenary fighters, who were killed after their detachment was attacked by a group of Kadyrovites, which is how the Georgian media describes Chechen detachments fighting on the side of the Russian Federation.

It is interesting to note that Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili, who grew up in France and whose family played all sides prior to escaping to there 100 years ago, immediately offered her condolences to the families, friends, and relatives of “all Georgian fighters who have died in Ukraine.”

The number of dead Georgians now stands at 40, and counting, and it is thought that nearly 2,000 Georgians are engaged in the fight. Zurabishvili’s condolences seem more than a bit strange, considering she must know the history of the group, and its actual funding source, admitted war crimes, and how it exists outside of any official policy or approval by the elected Georgian government.

That Georgian government also realises that the Georgian Legion, which had once found a safe haven in Ukraine, is no longer safe there, and its members will soon be returning to Georgia dead or alive, with the help of other foreign fighters, where those with the skills may consider staging a violent coup. Warnings of this eventuality have been widely discussed in the Georgian print media, Georgian TV being under the control of outside influences.

The Georgian presidency is now only a token position, with the real power vested in parliament and the PM. Their active participation in a foreign war, and how their funding has been from the CIA and other foreign sources, is what raises eyebrows. It is also becoming very difficult to have alternative views of situation in Ukraine, even for US officials, due to threats which may prove terminal.

The French-Swiss Connection

Let us not forget that Nona Mamulashvili, and her infamous brother’s, French education was provided by Dominique Saudan, a Swiss ex-serviceman who worked in the OSCE mission in Tbilisi during 2000, sent by the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dominique openly spoke with colleagues about young Nona Mamulashvili, and how he had fallen in love with her and given her money and his house in Paris to live, and despite his admitted sexual problems.

Likely such self-inflicted gossip was part of the subterfuge. We can be fairly certain that both Nona and Mamuka Mamulashvili took advantage of his attention and used him for years.

However, they themselves were the ones actually being used by a foreign intelligence agency or agencies. It is no coincidence that Saudan gained part of his education in Russia, and did a tour of duty in Kosovo, naturally as a peacekeeper.

In the opinion of her former colleagues, “Even after living in Paris Nona Mamulashvili was the same faceless and rustic-looking girl without any semblance of high society and fashionable taste, but somehow after she returned to Tbilisi she immediately started working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”. In fact, she was personally brought there by Salome Zurabishvili when she was the minister. This was indeed very strange, as Nona demonstrated little to no competence, and did nothing, several of her former co-workers claimed.

Nona was eventually dismissed from the Ministry just after Salome herself was. But Saudan’s money, connections to others in France, and free apartment made it possible for her brother Manuka, now head of the Georgian Legion, to come to France. With the change in government Nona was a liability and no longer needed, but she found a home as an MP representing the UNM, the party of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili.

The loving brother often repeats in TV and print interviews that he has a French diplomatic education. However, he does not mention that his sister and a well-connected Swiss officer made all this possible. His present connections to US think tanks, as noted in a recent interview with Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute, could only have been established from such a source.

Mamuka’s background is in Abkhazia, a network of railway criminals, links to former FSB and KBG networks of patronage and organised crime. That is just the sort of background that can be liability in civilian life. This is also true of others in the Georgian Legion; there many contradictions in Luke Coffey’s “conversation with Commander Mamulashvili” where they discuss the current situation on the front lines of Ukraine’s heroic defence against so-called “Russian aggression” and what the future holds for the region.

Much of the information about Saudan dates back to 2003, and was well known in the OSCE mission to Georgia, and to the late 80s and early 90s, when Georgians controlled railway terminals and freight transit throughout the former Soviet Union. However, this information is disappearing from the internet, even in the Georgian Language. It is likely that several intelligence services are involved in this, some tasked with finding incriminating evidence, others with hiding or spinning it.

We have been able to glean some information that still exists about Saudan. He speaks 14 languages, including Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian and Romanian. So he doesn’t need a translator to read and analyse information from all corners of the planet.

Live together, die together

Each and every word and action of Saudan continues to have a purpose, and often a long term one. He is not alone, as there are many useful idiots, even a former Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Giorgi Baramidze, involved in a BIGGER plan—not only to change the Georgian government by force but to involve Georgia directly in the military conflict in Ukraine.

One recent interview is revealing, much to the dismay of the Georgian government.

“I’m Giorgi Baramidze, a member of Georgian parliament, and a former vice-speaker of the Georgian Parliament. I am one of the volunteers from Georgia who is fighting on the side of Ukraine in the Georgian Legion. The current Speaker of the Georgian parliament said yesterday that there was no need to go to Kiev in order to see what’s going on. His speech made Ukrainian people angry; however, we want to say that the real Georgians are with us, with Ukraine, supporting not only with words, but also with deeds”.

Giorgi Baramidze is then asked by a Ukrainian journalist, “what do you think about the Speaker and what are Georgian people’s thoughts on this topic?” He responds,

“Of course the whole country is worried about Ukraine. This war is actually a war against 21st century fascists. This is a war for Georgia, too. Despite the Georgian authorities’ actions, people are handling the situation well. No matter how bad these authorities are, I could never imagine that they would refuse to visit Bucha and show the whole world that Russians have committed genocide there. We are ashamed of the authorities, but at the same time proud of the warriors who are here in Ukraine. These warriors didn’t owe anyone anything, and even though they were obstructed and not allowed to come here, they are fighting and dying.

Connecting the Dots as to Sponsorship

Apparently, the above rant is scripted, likely from some of the staff from the backstopping organization, CASE, which has by happenstance set up shop in Georgia. It is not difficult to connect the dots is understanding who is calling the shots, at least when the time is right to Call for Fire.

All one has to do is research who is Nona Manulashvili, her brother Mamuka, who was the father, and then their connections with US intelligence, Georgian snipers, a wide and diverse range of sponsors. Authorities should investigate the Case Study as above, some of it dating back to 2014, and contingency plans to overthrow the Georgian government. Already enough “volunteers” have been trained up and equipped for this purpose, some in Ukraine, others in Georgia, and by great trainers.

Many of the weapons are warehoused in Georgia, still in containers and original packaging, thanks to the generosity of the US and NATO member countries, and many of the arms had been previously siphoned off from the Ukrainian and Georgian army for a rainy day, or left over from the 2008 Georgian-Russian military conflict.

A portion of the financial backing in provided in part by UAE, Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority (RAKIA). Such a spider web of sticky connections should also come as no surprise, especially with all the logistical and money transfer operations.

It should come as no surprise, as Nona Mamulashvili recently posted on her Twitter account that “Georgian government officials are criticizing Georgian soldiers fighting in Ukraine and calling them “mercenaries” and threatening to revoke their citizenship.”

Salome Zurabishvili must know everything about the Mamulashvilis and what is being [alleged here] and who they are working for, and even earlier when the brother and sister were sponsored in France through various links with French and US intelligence.

It is still an open question, at least in Georgia, which Foreign Service the “lame duck” president works for now, given that she has been censored in recent months for making statements which contradict the official policy of the Georgian government. She is also in the damaged control mood over her intentions of pardoning certain high-value prisoners.

– As a close observer, knowing personally some in this so-called military unit, Legion, I can aver that The Georgian Legion is a covert means to train killers to take over the Georgian government through bloodshed, as there is no other way back for members of the UNM, as they will never again achieve power by legal means.

– If the Russians are able to take some Georgian Legion fighters prisoner, top ones, we may soon have all the answers. In the meantime, however, enough open source information is available to draw some interim conclusions.

Read Between the Lines

Intelligence agencies, the Foreign Ministry and the NGO community are concerned about the rhetoric and actions of the Georgian Legion, and fully understand that it is helping the other side by discrediting Georgia in an attempt to spoil Georgian-Russian relations. Georgian pundits could even argue that its real sponsor is the GRU, which would explain why war crimes are being committed and openly admitted to and videos posted.

The Russian-Ukrainian military conflict is a result of the work of foreign intelligence services dating back to 2014, which includes the involvement of US trained snipers in Maidan, most of whom were Georgian. However part of the picture involves returning the UNM to power in Georgia, hence the moves to discredit the country and make an armed takeover appear inevitable.

I would suggest interested parties read the Mark Twain short story War Prayer. The Georgian Legion may have far worse consequences for Georgia than Ukraine when its’ militarised volunteers return home looking for new action, and these may be more fatal than the military conflict in Ukraine itself for the Georgian state and citizens.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... -prisoner/

The Smoldering Moldovan Crisis
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 9, 2023
GORDON M. HAHN

Image

The battle between Russia and the West for Moldova has been ongoing since the Soviet collapse, despite the country’s constitutional ban on joining alliances, presumably applying only to military ones. That battle has been slowly escalating ever since the February 2014 Western-backed Maidan putsch, rise of the oligarchic-ultranationalist Maidan regime, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the Donbass conflict. Many aspects of the situation in Moldova mirror those that led to war in Ukraine: (1) a cleft state cobbled together as a result of World War II; (2) a ‘stateness problem’ with divisions between pro-Western and pro-Russian elements; (3) corresponding ethnic and religious cleavages; (4) NATO and EU encroachment on the country in opposition to Moscow’s interests and security; (5) Russian gas supply issues; and (6) worsening tensions inside the country exacerbated by Western and Russian involvement.

Like Ukraine, Moldova is a cleft state located on the cusp of the West-Eurasia dividing line between the European peninsula and the Eurasian continental – in other words, the new post-Cold War Eastern Europe. A signpost in the struggle for Moldova came in January 2020 when NATO member Romania threatened to break relations with Moldova because Kishinev under pro-Moscow then President Igor Dodon sought to join both the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and the EU (www.ng.ru/cis/2020-01-22/1_7774_moldova.html). Now, according to former Moldovan ambassador to Russia, Anatol Tsarapu argues Russo-Moldovan relations are headed for “complete collapse” (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html).

Moldova, which has stateness problems rooted in mutually antagonistic ethnic groups (Moldovans, pro-Russians in Transdniestr, Ukrainians, and pro-Russian Turkic Gagauz*), is now being targeted for full incorporation into the West, including NATO. Of course, the central conflict is between the largely Slavic (Russian and Ukrainian) Transdniestr region’s population and the Romanian Moldovan majority. Serious Western cooptation of Moldova would be sure to inflame the country’s ‘frozen conflict’ with the ethnic Russian-dominated breakaway region of Transdniestria, which borders Ukraine and is protected by Russia’s 14th Army Group, as well as with the Gagauz Autonomous Republic, the Turkic population of which looks to Moscow as its protector.

Moreover, religious tensions overlap ethnic tensions in Ukraine and are likely to be exacerbated by Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s attack on the formerly affiliate of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, could very well spillover into civil war. Tensions between the Orthodox and Uniate churches are traditionally tense in places like the central hub of Mukhachevo in the formerly Romanian territory of the Transcarpathia region in western Ukraine, and could draw in Romania, which Transcarpathia borders (along with Hungary and Slovakia), and thus Moldova, the border of which is just 100 miles away from Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region.

Ukraine would certainly support any move by Kishinev to force Transdniestr’s reintegration. Indeed, it supports these efforts whenever it can. In August, Russia’s envoy for the Moldovan-Transdniestrian issue Dmitrii Kozak was promised by Sandu that there would be no blockade of the breakaway region and no restriction on automobile plates. However, in September 2021, Ukraine started to close its territory to automobiles with Transdniestr license plates, which was unlikely to be implemented without Moldova’s approval if not outright request, something Kishinev denies it gave. But Kishinev had begun to violate its agreement with Tiraspol’ under which neutral license plates were given to Transdniestr residents, allowing them not only to travel into Ukraine but all EU territory. The transport restriction began to put strain on Transdniestr’s exports (www.ng.ru/cis/2021-09-09/1_8248_moldova.html). Thus, even before the present war, Zelenskiy and Moldova’s President Maria Sandu were cooperating to undermine Russian interests in Moldova-Transdniestr.

A crisis or civil war in Moldova might open up a second front to which Moscow might need to divert resources otherwise targeting Ukraine. It also might help bring NATO into the war; something Kiev has been struggling to achieve since February 2022. And Sandu’s Moldovan administration appears intent on escalating tensions with Moscow over several issues—most notably, that of possible NATO expansion.

BREAKING GAS TIES

The only thing still connecting Russia and Moldova are latter’s purchase of the former’s natural gas and the presence of Rssia’s 14th Army in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniestr. But Moldova is moving to get off all Russian gas and purchase it from its co-ethnic neighbor Romania. Already last winter, before the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Moldovan journalist Dmitrii Chubachenko noted that the repeated failure of Moldova to pay its gas debt and bills to GasProm, and Sandu’s failure to seek a new agreement with Moscow for well over a year despite the inevitability of a resulting gas crisis. If Moldova is to succeed in transitioning from Russian to alternative gas and avoid political instability, he argued, the West should pay for Moldova’s Russian gas in the interim at least during this winter of high prices if it cannot replace the supplies Moldova needs to avert a catastrophic gas cutoff (www.ng.ru/cis/2022-01-17/1_8347_moldova.html). The gas crisis threatens now to break Moldova and/or Transdniestr, whether by design or otherwise.

President Sandu and her ruling Action and Solidarity Party (ASP) support a full break with Russia and are using the Ukrainian method of failing to make gas payments on time, diverting gas supplies, and then asserting Moscow has unilaterally cut supplies. At a November joint press conference with EU Chair Ursula von der Leyen, Sandu emphasized the GazProm cut of supplies in half without noting Moldova’s repeated failure to pay for gas and receiving approval from Gazprom to postponement payments and Moldova’s failure to honor the stipulation in its GazProm contract that Kishinev conduct an audit of its estimated 700 million Euro debt to GazProm and begin payments on that debt by May 2022. At the same time, she has blamed protests against high energy prices on Moscow or “pro-Russian parties in Moldova and criminal groups,” referencing “much information” she never elaborated upon. At the same time, Leyen boasted that the EU had reduced its dependence on Russian gas and would help Moldova this winter with gas and electricity supplies (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html). But with the war and sanctions, non-Russian gas and electricity supplies will be more expensive for Moldova’s citizens.

According to some evidence, Ukraine is helping the Moldovan government facilitate such a break by ‘storing’ or withholding 56 million cubic meters of Russian gas that should transit to Transdniestr, as the Moldovan government has prepared shifting the country away from reliance on Russian natural gas by storing for a ‘rainy day’ over 200 billion cubic meters of gas that would have supplied the breakaway region. Some argue this is a deliberate policy to destroy Transdniestr’s economy and provoke a revolt against its pro-Russian leadership (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-27/11_8600_catastrophe.html). Unfortunately, for Kishinev, Moldova’s lone electricity plant from which energy bought from Russia is supplied is located in Transdniestria. Thus, an electrity collapse would necessitate, perhaps, a re-start of the frozen conflict.

In short, the stage is being set for a complete break from Russian not only regarding gas supplies but in overall relations in the attempt to complicate Transdniestr’s energy and political stability. In this way, with Moldova’s separation from Russian gas supplies and integration with the West and Ukraine, Transdniestr might be destabilized. That might activate the only remaining Russo-Moldovan ‘connection’ – Russia’s 14th army, which could be targeted by Ukrainian forces, among others.

INTENSIFICATION OF NATO AND EU INVOVLEMENT

It is curious indeed that on the background of a mounting gas crisis in Moldova and Europe, Moldova is moving closer to Ukraine and its military and NATO is becoming ever more involved in Moldova. In November there developed a discussion in Moldova on the possibility of transferring its territory where Russian ammunition depots are located to Ukraine. President Sandu had said earlier that she was ready to ‘share with her neighbors.’ Then the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Moldova, Viktor Shelin, stated that Ukraine’s shortage of ammunition could be solved by Moldova’s agreement to exchange those army depots for part of Ukraine’s Odessa region, which would also benefit Moldova’s fraternal state Romania, which would gain control of the Danube. Sandu, during a conversation with Telegram Channel prankers Vovan and Lexus in which she believed she was speaking with Ukrainian PM Denis Shmygal, expressed her readiness to give lands of her country to Ukraine for temporary use. She said she had discussed with representatives of Ukraine the village of Giurgiulesti in the south of Moldova, where the Republic of Moldova has 1 km of the Danube coast and a port has been built: “We have made a proposal. Your people (from Ukraine) came and inspected the territory that we are ready to provide you with. We are still trying to resolve legal issues with the port as a whole. However, we can offer you land for use for the next few years” (www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html).

Then there is the EU’s more concrete ‘Plan of the Euro-commission for the Increase of the Mobility of the Armed Forces of NATO’ (www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html). Through the Euro-commission’s NATO Plan, the European Union will connect the Moldova, Ukraine, and the Balkans in order to increase military mobility for the rapid deployment of NATO combat forces to the east. Under this plan all automobile and railroad transport systems will be adapted to facilitate the rapid movement of NATO troops to ‘the east.’ In November, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Josep Borrel stated in Kishinev that in accordance with the ‘Plan of the Euro-commission for the Increase of the Mobility of the Armed Forces of NATO’: “The military mobility Plan implies strengthening cooperation with NATO and key strategic partners such as the United States, Canada and Norway, while facilitating interaction and dialogue with regional partners and expansion countries such as Ukraine, Moldova and the Western Balkans” (http://www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html). “The European Union will involve Moldova in projects to increase military mobility for the rapid deployment of combat forces” by modernizing and interacting with EU infrastructure Moldova’s auto and rail transport infrastructures, according to Borrell. He stressed that bridges, tunnels, roads and railways are needed for this. (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html). Shelin specified: “There are stations in Moldova that were equipped in Soviet times for railway junctions where railway tracks intersect. These are Ungheni, Balti, Bender, Bessarabian. They can be used to transfer trains from the European gauge to the one that remained in the post-Soviet space from the USSR. That is, goods such as sunflower oil and grain needed in the EU can be transported from the territory of Ukraine to Europe in a mobile way. And military cargo – from the EU through Romania and Moldova – to Ukraine. Moldova will become a transit country, including for NATO military equipment” (www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html). Strategically, the EU-NATO ‘mobility plan’ undertakes to “allow the armed forces to move faster and better across borders” and “solve the problem of the deteriorating security situation after the Russian aggression against Ukraine and increase the EU’s ability to protect its citizens and infrastructure.” Borrel noted: “We need to adapt our entire mobility system so that our troops can quickly deploy their capabilities. And this is critically important for our defense: the ability to quickly transport troops from one part of the EU to another part – mainly from west to east” (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html).

Similarly, Moldova has ratified and will receive a 60 million Euro credit from the French Development Agrency to modernize the country’s energy and transport sectors and anchor them in the West, Kishinev recently restored the Kiev-Kishinev rail line (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html). The developments in transport are tied directly to security issues, as discussed below.

Moreover, the European Peace Foundation has given 40 million Euros to Kishinev for its army’s development and opened a Center for EU Support on Issues Internal Security and Border Administration “to help solve problems connected with the Russian invasion in Ukraine.” (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html). Since 2007, as has been the practice in other states that eventually joind NATO, there has been in Kishinev a Center for Information and Documentation of NATO for providing Moldovans with information about NATO, its policies, and “questions of security and Moldovan-NATO relations: (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-10-02/11_8554_moldova.html). Like Ukraine, Moldova continues is being targeted for NATO expansion, despite the country’s constitutional mandate of neutrality and the NATO expansion’s lead role in sparking war in Moldova’s neighbor, Ukraine.

The Western attempt at a somewhat asymmetrical escalation will be clear should Moldova revise its constitution and repeal its neutrality clause. In late September, Sandu’s presidential adviser on security issues and Secretary of Moldova’s Security Council Dorin Rechan seemed to be preparing the groundwork for revising Moldova’s neutral status. Stating that Kishinev ought no longer to rely on foreign policy instruments alone, one of which is the status of neutrality, he noted: “Society must understand that this is critically important for the survival of the state, funds must be allocated for defense, and the support of citizens is most important here” (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-10-02/11_8554_moldova.html). According to the leader of the Communist Party, Vladimir Voronin, Sandu and the ASP were moving in mid-November to make their move. Holding 63 of 101 seats in parliament and needing 68 to amend the constitution, Sandu’s ASP was looking for the five additional votes needed to amend the constitution (http://www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html).

As all of the above was occurring, Moscow did not remain idle. Russia appears to have successfully hacked the telephone accounts of Moldova’s highest-ranking officials, including President Maya Sandu, her advisers, Justice Minister Sergei Litvinenko, Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Son and others, sparking a political scandal. Moldovan media published private communications between them in discussion about rigging the competition for the post of head of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office in favor of the “American” Veronika Dragalin at the request of the IMF, about manipulating members of the “independent” Supreme Council of Prosecutors, about setting up ex-Prosecutor General Alexander Stoyanogo in 2021 and of pro-Russian ex–President Igor Dodon in 2019, about numerous episodes of corruption, use of official office for profit, the preparation of legislation in favor of lobbyists and “agreements” with businessmen about specific transactions. The ruling PAS party called the hacking an attempt by Russia’s FSB to block Moldova’s European course (www.ng.ru/week/2022-11-13/8_8588_week5.html).

CONCLUSION

To be sure, the West will not allow Moldova to remain vulnerable to Russian influence, no less normal relations. If this was conceivable at any time, that period ended on February 24, 2022. The Ukrainian crisis makes a Moldovan one much more likely. NATO member Romania’s ambitions in Moldova (and perhaps in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia as well) makes NATO’s drive to Moldova inevitable. With Russian troops in Transdniestria and US troops in Romania, another staging point is set for a fuller-scale NATO-Russian war.

NOTE:

*On the Gagauz see :https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... vMnW-Od93Q.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... an-crisis/

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

Pseudo-academic writings on the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine War
In this essay, I offer a short critique of the article by Anatol Lieven newly published in Responsible Statecraft entitled “Where the war in Ukraine could be headed in 2023.”

There are many articles on this subject appearing in Western media as we enter the new calendar year. I single out Lieven because he brings to the subject a certain expertise in Russian affairs, impressive academic credentials earned at respected institutions of higher education and a reasonably long period of service as a professor. In a word, what we have here is an apparently academic contribution to the discussion presented by an apparently academic minded publisher.

However, let the buyer beware. What I see here in reality is pseudo-academic writing in a pseudo-academic think tank environment.

The author offers three scenarios for the conclusion of the war this year, namely by Ukrainian victory, by Russian victory and by stalemate. So far, so good. However, as we go into each scenario it is clear that Lieven has cut the narrative to lead to a predetermined outcome which just happens to provide encouragement to the people who are paying his way. The notion that this writer could be following the truth wherever it leads him relates to some other world, not the one in which Lieven operates.

Lest the reader seek to raise the same objection to my writing, I state here and now that, unlike Lieven, I have no prediction on the war’s outcome, because the strategic, let alone the tactical intentions of the Russian military in particular are at this moment entirely opaque, which is a credit to the Kremlin’s ability to hold a secret.

War reporting presently coming from Kiev and from Moscow is totally contradictory and if you do not have money on one or the other horse, you do well to guard your silence till the power balance on the ground becomes clearer thanks to an offensive launched by one side or the other.

Back to Lieven and his first scenario of an outright Ukrainian victory, by which he means the recapture of the territories occupied by Russia, a breakthrough to the Sea of Azov. He acknowledges that this would require Kiev to overcome “a major challenge” posed by Russia, and yet he holds it out as a possibility given the way the Ukrainian forces have surprised us by their valor in this war.

Let us be frank. Even among the Capitol Hill hawks, we now see outright acknowledgement these days that the chances of Ukraine liberating its lost territories are negligible. This particular scenario is offered by Lieven as red meat to the war hawks in Washington, who want to believe in the Ukrainian chance of success to justify the billions in aid now being sent their way. To make the scenario still more worthy of time and attention, and to throw a sop to its backers given its unlikelihood, Lieven sets out the risks inherent in a Russian defeat, namely some insane escalation such as Russia’s bombing Poland, Romania or other country delivering the arms to Ukraine, leading to a direct confrontation between Moscow and Washington. But a nuclear showdown, says Lieven, could point to a peace agreement in Ukraine, one that might be sweetened for Washington if at the same time Putin were removed from power.

Putin removed from power? How, and by whom?

As I have said in the past to those in the West calling for Putin’s removal, think carefully about what you wish for. Given the present day atmosphere of wartime Russia and profound social consolidation behind the armed forces, any successor to Putin coming from the ruling elites will be far more aggressive than the urbane and restrained Vladimir Vladimirovich. There are today Russian patriots calling for the removal of Lavrov as Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Shoigu as Minister of Defense and their replacement by much tougher, no nonsense statesmen. A replacement for Putin will surely arrive with his finger on the button, ready to launch a first strike nuclear attack.

Lieven’s narrative with respect to a Russian victory is equally cut to meet his preferred outcome, not an outcome dictated by the facts. From the very start, he argues that the Russians are stuck in defensive posture and have no near term plans for an offensive. And what is meant by the near term? And why not look just beyond that time period?

From this, without further ado, Lieven argues essentially that the two forces are in stalemate, his third scenario. Why stalemate? Because they have each suffered 100,000 or more casualties. Says who? Here we have the issue of Lieven’s uncritical reliance on US and British intelligence estimates. And what if the actual correlation of losses is 10 Ukrainians to 1 Russian, as some Russian estimates claim?

Just take a look at the latest development in the war on the ground. Yesterday, the Russian military command announced the results of their “revenge” strike against the Ukrainian forces in retaliation for the loss of 93 dead during the New Year’s eve Ukrainian artillery barrage on a Russian barracks in Makeyevka, Donbas. The Russians now targeted Ukrainian barracks in Kramatorsk, where there also were high concentrations of soldiers, and they claim to have killed 600 Ukrainian soldiers. Six to one. A reasonable figure to use in our calculations of losses of the sides generally. No better or worse than 1:1.

In closing, I remind readers that I have directed attention to one of the more seemingly judicious and informed journalists reporting to Western media on the war. Yet, here too the Piper plays the tune he is given..

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/01/09/ ... raine-war/

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

Regarding the names of the settlements of the DPR
January 10, 10:46

Image

Regarding the names of the settlements of the DPR

According to the law of the DPR, the city is called Artemovsk. The city is now called Bakhmut according to the laws of Ukraine adopted under Poroshenko.

As soon as the city is liberated, Artemovsk will appear on the map in accordance with the decree of the head of the DPR of March 12, 2022, returning all the names of the cities of the Donetsk People's Republic within the borders of the former Donetsk region of Ukraine as of May 11, 2014, when the referendum was held on the withdrawal of the DPR from Ukraine.

All renaming by Ukraine in the occupied territories of the DPR after May 11, 2014 is illegal, and therefore will be canceled. All Ukrainian soldiers who interfere with this process will be killed (although not only for this reason 😀) as occupiers.

If the inhabitants of the city want not Artemovsk, but Bakhmut, they themselves can put forward such an initiative after the war to a local referendum. And if they want their city to be called Bakhmut, not Artemovsk, they should have the opportunity to vote for it.
And until that moment there will be Artemovsk, no matter how someone foams about this on the Internet. The soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine dying in Artemovsk are dying just for Bakhmut.
Our soldiers liberate Artemovsk.

How ironic (in Mikhalkov's voice)

PS. Pushilin today confirmed that this is exactly what will happen. After the war, residents will have the opportunity to speak out on these issues. Without Ukraine.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8091027.html

Google Translator

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

Biden’s existential angst in Ukraine
It is becoming increasingly clear that the US is fighting in Ukraine to preserve its global hegemony

January 09, 2023 by M.K. Bhadrakumar

Image
President Vladimir Putin attending Christmas Mass, Annunciation Cathedral, Kremlin, Moscow, January 7, 2023.

The bipartisan consensus in the Beltway on the United States being the ‘indispensable’ world power is usually attributed to the neocons who have been the driving force of the US foreign and security policy in successive administrations since the 1970s.

An op-ed in the Washington Post on Saturday titled Time is not on Ukraine’s side, co-authored by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in George W. Bush presidency and Defense Secretary Robert Gates (who served under both Bush and Barack Obama), highlights this paradigm.

Rice and Gates are robust cold warriors who are enthusiastic about NATO’s war against Russia. But their grouse is that President Biden should ‘dramatically’ step up in Ukraine.

The op-ed harks back to the two world wars that marked the US’ ascendance as world power and warns that the US-led ‘rules-based order’ since 1990 — code word for US global hegemony — is in peril if Biden fails in Ukraine.

Rice and Gates indirectly acknowledge that Russia is on a winning streak, contrary to the Western triumphalist narrative so far.
Evidently, the expected Russian offensive ahead is rattling their nerves.

Equally, the op-ed is contextual to American politics. The House speaker stalemate and its dramatic denouement in a bare-knuckle political fight among Republicans presages a dysfunctional Congress between now and 2024 election.

Kevin McCarthy, who had former President Donald Trump’s backing, finally won but only after making a series of concessions to the populist wing of the GOP, which has weakened his authority. The AP reported, “Fingers were pointed, words exchanged and violence apparently just averted… It was the end of a bitter standoff that had shown the strengths and fragility of American democracy.”

A senior Kremlin politician already commented on it. McCarthy himself, in his statement after election as the new House speaker, listed as his priorities the commitment to a strong economy, counteracting illegal immigration through the Mexican border and competing with China, but omitted any reference to the Ukraine situation or providing funds to Kiev.

Indeed, earlier in November, he had asserted that the Republicans in the House would resist unlimited and unjustified financial aid to Ukraine.

Now, Rice and Gates refuse to march in lockstep with Trump. But, although a diminished player, Trump still remains an active player, a massive presence and exercises functional control and is by far the largest voice in the Republican Party. Arguably, what defines the GOP today is Trump. Therefore, his backing for McCarthy is going to be consequential.

Biden understands that. Conceivably, the Rice-Gates op-ed was mooted by the White House and the US security establishment and scripted by the neocons. The op-ed appeared on the day after the January 5 joint statement by Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz underscoring their ‘unwavering solidarity’ with Ukraine.

Under immense pressure from Biden, Germany and France caved in last week to provide Ukraine with Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Scholz also agreed that Germany will supply an additional Patriot air defense battery to Ukraine. (A top SPD politician in Berlin has since voiced reservations.)

On the same day as the op-ed appeared, Pentagon arranged, unusually for a Saturday, a press briefing by Laura Cooper, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia. Cooper stated explicitly that the war in Ukraine threatens the US’ global standing:

“From an overall strategic perspective, it is hard to emphasize enough the devastating consequences if Putin were to be successful in achieving his objective of taking over Ukraine. This would rewrite international boundaries in a way that we have not seen since World War II. And our ability to reverse these gains and to support and stand by the sovereignty of a nation, is something that resonates not just in Europe, but all around the world.”

The cat is out of the bag, finally — the US is fighting in Ukraine to preserve its global hegemony. Coincidence or not, in a sensational interview in Kiev, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov also blurted out in the weekend that Kiev has consciously allowed itself to be used by NATO in the bloc’s wider conflict with Moscow!

To quote him, “At the NATO Summit in Madrid (in June 2022), it was clearly delineated that over the coming decade, the main threat to the alliance would be the Russian Federation. Today Ukraine is eliminating this threat. We are carrying out NATO’s mission today. They aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with weapons.”

Reznikov, an ex-Soviet army officer, claimed that he personally received holiday greeting cards and text messages from Western defense ministers to this effect. The stakes couldn’t be higher, with Reznikov also asserting that Ukraine’s NATO membership is a done thing.

Indeed, on Saturday, Pentagon announced the Biden administration’s single biggest security assistance package for Ukraine so far from the Presidential Drawdown. Evidently, the Biden Administration is pulling out all the stops. Another UN Security Council meeting has been scheduled for January 13.

But Putin has made it clear that “Russia is open to a serious dialogue – under the condition that the Kiev authorities meet the clear demands that have been repeatedly laid out, and recognize the new territorial realities.”

As for the war, the tidings from Donbas are extremely worrisome. Soledar is in Russian hands and the Wagner fighters are tightening the noose around Bakhmut, a strategic communication hub and linchpin of Ukrainian deployments in Donbas.

On the other hand, contrary to expectations, Moscow is unperturbed about sporadic theatrical Ukrainian drone strikes inside Russia. The Russian public opinion remains firmly supportive of Putin.

The commander of the Russian forces, Gen. Sergey Surovikin has prioritized the fortification of the so-called ‘contact line,’ which
is proving effective against Ukrainian counterattacks.

Pentagon is unsure of Surovikin’s future strategy. From what they know of his brilliant success in evicting NATO officers from Syria’s Aleppo in 2016, siege and attrition war are Surovikin’s forte. But one never knows. A steady Russian build-up in Belarus is underway. The S-400 and Iskander missile systems have been deployed there. A NATO (Polish) attack on Belarus is no longer realistic.

On January 4, Putin hailed the New Year with the formidable frigate Admiral Gorshkov carrying “cutting-edge Zircon hypersonic missile system, which has no analogue,” embarking on “a long-distance naval mission across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea.”

A week earlier, the sixth missile-carrying strategic nuclear-powered submarine of the Borei-A class, the Generalissimus Suvorov, joined the Russian Navy. Such submarines are capable of carrying 16 inter-continental ballistic missiles Bulava.

The fog of war envelops Russian intentions. Rice and Gates have warned that time works in favor of Russia: “Ukraine’s military capability and economy are now dependent almost entirely on lifelines from the West — primarily, the United States. Absent another major Ukrainian breakthrough and success against Russian forces, Western pressures on Ukraine to negotiate a cease-fire will grow as months of military stalemate pass. Under current circumstances, any negotiated cease-fire would leave Russian forces in a strong position.”

This is a brutally frank assessment. Biden’s call to Scholz on Friday shows the angst in his mind, too. With the fragmentation of the political class within America, Biden can ill afford cracks in allied unity as well.

Curiously, this was also the main thrust of an article a fortnight ago by a top Russian pundit Andrey Kortunov in the Chinese Communist Party daily Global Times titled US domestic woes could push Ukraine to sidelines of American public discourse.

Kortunov wrote: “Putting emotions aside, one has to accept that the conflict has already become existential not only for Ukraine and Russia, but for the US as well: the Biden administration cannot accept a defeat in Ukraine without facing major negative implications for the US positions all over the world.”

Kortunov was writing almost a fortnight before Rice and Gates began getting the same metaphysical perception. But the neocons aren’t yet prepared to accept that the choice is actually staring at them — Biden swimming alongside Putin toward a multipolar world order, or sinking in the troubled waters.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/09/ ... n-ukraine/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 10, 2023 11:58 pm

Ukraine And Russia Agree - Russia Is Fighting NATO

Russia and Ukraine have publicly agreed on a fundamental and important issue.

The question is who Russia is fighting in Ukraine.

During an interview with a Ukrainian TV station the Oleksii Reznikov, the defense minister of Ukraine, answered that the Ukraine has "already become a de facto member of the NATO alliance."

Image

The interview, given four days ago, is available on Youtube. English language subtitles can be generated by autotranslate. The sentence pictured above comes at about 1:25 minutes in.

Sputnik, which seems to be the only international outlet that has picked up on this, has more (from ~11:05 min):

“At the NATO Summit in Madrid” in June 2022, “it was clearly delineated that over the coming decade, the main threat to the alliance would be the Russian Federation. Today Ukraine is eliminating this threat. We are carrying out NATO’s mission today. They aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with weapons,” Reznikov said ...
The official said Kiev was being constantly reminded by its “Western partners” that it, “like a real shield, is defending the entire civilized world, the entire West,” from the Russians, and said that he personally has recently received holiday greeting cards and text messages from Western defense ministers to that effect.

Reznikov expressed “absolute” certainty in Ukraine’s eventual entry into NATO, saying he was “convinced that this is an absolutely realistic possibility... Of course they won’t accept this political decision via consensus before our victory. This is clear. But after the victory, after all this ends and some kind of peace arrives, NATO countries, first and foremost, will be interested in the construction of this security architecture. They have seen their own weak spots, they have seen who is strong and powerful. Today they are teaching us but tomorrow our officers, sergeants and even privates will be teaching them how to fight the Russians. Russia remains one of the threats to NATO, and for Europe as a whole.”


Reuters reports today that the Russian government agrees with the core of Reznikov's view:

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev is seen by diplomats as one of the major hardline influences on Putin, who has promised victory in Ukraine despite a series of battlefield setbacks.
"The events in Ukraine are not a clash between Moscow and Kyiv - this is a military confrontation between Russia and NATO, and above all the United States and Britain," Patrushev told the Argumenti i Fakti newspaper in an interview.

"The Westerners' plans are to continue to pull Russia apart, and eventually just erase it from the political map of the world," Patrushev said.
...
Asked about Patrushev's remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said NATO and the United States were part of the Ukraine conflict.

"De facto they have already become an indirect party to this conflict, pumping Ukraine with weapons, technologies, intelligence information and so on," Peskov told a regular news briefing.


As both sides now seem to agree on the real participants of the conflict we can assume that they will later also come to an agreement about its outcome. That however will still take a while.

The heavily fortified Ukrainian strongholds in Bahkmut (Artyomovsk) and Soledar are about to fall. The long fight over these cities has come at a high price particularly for their defenders. All the reserves the Ukrainian command has thrown into them have been ground up by massive Russian artillery applications.

Other reserves the Ukrainian army is still training up are waiting for new supplies of 'western' weapons. But what has been newly promised, mostly infantry fighting vehicles (aluminum cans), will only become available in late spring. The most likely plan the Ukrainian command will want to pursue is a move south towards Mariupol (bottom right) to severe the Russian land connection to Crimea.

Image

There is however only a small chance that such a move during spring could be successful. Until then Russia has the time to make its own moves.

Posted by b on January 10, 2023 at 15:30 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/01/u ... .html#more

Biden’s existential angst in Ukraine
It is becoming increasingly clear that the US is fighting in Ukraine to preserve its global hegemony

January 09, 2023 by M.K. Bhadrakumar

Image
President Vladimir Putin attending Christmas Mass, Annunciation Cathedral, Kremlin, Moscow, January 7, 2023.

The bipartisan consensus in the Beltway on the United States being the ‘indispensable’ world power is usually attributed to the neocons who have been the driving force of the US foreign and security policy in successive administrations since the 1970s.

An op-ed in the Washington Post on Saturday titled Time is not on Ukraine’s side, co-authored by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in George W. Bush presidency and Defense Secretary Robert Gates (who served under both Bush and Barack Obama), highlights this paradigm.

Rice and Gates are robust cold warriors who are enthusiastic about NATO’s war against Russia. But their grouse is that President Biden should ‘dramatically’ step up in Ukraine.

The op-ed harks back to the two world wars that marked the US’ ascendance as world power and warns that the US-led ‘rules-based order’ since 1990 — code word for US global hegemony — is in peril if Biden fails in Ukraine.

Rice and Gates indirectly acknowledge that Russia is on a winning streak, contrary to the Western triumphalist narrative so far.
Evidently, the expected Russian offensive ahead is rattling their nerves.

Equally, the op-ed is contextual to American politics. The House speaker stalemate and its dramatic denouement in a bare-knuckle political fight among Republicans presages a dysfunctional Congress between now and 2024 election.

Kevin McCarthy, who had former President Donald Trump’s backing, finally won but only after making a series of concessions to the populist wing of the GOP, which has weakened his authority. The AP reported, “Fingers were pointed, words exchanged and violence apparently just averted… It was the end of a bitter standoff that had shown the strengths and fragility of American democracy.”

A senior Kremlin politician already commented on it. McCarthy himself, in his statement after election as the new House speaker, listed as his priorities the commitment to a strong economy, counteracting illegal immigration through the Mexican border and competing with China, but omitted any reference to the Ukraine situation or providing funds to Kiev.

Indeed, earlier in November, he had asserted that the Republicans in the House would resist unlimited and unjustified financial aid to Ukraine.

Now, Rice and Gates refuse to march in lockstep with Trump. But, although a diminished player, Trump still remains an active player, a massive presence and exercises functional control and is by far the largest voice in the Republican Party. Arguably, what defines the GOP today is Trump. Therefore, his backing for McCarthy is going to be consequential.

Biden understands that. Conceivably, the Rice-Gates op-ed was mooted by the White House and the US security establishment and scripted by the neocons. The op-ed appeared on the day after the January 5 joint statement by Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz underscoring their ‘unwavering solidarity’ with Ukraine.

Under immense pressure from Biden, Germany and France caved in last week to provide Ukraine with Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Scholz also agreed that Germany will supply an additional Patriot air defense battery to Ukraine. (A top SPD politician in Berlin has since voiced reservations.)

On the same day as the op-ed appeared, Pentagon arranged, unusually for a Saturday, a press briefing by Laura Cooper, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia. Cooper stated explicitly that the war in Ukraine threatens the US’ global standing:

“From an overall strategic perspective, it is hard to emphasize enough the devastating consequences if Putin were to be successful in achieving his objective of taking over Ukraine. This would rewrite international boundaries in a way that we have not seen since World War II. And our ability to reverse these gains and to support and stand by the sovereignty of a nation, is something that resonates not just in Europe, but all around the world.”

The cat is out of the bag, finally — the US is fighting in Ukraine to preserve its global hegemony. Coincidence or not, in a sensational interview in Kiev, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov also blurted out in the weekend that Kiev has consciously allowed itself to be used by NATO in the bloc’s wider conflict with Moscow!

To quote him, “At the NATO Summit in Madrid (in June 2022), it was clearly delineated that over the coming decade, the main threat to the alliance would be the Russian Federation. Today Ukraine is eliminating this threat. We are carrying out NATO’s mission today. They aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with weapons.”

Reznikov, an ex-Soviet army officer, claimed that he personally received holiday greeting cards and text messages from Western defense ministers to this effect. The stakes couldn’t be higher, with Reznikov also asserting that Ukraine’s NATO membership is a done thing.

Indeed, on Saturday, Pentagon announced the Biden administration’s single biggest security assistance package for Ukraine so far from the Presidential Drawdown. Evidently, the Biden Administration is pulling out all the stops. Another UN Security Council meeting has been scheduled for January 13.

But Putin has made it clear that “Russia is open to a serious dialogue – under the condition that the Kiev authorities meet the clear demands that have been repeatedly laid out, and recognize the new territorial realities.”

As for the war, the tidings from Donbas are extremely worrisome. Soledar is in Russian hands and the Wagner fighters are tightening the noose around Bakhmut, a strategic communication hub and linchpin of Ukrainian deployments in Donbas.

On the other hand, contrary to expectations, Moscow is unperturbed about sporadic theatrical Ukrainian drone strikes inside Russia. The Russian public opinion remains firmly supportive of Putin.

The commander of the Russian forces, Gen. Sergey Surovikin has prioritized the fortification of the so-called ‘contact line,’ which
is proving effective against Ukrainian counterattacks.

Pentagon is unsure of Surovikin’s future strategy. From what they know of his brilliant success in evicting NATO officers from Syria’s Aleppo in 2016, siege and attrition war are Surovikin’s forte. But one never knows. A steady Russian build-up in Belarus is underway. The S-400 and Iskander missile systems have been deployed there. A NATO (Polish) attack on Belarus is no longer realistic.

On January 4, Putin hailed the New Year with the formidable frigate Admiral Gorshkov carrying “cutting-edge Zircon hypersonic missile system, which has no analogue,” embarking on “a long-distance naval mission across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea.”

A week earlier, the sixth missile-carrying strategic nuclear-powered submarine of the Borei-A class, the Generalissimus Suvorov, joined the Russian Navy. Such submarines are capable of carrying 16 inter-continental ballistic missiles Bulava.

The fog of war envelops Russian intentions. Rice and Gates have warned that time works in favor of Russia: “Ukraine’s military capability and economy are now dependent almost entirely on lifelines from the West — primarily, the United States. Absent another major Ukrainian breakthrough and success against Russian forces, Western pressures on Ukraine to negotiate a cease-fire will grow as months of military stalemate pass. Under current circumstances, any negotiated cease-fire would leave Russian forces in a strong position.”

This is a brutally frank assessment. Biden’s call to Scholz on Friday shows the angst in his mind, too. With the fragmentation of the political class within America, Biden can ill afford cracks in allied unity as well.

Curiously, this was also the main thrust of an article a fortnight ago by a top Russian pundit Andrey Kortunov in the Chinese Communist Party daily Global Times titled US domestic woes could push Ukraine to sidelines of American public discourse.

Kortunov wrote: “Putting emotions aside, one has to accept that the conflict has already become existential not only for Ukraine and Russia, but for the US as well: the Biden administration cannot accept a defeat in Ukraine without facing major negative implications for the US positions all over the world.”

Kortunov was writing almost a fortnight before Rice and Gates began getting the same metaphysical perception. But the neocons aren’t yet prepared to accept that the choice is actually staring at them — Biden swimming alongside Putin toward a multipolar world order, or sinking in the troubled waters.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/09/ ... n-ukraine/

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

BOOK REVIEW: RUSSIA WITHOUT BLINDERS
Posted by Roger Keeran | Jan 9, 2023 | Featured Stories | 0

Image

REVIEWED BY ROGER KEERAN
December 29, 2022
Russia without Blinders: From the Conflict in Ukraine to a Turning Point in World Politics [Original title: La Russie Sans Oeilleres: Du conflit en Ukraine au tournant geopolitique mondial] edited by Maxime Vivas, Aymeric Monville and Jean-Pierre Page. (Paris, France: Editions Delga, 2022. 22 Euros. Pp. 340)


Today the conflict in Ukraine advances every day and intensifies with Russian destruction of the Ukrainian infrastructure, with the western gift to Ukraine of more and more sophisticated and destructive weapons, with provocations like the missile aimed at Poland, and the Ukrainian attacks within Russia. Presently, the conflict in Ukraine has brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

In 1962, U.S. leaders believed that Russian missiles in Cuba posed such a national security threat that they were willing to risk nuclear war to get them removed. Yet, the U.S. and NATO propose creating exactly this kind of threat to Russia. The gravity of the current situation is obvious if one can imagine the reaction of Russian leaders at the prospect of American/NATO nuclear missiles in Kiev two hours flight from Moscow. Thus, the lack of an outcry against the war in Ukraine and the almost complete absence of calls for a ceasefire and negotiations constitute one of the most glaring and dangerous aspects of the present moment.

Though Washington officials and the mainstream media always refer to this conflict as Putin’s “unprovoked war,” seldom has a conflict been so clearly provoked as this one. The expansion of NATO since 1991 and U.S. insistence that Ukraine be allowed to join NATO are the most obvious and proximate causes of this conflict. By increasing economic sanctions against Russia, by arming of Ukraine with ever more sophisticated weapons, and by saying that Putin is a “butcher” who “can no longer remain in power” (Biden in March 2022) and by insisting that Ukraine’s right to join NATO is non-negotiable, the United States continues to escalate the conflict and place a negotiated settlement further out of reach.

In spite of this situation, in the United State and Europe, no movement for peace in Ukraine has emerged. Aside from a few right-wing outliers like Senator Rand Paul, and a hastily withdrawn letter to Biden from the House Progressive Caucus calling for negotiations, no elected officials have denounced American behavior or called for peace. Almost no intelligent and informed discussion of the war occurs in the media and none at whatsoever in the recent electoral debates. The entire nation seems plunging into the unknown with blinders on.

This makes the current volume an island of facts and reason in a sea of insanity. Russia without Blinders was edited by Aymeric Monville, the head of Delga Editions, the main Marxist publishing house in France, Maxime Vivas, author of a recent book on the anti-Chinese “ravings” in France, and Jean-Pierre Page, a writer and past director of the International Department of the French General Confederation of Labor (CGT). It has seventeen contributors mostly scholars, writers and activists in France, whose contributions fall under three headings: Russophobia, the Origins of the Conflict, and Russia and the World. While exposing the phobia and propaganda that has completely obscured the meaning of this war, the book, in the words of the editors, aims to be not pro-Russian but pro-truth.

To the extent that the book’s many authors and subjects could be reduced to a simple argument it would be this: The war in Ukraine did not begin with the Russian invasion of February 23, 2022, but was rooted in events at least as far back as the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its meaning is far more serious than the simpleminded notion that this is an “unprovoked” war driven by a madman’s desire to restore the Czarist empire. Rather, this war is symbolic of a seismic change in international relations and balance of forces that has occurred since the collapse of the Soviet Union and which has intensified in recent years with the economic recovery of Russia, now the world’s eleventh largest economy and the rise of China, which has become the world’s second largest economy. The United States and its European vassals are determined to hold on to their superiority and even expand their economic, military, and ideological dominance. The authors further argue that these imperial ambitions are doomed to fail and that the war is actually showing the limits of American power and the emergence of a multipolar world. That is, the machinations of American imperialism are giving rise to its opposite, a growing resistance to American dominance not only by Russia and China and but also by much of Africa, Asia and Latin America. This resistance manifests itself by the rejection of American hypocritical espousal of democracy, sovereignty, and the rule of law, as well as the rebellion against the domination of the American dollar, American sanctions, and American neoliberal policies.

It is impossible for a short review to do justice to the array of topics and the wealth of information and the high quality of research contained in these articles, which unfortunately are only available in French. Therefore, I will focus on the book’s main arguments as to the origin of the war and the increasing isolation and weakness of the U.S. revealed by the war.

Bombarded as we are by daily horror stories of Putin’s madness and authoritarianism and Russian war atrocities, torture, executions, mass graves, kidnappings, and civilian bombings, it is hard to focus on the causes of the conflict. Yet, without some factual understanding, it is easy to be swept up by war hysteria. The history reveals that far from this being an “unprovoked war,” it was provoked by the expansion of NATO and the longstanding designs on Ukraine by American policy-makers.

Several aspects of this “hidden history” of the war stand out. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, central Asia, especially Ukraine, has assumed major importance in the thinking of strategists concerned with preserving American world dominance. In The Grand Chessboard (1997), Zbigniew Brzezinski said “For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia….and America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.” According to Brzezinski, on this international chessboard, Ukraine is the “geopolitical pivot.” Ukraine is a vast territory rich in gas, oil, wheat, rare minerals, and nuclear power. If “Russia regains control over Ukraine,” it automatically acquires the potential to become “a powerful imperial state,” and a challenge to the U.S.

Since 1990, the U.S. has tried to drive a wedge between Ukraine and Russia. In 1990, as the Soviet Union dissolved, the Ukrainians participated in a referendum in which some 90 percent voted to remain in a union with Russia. The United States, however, promoted Ukrainian leaders hostile to Russia. In 2010 Viktor Yanoukovitch was elected president. Yanoukovitch tried to weave a course friendly both to Russia and European Union. In the legislative election of 2012, Yanoukovitch’s party won more seats than the other three parties combined. The next year, however, when he refused to sign an agreement of association with the European Union, mass demonstrations encouraged by the U.S. broke out in what became known as the Euromaidan movement. The administration of President Barack Obama supported, financed and coached this movement, which was taken over by right-wing nationalists including neofascists and which eventually forced the president to flee the country. On December 13, 2013, the U.S. State Department’s Undersecretary for Europe, Victoria Nuland, said that the U.S. had invested over five billion dollars in promoting democracy in Ukraine, that is to say in promoting the movement that ousted the democratically elected president. Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the American ambassador to Ukraine, played an active role in choosing the new government of Ukraine that included neo-fascists.

In 2019, during the administration of Donald Trump, Vladimir Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine. The millionaire comedian, who is now lauded as the heroic defender of democracy, had a sordid past completely overlooked by the American media. The Pandora Papers exposed him as one of the corrupt world leaders with vast wealth stored in offshore accounts. Moreover, Zelensky was closely connected to the corrupt oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky, the owner TV station where Zelensky’s show appeared and the owner or a major bank, Privat Bank, whose assets the government seized for corruption in 2016. In power, Zelensky made a leader of the neo-nazis governor of Odessa. He also outlawed trade unions and a dozen political groups, including the Communist Party. Also, Zelensky pursued military action against the separatists in the Donbas, a pro-Russian and largely working class area of Ukraine. Since 2014, military strikes on the Donbas have killed 14,000 and wounded 40,000 citizens. The worst atrocities were linked to the new-fascist army unit the Azov Battalion. Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who served as the American-picked Prime Minister between 2014 and 2016, referred to the citizens of Donetsk and Lougansk as “non-humans.”

According to Page, under Zelensky, the U.S. completely “colonized” Ukraine. It sent billions of dollars of military aid and advisors, built 26 laboratories for biological research, seized a big role in Ukrainian industry and media, allowed American agribusiness to buy huge tracts of farmland, and proposed Ukraine joining NATO. Zelensky in turn ended all relations with Russia and suppressed all political opposition.

This was the background to the Russian intervention of February 2022. Putin gave three objectives for this action: to de-nazify Ukraine, to de-militarize Ukraine, and to stop the massacre of citizens in the Donbas.

When NATO met on March 24, 2022, Biden said that the conflict in Ukraine meant that there was going to be a “new world order” and “we must direct it.” Biden also said that Putin was a butcher. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: “Our special military operation is designed to put an end to the rash expansion and rash course toward the complete international domination by the United States and other western countries.”

The book’s argument that the imperial designs of the United States is important and incontestable. The other thrust of the argument–that the war symbolizes the decline of American power and a realignment of global forces–is equally important though more debatable. Jean-Pierre Page and other of the book’s contributors contend that the U.S. attempt to isolate Russia politically and weaken it economically is doomed to fail. In the first place, Russia is one of the most economically self-sufficient nations of the world. The Russian economy has rebounded from the Soviet collapse and privatization and represents one the world’s largest economies. Moreover, it is rich in natural resources — gas, oil, coal, gold, wheat, nickel, aluminum, uranium, neon, lumber among other things. The idea that economic sanctions, which have never proved an effective instrument of international policy (witness the Cuban blockade), are going to force Russia to relent in the face of NATO expansion, which it sees as an existential threat, is simply delusional.

Furthermore, the expectation that the rest of the world would go along with the unilateral economic sanctions, which are illegal under the United Nations charter, has proven to be phantasmagorical. In spite of a tremendous campaign of cajoling, pressure, and threats, the United States has not managed to win the backing of any countries outside of Europe. The countries constituting BRICS–Brazil, India, China and South Africa have rejected sanctions, but so have such other large regional economies as Mexico, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, Algeria and Egypt. The resistance to U.S. sanctions is part of a larger resistance to the domination of American neoliberal policies and the U.S. dollar. More and more countries have agreed to buy oil and other commodities with rubles, yuans and gold in place of the once mighty dollar. In the words quoted by of one of the book’s contributors, Tamara Kunanayakam, the resistance to sanctions is the sign or a new more fragmented global order in which states are avoiding the geopolitical objectives of the grand powers to pursue their own economic needs.

For all of its merits, the book is not without limitations. For all its strengths in exposing the imperialist ambitions and machinations of the U.S., the book ignores the fact that Russia also has its monopoly capitalists with designs on expanding to Ukraine and elsewhere, and Russia too also part of the imperialist stage of world history. For a book looking at Russia “without blinders,” the authors are strangely blind to Russian imperialism. Lenin argued that is not just a policy but a stage in the development of capitalism dominated by monopolies and finance. As Andrew Murray has pointed out (Communist Review Autumn 2022), Russia ticks off many of the boxes of Lenin’s description of imperialism. It present “an astonishing degree of economic monopolization” with 22 oligarchic groups accounting for 42 percent of employment and 39 percent of sales. In finance, Sberbank provides banking for 70 percent of Russians, controls a third of all bank assets, and operates in twenty-two countries. Moreover, Russia has repeatedly used military interventions in Chechnya, Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics as well as in Syria and (with the mercenary Wagner Group) west Africa. Simply put, in Murray’s words Russia “is an imperialist power.”

At the Ideological Seminar in Caracas, Venezuela, in the fall of 2022, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) put forward a similar analysis (see MLToday.com, November 6, 2022): “Recently, in the face of developments and especially the imperialist war in Ukraine, other CPs have focused only on the obvious responsibilities of the US, the EU, and NATO, which has been advancing and encircling Russia for years. In fact, this was combined with the approach that Russia is a capitalist but not an imperialist power. This approach is detached from the fact that imperialism is not just an aggressive policy but capitalism in its modern stage, the monopoly stage. Today, large monopolies prevail in the entire world and in Russia. The plans of NATO, the US, and the EU in the past 30 years have clearly been a powder keg for this conflict, but when did this powder keg begin filling up? Did it not begin with the overthrow of socialism, the dissolution of the USSR —in fact through a coup d’état— against the will of the majority of its peoples? Wasn’t it then when factories, mines, oil, natural gas, precious metals, and labour power became a commodity once again? Wasn’t it then when, after 7 decades of socialist construction, all of the above became once again a bone of contention for the capitalists, for the big monopoly enterprises?”

If the authors of this volume are still wearing blinders with regard to Russia, some are also wearing rose tinted lenses with respect to the emergence of a “fragmented global order” or a “multipolar world.” Of course, the authors are right to point out the decline of American influence as represented by resistance to American sanctions against Russia and the domination of the American dollar and influence. Nevertheless, without actually saying so, some of the authors suggest that this shift in the global balance of forces represents something new and fundamental, and that it might provide a check on imperial expansion and imperial wars. Whether the authors really believe this and whether this idea has any validity remains to be seen, but it is helpful to recall the ideas of Lenin.

In 1916 Lenin wrote his classic analysis of imperialism, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin distinguished his view of imperialism from the leading competing view, that of the social-democrat Karl Kautsky. On the surface both Lenin and Kautsky had similar views of imperialism. They both recognized the development of monopoly capital and finance capital, and saw it leading to expansion, exploitation and war. For Lenin, however, imperialism was a stage, the latest stage, of capitalist development, the stage of monopoly capital that succeeded competitive capital. For Kautsky, imperialism represented a policy adopted by the monopolists. The implications of these different points of view were monumental. For Lenin, only revolutionary struggle against monopoly capital could end imperialism and end imperialist wars. Kautsky, however, thought it was possible to replace imperialist policies by other pacifist policies. Kautsky insisted that it was possible to imagine a new stage of economic development, “ultra-imperialism,” where the world would be divided up among a few great monopolies among whom peace would be possible. The First World War and the Second World War effectively swept Kautsky’s ideas about ultra-imperialism and a pacific imperialist world into the dustbin. Kautsky is barely known let alone read today.

I would suggest that some of Kautsky’s ideas have been picked up or reinvented by contemporaries. The idea of an emerging new stage of multipolarity resembles Kautsky’s stage of super-imperialism. Some of those enamored by the emergence of multipolarity think that it represents a fundamental change in the global balance of forces and seem to think it can countervail the imperialist drive for expansion and war and thus provide a basis for peace within the framework of imperialism. Two of the writers of this volume even say that the time is coming when an alliance of Russia, China, India, Latin America and the Arab world can “prevent” the financial oligarchs of the world from “launching the third world war.” The problem is that such thinking, however beguiling, avoids a tough-minded understanding of the fundamental nature of imperialism rooted in capitalism’s insatiable drive for profit, exploitation, and expansion. It may not be necessary for worldwide socialist revolution in order to stop any particular imperialist conflict, but under the imperialist stage of capitalism war is omnipresent and unavoidable. This understanding imperialism provides a better basis for struggle against it than social democratic illusions about the efficacy of multipolarity. Let’s hope that it will not take another world war to banish these illusions.

https://mltoday.com/book-review-russia- ... -blinders/

No quibbling about Russia being capitalist, and as quantity becomes quality so capitalism begets imperialism. And the interconnections of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchies we've noted since 2014. But there is 'uneven development' among capitalist states and so greater impacts which cannot be ignored. What is noted concerning Russian capital is true enough, but relatively it's impact is less. And Russian military actions has not, to my eyes, been directed at conquering resources or markets.

But the critique to the "multipolar world" I fully agree with: seems like 'classic' imperialist competition as described by Lenin has been on hiatus since the end of WWII as US imperialism had no capitalist competition, the Soviet Union was competing otherwise. With the hegemon out of the way various actors will re-enter the game and new actors too. As long as capitalism is extant the 'endgame' of war is inevitable. Careful what you wish for...Socialist China though is a new thing, and might become the new hegemon of a different sort... but one hegemon at a time.

******

Sweden Hustled into Military Pact with US
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 10, 2023
M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Image

The Biden Administration’s efforts to put on fast track Sweden’s accession as a NATO member petered out as Turkiye balked, exercising its prerogative to withhold approval unless its conditions regarding Stockholm’s past dalliance with Kurdish separatist elements is fully addressed.

President Biden was bullish and insisted publicly that Sweden’s NATO membership was a foregone conclusion. He underestimated President Recep Erdogan’s tenacity and overlooked the geopolitical ramifications.

Biden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg assumed that all that was needed was a face-saving formula to pander Erdogan’s vanity — ie., a few Kurdish militants in Sweden would be extradited and Ankara and Stockholm would thereupon kiss and make up.

However, as time passed, Erdogan kept shifting the goal post and refined his conditions to include issues such as Sweden lifting its arms embargo against Turkiye, joining Ankara’s fight against banned Kurdish militants as well as extradition of people linked to US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen whom Turkish government accuses of masterminding the 2016 failed coup attempt, reportedly with American backing.

Evidently, Swedes didn’t realise that Turkiye had such deep knowledge of the covert activities of their intelligence.

To cut the story short, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson finally took the exit route saying on Sunday in exasperation that “Turkey has confirmed that we have done what we said we would do, but it also says that it wants things that we can’t, that we don’t want to, give it.”

“We are convinced that Turkey will make a decision, we just don’t know when,” he said, adding that it will depend on internal politics inside Turkey as well as “Sweden’s capacity to show its seriousness.”

Stoltenberg has reacted stoically, saying, “I am confident that Sweden will become a member of NATO. I do not want to give a precise date for when that happens. So far, it has been a rare, unusual and fast membership process. Normally, it takes several years.”

Meanwhile, Sweden’s defence ministry announced on Monday that negotiations have begun for a bilateral security pact with Washington — so-called Defense Cooperation Agreement — which makes it possible for American troops to operate in Sweden.

As Defence Minister Pal Jonson put it, “It could entail storage of military supplies, investments in infrastructure to enable support and the legal status of American troops in Sweden. The negotiations are started because Sweden is on its way of becoming an ally of the United States, through the NATO membership.

That is to say, the US is no longer waiting for the formalisation of Sweden’s accession as a NATO member but will simply assume it is a de facto NATO ally!

A press release on Monday by US state department said the bilateral security pact will “deepen our close security partnership, enhance our cooperation in multilateral security operations, and, together, strengthen transatlantic security.” It referred to US commitment to “strengthening and reinvigorating America’s partnerships to meet common security challenges while protecting shared interests and values.”

The crux of the matter is that a security will provide the necessary underpinning for a US deployment to Sweden on an immediate basis, which is not possible otherwise without Stockholm formally jettisoning its decades-old policy of military non-alignment.

This ingenuous route signifies a monumental shift for Sweden which has a long history of wartime neutrality. Put differently, Russia strongly opposes Sweden’s NATO membership, but Washington is reaching its objective anyway.

Interestingly, though, Finland, which also had thrown its hand in the NATO ring under US pressure, doesn’t seem to be in a tearing hurry to negotiate a pact with Washington, although it has a 1,340km border with Russia. Finland’s stance is that it would join NATO at the same time as Sweden.

Foreign minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters on Sunday, “Finland is not in such a rush to join NATO that we can’t wait until Sweden gets the green light.” A former Finnish President Tarja Halonen once said, Finland and Sweden are “sisters but not twins.” They have commonalities, but their motivations are not the same.

Unlike Sweden which was all along in the Western orbit and provided secret intelligence to Western powers throughout the Cold War, both bilaterally and through NATO, Finland had a unique relationship with Russia, which was a result of its history.

Finland positioned itself as a neutral country during the Cold War maintaining good relations with the Soviet Union, riveted on the doctrine enabled by the Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (1948) with Moscow, which served well as the main instrument in Finnish-Soviet relations all the way until 1992 when the Soviet Union got disbanded.

For sure, the 1948 pact granted Finland enough freedom to become a prosperous democracy, while, in comparison, despite Sweden’s public posture of neutrality throughout much of the Cold War, behind closed doors it had become a key partner of NATO in Northern Europe.

Conceivably, neutrality still could remain an appealing alternative for Finland. Of course, it is a different matter if the balance of power in the region changes dramatically in the event of a large-scale conflict in Europe.

Sweden’s (or Finland’s) NATO membership isn’t exactly round the corner. Sweden is either unable or unwilling to fulfil Turkiye’s demands. Besides, there are variables at work here.

Most important, the trajectory of the current Russian-brokered rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus will profoundly impact the fate of the Kurdish groups in the region — and the Kurdish-US axis in Syria. Washington has warned Erdogan against seeking rapprochement with President Bashar Al-Assad.

What complicates matters further is that presidential and parliamentary elections are due in Turkiye in June and Erdogan’s political compass is set. Any change in his calculus can only happen in the second half of 2023 at the earliest.

Now, 6 months is a long time in West Asian politics. Meanwhile, the Ukraine war will also have phenomenally changed by summer.

Finland is ready to wait till summer, but Sweden (and the US) cannot. The heart of the matter is that Sweden’s NATO membership is not really about the war in Ukraine but is about containing the Russian presence and strategy in the Arctic and North Pole. There is a massive economic dimension to it, too.

Thanks to climate change, the Arctic is increasingly becoming a navigable sea route. The expert opinion is that nations bordering the Arctic (eg., Sweden) will have an enormous stake in who has access to and control of the resources of this energy- and mineral-rich region as well as the new sea routes for global commerce the melt-off is creating.

It is estimated that forty-three of the nearly 60 large oil and natural-gas fields that have been discovered in the Arctic are in Russian territory, while eleven are in Canada, six in Alaska [US] and one in Norway. Simply put, the spectre that is haunting the US is: “The Arctic is Russian.”

Image

Just look at the map above. Sweden can bring quite a bit to the table to secure the Arctic through NATO. Finland may have a strong icebreaker-ship building industry, but it is Sweden’s highly effective submarine fleet that will be crucial — both for polar defence and for blocking Russia’s access to the world oceans.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... t-with-us/

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

Soledar. 01/10/2023. Evening
January 10, 23:14

Image

Briefly along Soledar on the evening of January 10th.

1. Most of the city, including administrative buildings in the center, is controlled by Wagner PMC assault groups. Pushilin has already announced the liberation of the center of Soledar (for good, the cleanup still needs to be completed there)

2. Yurchina Gora, which dominates the area near the northern outskirts, has also been taken 3. The main roads from Soledar

are under the fire control of our troops, which allows us to talk about the operational encirclement

4. According to various estimates, from 300 to 500 enemy soldiers and officers remain in the city, or covering the withdrawal of the main forces, or those who did not have time to withdraw from the central regions, where the sweep is now underway.



5. In the city itself, the enemy still remains at the Sol station, near mine No. 7, in the northwestern part of the city and the western suburbs

. After completing the cleansing of Soledar (a matter of the next few days), our troops will either begin to intensify attacks north of Artemovsk (which is also on the verge), or they will strike in the direction of Seversk.

8. Ukrainian propaganda is already talking with might and main about the "unimportance of Soledar", although it has recently positioned it as a fortress. It is worth noting that the largest salt production enterprise in Europe is located on the territory of Soledar, as well as the largest warehouses of small arms in Ukraine in the village of Paraskoveevka adjacent to Soledar (it is interesting what has been left there over the past years, in 2014 there were more than 2, 1 million storage units of small arms).

In general, for our troops this is the first serious victory after the withdrawal from the right bank. But while it’s too early to throw caps, the city still needs to be cleaned up, and the liberation of Artemovsk, which is of operational and strategic importance for the entire Donbass Front, will become a really big victory.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8093097.html

Capture of Soledar
January 11, 0:16

Image

Prigozhin announced the capture of Soledar.

“The divisions of PMC Wagner took control of the entire territory of Soledar. A cauldron has been formed in the center of the city, in which urban battles are being fought. The number of prisoners will be announced tomorrow. Once again, I want to emphasize that no units other than the fighters of the Wagner PMC took part in the assault on Soledar.

Judging by the photo of Prigozhin in Soledar, this is one of the salt mines. Two days ago, Syrsky was photographed in Soledar.

Image
In one of the Soledar mines.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8093234.html

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

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

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

Post by blindpig » Wed Jan 11, 2023 7:12 pm

The battle for Artyomovsk-Soledar
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/11/2023

Image

In the last few hours, active talk has begun again about the Artyomovsk-Soledar axis, in which the Russian troops hope to finally achieve a victory on the front that will break the negative dynamic that has been maintained since September. At that time, with the Russian troops having no choice but to try to withdraw in the most orderly manner possible, with the complete improvisation of someone who has not taken seriously the indications of an imminent attack, the Ukrainian troops recovered for the first time since February the initiative at the front. Russia was forced to make a decision that it had delayed as long as possible, but without which its situation could only worsen: decree a partial mobilization of reservists and people with experience or military training. The decision was made to coincide with the referendum with which Russia justified the annexation of the DPR and the PRL and the regions of Zaporozhye and Kherson. In these last two cases, the Russian troops have never really controlled the integrity of the territory. Moscow needed a political decision to justify that military decision, without which it risked continuing to lose territory.

At that time, specialized journalists who have covered the war from the front lines such as Poddubny or Kots warned the Russian public that there would be no good news from the front anytime soon. The reporters were not wrong in their forecasts and despite the fact that in a large part of the territory Russian troops have managed to contain the Ukrainian advance, Russia was forced to make another controversial decision: the withdrawal from the city of Kherson, the only Ukrainian regional capital under control Russian, given the need to preserve the integrity of the military group. On the right bank of the Dnieper River were some of the best Russian troops, who were barely in control of the front, but had not yet allowed Ukrainian troops to besiege the city.

Both cases -the blitzkriegfrom Kharkov and the forced withdrawal due to wear and tear and the risk of loss of supply routes - represented two great military successes for Ukraine that not only justified to its partners the real possibility of Ukrainian military victory on the battlefield, but also forced Russia to take defensive positions with no real chance of regaining the initiative. kyiv has used this time in which Russia has rapidly mobilized and instructed those around 300,000 troops (those are, at least, the data offered by the Russian authorities) to insist on a speech that, exploiting these two successes , takes the Ukrainian military victory for granted. With this, Ukraine has once again put Crimea in its sights, although for this it needs a ground offensive on Melitopol that it has not even tried to launch.

kyiv's recent insistence on the need for its partners to send heavy equipment and tanks points in this direction. However, an apparently better organized Russia and with a less imbalance in the number of troops has already had several months to prepare defensive fortifications along the front. The Russian press has especially highlighted the fortification work in the Zaporozhye region, where Melitopol is located. A break in this front would pose an even greater danger to the Russian military group in the south than the possibility of Ukraine forcing the Dnieper in the Kherson region, something that is now also posed given the decrease in the river's flow. The loss of Melitopol would not only pose a real risk to Crimea, but also split Russian territory in two. Nevertheless, a deep advance into that terrain would also pose a serious risk that those Ukrainian troops would be surrounded by Russian troops. Unlike Kherson or Kharkiv, withdrawal, "ordered" or not, is impossible in that territory without risking complete defeat. Hence the special attention that has been devoted to his defense.

Autumn, the season of mud, and the preparation of the parties for a war that is presumed to be long -the declarations of representatives such as Mikhailo Podolyak assuming that Ukraine will capture Yalta in a few months are just war propaganda to cause nervousness in Russia- They have caused the activity on the front to drop somewhat with respect to moments of greater intensity. Faced with this general situation, one of the fronts has remained active: that of Donbass. Despite the momentum achieved in September, when Ukraine managed to recapture Krasny Liman and threaten the entire Kremennaya-Svatovo axis in the PRL, where the war had ended in the first week of July, kyiv failed to capitalize on that Kharkiv victory with further progress. Despite the difficulties,

In the same way, Russia and the DPR have not managed to break through the Donetsk front, the main theater of offensive operations for Russian troops since last summer. Without the possibility of recovering the lost territories of Kherson, advancing into Zaporozhye to protect Melitopol by moving the city away from the front and giving up the Kharkov region, Donetsk has given Russia the few military successes it has achieved in the last five months: the capture Peski, once a Ukrainian fortress but hardly a strategic location, and Pavlovka, announced just a few hours after the withdrawal from Kherson, but which has not been able to translate into an advance on Ugledar, this is a strategic point. Russian troops continue trying to advance on the city of Marinka, fortified for eight years and much more complicated than the smaller Peski,

As both Ukraine and the European allies who negotiated the deal, Angela Merkel and François Hollande, now openly admit, the seven-year Minsk process gave kyiv time to reinforce its army, but also to fortify important points. In the Donetsk region, undoubtedly the best fortified, this seven-year effort is making it possible to maintain the front despite the insistence that Russia has placed on it. At the beginning of July, it was beginning to be reported that Russian troops, mainly mercenaries from the private company Wagner, had reached the outskirts of the city of Artyomovsk, a point that was to be key in the battle for the north of the DPR, which began it was presumed immediate. At that time, Despite the difficulties involved in fighting in a region so densely populated and with large industrial zones that have protected Ukrainian troops in various battles, Russian troops clearly had the initiative on the battlefield. In the attempt to advance on the Artyomovsk, Soledar, Seversk axis that initiative was stopped. In July, it became clear that the offensive capacity of the Russian troops had been exhausted. In September, its defensive capacity was also in doubt, hence the need for mobilization to overcome one of the problems that had undermined Russian effectiveness.

The significant fortifications and the Ukrainian will to resist at all costs against the Russian advance have made the battle for Artyomovsk the longest of the war to date and has entailed not only an enormous number of casualties, but the virtual destruction of the town. In these months, Russia has insisted on the enormous casualties of the Ukraine, which has continued to transfer reserves to guarantee its permanence in the city, but the type of attack that has occurred necessarily also implies heavy Russian casualties.

Months after the start of the battle, both sides confirm an escalation of the situation. For several days now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has highlighted the struggle of his troops to stay in the city in a battle that he has repeatedly defined as "madness" and that Ukraine tries to present as a symbol, "its Stalingrad", a risky bet considering the great chances that his troops will not be able to exert the resistance that the Soviets did achieve in the Volga city. The fight, which has also been compared to Verdun due to the terrible images of water in the trenches in the middle of winter, now continues in the face of a push that Russia hopes will be definitive. The situation is even more critical in the city of Soledar, smaller and less important than the Artyomovsk communications hub, but with the capture of which Russia hopes to achieve an operational encirclement that will force Ukrainian troops to withdraw or risk being trapped. Yesterday, CNN published the statements of a soldier who stated that the situation is critical for Ukraine. "In Soledar, nobody counts the dead," he said.

With the battle on this axis of the front, Ukraine has managed to mire Russia in a fight that prevents it from advancing in other areas. Underestimating the opponent's forces and overestimating its own, Russia intended to advance from Izium north and Gorlovka south towards Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, thus avoiding a fight for every fortified town on the Donetsk front, an option impossible even before the loss of the region. from Kharkov. Without that option, the only route of advance towards the north of the DPR, essential if Russia intends to solve the question of the Donetsk water supply, passed through the Artyomovsk-Soledar-Seversk axis, none of them really strategic in the current conditions, but today essential.

The feeling that the end of the battle is near is not only due to the images of Wagner's soldiers in the western part of Soledar or the announcement that the group controls the entire city after having surrounded the foci in the center that are still resisting, but also because of Ukraine's insistence that none of the cities that have been fighting for months are strategic. A statement that, although true, may be a necessary first step to justify a withdrawal in case of danger of the troops being isolated. In any case, the temporary extension of the battle gives Zelensky the possibility of arguing that it has put a brake on Russia, which in recent months has had to allocate troops to this small point on an immense front on which it has not been able to advance. The same can be said today for Ukraine,

But in the face of the triumphalism of those who are discussing whether Artyomovsk will recover its name or remain as Bakhmut or statements such as that of Denis Pushilin, who stated on Tuesday that the fighting in Soledar was limited to the western part and has assumed the prompt definitive capture of the city, the battle continues. Even the owner of the private security company Wagner, Evgeny Prigozhin, specified that Ukrainian troops continue to defend themselves fiercely in Soledar. And given the possibility of success in the battle, and in search of personal success, Prigozhin also added that the assault is carried out only with units of his company. Last night, providing a photograph of Prigozhin and his soldiers in Soledar, Wagner claimed to control the entire city. Progress throughout the day had been evident,

Although the battle for Soledar-Artyomovsk has not yet ended, it has already begun to look at the day after. A victory, which still must not be taken for granted, would mean for Russia to overcome a wall to try to face another. These months have given Ukraine time to reinforce Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, the most important cities in the northern part of the Donetsk region. With no more possible directions from which to move in that direction, that would mean another frontal assault on an even more heavily fortified area. A success at Artyomovsk would bring Russia a first real victory after several much larger defeats, but not necessarily regain the initiative at the front, something that will require either a broader offensive action or a continuation of the Donetsk offensive beyond the wall that has guessed Artyomovsk.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/11/la-ba ... more-26397

Google Translator

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

Poland to supply Leopard-2 tanks to Ukraine
January 11, 18:06

Image

Poland will supply a company of Leopard 2A4 PL tanks to Ukraine.
Behind this, we can expect deliveries of "Leopards" from other countries + deliveries of the British "Challenger 2".
This was expected, as were the deliveries of Western air defense systems. Aircraft deliveries can be expected in spring-summer.
As the conflict unwinds, NATO will become more and more active in it, and the role of Ukraine remains exclusively as a supplier of cannon fodder.
It is also worth noting that with an eye to a direct military conflict with the Russian Federation and Belarus, Poland hastily buys American Abrams and South Korean K-2s.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8094232.html

Google Translator

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

THE UKRAINAIN DEMILITARIZED ZONE – NEGOTIATIONS START AT DEAD END

Image

By John Helmer, Mosco @bears_with

A leading Ukrainian government official has admitted that a demilitarized zone (lead image, left) to divide the battlefield, protect the Russian east of the country from the US and NATO long-range assault, and partition Ukraine is in negotiation.

“’We are currently being offered the Korean scenario,” Alexei Danilov (lead image, right) announced on January 8. Danilov, a native of Lugansk, is the deputy chairman of the National Security and Defence Council, and second in rank to President Vladimir Zelensky. “[This is] the so-called conditional ’38th parallel’”, he told local reporters. “Here are Ukrainians, but there Ukrainians are not like that. The Russians will now invent anything. I know for sure that one of the options they can offer us is the ’38th parallel’”. Danilov claimed one of the sources for the proposal is Dmitry Kozak. Officially, he is a deputy head of the presidential staff. In 2020-21 he was the Kremlin’s chief negotiator on the Minsk accords with the Kiev regime and in the Normandy format with Germany and France; for Kozak’s detailed record of those negotiations, read this.

Danilov now says Kozak “meets with former politicians in Europe and conveys through them the message that the Russians are ready to make concessions in order to fix the current status quo and force Ukraine to a truce.” Danilov did not say that he, Zelensky and the Ukrainian-US general staff have rejected the idea. Instead, he claimed the Korean DMZ has proven to be a mistake: “Danilov said that during a recent meeting, Korean representatives noted that establishing the division of the Korean peninsula into two parts along the 38th parallel was a mistake as the concessions made in the 1950s after the end of the war between North Korea and South Korea are currently leading to problems.” It is unclear what meeting Danilov was referring to, if any. US press reporting has identified the mistake of Vice President Kamala Harris last September in misnaming the “Republic of North Korea”.

Moscow sources suspect Danilov is attempting to relieve the pressure now growing on the Ukrainian generals from the US and the NATO command to consider an armistice before the Russians launch their anticipated general winter offensive. By exposing and trying to sandbag the Americans, Danilov’s remark is a signal that the real US assessment is that a much bigger loss of military capacity, territory and viable economy will be the outcome of the Russian offensive – unless the Ukrainians buy time with a ceasefire and protracted armistice talks to commence.

The reaction of the Stavka to that has been President Vladmir Putin’s explicit condemnation of the buying-time tactic after former German chancellor Angela Merkel revealed it last month, and ex-French President Francois Hollande repeated it on December 28. “The West lied to us about peace,” Putin said in his New Year address on December 31, “while preparing for aggression, and today, they no longer hesitate to openly admit it and to cynically use Ukraine and its people as a means to weaken and divide Russia. We have never allowed anyone to do this and we will not allow it now.”

Putin also confirmed the message with a Korean gloss. “Russian servicemen, militiamen and volunteers are now fighting for their homeland, for truth and justice, for reliable guarantees of peace and Russia’s security.” The narrow 4-kilometre depth and short 240-km length of the Korean DMZ are not, Putin implied, “reliable guarantees of security.”

Danilov’s disclosure has been altogether missed by the mainstream western media, by the alternative media, and by US think-tankers claiming to favour negotiations.

Moscow sources believe Danilov’s signal indicates anxiety in Kiev, not only at the collapse of their front at Soledar and Bakhmut, but at the prospect of the following Russian offensive striking simultaneously north from Sumy to Kharkov and Poltava; in the centre around the E50 highway into Dniepropetrovsk; and in the south to blockade Odessa.

Image

“I have not seen a serious discussion in Moscow about a DMZ at all,” according to a Moscow source and Donbass sources. They believe Danilov is reporting what the Americans are telling Kiev.

“Kozak has been de-activated in Moscow since last July”, according to another source. “That’s why it makes all the more sense [for the Ukrainians] to refer to him and not to genuine negotiators, not to a credible Russian figure. Danilov is attempting to refuse a proposal from a non-person. He and Zelensky are putting the Pentagon at that level – in other words, they are sending a message to [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken, [Deputy Secretary Wendy] Sherman and [Under Secretary Victoria] Nuland, or whoever the Ukrainians think will save them from the US military pressure now.”

The Russian sources note there has been no other public acknowledgement of the change in US thinking; they interpret press reporting of promises of US armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs), German and British tank deliveries to mean the reverse of the appearances. “Time will have run out for the delivery of the Strykers and Bradleys, Leopards and Challengers in the east. So these press promises of delivery are for the last-ditch fortification of the western lines defending the regime between Lvov and Kiev. That’s between Zhitomyr and Vinnitsa, then Rivne and Chernopil.

Image
Left to right, in desert operations against an unarmed opponent, the US Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles; the British Challenger main battle tank.

A North American veteran source urges patience. “The Bradleys may be rushed, so the question now is whether everything the Ukrainians throw into their fight west of the Artemovsk-Soledar- Seversk line to Dniepropetrovsk, including the press-ganging of civilians in Kharkov city, is just a rearguard action to hold up the Russians and create time for the reinforcements to arrive.”

A Canadian military source says that Ontario-made Strykers “have already been delivered to the eastern lines. They know the danger of a breakthrough and are determined to at least stall it. They cannot do that without AFVs.” Russian sources published sighting one on December 31. A Canadian press reporter took a week before acknowledging that 39 Canadian APVs had been delivered, most of them to “rear-area units for training and familiarization”, and then, after they were revealed in the local media, “in thick mud at an unidentified section of the Ukrainian front.”

A veteran of NATO tank operations in Afghanistan adds: “By necessity, the tanks come later. It takes much longer to train their crews, let alone maintenance cells. Setting up the logistics will be much harder too. In Afghanistan it took a lot to support tanks – even just a squadron of them.”

A Moscow source adds strategy: “The Pentagon might want to fend off a general Russian operation with a DMZ but the Ukrainians, the Germans and the State Department want to see the rearguard action because they believe they can exact a heavy loss of life on the Russians. I’m convinced they don’t want a DMZ until the Russians fight their way to the borders of the regions they have already incorporated. Their perception is that the Russians will be too weak to take any more. They won’t mind another meat-grinder like Bakhut. It’s not their children dying. At worst, the Ukrainians think a DMZ would be inside or at the limit of the Russian zone. That would free them to start preparing for the next big war in a few years.”

The consensus of the Russians sources is: “These are all lose-lose propositions for us and that is why we have not heard this being discussed seriously. What’s needed is Ukrainian capitulation. This is why most Russians see armistice as a Russian surrender because it means none of the stated goals of the operation has been achieved. More than at Minsk in 2015, the Ukraine will be re-armed and prepared for the next big fight.”

Danilov’s disclosure puts into quite different context Putin’s Orthodox Christmas truce between January 6 and 7. “Upon consideration of the address from His Holiness Patriarch Kirill,” the president said, “I instruct the Defence Minister of the Russian Federation to introduce a ceasefire along the entire line of contact in Ukraine from 12.00 on January 6, 2023 to 24.00 on January 7, 2023. As a large number of Orthodox Christians reside in the area of hostilities, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a ceasefire to allow them to attend church services on Christmas Eve as well as on Christmas Day.” For the text of Kirill’s message, which avoided a recommendation of this kind, click to read.

Image
Left: President Putin at the Annunciation Cathedral, Moscow, January 7. Right: Patriarch Kirill II’s Christmas message.

In retrospect, the truce was dismissed by Kiev, and the Russian side recorded numerous violations, including the movement of heavy artillery into range of Lugansk and Donetsk region targets. “Pigs have no faith”, Dmitry Medvedev, the ex-president and now deputy head of the Security Council, responded. “and no innate sense of gratitude. They understand only brute force.”

Following the fall of Soledar on evening of January 10, there are signs that the Ukrainian General Staff will not continue following the orders from either Washington or Zelensky and Danilov to continue the meat-grinder defence of the eastern front, at least not until a “second line of defence” can be formed, according to the leak.

Image
Source: https://t.me/rezident_ua/15861
Date stamp indicates: 21:19 Tuesday, January 10, 2023.

The evidence of the battlefield map is that the Russian General Staff has decided to leave open the corridors for NATO troops and arms to be resupplied from Poland, and to let Ukrainian refugees leave. However, the rail and road junctions, warehouses, vehicle lagers, electric grid units, and fuel and other storages are being hit repeatedly, west and east of Kiev.

UKRAINE MAP – BATTLEFIELD TARGETS AFTER THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE

Image

When Russian and western analysts map the economic and military capabilities of the Ukrainian territory which would lie to the west of the Dnieper River demilitarized zone (UMZ) it becomes clear the rump state will have lost the capacity to feed itself; and will lack the river or sea ports to export corn, wheat, sunflower products or rapeseed without Russian and Turkish agreement. Lacking seaports and airfields, the western Ukrainian territory, without the farms, mines and smelters to produce food or metals for trade, will be reduced to a gun platform dependent on imported cash and arms for the state’s sole remaining export – permanent war against Russia.

Image
Source: https://www.fas.usda.gov


Image
Source: https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/
A Closer Look at Ukrainian Corn and Wheat Exports


Image
Source: https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/

Image
Source: https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/

To date, US, Canadian, German, and British politicians have been emphatic that they have the parliament votes and will neutralize domestic opposition to their whatever-the-cost war policy.

Russian sources add there is no evidence that in planning the conversion of the special military operation to the general military operation, the Kremlin, the Stavka, and the General Staff are not taking this into account. What this means, said one source, is that the de-Nazification objective of February 24, 2022, is now practically impossible. “The DMZ is impossible for us because it will leave the Ukrainian nazis to keep rearming, exactly as Merkel and Hollande have said. This means there can be no demilitarized zone – there must be Ukrainian capitulation and surrender.”

A NATO source speculates about the mentality of his counterparts in Washington: “The DMZ needs to be big and deep no matter what the structure of the forces that create and maintain it. The question that looms larger in my mind is how to get the US and NATO to understand that continuing to push their Ukrainian checker will come at a cost on the checkerboard they aren’t prepared to pay?”

The evidence from the daily reports of the Polish Border Guard confirms the Russian strategy is to leave the corridor open for the exit of Ukrainian civilians and then strike after the incoming foreign troops and their equipment are deployed at their rear assembly areas.

Image
Source: https://twitter.com/Straz_Graniczna .

The highlighted figures for Ukrainian movement to Poland indicate refugees responding to the Russian electric war and the onset of winter. The corresponding, highlighted figures of movement from Poland to the Ukraine include Polish and other foreign troops moving under civilian shield.

Moscow sources comment. “The Russians will not tolerate half-measures. Not like the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, not like Yeltsin in Serbia. Not like Nord Stream or the Crimean Bridge. Not now. Read Putin’s lips.” This is a reference to Putin’s speech to the enlarged Defence Ministry and military staffs on December 21. “We will not repeat the mistakes of the past, when we harmed our economy to boost our defence capabilities, regardless of whether it was warranted or not. We are not going to militarise our country or militarise the economy, primarily because we have no need to do it at the current level of development and with the structure of the economy that we have. Again – we do not intend to, and we will not do things we do not really need, to the detriment of our people and the economy, the social sphere. We will improve the Russian Armed Forces and the entire military component. We will do it calmly, routinely and consistently, without haste. We will attain our objectives to strengthen our defence capability in general as well as meeting the goals of the special military operation”.

“The big part of the NATO equation,” comments the North American veteran, “ought to be the Russian message – ‘keep on coming. You will all be destroyed.”

http://johnhelmer.net/the-ukrainain-dem ... more-70470

********

From Cassad's Telegram account:

forwarded from
Lawyer in the subject⚖️
📃EXAMPLE OF COMPLETING THE CERTIFICATE ON UNWISHING TO BE CITIZENSHIP OF UKRAINE 📃

The President of Russia approved the procedure for filing and recording applications for unwillingness to be a citizen of Ukraine.

✅The application is submitted by citizens of the Russian Federation who acquired the citizenship of the Russian Federation as a result of the reunification of the DPR with the Russian Federation or permanently resided on that day or previously permanently resided on the territory of the DPR and whose citizenship of Ukraine has not been terminated.

🔻Sample application - https://disk.yandex.ru/i/jjn7K894INgCUw
🔻Application form - https://disk.yandex.ru/i/FwuqAI84a8tr6A

What documents are needed❓

✅A citizen of the Russian Federation, along with the application, submits:
🔻Russian passport;
🔻a document confirming registration at the place of residence in the DPR;
🔻a document confirming the citizenship of Ukraine (including expired ones).

✅The parent (adoptive parent), together with the application, submits:
🔻a document proving the citizenship and identity of the applicant;
🔻a birth certificate of a child with a mark certifying the acquisition by the child of citizenship of the Russian Federation - not required if information about the child is entered in the passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation, proving the identity of the applicant;
🔻certificate of adoption (adoption) of a child in the event of adoption (adoption) of a child and the absence of an indication of the adoptive parent as the parent of the child in the birth certificate.

✅The guardian or authorized representative, together with the application, shall submit:
🔻an identity document of the applicant;
🔻a birth certificate of a child with a mark certifying the acquisition of citizenship of the Russian Federation, or a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation, proving the identity of an incompetent person;
🔻a document of the guardianship and guardianship authority on the appointment of the applicant as the guardian of a child or an incapable person, or a document confirming the authority of an authorized representative;
🔻a document confirming the grounds for placing a child or an incapacitated person in an educational organization, a medical organization, an organization providing social services, or another organization, including for orphans and children left without parental care, if an application is filed in relation to a child or incapacitated persons placed in such an organization;
🔻a court decision declaring a person incompetent in the event of filing an application against such a person.

Who applies for a child❓

✅For a child under 14 years of age, the application is submitted by one of the parents / adoptive parent.
✅In relation to a child under 14 years of age left without parental care, or an incapacitated person, an application is submitted by a
guardian or an authorized representative of the organization where he permanently resides.

Where to apply❓

✅Donetsk:
🔻st. Lagutenko, 14;
🔻 Donetsk, st. Guryevskaya, 3;
🔻Donetsk, st. F. Zaitseva, 46c;
🔻st. Kirov, 106.

✅Gorlovka:
🔻st. Rudakova, 17;
🔻st. Gorlovsky Division, 30.

✅Makeevka:
🔻st. Dzerzhinsky, 23;
🔻st. Avtotransportnaya, 42;
🔻st. Malinovsky, 57.

✅Novoazovsk , st. Kommunarov, 69.
✅Snezhnoye , st. Gnesenykh, 24.
✅village Starobeshevo , st. Angelina, 30.
✅Torez , st. Engels, 126.
✅Shakhtyorsk , st. Dzerzhinsky, 13.
✅Volnovakha, per. Energy, d. 3.
✅town Mangush, st. Titova, 63.
✅Khartsyzsk, st. Vokzalnaya, 37.
✅Enakievo, st. Sverdlov, 110.
✅town Mangush, st. Titova, 63.

✅Mariupol
🔻st. Nakhimova, d. 86;
🔻st. 130th Taganrog Division, d. 114.

This procedure is not mandatory.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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

Ukrainian Defense Lines And What Happens When They Are Breached

Soledar has fallen to Russian troops. Bakhmut (Artymovsk) will follow soon.

This constitutes the breach of Ukraine's second defense line within the Donetzk and Lysichansk oblasts. I will discuss those lines with the maps below.

The first map shows the range of land taken by Russian forces by April 1 2022 (Kiev region not shown).

Russia had invaded with a small force of some 100,000 soldiers supported by some 50,000 soldiers of the Donetzk/Luhansk Republics. The opposing forces were 250,000 regular Ukrainian army troops which quickly grew to 450,000 and then 650,000 by mobilization of reserve forces plus the Territorial Defense Forces. During the first weeks the Russian forces had taken a huge amount of land that they barely had the numbers to hold.

At that point Russia was still hoping that the negotiations held at that time with Ukraine in Turkey would have a positive outcome. As a confidence measure it had already started to pull back from around Kiev. However, after phone calls from and a visit by the British prime minister Boris Johnson the Ukrainian government ended the negotiations by suddenly adding demands the Russia would never agree to. The troops from Kiev were pulled back anyway and moved to the east of Ukraine where they started an attack on the first defense line (yellow) of the Ukrainian forces.

April 1 2022
Image

This first defense line, like later ones, ran along railway and road communication routes that connect major cities. In the map above the cities that constituted the first defense line were, north to south, Siverodonetsk, Lysichansk, Popasna, Svitlodarsk.

By July 1 2022 the first Ukrainian defense line was breached and defeated by Russian forces. The Ukrainian troops moved back to their second defense line. However, the defeat of the first defense line had taken its toll of the small Russian Special Military Operation force.

July 1 2022
Image

The second Ukrainian defense line, north to south, ran from Siversk to Soledar, Bakhmut, New York agglomeration and then along the old ceasefire line of the Donetzk Republic.

The Russian forces tried to avoid a costly direct attack on the second Ukrainian defense line. It launched an operation to breach into the Donetzk oblast behind the second Ukrainian defense line from the north (now gray area). The battles for Izium and Lyman were fought for that purpose. However, the wooden area north of the Siversky Donets river that runs east to west as well as the river itself proved to be difficult to cross. Several attempts to move significant forces across it failed.

At the end of August 2022 the exhausted Russian forces had switched to a defensive posture and into an 'economy of force' mode. Troops that were holding the Kharkiv area north of the Donetzk oblast were reduced. The other forces were moved to the eastern front to strengthen the Russian lines on that front.

Meanwhile Ukraine was openly discussing and preparing for an attack on the Kherson region north of the Dnieper river with the final aim of crossing the river to then move towards Crimea. Russia responded by further reducing the troop numbers in the northern Kharkiv region to a few thousand men and by using the others to further strengthen its positions in the south around Kherson.

During the fall the Ukrainian attacks on the Kherson region all failed with high losses. However U.S. intelligence advised the Ukrainian command that the Kharkiv region, while still held by Russian forces, was practically empty. The command switched the active front towards the north and successfully moved into the Kharkiv region while Russian troops still positioned there moved further east.

This was a quite fast operation that looked very successful. But the speed also meant that the heavy Ukrainian artillery cover was thin to not existent. This while the retreating Russian forces used their own artillery to attack Ukrainian front formations in pre-planned fire missions. After proceeding fast over some 70 kilometers from west to east the Ukrainian attack force had taken high losses and ran out of steam. It came up to a new Russian defense line (red) covered by two rivers that proved difficult to cross. The Kharkiv front has since stabilized.

Jan 1 2023
Image

The Ukrainian 'victory' in the Kharkiv region gave the Russian government the necessary public backing for the mobilization of additional forces. 300,000 reservists were called up. Some 70,000 additional men joined as volunteers. The Wagner private military company increased its force size to some 50,000 men. Over the last three month of 2022 all those forces were supplied with the necessary equipment and went through refresher training.

Meanwhile a new Russian commander, General Sergey Surovkin, took over. He warned immediately that he would have to take some difficult decisions. This was related to the situation in the Kherson region north of the Dnieper. Constant attacks on the river crossings with U.S. supplied missiles made the logistic situation very difficult. The command decided to pull back behind the river. This operation was remarkably successful. Ten thousands of civilians plus some 25,000 soldiers with all their equipment were removed from the area with only few if any losses.

Image

By the end of the year the shortening of the front lines and the introduction of fresh forces had allowed the Russian forces to regain the initiative. They launched intense attacks on Ukraine's second defense line. With the successful taking of Soledar that line has now been breached. This makes the situation of Siversk, north of Soledar, and of Bakhmut, south of it, much more difficult. The breach of the line will allow Russian troops to move behind it north and south to then create cauldrons for the other positions within that same line. 'Rolling up a defense line' is a description of that process.

The now heavily reduced Ukrainian forces will likely have to give up on holding the second defense line to then create a third one to the west of it.

Image

The third Ukrainian defense line will run from Sloviansk in the north through Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Kostantinovka to the New York agglomeration. I expect the complete defeat and cleanup of the second Ukrainian defense line by the end of March. The third Ukrainian defense line will probably fall by the mid of the year. Whatever is left of the Ukrainian forces will then try to hold a fourth defense line along the string of smaller towns west of it.

Image

This will be the last Ukrainian line in the Donetsk oblast. It likely to fall before by the end of September.

The Russian moves against the third and fourth Ukrainian defense lines will likely be supported by a move from the south that will liberate the rest of the Zaporiziha and Donetsk oblast.

Aside from those operations the Russian command has sufficient number of troops available to run another major attack. This could come from the north into the Kharkiv regain behind the Ukrainian troops currently attacking the Russian lines further east.

The Russian forces in Ukraine were tasked with liberating the oblast that Russia had recognized as independent states (Donetzk and Luhansk) as well as those that had additionally voted to become part of Russia (Zaporiziha and Kherson).

With the breaking up of all four Ukrainian defense lines in Donetzk oblast that task will be fulfilled. This with the exception of the part of the Kherson region north of the Dnieper river which will require a separate operation on its own. The Russian command may want to wait for this until more Ukrainian forces have been destroyed while holding their defense lines.

Another task given to the Special Military operation was to 'demilitarize' and 'denazify' Ukraine. The Ukrainian tactic of holding fixed lines anchored on major cities at any price has come at a significant cost. Russian artillery is superior to the Ukrainian by a factor of ten. The Russian forces use it to destroy Ukrainian troops holding the lines while taking only few losses on their own side.

Today's Wall Street Journal finally noted that this Ukrainian battle tactic is not a winning one:

Western—and some Ukrainian—officials, soldiers and analysts increasingly worry that Kyiv has allowed itself to be sucked into the battle for Bakhmut on Russian terms, losing the forces it needs for a planned spring offensive as it stubbornly clings to a town of limited strategic relevance. Some of them say that it would make sense to retreat to a new defensive line on the heights west of Bakhmut while such a pullback can still be organized in a coordinated fashion, preserving the Ukrainian military’s combat strength.
“It’s not me, it’s King Leonidas who figured out that you should fight the enemy on the terrain that is advantageous to you,” said one Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut, referring to the ruler of Sparta who battled the Persian Empire at Thermopylae. “So far, the exchange rate of trading our lives for theirs favors the Russians. If this goes on like this, we could run out.”

The Ukrainian soldier is right. However, a different form of fighting the war would be a mobile delay and retreat action from which local counter offensives would be launched. This requires a lot of equipment, battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, that the Ukraine no longer has. It also requires troops and larger formations trained for that type of fight. Some 60 year old mailman drafted during Ukraine's 9th mobilization wave will not be able to learn this during his two weeks training course.

Had the professional Ukrainian army that exited before the war been allowed to give up on cities and had it used a mobile combined arms tactic of delay-retreat-counterattack it probably would have been more successful. But that army has by now been destroy with Russian artillery because Kiev insisted on holding cities and lines at any price.

The U.S. will only now start to train Ukrainian troops in combined arms and joint maneuvering. It will be too little too late to make any difference.

As of current news, today we see fake news headlines like this from NBC:

Putin replaces commander of Russia’s war in Ukraine after just 3 months
Valery Gerasimov takes over from Sergei Surovikin, who will now serve as one of his deputies, Russia's defense ministry said Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has replaced the commander leading his forces in Ukraine just three months after he handed him the job.
Gen. Valery Gerasimov will take over from Sergei Surovikin, the country’s defense ministry said on Telegram Wednesday, a change that comes as Kyiv warns Moscow is planning a major new offensive after months of battlefield setback.

The above is a misinterpretation of a simple naming change.

Russians With Attitude @RWApodcast - 16:09 UTC · Jan 11, 2023
As I understand it, we went from 1 to 2

Image

Neither was Surovkin pushed aside or demoted nor was Gerasimov promoted to a new job. Surovkin will continue to run the theater force in Ukraine. This move did not change command responsibilities but lifted the importance of the whole operation by making it the highest military commander's priority.

Posted by b on January 11, 2023 at 18:49 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/01/u ... .html#more
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

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

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 12, 2023 1:48 pm

One battle, different interests
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/12/2023

Image

Although with the front apparently static since last September, when Ukraine managed to break through to Krasny Liman and from there to the RPL, the Donetsk region has seen the hardest battles on the contact line in the autumn months and winter weeks. . Far from the headlines and the official discourse, which prefers to highlight the proximity of Ukraine to Crimea or speculate on the spring offensive towards Melitopol with which they hope to defeat the Russian forces, the battles currently being fought on the Artyomovsk-Soledar- Seversk and also in the city of Marinka, on the outskirts of Donetsk, not only have not declined but have increased.

There have been several occasions on which the Russian or Republican authorities have implied that Russian victory was just around the corner in places as important as Artyomovsk. In July, when the Russian and Republican advance after the capture of Popasnaya seemed not to have been exhausted, Russian sources spoke of the start of the urban battle. Wagner's troops, it was said at the time, were already fighting on Rue Patrice Lumumba. The assault was unsuccessful and the battle became bogged down in an artillery fight that has caused countless casualties - an unknown number, but even Ukrainian sources admit that they have been and continue to be very high - and the destruction of the city. Already then,

Months later, the slight advances in the small towns around Artyomovsk, which coincided with a greater push in the Ugledar area, also on the Donetsk front, gave rise to new speculation about the possibility of advances in that central area. of the DPR where the Russian troops had completely bogged down. At that time, Russia, and especially Denis Pushilin, beleaguered by the inability to move the Ukrainian troops, who bombarded it daily, away from the region's capital, needed good news from the front. Although the final push began at that moment, little by little and at the cost of casualties and great resources, the Russian troops have managed to approach both Soledar and Artyomovsk and begin what now seems to be a final assault.

On Tuesday night, images of Wagner soldiers together with company owner Evgeny Prigozhin in one of the city's salt mines confirmed the strong advance. Before the underground footage, videos of the fighting in the western part of the city had already been broadcast. Yesterday morning, Prigozhin claimed victory, alleging that his army -and insisted that Wagner alone- had taken the perimeter of the city and that only pockets of Ukrainian troops remained in the city, which, according to this version, would have a difficult escape. Russian sources allege that the regular troops complete the siege in the southern area, the main objective of the advance, since it is actually intended to prevent the supply of Artyomovsk, more populated and more important. Although relevant as it is an advance, the capture of Soledar, if Russian control is consolidated, it should not, by itself, be considered a victory. After six months of fighting and casualties that, due to the type of fighting that has taken place, cannot be reduced either, even the eventual capture of Artyomovsk must be put into perspective.

Faced with news from Russian sources and allegations by Denis Pushilin, who called the recent developments a turning point in the DPR's liberation struggle, the Western press has unsurprisingly followed the Ukrainian script with a mix of news denying Russian claims of progress and texts downplaying both Soledar and Artyomovsk. In both cases, the contradiction with the publication of various testimonies in media as important as CNN seems evident.of soldiers who openly mention very high casualties, the constant arrival of new units, the impossibility of counting the dead and wounded, or even a lack of interest in knowing the nom de guerre of their newly arrived comrades. If the Russian troops fail to advance, why is it necessary to send new units to the area? If Artyomovsk and Soledar are nothing more than small cities already destroyed and without any tactical or strategic value, why the effort to maintain them even now that, faced with an obvious reality, Ukraine has had to admit that the situation is difficult ?

That is where the difference lies in the importance of Artyomovsk or Soledar for kyiv and for Moscow. Faced with abstract objectives that Russia has never been able to explain, such as the idea of ​​denazification, or unrealistic, such as the demilitarization of an increasingly militarized Ukraine, the idea of ​​gaining control of the former Donetsk and Lugansk regions has been repeated explicitly. Overcoming the barrier that Ukraine had placed and has maintained for six months in Artyomovsk-Soledar-Seversk is essential for Russia if its authorities maintain the goal of regaining control of the entire territory of the DPR, that is, of the entire region of Donetsk. After two consecutive defeats and more than six months of complete blockade on the front that it had declared to be a priority, it is clear that Russia needs a victory on which to build a speech trying to recover an initiative lost months ago.

Ukraine, which has used the battle of Artyomovsk and Soledar as the basis for a speech that has presented its troops as unbeatable, sees those cities differently. Little interested in the industrial zones of Donbass, largely already destroyed and practically depopulated, the images of the Ukrainian journalists themselves showed this week the reproaches against the Ukrainian troops of the small population that has not left Artyomovsk. kyiv has used this battle, partly at the expense of its reserves, as a retaining wall against any Russian advance, but also as a political argument. A defeat now would mean disfiguring the income statement of the Ukrainian troops, Ukraine's main argument for demanding more weapons from its partners.

Since last September, the idea of ​​the invincibility of the Ukrainian troops has supported the Ukrainian story, which has sought and will continue to seek ever heavier weapons to "shorten the war." "Russia has already lost", different Ukrainian representatives have repeated incessantly in recent months. The West's only task then is to deliver longer-range artillery and tanks on which to march on Melitopol and liberateCrimea, a simple task only in the sometimes fanciful imagery of kyiv. A victory now, however pyrrhic it may be considered after six months of fighting for two cities that do not really represent a strategic advantage of enormous magnitude, does not necessarily mean that Russia will regain the initiative on the front, but it does break with a trend that entails consequences beyond the military plane. The halo of invincibility that Ukraine has wanted to project over its troops really seeks to discredit any negotiation proposal with Russia that does not imply its unilateral capitulation. If a complete victory is possible and can happen as quickly as Podolyak or Kuleba claim, why a negotiation?

The battle for Artyomovsk and Soledar, the end of which has yet to be written, shows the difficulty of this war in which two heavily armed armies face each other and capable of inflicting great damage on the opposing side and also on the civilian population and the cities in which which the fight ensues. The slowness with which, with the exceptions of the initial Russian advance and the Ukrainian blitzkrieg in Kharkiv, also reminds us that the Ukrainian idea of ​​demanding heavy weapons to shorten the war is nothing more than the last argument to continue on the path of war until the end, whatever the cost, as long as it does not mean reaching a negotiating table that implies concessions to Russia or the population of Donbass or Crimea.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/12/26409/#more-26409

Google Translator

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

Incorrect conversations
January 12, 15:10

Image

It is incorrect to say how many percent of Stalingrad is controlled by the 6th Army of Paulus. There are fierce battles going on, it's a little inappropriate to evaluate the percentage of control over the city. (c) representative of the OKW 02/01/1943

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8096663.html

Google Translator

********

Russia now fighting NATO in Ukraine, Putin's top aide says
By REN QI in Moscow | China Daily Global | Updated: 2023-01-12 06:58


Image
Residents remove debris and carry belongings out of a shop destroyed in recent shelling in the Donetsk region on Tuesday. ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS

One of Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest aides said on Tuesday that Moscow was now fighting the US-led NATO military alliance in Ukraine and that the West was trying to wipe Russia from the political map of the world.

"The events in Ukraine are not a clash between Moscow and Kyiv — this is a military confrontation between Russia and NATO, and above all the United States and Britain," Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev told the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper.

"The Westerners' plans are to continue to pull Russia apart, and eventually just erase it from the political map of the world."

The US had sown chaos in Afghanistan, Vietnam and the Middle East, and has been trying for years to undermine Russia's "unique" culture and language, Patrushev said.

"There is no place for our country in the West," he said.

In response, he said Russia would achieve economic sovereignty and financial independence, while also building up its armed forces and special services to deter any potential aggressor.

When asked about Patrushev's remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said NATO and the US were part of the Ukraine conflict.

"They have de facto already become an indirect party to this conflict, pumping Ukraine with weapons, technologies, intelligence information and so on," Peskov told a regular news conference.

Oklahoma training

Russia's special military operation in Ukraine has triggered one of the deadliest European conflicts since World War II and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Meanwhile, about 100 Ukrainian troops will head to Oklahoma's Fort Sill as soon as next week to begin training on the Patriot missile defense system, getting Kyiv closer to obtaining the long-sought protection against Russia's missile attacks, The Associated Press reported.

The number of Ukrainians coming to Fort Sill is approximately the number it takes to operate one battery, and they will focus on learning to operate and also maintain the Patriot, Pentagon spokesman Air Force General Pat Ryder said on Tuesday.

The US pledged one Patriot battery in December as part of several large military assistance packages it has provided to Ukraine in recent weeks. Last week, Germany pledged an additional Patriot battery.

Each Patriot battery consists of a truck-mounted launching system with eight launchers that can hold up to four missile interceptors each, a ground radar, a control station and a generator. The army said it currently has 16 Patriot battalions.

On the battlefield, fighting for salt mining town Soledar raged in subzero temperatures on Wednesday as Russia's paramilitary group Wagner claimed it had taken control, with its fighters training their fire on a pocket of resistance in the town center.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... a90fd.html

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

Image

The smoldering Moldovan crisis
Originally published: Russian and Eurasian Politics on January 7, 2023 by Gordon M. Hahn (more by Russian and Eurasian Politics) (Posted Jan 11, 2023)

The battle between Russia and the West for Moldova has been ongoing since the Soviet collapse, despite the country’s constitutional ban on joining alliances, presumably applying only to military ones. That battle has been slowly escalating ever since the February 2014 Western-backed Maidan putsch, rise of the oligarchic-ultranationalist Maidan regime, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the Donbass conflict. Many aspects of the situation in Moldova mirror those that led to war in Ukraine: (1) a cleft state cobbled together as a result of World War II; (2) a ‘stateness problem’ with divisions between pro-Western and pro-Russian elements; (3) corresponding ethnic and religious cleavages; (4) NATO and EU encroachment on the country in opposition to Moscow’s interests and security; (5) Russian gas supply issues; and (6) worsening tensions inside the country exacerbated by Western and Russian involvement.

Like Ukraine, Moldova is a cleft state located on the cusp of the West-Eurasia dividing line between the European peninsula and the Eurasian continental—in other words, the new post-Cold War Eastern Europe. A signpost in the struggle for Moldova came in January 2020 when NATO member Romania threatened to break relations with Moldova because Kishinev under pro-Moscow then President Igor Dodon sought to join both the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and the EU (www.ng.ru/cis/2020-01-22/1_7774_moldova.html). Now, according to former Moldovan ambassador to Russia, Anatol Tsarapu argues Russo-Moldovan relations are headed for “complete collapse” (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html).

Moldova, which has stateness problems rooted in mutually antagonistic ethnic groups (Moldovans, pro-Russians in Transdniestr, Ukrainians, and pro-Russian Turkic Gagauz*), is now being targeted for full incorporation into the West, including NATO. Of course, the central conflict is between the largely Slavic (Russian and Ukrainian) Transdniestr region’s population and the Romanian Moldovan majority. Serious Western cooptation of Moldova would be sure to inflame the country’s ‘frozen conflict’ with the ethnic Russian-dominated breakaway region of Transdniestria, which borders Ukraine and is protected by Russia’s 14th Army Group, as well as with the Gagauz Autonomous Republic, the Turkic population of which looks to Moscow as its protector.

Moreover, religious tensions overlap ethnic tensions in Ukraine and are likely to be exacerbated by Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s attack on the formerly affiliate of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, could very well spillover into civil war. Tensions between the Orthodox and Uniate churches are traditionally tense in places like the central hub of Mukhachevo in the formerly Romanian territory of the Transcarpathia region in western Ukraine, and could draw in Romania, which Transcarpathia borders (along with Hungary and Slovakia), and thus Moldova, the border of which is just 100 miles away from Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region.

Ukraine would certainly support any move by Kishinev to force Transdniestr’s reintegration. Indeed, it supports these efforts whenever it can. In August, Russia’s envoy for the Moldovan-Transdniestrian issue Dmitrii Kozak was promised by Sandu that there would be no blockade of the breakaway region and no restriction on automobile plates. However, in September 2021, Ukraine started to close its territory to automobiles with Transdniestr license plates, which was unlikely to be implemented without Moldova’s approval if not outright request, something Kishinev denies it gave. But Kishinev had begun to violate its agreement with Tiraspol’ under which neutral license plates were given to Transdniestr residents, allowing them not only to travel into Ukraine but all EU territory. The transport restriction began to put strain on Transdniestr’s exports (www.ng.ru/cis/2021-09-09/1_8248_moldova.html). Thus, even before the present war, Zelenskiy and Moldova’s President Maria Sandu were cooperating to undermine Russian interests in Moldova-Transdniestr.

A crisis or civil war in Moldova might open up a second front to which Moscow might need to divert resources otherwise targeting Ukraine. It also might help bring NATO into the war; something Kiev has been struggling to achieve since February 2022. And Sandu’s Moldovan administration appears intent on escalating tensions with Moscow over several issues—most notably, that of possible NATO expansion.

BREAKING GAS TIES
The only thing still connecting Russia and Moldova are latter’s purchase of the former’s natural gas and the presence of Rssia’s 14th Army in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniestr. But Moldova is moving to get off all Russian gas and purchase it from its co-ethnic neighbor Romania. Already last winter, before the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Moldovan journalist Dmitrii Chubachenko noted that the repeated failure of Moldova to pay its gas debt and bills to GasProm, and Sandu’s failure to seek a new agreement with Moscow for well over a year despite the inevitability of a resulting gas crisis. If Moldova is to succeed in transitioning from Russian to alternative gas and avoid political instability, he argued, the West should pay for Moldova’s Russian gas in the interim at least during this winter of high prices if it cannot replace the supplies Moldova needs to avert a catastrophic gas cutoff (www.ng.ru/cis/2022-01-17/1_8347_moldova.html). The gas crisis threatens now to break Moldova and/or Transdniestr, whether by design or otherwise.

President Sandu and her ruling Action and Solidarity Party (ASP) support a full break with Russia and are using the Ukrainian method of failing to make gas payments on time, diverting gas supplies, and then asserting Moscow has unilaterally cut supplies. At a November joint press conference with EU Chair Ursula von der Leyen, Sandu emphasized the GazProm cut of supplies in half without noting Moldova’s repeated failure to pay for gas and receiving approval from Gazprom to postponement payments and Moldova’s failure to honor the stipulation in its GazProm contract that Kishinev conduct an audit of its estimated 700 million Euro debt to GazProm and begin payments on that debt by May 2022. At the same time, she has blamed protests against high energy prices on Moscow or “pro-Russian parties in Moldova and criminal groups,” referencing “much information” she never elaborated upon. At the same time, Leyen boasted that the EU had reduced its dependence on Russian gas and would help Moldova this winter with gas and electricity supplies (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html). But with the war and sanctions, non-Russian gas and electricity supplies will be more expensive for Moldova’s citizens.

According to some evidence, Ukraine is helping the Moldovan government facilitate such a break by ‘storing’ or withholding 56 million cubic meters of Russian gas that should transit to Transdniestr, as the Moldovan government has prepared shifting the country away from reliance on Russian natural gas by storing for a ‘rainy day’ over 200 billion cubic meters of gas that would have supplied the breakaway region. Some argue this is a deliberate policy to destroy Transdniestr’s economy and provoke a revolt against its pro-Russian leadership (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-27/11_8600_catastrophe.html). Unfortunately, for Kishinev, Moldova’s lone electricity plant from which energy bought from Russia is supplied is located in Transdniestria. Thus, an electrity collapse would necessitate, perhaps, a re-start of the frozen conflict.

In short, the stage is being set for a complete break from Russian not only regarding gas supplies but in overall relations in the attempt to complicate Transdniestr’s energy and political stability. In this way, with Moldova’s separation from Russian gas supplies and integration with the West and Ukraine, Transdniestr might be destabilized. That might activate the only remaining Russo-Moldovan ‘connection’—Russia’s 14th army, which could be targeted by Ukrainian forces, among others.

INTENSIFICATION OF NATO AND EU INVOVLEMENT
It is curious indeed that on the background of a mounting gas crisis in Moldova and Europe, Moldova is moving closer to Ukraine and its military and NATO is becoming ever more involved in Moldova. In November there developed a discussion in Moldova on the possibility of transferring its territory where Russian ammunition depots are located to Ukraine. President Sandu had said earlier that she was ready to ‘share with her neighbors.’ Then the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Moldova, Viktor Shelin, stated that Ukraine’s shortage of ammunition could be solved by Moldova’s agreement to exchange those army depots for part of Ukraine’s Odessa region, which would also benefit Moldova’s fraternal state Romania, which would gain control of the Danube. Sandu, during a conversation with Telegram Channel prankers Vovan and Lexus in which she believed she was speaking with Ukrainian PM Denis Shmygal, expressed her readiness to give lands of her country to Ukraine for temporary use. She said she had discussed with representatives of Ukraine the village of Giurgiulesti in the south of Moldova, where the Republic of Moldova has 1 km of the Danube coast and a port has been built: “We have made a proposal. Your people (from Ukraine) came and inspected the territory that we are ready to provide you with. We are still trying to resolve legal issues with the port as a whole. However, we can offer you land for use for the next few years” (www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html).

Then there is the EU’s more concrete ‘Plan of the Euro-commission for the Increase of the Mobility of the Armed Forces of NATO’ (www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html). Through the Euro-commission’s NATO Plan, the European Union will connect the Moldova, Ukraine, and the Balkans in order to increase military mobility for the rapid deployment of NATO combat forces to the east. Under this plan all automobile and railroad transport systems will be adapted to facilitate the rapid movement of NATO troops to ‘the east.’ In November, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Josep Borrel stated in Kishinev that in accordance with the ‘Plan of the Euro-commission for the Increase of the Mobility of the Armed Forces of NATO’: “The military mobility Plan implies strengthening cooperation with NATO and key strategic partners such as the United States, Canada and Norway, while facilitating interaction and dialogue with regional partners and expansion countries such as Ukraine, Moldova and the Western Balkans” (http://www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html). “The European Union will involve Moldova in projects to increase military mobility for the rapid deployment of combat forces” by modernizing and interacting with EU infrastructure Moldova’s auto and rail transport infrastructures, according to Borrell. He stressed that bridges, tunnels, roads and railways are needed for this. (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html). Shelin specified: “There are stations in Moldova that were equipped in Soviet times for railway junctions where railway tracks intersect. These are Ungheni, Balti, Bender, Bessarabian. They can be used to transfer trains from the European gauge to the one that remained in the post-Soviet space from the USSR. That is, goods such as sunflower oil and grain needed in the EU can be transported from the territory of Ukraine to Europe in a mobile way. And military cargo—from the EU through Romania and Moldova—to Ukraine. Moldova will become a transit country, including for NATO military equipment” (www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html). Strategically, the EU-NATO ‘mobility plan’ undertakes to “allow the armed forces to move faster and better across borders” and “solve the problem of the deteriorating security situation after the Russian aggression against Ukraine and increase the EU’s ability to protect its citizens and infrastructure.” Borrel noted: “We need to adapt our entire mobility system so that our troops can quickly deploy their capabilities. And this is critically important for our defense: the ability to quickly transport troops from one part of the EU to another part—mainly from west to east” (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html).

Similarly, Moldova has ratified and will receive a 60 million Euro credit from the French Development Agrency to modernize the country’s energy and transport sectors and anchor them in the West, Kishinev recently restored the Kiev-Kishinev rail line (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html). The developments in transport are tied directly to security issues, as discussed below.

Moreover, the European Peace Foundation has given 40 million Euros to Kishinev for its army’s development and opened a Center for EU Support on Issues Internal Security and Border Administration “to help solve problems connected with the Russian invasion in Ukraine.” (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-11-13/9_8588_moldova.html). Since 2007, as has been the practice in other states that eventually joind NATO, there has been in Kishinev a Center for Information and Documentation of NATO for providing Moldovans with information about NATO, its policies, and “questions of security and Moldovan-NATO relations: (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-10-02/11_8554_moldova.html). Like Ukraine, Moldova continues is being targeted for NATO expansion, despite the country’s constitutional mandate of neutrality and the NATO expansion’s lead role in sparking war in Moldova’s neighbor, Ukraine.

The Western attempt at a somewhat asymmetrical escalation will be clear should Moldova revise its constitution and repeal its neutrality clause. In late September, Sandu’s presidential adviser on security issues and Secretary of Moldova’s Security Council Dorin Rechan seemed to be preparing the groundwork for revising Moldova’s neutral status. Stating that Kishinev ought no longer to rely on foreign policy instruments alone, one of which is the status of neutrality, he noted: “Society must understand that this is critically important for the survival of the state, funds must be allocated for defense, and the support of citizens is most important here” (www.ng.ru/dipkurer/2022-10-02/11_8554_moldova.html). According to the leader of the Communist Party, Vladimir Voronin, Sandu and the ASP were moving in mid-November to make their move. Holding 63 of 101 seats in parliament and needing 68 to amend the constitution, Sandu’s ASP was looking for the five additional votes needed to amend the constitution (http://www.ng.ru/cis/2022-11-14/5_8589_cis02.html).

As all of the above was occurring, Moscow did not remain idle. Russia appears to have successfully hacked the telephone accounts of Moldova’s highest-ranking officials, including President Maya Sandu, her advisers, Justice Minister Sergei Litvinenko, Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Son and others, sparking a political scandal. Moldovan media published private communications between them in discussion about rigging the competition for the post of head of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office in favor of the “American” Veronika Dragalin at the request of the IMF, about manipulating members of the “independent” Supreme Council of Prosecutors, about setting up ex-Prosecutor General Alexander Stoyanogo in 2021 and of pro-Russian ex—President Igor Dodon in 2019, about numerous episodes of corruption, use of official office for profit, the preparation of legislation in favor of lobbyists and “agreements” with businessmen about specific transactions. The ruling PAS party called the hacking an attempt by Russia’s FSB to block Moldova’s European course (www.ng.ru/week/2022-11-13/8_8588_week5.html).

Conclusion
To be sure, the West will not allow Moldova to remain vulnerable to Russian influence, no less normal relations. If this was conceivable at any time, that period ended on February 24, 2022. The Ukrainian crisis makes a Moldovan one much more likely. NATO member Romania’s ambitions in Moldova (and perhaps in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia as well) makes NATO’s drive to Moldova inevitable. With Russian troops in Transdniestria and U.S. troops in Romania, another staging point is set for a fuller-scale NATO-Russian war.

https://mronline.org/2023/01/11/the-smo ... an-crisis/

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

Dominic, the ‘other’ Lieven and the opposition of White Russian noble descendants to the Ukraine war;

Once again I make reference to the Comments section of my website on which some readers have pointed to journalist, think tank associate Anatol Lieven’s older brother Dominic as the true academic in the family. Anatol is put down as merely the careerist in the family who writes what is demanded by his publishers and promoters.

From my experience, things are not that simple, not in the Lieven family, not more generally among descendants of the nobility who emigrated in the waves of White Russians after the 1917 Revolution when we consider on which side of the barricades they are now planted with regard to the Ukraine-Russia war.

I agree with readers who have directed attention to Dominic Lieven’s seriousness as a scholar of Russian history. To my estimation, he is the greatest living historian of Imperial Russia in the West. His book on Russia’s war with Napoleon broke new ground and will not easily be surpassed for decades to come. He was the first Western historian of the period to make extensive use of Russian sources, as opposed to British and French sources which were all that his predecessors used. He was the first to break with the tradition established by Lev Tolstoy in the novel War and Peace, which ended the description of the conflict with the expulsion of the invading Grande Armée in 1812. Lieven took the narrative straight to the end in 1815, and, as a consequence, he reevaluated in an entirely new manner the role of Alexander I in arranging the decisive victory thanks to his brilliant personal direction of the diplomacy which made the winning alliance of forces possible. He is the historian who rejected the simplistic explanation of the French defeat inn 1812 by General Winter, meaning by the climatic conditions for which their army was not properly prepared and which they faced after the pointless taking and destruction of Moscow led to looting and breakdown of discipline in their ranks. He is the historian who documented how the massive Russian superiority in cavalry horses, the tanks of the day, favored Russian victory.

In short, this one book, which was prepared in time for celebrations of the two hundredth anniversary of the 1812 war, established Dominic Lieven as a worthy heir to the traditions of his forebears, the Baltic barons, who loyally served the House of Romanov for three centuries or more. Other books by Dominic Lieven used extensive archival research in Russia to tell us who constituted the ruling officialdom of the Empire.

In acknowledgement of Dominic’s well earned reputation as a fair-minded reader of Russian history to Western students and academics, he was several years ago invited to participate in one of the annual gatherings of the Valdai Club in Sochi in the presence of President Putin.

Regrettably, that invitation is just one more proof of how Putin’s assistants misjudge who is who in the West. It ranks with the utterly foolish annual invitations extended to Georgetown University’s house Russophobe professor, Angela Stent.

Why do I say this? Because a couple of months ago Dominic Lieven came out publicly with a harsh condemnation of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. He could have just remained silent, but he did not do so.

What motivated Dominic to take this stand is hard to say. Perhaps he understood that failure to do so would do irreparable damage to his standing in British academic society which is almost entirely anti-Russian

However, Dominic Lieven’s public stance against the Kremlin highlights the schism among the descendants of noble White Russian families. During Soviet days, they were nearly all aligned against Moscow. Following 1991, many returned to Russia to inspect what was left of their family estates. Some few among them actually were given rooms in surviving manor houses for their use in perpetuity. And the claimant to the Romanov throne, a certain Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna Bagration, was flattered to receive the attentlon of Moscow mayor Luzhkov while rumors swirled in the 1990s about a possible restoration of the monarchy. I had a personal connectlon with this issue insofar as one of my early accomplishments as Managing Director of one of the world’s leading wine and spirits companies in 1998 was precisely to cut the sponsorship funds the company had been paying to sustain this fraud.

In essays which I published on my website in the two years before the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic, I wrote about one of the most important events of the French-speaking royal social club where I am a member, their annual dinner early in January in honor of Russian Christmas. These dinners had as their honorary patrons the RF Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium and the head of the society of Russian noblemen in Paris, Prince Trubetskoy.

As I mentioned in 2019, these Russian dinners were well attended by the cream of Belgium’s French-speaking monarchists, who, to my understanding, were sympathetic to the traditions of Russian-Belgian cultural and economic ties going back to the times of Peter the Great. The Tsar had famously visited the waters of Spa during his travels in the Low Countries.

Now, under conditions of the Russian-Ukraine war, I see a cardinal shift in the thinking of these social and business elite members of my Cercle. As table mates have explained to me, the democratic world is now engaged in a life or death struggle with the forces of autocracy led by Mr. Putin. And this new ideologically driven thinking seems to have captured the minds of descendants of the White Russians who are counted among our Cercle’s leading members.

This year’s celebratory dinner on 5 January was dedicated to Orthodox Christmas and all the entertainment which enlivened the dinners past was renamed in Ukrainian. And so the former Kuban Cossack singers were this year Zaporozhye Cossack singers and their songs are called Ukrainian national songs. Of course, all that changed was the names, not the content. But at the head of this farce we had the very same Prince Trubetskoy from Paris!

In short, White Russians stood against the Soviet regime. Now all too many of them stand against the Russian Federation. These are the sad facts of a country that has had a centuries-long problem with its identity.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/01/12/ ... raine-war/

That's funny, White Russian nobility against autocracy. Ya can't make this shit up.

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

From Cassad's Telegram account:

forwarded from
Systemic pesticide
🇬🇧🇺🇦Beregini 's hacker group has begun releasing a series of materials with now accurate evidence of the virtual nature of the Freedom of Russia legion.

Beregini write that curators from NATO instructed the Ukrainian special services to develop a concept for a unit of Russian volunteers in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a plan for an information campaign.

➖The fugitive State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev was ordered to become the media face of the legion.

➖Ukrainian intelligence begins to work with citizens of the Russian Federation who apply to the legion.

➖For the informational promotion of the legion, all information resources of both Ukraine and NATO countries are used.

🔎We have been closely following the legion's information vicissitudes since the spring.

🔻The first public person who loudly announced the creation of the legion was the adviser to the President of Ukraine Oleksiy Arestovich .

Then the chief Ukrainian psychologist, intelligence officer and actor said that every day he receives dozens of messages with facts of sabotage on the territory of the Russian Federation, organized by members of the legion.

🔻In July, the British press began to circulate a clearly staged video of the first woman joining the legion, whose husband was allegedly killed by Chechens.

🔻The information resources of the virtual legion were referred to by the Atlantic Council , the NATO Analytical Center .

An expert from Latvia then made references to an "authoritative" source with evidence of arguments about the suppression of ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation, which are determined to fight for decolonization.

🔻After the announcement of partial mobilization in the Russian Federation, some resources called for the surrender of Russian military personnel with the prospect of joining the legion.

🔻"Freedom of Russia" periodically takes responsibility for sabotage within Russia.

For example, in December, The Insider 's foreign agent did not at all critically refer to the legion's channel, thereby confirming their involvement in the undermining of the railway track in the Rostov region on December 14th.

📌Even the analysis of open sources convinced us that the legion exists exclusively on the Internet. But now it will be doubly interesting to look into the internal documents of Ukrainian intelligence, which, with the participation of advisers from NATO, hyped this misunderstanding.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

As I recall Nazi tried this one in WWII and the traitors all ran away at the first whiff of grapeshot.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

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

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 13, 2023 1:13 pm

war as opportunity
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/13/2023

Image

In the last eight years and especially in the last ten months, the different phases of the war have corresponded with different stages in the information war, in the speech with which Ukraine has appealed to its partners to come to its aid. The image of weakness typical of a country that demands more at all times has not meant any contradiction to the sure-victory discourse that Kiev has maintained since last spring and which has always had a more than problematic nuance of supremacy: the idea that presents is that Ukraine, the Ukrainians, are simply better than Russia and than the Russians. Coupled with the generalization of terms like orcs or to the idea of ​​Ukraine as the frontier of European and Western civilization vis-a-vis Russia, it can be said that it also contemplates a certain racial aspect.

Each phase of the war has brought new Ukrainian demands, which did not start on February 24, 2022, but go back to the years of the war in Donbass, when Ukraine pleaded for the shipment of Javelin anti-tank missiles. The war went to a higher level with the Russian military intervention, which showed the difference between the war against some militias that, although supported from Russia, did not have the heavy weapons that are now being used. That change brought new desires, some of them, like closing the skies, unfulfilled. However, many others have been gradually realized as Ukraine showed, almost always more through Russian demerit than through its own merit, that it was capable of staying in the fight. The defense of kyiv implied a new phase in the delivery of foreign material, increasingly offensive and not only defensive. With the passing of the months and the beginning of the campaign of Russian missile attacks against the Ukrainian critical infrastructure, Ukraine has obtained the commitment of the United States to send Patriot systems . This week it has been known that Ukrainian soldiers will be trained in Oklahoma in handling these anti-aircraft weapons.

Little by little, first by pillaging the arsenals of countries that were former members of the Warsaw Pact in search of Soviet weapons and later with weapons from NATO countries, Ukraine has managed to become the proxy army of the Atlantic alliance. No one hides the fact that this conflict has become, if it has not been since its inception, a common proxy war against Russia. On the contrary, kyiv has decided to exploit that condition and this week the Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar openly offered her partners to use the Ukrainian battlefield to test their new weapons.

Proxy warfare can be defined as the indirect participation in a conflict by third parties, be they states or non-state actors, seeking to influence its strategic outcome. Despite occurring in a common war context, provider and recipient may, on occasion, differ in their objectives, tactics, or strategies. In this case, the dependence on Ukraine is, by now, so high that it is difficult to imagine how kyiv could act in a way that would harm the interests of its main allies: the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom as politically and economically more present.

However, highlighting that complete dependency does not seek to deny Ukraine its agency ., ability to act relatively independently, but is simply meant to underline that kyiv has subordinated its interests to those of its more politically powerful allies. Otherwise, if the interests of the country and its population had been safeguarded, the peace talks that began in March of last year would possibly have continued beyond the few meetings that were held in Belarus and the final summit in Istanbul in which made it clear that Ukraine's option was war to the end. At that time, Ukraine's foreign partners did not press for peace either, as they had not done during the Minsk process, all of them ready to sacrifice the Ukrainian people in pursuit of their common interests, which happen to weaken and perhaps even defeat. militarily and politically to Russia.

Faced with naive Russian forecasts, Ukraine not only defended itself and kept the state and the army on its feet, but its Western partners responded quickly and have provided real-time intelligence, unconditional information support to impose their discourse and an ever-increasing amount of weapons. Although nothing is ever enough and Ukraine constantly demands increased deliveries beyond its partners' capacity to produce such weapons and ammunition, kyiv sees this as a way to pay for its efforts. The recent words of Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, stating that Ukraine supplies the blood, so NATO must supply the bullets is just one more representation of something that kyiv has been repeating for years: Ukraine is the army that fights on “the border outside of Western civilization.

With this discourse of European supremacist overtones fully installed in the collective imagination of the population and the Western press, Ukraine is now seeking a further step. Any mention of a peace process other than the “peace plan” presented by Zelensky is unacceptable. This has been made clear this week by Oleksiy Danilov, president of the National Defense and Security Council, who has denounced that Russia is seeking to negotiate in Europe an approach similar to that of the partition of Korea, actually a way of freezing the conflict. Whether it corresponds to reality or is nothing more than a new fantasy of the kyiv writers, this idea cannot count on the favor of the countries of the European Union, which, like its North American partners and the United Kingdom, is preparing to a long war in which he will continue to unconditionally support hisukrainian proxy . This week's image of Úrsula von der Leyen, Charles Michelle and Jens Stoltenberg and their agreement to expand the collaboration between the EU and NATO is just the latest representation of the alignment of interests, but also of the subordination of the EU to NATO.

There will be no diplomatic attempt by Ukraine's Western partners to seek a peace agreement beyond what Zelensky proposed. This plan demands the surrender of Russia and the abandonment of all territories seized from Ukraine according to its 1991 borders, that is, also Crimea, whose population left Ukraine on their own initiative in 2014 and can hardly wish to return to the country that for years interrupted them. water supply. Dmitro Kuleba has been seeking for weeks to obtain a United Nations act to embody that plan, a summit to which Russia would not even be invited, not even to sign the capitulation. According to the Ukrainian minister, Russia would only be invited after having undergone a trial for war crimes, that Nuremberg that Mikhailo Podolyak intends to hold in Yalta, Crimea. Yesterday, Openly ignoring the development of the war events, where Ukrainian troops now find themselves in difficulties on the Donetsk front, he wrote that "the war will end at the 1991 borders with a court, reparations and life sentences." That is also the wish of Wesley Clark, NATO Supreme Commander when the Alliance was bombing Yugoslavia. A prominent hawk, Clark has spent years seeking greater NATO involvement in the war against Russia. And now he is trying to pressure Ukraine to get the necessary material to conquer Crimea. That is also the wish of Wesley Clark, NATO Supreme Commander when the Alliance was bombing Yugoslavia. A prominent hawk, Clark has spent years seeking greater NATO involvement in the war against Russia. And now he is trying to pressure Ukraine to get the necessary material to conquer Crimea. That is also the wish of Wesley Clark, NATO Supreme Commander when the Alliance was bombing Yugoslavia. A prominent hawk, Clark has spent years seeking greater NATO involvement in the war against Russia. And now he is trying to pressure Ukraine to get the necessary material to conquer Crimea.

The objective is clear, as is the apparent acceptance by Ukraine's Western partners, not just of a war to the end, but of a conflict involving the fight for Crimea, Russian since 2014 and a strategic territory for which Russia he would fight with all the weaponry available in his arsenal (except perhaps nuclear weapons). That faction of members of the Biden administration who sought to prevent the escalation of the war that the Ukrainian attempt to get closer to Crimea would entail is in the past.

With the front paralyzed again in a large part of the 600 kilometers that make it up and with Russia trying to recover in Donetsk the initiative lost in Kharkov, hawks from the past return to warn that a long war benefits Putin -not even Russia- and NATO must arm Ukraine to ensure it does not have to deal with Russia later. That is the approach of Condoleeza Rice and Robert Gates in an article published by The Washington Post and in which part of the ideas of Zbig Brzezinski, staunch fighter of the Cold War who, even after September 11, 2001, considered that arming for years to freedom fightersin Afghanistan that gave rise to al-Qaeda was "a great idea." "We have a determined partner in Ukraine who is willing to bear the consequences of the war so that we do not have to do it ourselves in the future," say the former Secretary of State and the former Secretary of Defense in an argument that presents the situation in Ukraine. as catastrophic, even though it does so only to justify more war.

The catastrophe that war entails for the population is, as can be deduced from both this argument and the actions of Ukraine's allies, an opportunity for the Ukrainian state, NATO, the United States and the EU, which have subordinated their interests to the greater good of Washington.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/13/la-gu ... more-26413

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

Will Western Main Battle Tanks Turn the Tide in Ukraine? What do Russian Gains in Soledar Mean?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 12, 2023



Update on Russian military operations in Ukraine for January 13, 2022.

– Russian advances near Soledar and Bakhmut contradict “Ukrainian offensive momentum” narrative;

– Russian operations are consistent with the “demilitarization” objective for the special military operation;

– Bakhmut & Soledar are fortified cities along one of Ukraine’s last defensive lines in the Donbass region;

– West is announcing plans to send Western main battle tanks including Challenger 2 and Leopard 2 tanks;

– Challenger 2 and Leopard 2 tanks use different ammunition & both require an additional crew member (loader) increasing training demands for Ukrainian forces;

– The large variety of equipment the West is sending will create additional burdens for Ukrainian forces without any notable benefit;

– Western main battle tanks have proven to be vulnerable to (Russian-made) modern anti-tank weapons even under relatively ideal conditions;

– Ukrainian forces will be going into battle without sufficient artillery or air cover and facing off against Russian forces reinforced with an additional 300k men, new defenses, and an influx of new weaponry;

References:

The Duran on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDuran Alex Christoforou on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexChristof

Alexander Mercouris on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexMercouris Washington Post – Russia claims to control Soledar, a battlefield gain after months in retreat: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/

Congress of the US Congressional Budget Office – The US Military’s Force Structure: A Primer (explanation of the size and composition of a US armored brigade): https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/fil

NYT – Russia is building a vast network of trenches, traps and obstacles to slow Ukraine’s momentum. Will it work?: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2

Guardian – UK considers supplying handful of Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine: https://www.theguardian.com/world/202

Reuters – Poland plans to give Ukraine Leopard tanks as part of coalition: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/

CBS News – U.S. Tank Hit, 2 GIs Dead In Iraq (2007): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-tank-

Defense One – Saudi Losses in Yemen War Exposed by US Tank Deal: https://www.defenseone.com/business/2

National Interest – Turkey’s Leopard 2 Tanks Are Getting Crushed in Syria: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buz

New York Times – A Disciplined Hezbollah Surprises Israel With Its Training, Tactics and Weapons (2006): https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/wo

Haaretz – Hezbollah Anti-tank Fire Causing Most IDF Casualties in Lebanon (2006): https://www.haaretz.com/2006-08-06/ty

The Telegraph – MoD kept failure of best tank quiet (2007): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne

Guardian – John McCain tells Ukraine protesters: ‘We are here to support your just cause’ (2014): https://www.theguardian.com/world/201

BBC – Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call (2014): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe

HRW – New Language Requirement Raises Concerns in Ukraine: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/19/n

Guardian – Ukraine bans Communist party for ‘promoting separatism’: https://www.theguardian.com/world/201

Al Jazeera – In risky move, Ukraine’s president bans pro-Russian media: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2

BBC – US and Nato troops begin Ukraine military exercise (2014): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... edar-mean/

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

Enemy in Soledar is not detected
January 12, 20:28

Image

The first big report from the liberated Soledar. The enemy is not found in the city.

(Video at link.)

It is also worth noting that the enemy tried to counterattack today and return to Soledar, but he did not succeed with this.

On the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Soledar

On @rt_russian they write ( https://t.me/rt_russian/142900 ) that the combined units of the 46th and 77th airmobile brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from Paraskovievka tried unsuccessfully to counterattack the positions of the RF Armed Forces and break through the encirclement in the vicinity of Soledar.

Enemy detachments on French VAB armored personnel carriers and British Wolfhound armored personnel carriers tried to strike at the advancing orders of Russian troops. However, they were detected and destroyed by Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft during target designation from the ground.

During the sortie, the losses of Ukrainian formations amounted to about 200 people, the survivors fled from their positions. The airmobile forces operated without fire support due to the incapacitation of most enemy artillery systems in the Soledar area.

Why are the Armed Forces of Ukraine carrying out sorties that are doomed to failure?

Soledar for the Armed Forces of Ukraine is an important node in the still existing line of defense of Chasov Yar - Bakhmut - Soledar - Seversk. Its fall endangers a significant contingent in the vicinity of Seversk, as the defense is complicated by the location: the settlement is located in a lowland.

In the event of the final loss of Soledar and the nearby villages of Blagodatnoye, Razdolovka, Vyemka and Veseloye, Ukrainian formations will have to leave Seversk and other strongholds due to the threat of possible encirclement.

Together with the liberation of the Bakhmut agglomeration, the potential loss of Seversk will cause significant damage to the image of the Ukrainian army, the image of which has been built over the past six months.

An attempt to counterattack without regard for losses is a desire to rectify the catastrophic situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in this sector. And it is not at all excluded that such actions will be repeated until the final cleansing of Soledar by Russian troops.

Now in Minkovka, an advanced command post of the consolidated group of troops of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been organized. The arrival of 500 members of the territorial defense from the Sumy region is expected to the combat area, which are planned to be used to storm the Russian positions.

However, the effectiveness of such actions is a big question, given the fire control of the RF Armed Forces over the main routes in the area and the lack of tactical commanders of the Ukrainian formations: a significant part were killed or captured, the rest fled to Seversk.

And the encirclement of Bakhmut from the north, south and east leaves the Armed Forces of Ukraine less and less chances and time to rectify the situation.

@rybar

Broadcast of hostilities in Ukraine as usual here https://t.me/boris_rozhin (if you are interested, subscribe)

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8097312.html

Google Translator

*********

JIHADISTS MOVE TO UKRAINE AFTER CLASHES BETWEEN TÜRKIYE AND SYRIA
12 Jan 2023 , 2:01 pm .

Image
Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, former leader of the foreign group 'Caucasus Soldiers' in Syria, and now an official member of Ukraine's international legion (Photo: Atlas News)

The jihadists have been moving to the war front in Ukraine as negotiations between Türkiye and Syria progress. This rapprochement has been seen by the most extremist factors of the armed opposition as a betrayal, for which they have sought other territories where they are more "useful".

This confirmation came via a Lebanese media outlet, who said that the well-known Chechen extremist and leader of the 'Soldiers of the Caucasus' militia, Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, has reappeared in Ukraine as a member of the kyiv militia, the so-called 'legion international', established to attract and recruit foreign fighters against Russia.

Likewise, the report reports an increased number of foreign fighters leaving Syria for the "new battlefield", bolstered by "Türkiye's lack of need for 'jihadists' on Syrian soil" and its "definite interest... in get rid of them," reviews The Cradle .

The report also highlights the leading role played by Turkish intelligence in facilitating this transfer of extremists between countries in the early stage of the war. The outlet argues that this could have been Ankara's way of ridding itself of militants from Syria and clearing the way for a solution to the war in the territory.

Syrian officials also suggest a role for Washington in facilitating these transfers to Ukraine, as the United States has been involved in relocating extremists between Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.

The fact that the mercenary Shishani appeared on video on Ukrainian soil serves as propaganda specifically designed to attract extremist militants from Syria. His disappearance coincided with the establishment of recruitment centers in northern Syria designed to send fighters to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian territory is likely to become the battlefield and new safe haven for the Syrian jihadist movement. All under the protection of those who outsource the war through mercenaries.

https://misionverdad.com/yihadistas-se- ... ye-y-siria

Google Translator

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

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Soledar direction
situation as of 13.00 January 13, 2023

🔻In the Soledar sector, assault detachments of the PMC "Wagner" are clearing quarters and underground communications on the western outskirts of Soledar . Today, the "Wagnerites" entered the territory of the urban-type settlement of Sol and established control over the depot of the railway station of the same name.

▪️In the northwest of Soledar, there is active fighting on the southern edge of Krasnaya Gora and in Paraskovievka near the Bakhmutka River . After the liberation of the railway station Sol, the village of Blagodatnoye was actually cut off from supply lines from Seversk and Bakhmut .

▪️The members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who survived in Soledar and its environs spread information about huge losses in manpower due to command errors. In one of the brigades in the company of the formation, only 30 people remained , and in the battalion of 24 ombr out of 300, only 100 fighters survived .

🔻Fighting continues in Bakhmut and its suburbs. After the liberation by PMC "Wagner" of the village Experienced position of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the city is deteriorating.

▪️In Minkovka , a spare command post for the combined group has been equipped, and the forces of the 116th brigade of the territorial defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the Sumy region are expected to arrive at the direction.

▪️As a result of the active offensive of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost control over two company and two platoon strongholds in Bakhmut, Kleshcheevka and Krasnaya Gora.

▪️On January 12 alone, confirmed losses of Ukrainian formations in Bakhmut amounted to 100 people , and 39 were wounded . To strengthen the position, it is expected to transfer 600 mobilized without combat experience in the near future.

▪️According to radio interception from Bakhmut, more than 800 people have been killed in the past five days , not counting the missing and wounded.

In addition, individual units of Polish mercenaries, who were transferred to the direction a few weeks earlier, suffered huge losses.

The Poles spread information about the loss of communication and communication and the complete disunity between the formations in Bakhmut and the surrounding area. The moral and psychological state of mercenaries is at a low level.

▪️The forces of the 3rd Battalion of the 28th Ombre of the Armed Forces of Ukraine attempted a counteroffensive against Russian positions southwest of Bakhmut. The attack was repulsed, and separate detachments of the 28th brigade fled from the combat area.

🔻The leadership of the Ukrainian operational-tactical group "Soledar" assesses the situation as critical and expects an intensification of the offensive of Russian troops at the Berestovoe-Disputed line in order to reach the Seversk agglomeration , as well as in the south at the Ozaryanovka-Mayorsk line to Druzhba and Dyleevka .

The release of Experienced allows you to start advancing on the southern outskirts of Bakhmut, as well as attacking the fortified areas of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kleshcheevka from the east. Communication problems and low temperatures affect the ability to use reconnaissance UAVs, which reduces the effectiveness of the use of artillery and MLRS from Chasov Yar .

Image

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

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

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 14, 2023 1:49 pm

faked hits
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/14/2023

Image

In his daily communiqué on the development of what he continues to call a special military operation, the war in Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation yesterday referred to the complete capture of the city of Soledar. Two days earlier, after notable advances had already been reported in the city itself, the owner of the Wagner company, whose mercenaries had led the approach and assault on the city, considered Soledar controlled. In these hours, in which not even Evgeny Prigozhin had considered the battle in the city over, since the fight for the railway station was still going on and the Ukrainian troops were holding out in one of the salt mines, the usual dance took place of cross statements, also accompanied by some testimonies from Ukrainian soldiers published by Western media and which showed the loss of the city and the high Ukrainian casualties.

On Tuesday, Prigozhin tried to claim for himself and his family a victory that is presumed collective. Wagner's owner focused his speech on emphasizing that no more units than his soldiers had participated in the assault. Yesterday, a part of the audience, and also Prigozhin himself, seemed surprised at the mention of the paratroopers in the operation for the liberation of the city. Western media have understood this reference as an attempt by the official structures to snatch success of the operation to Wagner to be assigned to the Ministry of Defense. This rhetoric is aimed at underlining the existing differences, which have sometimes been public, between Prigozhin and the official military structures of the Russian Federation. The time is especially right for it. This week, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced the umpteenth reorganization of the command of the special military operation . Three months after the latest change, the Ministry of Defense leaves operations directly under the command of the General Staff and therefore its chief, Valery Gerasimov, whom both Prigozhin and Ramzan Kadirov have publicly criticized at times of crisis in Russian troops in Ukraine.

It is early to really know the effect that the fact that command has passed from Surovikin to Gerasimov will have on the ground, but the passing of the hours is illustrative of the situation in Soledar and its surroundings. Despite the surprise that the mention of the Russian paratroopers might cause yesterday, who indeed seem not to have participated in the assault on Soledar, already on Wednesday the Russian sources spoke of their presence to secure the perimeter of the city while combat against the Ukrainian groups that resisted in places like the railway station or some of the mines, which for obvious reasons favor the possibility of defense even in cases of numerical superiority of the attacking party.

In any case, the capture of Soledar, which is expected to be completely controlled in the next few hours despite the Ukrainian declarations, can only become a minimally noteworthy victory if it becomes the base on which to advance in the important city of the area: Artyomovsk, for which Wagner has been fighting since last July. Back then, the talkative adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine Oleksiy Arestovich claimed in one of his many media appearances that Russia would not be able to capture any other Ukrainian cities and that his possible successes would be limited to small villages. Until now, Arestovich's premonition had been fulfilled: in this time, Russia had only managed to capture Peski and Pavlovka as the most prominent towns in the Donetsk city area.

The consolidation of the positions around Soledar could allow Russia to interrupt, or at least significantly hinder, the supply of the Ukrainian troops in Artyomovsk. However, just yesterday, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky announced the sending of reinforcements to the area. In the morning, Zelensky announced that Ukraine had inflicted huge casualties on Russian troops in the city of Soledar, where according to the official version the battle is not only continuing, but Ukrainian troops are holding their positions. While the first graphic reports from the Russian press are already beginning to arrive, whose presence in the cities of Donbass is impossible in the event of Ukrainian control, kyiv still maintains the fiction of control of the city. Andriy Ermak, head of the Office of the President and a figure of enormous political weight today, he compared the situation in Soledar-Artyomovsk to the battle of Verdun, the greatest carnage of World War I, a simile that holds up neither in importance nor in magnitude. Ermak, like Zelensky, seeks to give the battle an added epic before justifying a withdrawal to which Arestovich's statements several days ago already pointed. "We maintain control," he said to explain that the decision will be made by Ukraine and "it will not be an escape, it will be an orderly withdrawal." As was the case in Mariupol, kyiv will continue to maintain the discourse of a hard battle, but in which Ukraine maintains control as long as a single Ukrainian unit remains in the city's territory. Currently, the battle seems to have moved to the western suburbs of Soledar, confirming that much, if not all, of the city it is already under Russian control, something that Russia will have to consolidate if these positions are to become a bridgehead for the assault on Artyomovsk, where the battle is expected to be the hardest. Despite some premature claims, Russian sources say the city is not yet in operational encirclement, so Ukraine still has an opportunity to continue sending reinforcements to a battle for a city kyiv says is of no strategic importance. but in which she is still willing to send more units of her army to die in the attempt to hold on for a while longer.

Although the bulk of the fight for Soledar seems to have ended, the aerial images released this week by Russian sources show enormous damage to the city's housing stock, so, in the face of the usual crossover of statements and accusations, it should be highlighted the drama that war entails for the civilian population. Yesterday, the DPR announced that the vulnerable civilian population will be temporarily relocated to nearby Shakhtyorsk. However, the magnitude of the damage implies an enormous task of reconstruction, impossible under war conditions.

The crossed statements will continue as long as the battle persists in the surroundings of Soledar. Living in this way the discourse that denies strategic, tactical or even moral importance to the town of Soledar -and later to Artyomovsk- with the denial of reality. Although the Russian advance is evident even to Western think-tanks , Zelensky will continue, as he did yesterday, stating that nothing has changed and that "Russia is only faking success." Ukraine thus feigns a defensive success that is increasingly difficult to sustain publicly.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/14/exito ... more-26417

Google Translator

*********

How Ukraine Suffered a Humiliating Defeat in Soledar
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 13, 2023
Vladislav Ugolny

Image

Fighters from the Wagner Group have completely surrounded the Donbass town of Soledar and are now clearing the extensive tunnel network in the town’s salt mines, the head of private military company, Evgeny Prigozhin, claimed.

The news came after weeks of intense battles in an area which sources from both sides, but especially those which are pro-Kiev, have described as a “meat grinder.” Despite the sustained, albeit slow, Russian advance, the Ukrainian authorities have chosen not to retreat at the cost of tremendous losses.

“I want to repeat that Soledar has been fully liberated and cleared of Ukrainian army units,” Prigozhin said in a statement on Wednesday evening. “The Ukrainian troops that refused to surrender have been destroyed.”

Prigozhin estimated that 500 Ukrainian troops died in the final stages of the fighting, after Wagner forces encircled them. That’s on top of others who perished previously.

The entire town is littered with the bodies of Ukrainian servicemen,” he said.[/i]

While gunfire can still be heard in the western outskirts of Soledar, it is clear now that Russian forces will emerge victorious. Their victory will, in turn, collapse a 70 km-long section of Kiev’s defenses.

The Stakes

Soledar is a conglomeration of several settlements established around salt mines and railway stations. In 2001, when Ukraine last conducted a census, around 13,000 people lived here. The town stretches along the right bank of the Bakhmutka River from southeast to northwest.

In late 2022, it became an infamous urban warzone. In peaceful times, however, it was known as the largest source of mineral salt in Central and Eastern Europe, covering around 80% of Ukraine’s needs. Deep salt mines have also made Soledar a tourist and leisure destination with tours around the caves.

There was, however, a second, military purpose to the city and its industries, as was typical for the Soviet Union. In the case of Soledar, several of its depleted mines were used as spacious and secure military warehouses.

Last year, this previously disregarded aspect of Soledar’s identity became its most prominent feature. Salt production stopped, and the gypsum plant ceased operating; the only visitors around were now Ukrainian soldiers – and developing asthma was the least of their problems.

Image
Artemsol salt mine with salt mining museum and sanatorium at a depth of 288 m in Soledar. © Elizaveta Becker / ullstein bild via Getty Images

Strategic Positions

Soledar became the focus of Russian offensive operations last May, after troops seized Popasnaya and breached the first line of Ukrainian defenses. The Ukrainian command turned the town into a major piece of its second defensive line, a stretch of fortifications along the Dzerzhinsk – Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) – Soledar – Seversk line.

Up until early August, fighting continued around Soledar: Russian forces were busy cutting off the pocket of Ukrainian forces near Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, and gradually advancing toward Soledar and Artyomovsk, seizing fortifications at Pilipchatino and Pokrovskoye along the way. Wagner units and the 6th Cossack Regiment of Lugansk gradually moved into the combat area. Russian troops enjoyed uncontested superiority in terms of artillery, but there were some early signs of ‘ammunition hunger’ looming on the horizon.

The Russians were unable to penetrate Ukrainian defenses in one burst. The troops, exhausted after a major operation to liberate the entirety of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), simply could not break through the numerically superior Ukrainian forces.

Ukrainian defenses in the area consisted of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, supported by numerous units of the Territorial Defense Forces. The second line was formed by the 24th Mechanized Brigade, which had suffered losses during the earlier fighting in Popasnaya. Combined, these forces were sufficient to hold off the attacks along most of the Artyomovsk-Soledar-Lisichansk line, a stretch of fortifications that would not be breached until December – a development that would ultimately spell defeat for the Ukrainians.

Yet, over the summer of 2022, Ukrainian defenses in the area held strong – so much so that one of Ukraine’s top media spokesmen, Aleksei Arestovich, boasted that the Russians would not take a single Ukrainian town beyond Lisichansk, including Artyomovsk and Soledar. The frontline stabilized, and the armies switched to positional warfare. In the Donbass farmland, fields are separated by strips of trees to prevent soil erosion; these strips were fortified and used as strongpoints. The Russian troops wrestled the farmland away from the Ukrainians, 500 meters at a time – however, an unconventional approach was required in order to achieve a decisive breakthrough.

Image

Until then, Russian assault groups, under the cover of artillery fire, had been working their way slowly, but steadily, through the Ukrainian defenses. Their first successful operation, which marked the start of the battle for Soledar, was the capture of the Knauf Gips gypsum plant in early August, by the 6th Cossack Regiment of the LPR army and Wagner units. Then, using the plant as a foothold, the Russian forces engaged in months of fighting in the southern part of the city, which consisted of private residences, several blocks of multistory residential buildings, a gypsum plant, a gypsum quarry and a refractory materials factory.

The fighting dragged on for the rest of the summer and into the fall. After the pullback from Kharkov Region and Krasny Liman, a new tug-of-war started over Peski, Marinka and Avdeevka. Later, the Russian army pulled out of Kherson, but managed to hold Svatovo. In the meantime, the situation around Soledar and Artyomovsk remained unchanged. Wagner forces, in cooperation with units from the Donbass republics and assisted by Russian aviation and artillery, lay the groundwork for a successful breach of the multi-layered Ukrainian defenses.

Fresh blood

What finally got things moving was the Wagner group’s decision to focus on assault tactics and scale up its operations by increasing its numbers. To get an influx of fresh blood, it used several approaches. First, friendly media created an entire subculture that praised Wagner as the leading military force and made it desirable to serve in its ranks. This promotional effort was driven by military bloggers (often Wagner veterans themselves), journalists, musicians and artists, and was certainly helped by the outspoken head of the group, Prigozhin.

As a result, when Russia announced a partial mobilization, some eligible men decided that it would be better to go to war themselves than sit around and wait for a draft summons. Volunteering gave you one privilege: You could choose which force to join. Wagner was one of the top choices.

Second, it was decided to start recruiting among prison inmates. Subject to strict discipline, they were offered equal treatment to other soldiers and a six-month contract, after which it was promised that they would be pardoned and their criminal records cleared. The first unit made up of such volunteers set out for the front in July, and those who survived until January went home, as shown in videos published by Prigozhin’s affiliated media.

The whole enterprise would not be as effective if not for the training system, in which assault units were actually prepared for this role, without wasting time on other skills that would be useless in this context. Another factor was Wagner’s combat control system that enabled coordination between many small groups.

By December, the assault units had proved their worth in Artyomovsk, breaking through Ukrainian defenses south of the city. Ukrainian commanders had to send brigade after brigade over to this front, losing opportunities in other areas.

Path to victory

The front line in Soledar was moving north, rather slowly. But the Ukrainian army was suffering losses. The 93rd Mechanized Brigade, which had stopped Russians near Soledar in August, was shattered so badly that it lost combat effectiveness and was pulled back for reinforcements.

It was replaced by the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, which was supposed to have been drawn out of combat to be replenished after heavy fighting on the right bank of Dnieper in Kherson Region. But the Ukrainian general staff had to draw on reserves, so there wasn’t enough time to replenish the 128th brigade before it was put up against Wagner’s assault troops in Bakhmutskoye and Soledar.

In the latter, fighting had intensified along the flanks. The Russians started to move forward through the industrial areas of Artyomovsk, opening up possibilities for moving into the southern outskirts of Soledar and for attacking Yakovlevka from the north.

Image

Yakovlevka was seized on December 18, which enabled further advancement towards Soledar. Ukrainians undertook a number of counter-attacks, trying to use the wood strips in the fields for their defense. The fall of Yakovlevka was a turning point that defined future success in Soledar.

The situation in the industrial area of Artyomovsk was different. The assault operation stopped after the frontline had shifted several kilometers away from the highway. Ukraine’s government and Western media described this as a victory, claiming that the Russians were evidently unable to seize Artyomovsk and had to shift the focus to a minor target – Soledar. In reality, the battles in Artyomovsk and Soledar were interconnected.

By advancing east of Artyomovsk, the Wagner Group took the upper hand and was able to storm Bakhmutskoye. Since the summer, the frontline ran through the village, splitting it into two parts, with the Ukrainian Armed Forces setting up a fortified area in the local school and equipment storage facilities in its northern part. After this, events took a faster course. On December 26, the Ukrainians were driven out of the school building and, on January 9, Bakhmutskoye was liberated almost completely and the Russian storm units moved on to Dekonskaya railway station.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defense in Soledar suffered an operational crisis, with the garrison stationed in the town attacked at the southern and northern flanks and unable to stop the Russian offensive. Kiev’s troops were exhausted with some fighters fleeing from their positions, according to Arestovich.

On January 5, the crisis Ukraine’s defenses became apparent, with its Forces withdrawing from the southern part of the town. On January 6, fighting broke out on the premises of salt mine No. 1-3, located downtown. The following day, Ukraine’s 46th Airmobile Brigade, one of the freshest units on the battlefield, was moved there from Artyomovsk to reinforce the defense – or rather, to cover retreat of Kiev’s fighters, in reality.


Image
Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin tours the Soledar salt mines with fighters of the Wagner Group PMC. © RIA News

On January 9, Prigozhin reported that there was fighting for control of Soledar’s municipal buildings. By January 10, the Russians had taken control of the town center and surrounded the Ukrainian units that hadn’t retreated to Soledar’s western parts. They were then given time until midnight to lay down their arms.

What happens next?

At the moment it’s hard to say how effective this rhetoric might be for encouraging the Ukrainian troops to surrender. There have been cases of some soldiers giving up, but there have also been quite different cases – like, for example, that of five Ukrainian troops who preferred to jump off a five-story building than submit to Russian custody during the assault of Soledar.

By late Wednesday, Russian troops had mostly cleared central Soledar. Clearing the salt mines is expected to take more time. According to open-source intelligence, Ukraine recognizes that mine 4 is under Russian control. and its troops to the east that point are surrounded. There is no data concerning the situation around mine 7 and railway station Sol, which have been under the control of the Ukrainian Army. These are Kiev’s last footholds in the area of Soledar and they will be hard to keep since all the supply routes are open to enemy fire.

The Russian offensive is targeting not only Soledar, but also the settlements on its flanks. The village of Podgornoye is already under Moscow’s control, and an offensive is in progress to capture the settlement of Krasnaya Gora, located between Soledar and Artyomovsk. If successful, this operation will cut off Artyomovsk’s supply routes from Slavyansk in the north, leaving it only accessible from Konstantinovka and Chasovy Yar.

A Russian offensive targeting railway station Sol, Krasnopolye, and Razdolovka is also in progress. Should this be a success and the troops succeed in crossing the Bakhmutka River, it will be a serious threat to the Ukraine-controlled Seversk that is strategically important to the Ukrainian Army since it keeps both Lisichansk and Kremennaya in check.

Image

The Ukrainian resistance in Soledar and Artyomovsk is currently weakening due to the intense Russian offensive. There is a clear shortage of battle-ready Ukrainian troops up to the challenge of withstanding the efficient offensive tactics employed by the Wagner PMC assault units.

And yet, the outcome of the Soledar offensive is up to the Russian command now. It remains to be seen within the next few weeks whether the command will take the risk of large casualties and try to step up the offensive or revert to slower tactics in crushing the Ukrainian defenses.

This is Russia’s first major victory since the withdrawals from Balakleya, Krasny Liman and Kherson and it’s important for boosting the morale of the troops. It is certainly a bitter pill for the Ukrainian Army. Whether we can expect Kiev to try and adapt to the new situation and look for out-of-the-box solutions remains to be seen. All we know now is that President Zelensky keeps promising the Ukrainian people he will recapture all of Donbass even though his troops are retreating.

Vladislav Ugolny, a Russian journalist based in Donetsk.
Russell Texas Bentley

Kiev starts to prepare Ukrainians for the sad news – western media reports on Soledar’s surrender are spreading on the channels controlled by the Ukrainian president’s office.

Officially, the Kiev authorities still do not acknowledge the loss of Soledar, but the agenda of the Ukrainian media has drastically changed. There is now a direct message on various channels controlled by the Office of the President, preparing for a truthful statement about the actual situation through reports by Western analysts noting that Soledar has been surrendered.

In the Ukrainian media space, an article by analysts from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is being circulated, explicitly stating that Soledar has fallen under Russian control. At the same time, neither Kiev nor the West benefits from admitting defeat in this direction, so the loss of the strategically important settlement is presented as a minor event, emphasizing that it does not imply the imminent encirclement of Artempvsk (Bakhmut).

In addition, Kiev-controlled channels cite Pentagon statements claiming that heavy fighting is still taking place in Soledar, thus delaying the inevitable moment of acknowledging the city’s loss to the AFU. Soledar has been under complete Russian control for several days – the Wagner PMC is now conducting mopping-up operations in the town, and the enemy resistance has been localized. And Kiev’s attempts to launch fakes with alleged video evidence are not crowned with success, nor is the prospect of revenge, which obviously will not succeed.


https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... n-soledar/

2023 Outlook for Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 13, 2023
Scott Ritter

Image
Russian President Vladimir Putin observing military exercises in the eastern Primorsky Krai region, September 2022. (Kremlin)

After almost a year of dramatic action, where initial Russian advances were met with impressive Ukrainian counteroffensives, the frontlines in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict have stabilized, with both sides engaged in bloody positional warfare, grinding each other down in a brutal attritional contest while awaiting the next major initiative from either side.

As the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches, the fact that Ukraine has made it this far into the conflict represents both a moral and, to a lesser extent, a military victory.

From the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to the director of the C.I.A., most senior military and intelligence officials in the West assessed in early 2022 that a major Russian military offensive against Ukraine would result in a rapid, decisive Russian victory.

The resilience and fortitude of the Ukrainian military surprised everyone, including the Russians, whose initial plan of action, inclusive of forces allocated to the task, proved inadequate to the tasks assigned. This perception of a Ukrainian victory, however, is misleading.

The Death of Diplomacy

As the dust settles on the battlefield, a pattern has emerged regarding the strategic vision behind Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine. While the mainstream Western narrative continues to paint the Russian action as a precipitous act of unprovoked aggression, a pattern of facts has emerged which suggests that the Russian case for preemptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter may have merit.

Recent admissions on the part of the officials responsible for the adoption of the Minsk Accords of both 2014 and 2015 (former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, former French President Francois Hollande and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel) show that the goal of the Minsk agreements for the promotion of a peaceful resolution to the post-2014 conflict in the Donbass between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists was a lie.

Instead, the Minsk Accords, according to this troika, were little more than a means to buy Ukraine time to build a military, with the assistance of NATO, capable of bringing the Donbass to heel and driving Russia out of Crimea.

Seen in this light, the establishment of a permanent training facility by the U.S. and NATO in western Ukraine — which between 2015 and 2022 trained some 30,000 Ukrainian troops to NATO standards for the sole purpose of confronting Russia in eastern Ukraine — takes on a whole new perspective.

The admitted duplicity of Ukraine, France and Germany contrasts with Russia’s repeated insistence prior to its Feb. 24, 2022, decision to invade Ukraine that the Minsk Accords be implemented in full.

In 2008, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia William Burns, the current C.I.A. director,warned that any effort by NATO to bring Ukraine into its fold would be viewed by Russia as a threat to its national security and, if pursued, would provoke a Russian military intervention. That memo by Burns provides much-needed context to the Dec. 17, 2021, initiatives by Russia to create a new European security framework that would keep Ukraine out of NATO.

Simply put, the trajectory of Russian diplomacy was conflict avoidance. The same cannot be said of either Ukraine or its Western partners, who were pursuing a policy of NATO expansion linked to the resolution of the Donbass/Crimea crises through military means.

Game Changer, Not Game Winner

The reaction of the Russian government to the failure on the part of the Russian military to defeat Ukraine in the opening phases of the conflict provides important insight into the mindset of the Russian leadership regarding its goals and objectives.

Denied a decisive victory, the Russians seemed prepared to accept an outcome which limited Russian territorial gains to the Donbass and Crimea and an agreement by Ukraine not to join NATO. Indeed, Russia and Ukraine were on the cusp of formalizing an agreement along these lines in negotiations scheduled to take place in Istanbul in early April 2022.

This negotiation, however, was scuttled following the intervention of then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who linked the continued provision of military assistance to Ukraine to the willingness of Ukraine to force a conclusion to the conflict on the battlefield, as opposed to negotiations. Johnson’s intervention was motivated by an assessment on the part of NATO that the initial Russian military failures were indicative of Russian weakness.

The mood in NATO, reflected in the public statements of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (“If [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wins, that is not only a big defeat for the Ukrainians, but it will be the defeat, and dangerous, for all of us”) and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”) was to use the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as a proxy war designed to weaken Russia to the point that it would never again seek to undertake a Ukraine-like military adventure. [Coupled with an ill-fated economic war, it was also designed to bring down the Russian government, as President Joe Biden admitted last spring.]

This policy served as the impetus for the injection of what would amount to well over $100 billion worth of assistance, including tens of billions of dollars of advanced military equipment, to Ukraine.

This massive infusion of aid was a game-changing event, allowing Ukraine to transition from a primarily defensive posture to one that saw a reconstituted Ukrainian military, trained, equipped and organized to NATO standards, launching large-scale counterattacks that succeeded in driving Russian forces from large swaths of Ukraine. It was not, however, a game winning strategy — far from it.

Military Math

The impressive Ukrainian military accomplishments that were facilitated through the provision of military aid by NATO came at a huge cost in lives and material. While the exact calculation of casualties suffered by either side is difficult to come by, there is widespread acknowledgement, even among the Ukrainian government, that Ukrainian losses have been heavy.

With the battle-lines currently stabilized, the question of where the war goes from here comes down to basic military math — in short, a causal relationship between two basic equations revolving around burn rates (how quickly losses are sustained) versus replenishment rates (how quickly such losses can be replaced.) The calculus bodes ill for Ukraine.

Neither NATO nor the United States appear able to sustain the quantity of weapons that have been delivered to Ukraine, which enabled the successful fall counteroffensives against the Russians.

This equipment has largely been destroyed, and despite Ukraine’s insistence on its need for more tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery and air defense, and while new military aid appears to be forthcoming, it will be late to the battle and in insufficient quantities to have a game-winning impact on the battlefield.

Likewise, the casualty rates sustained by Ukraine, which at times reach more than 1,000 men per day, far exceed its ability to mobilize and train replacements.

Russia, on the other hand, is in the process of finalizing a mobilization of more than 300,000 men who appear to be equipped with the most advanced weapons systems in the Russian arsenal.

When these forces arrive in full on the battlefield, sometime by the end of January, Ukraine will have no response. This harsh reality, when coupled with the annexation by Russia of more than 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory and infrastructure damage approaching $1 trillion, bodes ill for the future of Ukraine.

There is an old Russian saying, “A Russian harnesses slowly but rides fast.” This appears to be what is transpiring regarding the Russian-Ukraine conflict.

Both Ukraine and its Western partners are struggling to sustain the conflict they initiated when they rejected a possible peace settlement in April 2022. Russia, after starting off on its back feet, has largely regrouped, and appears poised to resume large-scale offensive operations which neither Ukraine nor its Western partners have an adequate answer for.

Moreover, given the duplicitous history of the Minsk Accords, it is unlikely Russia can be dissuaded from undertaking its military offensive through diplomacy. As such, 2023 appears to be shaping up as a year of continued violent confrontation leading to a decisive Russian military victory.

How Russia leverages such a military victory into a sustainable political settlement that manifests itself in regional peace and security is yet to be seen.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... r-ukraine/

How the Crisis This War is Causing Will End with Most Americans Supporting Russia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 13, 2023
Rainer Shea

Image
From the Facebook page of Russell Bentley, the Texan who joined to help the Donbass liberation fighters

In his article for International Socialist Review about the American Civil War, Donny Schraffenberger observes how the crisis the country underwent largely brought about a shift in consciousness among the white proletariat:

The vast majority of poor whites weren’t abolitionists. They didn’t thrive economically because Blacks were enslaved. Slavery actually hindered their economic development. Even though slavery was against their own class interests, poor whites continued to support the slave system on the hope that some day, as Marx noted, they would become slaveholders themselves. They recognized that despite their poverty and lack of education, they, at least, were not slaves…The resistance of slaves and former slaves mattered. Their running away, denying their labor to the Confederacy, helping the Union armies, and agitating to take up a rifled musket to bring down the slaveocracy convinced more and more Northerners of their cause for freedom. Abolitionists, both Black and white, organized meetings and demonstrations. Antislavery papers such as Frederick Douglass’s North Star or William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator helped to sway public opinion. Soldiers debating the nature of war and slavery around the campfire also had its impact. The timidity of the conservative generals, and their unwillingness to bring the full resources of the Union army down upon the Confederacy, fueled the national debate. The old strategy of compromising to win over slavery supporters was no longer working. Which way forward?

Why is this story applicable to an analogy about how Americans can overall be persuaded towards the pro-Russia stance? Because like was the case with slavery, the U.S. empire has brought the country to a point of crisis due to its refusal to stop engaging in evil. In the case of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the evils our government has committed are carrying out a fascist coup in Kiev, then militarizing Ukraine to the consequence of threatening Russia’s security, then backing the coup regime in its ethnic cleansing against the Donbass Russian speakers. As a consequence of these wrongdoings by their government, the American people are now experiencing a war. They’re not directly faced with it, but the war is destroying the last hopes for stability among millions of working class Americans.

The inflation the conflict has exacerbated is making it ensured that many people in this country aren’t able to buy enough food, pay their bills, or avoid eviction. And like with the war over slavery, the working class people who’ve been negatively impacted by their government’s worst policy—which back then was slavery whereas now it’s imperialist maneuvers to assist in genocide—have not initially been dissuaded from supporting this policy. This is because like how slavery was back then the economic basis for U.S. capitalism, in modern America the country’s main source of wealth comes from imperial extraction. Which directly pertains to the Ukraine issue.

Washington’s meddling and war provocations in Ukraine have been about trying to fortify the presently threatened neo-colonial order. The empire hopes to weaken Russia enough that it can be destabilized and broken apart like Yugoslavia, allowing for China to be subdued in the new great-power competition. If China were subdued, it would stop undermining U.S. neo-colonial extraction across the peripheral countries. Therefore opposing Russia is in the best interests of those whose primary material stake is tied to the continuation of the Global South’s robbery.

What most of the U.S. working class hasn’t (yet) realized is that their primary material interests are not tied to maintaining the U.S. empire. They’re tied to proletarian revolution in America, and therefore to the U.S. empire’s abolition. The ways in which working class Americans “benefit” from imperialism are negligible at best. The only “advantage” they get from it is cheaper consumer goods, which is a tiny factor in comparison to the ways living under an imperialist government harms them. Imperialism, particularly imperialism’s militarist project, depends on austerity being imposed upon the workers in the core. As we’re seeing, these workers are also subjected to grievously damaging inflation in order to keep their government’s warfare operations running.

The latter way in which imperialism harms the U.S. working class is new. It only came to noticeably impact the livelihoods of American workers a year ago, when Russia was provoked into intervening in Ukraine and Biden committed to an indefinitely long proxy conflict. This means the empire has introduced an unprecedented factor within the conditions of the core’s proletariat. Never before have working Americans had less clear of a material incentive to back imperialism. And never before have they had more of a material incentive to overthrow the bourgeois state, which entails coming to support Russia against the empire’s vile transgressions.

You can argue the American working class is chauvinistic towards its own country, and that supposedly this therefore means they’ll never come to support Russia. To which I’d say: yes you can find much imperial chauvinism among the American people. And?

It’s only natural for a population that’s only ever been exposed to imperialist propaganda to exclusively hold pro-imperialist ideas, insofar as they hold opinions on foreign affairs at all. When they’re also exposed to anti-imperialist arguments, like the ones I’ve articulated, they won’t all reject these arguments. Certain elements of them will cling to pro-imperialist ideology, but many more of them will come to renounce it. Or to hate upon first finding out about it, as many working class people aren’t zealous pro-imperialists in the first place. They’re simply going along with what their cultural hegemony tells them to think, without much passion for these ideas the ruling class imposes upon them. Their role in this situation is passive, rather than aggressive like is often the case for the academics, commentators, and social media actors who constantly promote NATO’s propaganda.

That’s because the Americans most inclined to reject the evidence of Washington’s Ukraine meddling, support for ethnic cleansing, and menacing activities towards Russia are the ones in the upper strata of income. They’re the comfortable minority who’ve had the luxury to focus on international affairs, and who’ve naturally embraced the war against Russia with great enthusiasm as per their neo-colonial interests.

As the principled communist parties continue to spread anti-imperialist education, and as principled individual communists continue to do this educational work on their own, we’ll see more of a visible social element which supports Russia. This social element is based in the proletariat, not in the economically privileged individuals who make up the social base for the Ukraine aid effort. If you’re among the one-third of Americans who still aren’t living paycheck to paycheck because of the inflation, it’s easy to keep believing the lies our government has produced to rationalize continuing aid for Ukraine. It’s easy to disbelieve the evidence that Ukraine is guilty of genocide, and that a U.S. coup happened in Kiev in 2014. So is not the case if you’re in the majority which has been getting materially harmed by the war effort.

The day when a working class American sees the evidence behind Russia’s justification for intervening in Ukraine, and then reacts to this evidence with total denial the way the war’s materially comfortable supporters do, will be an odd day. People are not idiots, they can tell they’ve been scammed when the scam is a simple one and they’re shown straightforward proof it’s a scam. And the Ukraine psyop is a ridiculously simple scam, one that’s been directed towards the U.S. proletariat: the empire turned Ukraine into a launching pad for attacks against Russia, got Russia to respond, then sacrificed the wellbeing of the core’s workers to fund a costly war. All while telling these workers their suffering is for the sake of “defending Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

For someone who’s accepted the indisputable evidence of Washington’s role behind creating the conflict, this idea is the most hilariously absurd thing imaginable. The psyop’s creators should be embarrassed of themselves for having spun such a weak story. They’re not masterminds, they’re PR managers who’ve had to put forth the only claim that can act as damage control for imperialism’s Ukraine scheme. And it’s not a convincing claim from the perspective of the people who are being screwed over by this war.

In time, the psyop’s engineers will indeed be embarrassed. All that’s delaying the switch in America’s popular consciousness towards the anti-imperialist stance is the ongoing success of the counterinsurgency against revolutionary organizing, which can’t continue. Not if anti-imperialists put in the work to build our movement. Most U.S. workers only “support” Ukraine because they’ve been exclusively shown the easily debunked account of events that the Ukraine psyop relies on. That isn’t them being happily pro-imperialist, that’s them being made into a captive audience for some of the weakest arguments ever proliferated within American public discourse. When the counters to these arguments are widely seen, the way that millions of people view the world will radically shift.



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... ng-russia/

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

THE US CONTRIBUTED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF NAZISM IN UKRAINE DURING THE COLD WAR
Jan 13, 2023 , 1:31 p.m.

Image

Declassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) give indications of how the United States has contributed to the historical development of Nazism in Ukraine.

The document outlines details of Operation Belladonna. One of these has to do with the contact between extremist Ukrainian nationalists and the US government in the context of the fight against the Soviet Union.

Below are more details about the involvement of the United States in the creation of groups that consolidated Nazism in Ukrainian territory:

*He influenced the development of the Supreme Liberation Council of Ukraine (UHVR). The factions of Stepán Bandera and Andrij Melnyk were part of this council.
*The CIA expanded its operations in the Ukraine through the AERODYNAMIC Project, which operated between the years 1949-1970. The aim was to create "nationalist outbreaks" in widely scattered areas of the Soviet Union.
*The CIA successfully established a counterintelligence network with the Ukrainian underground Nazis in the 1950s.
*Radio was used to transmit communication between various insurgent groups. The objective? Foster a national awareness and pride in the heritage and individuality of their culture.
*Ways were sought to create discontent among Ukrainian military personnel against the Soviet Union.
*For this reason, the frequency of glorification of Nazism through its historical leaders such as Stepán Bandera is manifested.

Without a doubt, these projects define half a century of US support for Ukrainian Nazism. The development of the current war would not have been possible if US intelligence had not influenced extreme right groups.

https://misionverdad.com/eeuu-contribuy ... uerra-fria

Google Translator

For the US citizen: If you are not shamed and outraged, if you do not oppose the promotion of Nazism then you are complicit.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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

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

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 15, 2023 3:10 pm

Economic priorities of the war
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/15/2023

Image

The destruction caused by the war and the implications of population loss, capital flight and destruction of the economic and social fabric have caused, throughout the years of war in Donbass, a situation that, on occasions, has been able to lead to a true humanitarian catastrophe. This was the case in the first winter of the DPR and the LPR, when in places like Pervomaisk, partially besieged and practically isolated from the rest of Lugansk due to the danger of traveling on the roads, truly catastrophic situations occurred. The problems for the population were due to two fundamental aspects: the destruction of employment or the difficulties in collecting wages from those companies that were still active and the lack of certain essential goods. To these two purely economic difficulties must be added the damage suffered in infrastructures and houses in the towns near the front. In the more than eight years of war in Donbass, the image of houses and other buildings without windows has been a constant repeated in the towns and cities where the Minsk truces existed only on paper.

The extension of the war in Donbass to all of Ukraine has meant the extension of the front to almost a thousand kilometers that it reached in summer and to around 600 that it maintains today. The war, which is still an artillery war, means that the destruction that was previously limited to the DPR and the LPR is now repeated in more cities and towns in Donbass and also in Kharkiv, Zaporozhye and Kherson. The problem of material deficiencies in the homes, especially the absence of windows or the usual temporary patches with film, is especially worrying for the population in these winter months, a problem that the Russian authorities are trying to solve quickly, but without having able to cover all the demand in the enormous number of cities destroyed in its territory. The problem is especially important in cities like Mariupol, where Russia has begun to rebuild the housing stock and is building new neighborhoods at a rapid pace to relocate the population. Much closer to the front and with a lower profile, other cities such as Lisichansk or Severodonetsk have received less attention. After months of complaints, a report published this week finally showed some progress in the supply of basic services such as electricity or water in the city of Severodonetsk. However, many of these houses still lack windows. other cities such as Lisichansk or Severodonetsk have received less attention. After months of complaints, a report published this week finally showed some progress in the supply of basic services such as electricity or water in the city of Severodonetsk. However, many of these houses still lack windows. other cities such as Lisichansk or Severodonetsk have received less attention. After months of complaints, a report published this week finally showed some progress in the supply of basic services such as electricity or water in the city of Severodonetsk. However, many of these houses still lack windows.

The shortcomings do not distinguish the margins of the front line and the problems are similar on both sides. In the Ukrainian case, as in Donbass, the effects of the war go beyond the destruction of the towns near the front lines and the difficulties for the daily life of the population in those places. Far from the front lines, even those places that have not been affected by bombing or missile attacks are now suffering from the effects of the conflict. As happened in Donbass in 2014, the loss of employment, capital flight and loss of population are a reality in today's Ukraine, whose industry also suffers from the Russian bombing of companies related to the military sector and the crisis energetic and economic. This combination of circumstances has led to the virtual disappearance of the industry in a country that inherited from the Soviet Union an entire industrial network that made a group of oligarchs immensely rich in the 1990s, but which the country has never developed as a form of sovereignty. economic. Currently, in conditions of war and with the constant risk of being destroyed by Russian bombing, the industry is no more than a shadow of what it was, with the consequences that this entails for the population.

However, unlike Donbass, with the DPR and PRL being states not even recognized by Russia until February 2022, Ukraine does now have a steady stream of funding to keep its economy afloat. Ukraine is not suffering from a blockade imposed by its enemy with the aim of destroying its economy and the well-being of its population. It was not Vladimir Putin but Petro Poroshenko who imagined the start of "hunger riots" in Donbass due to the blockade that he himself imposed.

At that time, Donbass had the financial support of Russia to guarantee minimum services, maintain at least part of the economy and start paying small, although essential, pensions to the most vulnerable population. Ukraine, for its part, relies on subsidies and lines of credit from the most powerful countries and institutions in the Western world to cover the costs of the war and to maintain the population at a decent standard of living. However, with war as a tool with which to achieve the country's objectives, entry into the European Union and NATO, the priorities of the Government of Ukraine have always been clear: every aspect of life and the State must be subordinated to the military objective. Hence, kyiv has reacted in economic terms unchanged from what was observed before Russia's entry into the war. Ukraine has not opted for nationalization or the takeover of the economy to reorganize the different sectors to guarantee the basic needs of the front and rear, but has deepened theneoliberal reforms that he had been carrying out for years. The privatization of state assets has continued and any seizure of private assets is intended to be used for subsequent sale to big foreign capital.

The subsidies of the European Union, 18,000 million euros for the next months, are allowing Ukraine to maintain, for example, the payment of pensions and public salaries, not only the costs of the personnel involved in the war. However, beyond that minimum, the Ukrainian government seems to be applying the libertarian recipe, understood in the American sense: leave everything in the hands of the market. The consequence is that, despite not suffering from any economic blockade, it now suffers from some of the deficiencies that have occurred in Donbass over the years, which did suffer from this burden of the Ukrainian blockade. Without going any further, yesterday Ukrainian media critical of the Government published, for example, the shortage of antibiotics in Ukrainian pharmacies,

None of this seems to be the responsibility of the Ukrainian government, which is focused solely on two fronts: military and informational. In this context, the population must fend for itself with the only help of the market. This has been made clear this week by Irina Vereschuk. The deputy prime minister, who stood out a few months ago for recommending that children not be sent to school in territories controlled by Russia, has asked the internally displaced population, that is, those who have had to leave their towns due to the war, that they look for employment. With the economy paralyzed and a large increase in both poverty and unemployment, the Ukrainian government hopes that this population, victims of the war, will not be a burden and will not have to invest in it what it expects to use in the war.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/15/prior ... more-26424

Google Translator

***********

Emmanuel Todd On The Third World War

The French Le Figaro has an interview with the well known anthropologist Emmanuel Todd.

Emmanuel Todd: «La Troisième Guerre mondiale a commencé»

"The third world war has began" is his new thesis. Todd is quite famous for correctly predicting the devolution of the Soviet Union long before it happened. He was quite alone at that time.

I once had a piece on Todd's later predictions for the U.S. and Europe which still seems spot on. I also quoted him in a piece on social decline as a national security issue.

Unfortunately the Figaro piece is paywalled. But Arnaud Bertrand has done us the favor of translating the gist. Here is his slightly edited thread:

Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand - 15:42 UTC · Jan 13, 2023
Emmanuel Todd, one of the greatest French intellectuals today, claims that the "Third World War has started."

Small 🧵 translating the most important points in this fascinating interview.

He says "it's obvious that the conflict, which started as a limited territorial war and is escalating to a global economic confrontation between the whole of the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other hand, has become a world war."

He believes that "Putin made a big mistake early on, which is [that] on the eve of the war [everyone saw Ukraine] not as a fledgling democracy, but as a society in decay and a “failed state” in the making. [...] I think the Kremlin's calculation was that this decaying society would crumble at the first shock. But what we have discovered, on the contrary, is that a society in decomposition, if it is fed by external financial and military resources, can find in war a new type of balance, and even a horizon, a hope."
He says he agrees with Mearsheimer's analysis of the conflict: "Mearsheimer tells us that Ukraine, whose army had been overtaken by NATO soldiers (American, British and Polish) since at least 2014, was therefore a de facto member of the NATO, and that the Russians had announced that they would never tolerate Ukraine in NATO. From their point of view, the Russians are therefore in a war that is defensive and preventive. Mearsheimer added that we would have no reason to rejoice in the eventual difficulties of the Russians because since this is an existential question for them, the harder it would be, the harder they would strike. The analysis seems to hold true."


He however has some criticism for Mearsheimer:

"Mearsheimer, like a good American, overestimates his country. He considers that, if for the Russians the war in Ukraine is existential, for the Americans it is basically only one 'game' of power among others. After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, what's one more debacle? The basic axiom of American geopolitics is: 'We can do whatever we want because we are sheltered, far away, between two oceans, nothing will ever happen to us'. Nothing would be existential for America.

Insufficient analysis which today leads Biden to proceed mindlessly. America is fragile. The resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system towards the precipice. No one had expected that the Russian economy would hold up against the 'economic power' of NATO. I believe that the Russians themselves did not anticipate it.

If the Russian economy resisted the sanctions indefinitely and managed to exhaust the European economy, while it itself remained, backed by China, American monetary and financial controls of the world would collapse, and with them the possibility for United States to fund their huge trade deficit for nothing. This war has therefore become existential for the United States. No more than Russia, they cannot withdraw from the conflict, they cannot let go. This is why we are now in an endless war, in a confrontation whose outcome must be the collapse of one or the other."


He firmly believes the US is in decline but sees it as bad news for the autonomy of vassal states:

"I have just read a book by S. Jaishankar, Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs (The India Way), published just before the war, who sees American weakness, who knows that the confrontation between China and the US will have no winner but will give space to a country like India, and to many others. I add: but not to Europeans. Everywhere we see the weakening of the US, but not in Europe and Japan because one of the effects of the retraction of the imperial system is that the United States strengthens its hold on its initial protectorates. As the American system shrinks, it weighs ever more heavily on the local elites of the protectorates (and I include all of Europe here). The first to lose all national autonomy will be (or already are) the English and the Australians. The Internet has produced human interaction with the US in the Anglosphere of such intensity that its academic, media and artistic elites are, so to speak, annexed. On the European continent we are somewhat protected by our national languages, but the fall in our autonomy is considerable, and rapid. Let's remember the Iraq war, when Chirac, Schröder and Putin held joint anti-war press conferences."

He underlines the importance of skills and education: "The US is now twice as populated as Russia (2.2 times in student age groups). But in the US only 7% are studying engineering, while in Russia it is 25%. Which means that with 2.2 times fewer people studying, Russia trains 30% more engineers. The US fills the gap with foreign students, but they're mainly Indians and even more Chinese. This is not safe and is already decreasing. It is a dilemma of the American economy: it can only face competition from China by importing skilled Chinese labor."

On the ideological and cultural aspects of the war: "When we see the Russian Duma pass even more repressive legislation on 'LGBT propaganda', we feel superior. I can feel that as an ordinary Westerner. But from a geopolitical point of view, if we think in terms of oft power, it is a mistake. On 75% of the planet, the kinship organization was patrilineal and one can sense a strong understanding of Russian attitudes. For the collective non-West, Russia affirms a reassuring moral conservatism."

He continues: "The USSR had a certain form of soft power [but] communism basically horrified the whole Muslim world by its atheism and inspired nothing particular in India, outside of West Bengal and Kerala. However, today, Russia which repositioned itself as the archetype of the great power, not only anti-colonialist, but also patrilineal and conservative of traditional mores, can seduce much further. [For instance] it's obvious that Putin's Russia, having become morally conservative, has become sympathetic to the Saudis who I'm sure have a bit of a hard time with American debates over access for transgender women in the ladies' room.

Western media are tragically funny, they keep saying, 'Russia is isolated, Russia is isolated'. But when we look at the votes at the UN, we see that 75% of the world does not follow the West, which then seems very small.

With an anthropologist reading of this [divide between the West and the rest] we find that countries in the West often have a nuclear family structure with bilateral kinship systems, that is to say where male and female kinship are equivalent in the definition of the social status of the child. [Within the rest], with the bulk of the Afro-Euro-Asian mass, we find community and patrilineal family organizations. We then see that this conflict, described by our media as a conflict of political values, is at a deeper level a conflict of anthropological values. It is this unconscious aspect of the divide and this depth that make the confrontation dangerous."


There you go. Is he right on everything? I don't know, but Emmanuel Todd is certainly always a very singular and interesting thinker, with a vastly different analysis from the depressingly predictable bad takes that usually dominate French media.

Todd's thinking rhymes well with that of Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson as reproduced at Naked Capitalism.

Economists Radhika Desai & Michael Hudson Explain Multipolarity, Decline of US Hegemony - Original here[/i]

Yves Smith introduces it:

Yves here. Some rousing weekend listening! Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson are launching a bi-weekly talk show, Geopolitical Economy Hour. The opening segment gives an overview, starting with the breakdown of US dominance and how it has been accelerated ironically by self-defeating efforts to preserve the system. It seems trivial at this point to observe that American defense of its hegemony has helped forge a strong Russia-China alliance. But will this partnership wind up dominating other countries, and stymie the development of a truly multipolar order?

Good food for thought ...

Posted by b on January 14, 2023 at 14:52 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/01/e ... .html#more

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

Payment of reparations to Ukraine. 01/14/2023
January 14, 18:54

Image

Payment of reparations to Ukraine. 01/14/2023

Results of missile strikes at 18-00.

Arrivals in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kyiv, Kherson, Odessa, Mykolaiv, Ternopil, Vinnitsa, Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk regions, as well as in the territories of Donbass occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
So far, there is no exact data on explosions in the Volyn, Chernivtsi, Sumy and Zhytomyr regions, since air defense systems were operating everywhere.

Infrastructure facilities in Kharkiv, Dnepropetrovsk and Lviv regions were most severely affected, leading to power outages in these and neighboring regions, as well as interruptions in water, cellular communications and the Internet.

The weak effectiveness of the air defense (which, of course, will not hurt later to shoot down "almost everything" on the Internet) is associated with fog and changed tactics of the Aerospace Forces, which launch a large number of decoys and work out on the radar and air defense systems before the strike, after which there are already attacks on the infrastructure. So far, there is no data on the results of the destruction of air defense objects, but the last 3 attack waves led to the destruction of various elements of air defense systems (mainly components of the S-300 complex and various radars).

Broadcast of hostilities in Ukraine as usual in Telegram https://t.me/boris_rozhin (if you are interested, subscribe)
The current situation on the channel https://t.me/boris_rozhin/75379

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8101324.html

Google Translator

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

Image

The World Split Apart 2.0: Introduction and Part 1
Originally published: Russian and Eurasian Politics on November 3, 2022 by Gordon Hahn (more by Russian and Eurasian Politics) (Posted Jan 14, 2023)

Nearly a decade ago I began warning that NATO expansion and the West’s failure to understand that Russian national security interests not a Russian desire to ‘recreate the USSR’ or ‘former Russian empire’ would lead to a world split apart between the West and ‘the rest’ (Sino-Russian ‘strategic partnership and those states oriented towards it).

In September 2015, for example, I argued:

Therefore, rather than being some grand conspiracy to build a Russian empire and defeat the West in the ostensible ‘new cold war,’ Putin’s actions are actually about defending Russian positions in the region and national security at home. Any failure to realize the latter, real motivations behind Putin’s actions and instead favor a focus on the former, imagined ones is fraught with specter of more gains for the jihadists and the greater likelihood of a world needlessly split apart on this and other key issues”(https://gordonhahn.com/2015/09/29/expla ... -cold-war/).

In the same month I wrote:

(I)t cannot be excluded that in the back of Putin’s mind, held in reserve depending on how talks on the Levant crisis develop, talks on Ukraine could ensue around the Levant talks. In this way, the Ukraine crisis could be addressed in any grand deal. The ensuing talks could even lead to a grand deal on Ukraine… However, just as likely an outcome as some grand deal is a more polarized East-West divide, a world split apart over the fate of Assad, the war against jihadism, and Ukraine. This has all the makings of a world war (https://gordonhahn.com/2015/09/10/putin ... di-crisis/).

A year later I reiterated the point:

The calamitous Arab ‘Spring’ has justified the Russian critique of American foreign policy to such an extent that some neocons and other conservatives as well as no small number of leftists have bought into it not only in the U.S. but also in Europe and globally, most starkly in the non-West. This risks a new ‘world split apart’… The coming of that world may well depend on the triumph in Moscow of the radical Eurasianist view; a triumph made more likely by the neocon-neolib hold on the American imagination, regardless of which ideological clan wins the upcoming exercise in the decaying American democracy (https://gordonhahn.com/2016/10/27/the-r ... ontention/).

In 2018 I continued, noting that “the world is increasingly split apart between the West (plus Japan) and all the rest” (https://gordonhahn.com/2018/03/12/impli ... the-globe/). In 2019 I refined the point: “Thus, for our, the American/Western, part—I can only hope that some day we will revive the political culture of tolerance, rule of law, freedom of speech, which is slowly but surely being lost in good part for the sake of our efforts at democracy-promotion and NATO expansion. A failure to do so will result in more overreactive American and Western Russia policies, increasing polarization between the West and Russia (and China), the strengthening of an anti-Western alliance led by China and Russia, an economic war in a world split apart damaging the global economy, and finally more political violence and even war between East and West” (https://gordonhahn.com/2019/01/26/the-w ... next-wave/). In 2020 I noted:

It appears that excesses of traditionalism in the east and of anti-traditionalist nihilism in the West continue to split the world apart in this crisis century (https://gordonhahn.com/2020/03/24/putin ... s-century/).

My worst fears now appear to be coming true, portending a global catastrophe of war, revolution, and chaos. To be sure, the war for and against NATO expansion is not the only cause of the global schism and catastrophe now before us. The Schwabist-Soros globalist and transhumanist agenda is driving economic collapse and social discontent contributing to the oncoming catastrophe, but that is another topic for another day.

NATO expansion to Ukraine continued with Ukrainian membership replaced by deep Western and NATO involvement in Ukraine’s politics and military and gradually deepening after the 2014 Maidan revolt. In effect if not juridically, Ukraine was becoming a member of the NATO alliance. In this regard, it is important to point out that the famous Article 5 of the NATO Charter is not a blanket, mandatory obligation to engage directly in military action in defense of an alliance member under attack by an alliance non-member state. It merely requires consultations and assistance, which can but does not necessarily have to be the commitment of member-states’ forces directly to the battlefield. Assistance can include the provision of weapons, training, intelligence, and other forms of indirect assistance. This was already happening in Ukraine as a result of NATO policies. The Russian president responded with his invasion rapidly, both escalating that level of NATO military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine and accelerating the bifurcation of the world between the West and the rest. For all intents and purposes NATO and the entire West are at war with Russia and escalation to a more direct confrontation is just over the horizon. This course of events has deepened and consolidated the Sino-Russian alliance by any other name and that alliance’s efforts to rally to its side the rest of the rest. The world is becoming split apart as never before—an outcome globalization was not supposed to be about. The ‘new cold war’ is driving towards a greater bifurcation of the world into two camps than the confrontation between communism and capitalism ever engendered.

To be sure, this is in part simple counterbalancing, with great powers and small states joining to counter the global hegemon—the U.S. and the West—in order to maximize their own interests. It is also a consequence of exceedingly hubristic, arrogant, and increasingly clumsy U.S. foreign policies, such as NATO and EU expansion, a less thaN surgical and overly politically correct ‘war against terrorism’ (i.e., against jihadism). However, more recently, because of U.S. ‘democracy-promotion’ and human rights policies (an often hypocrisy), the emerging bipolar or multipolar culture is taking on an ideological element. In the West, democratization is being more insistently pushed while those deemed insufficiently ‘liberal’ (which has received some exotic new content and criteria: homosexuality promotion, transgenderism, and critical race theory—perhaps not entirely objectionable to some among the West’s former colonies. The non-Western ‘rest’ is increasingly opposed to democratization, seeing it as a Western pretext for expanding NATO and hegemony over the rest. China and Russia are increasingly moving to a pro-authoritarian stance that asserts that their systems are more efficient at maintaining order and thus securing development and can protect the rest’s cultures and economies from Western encroachment and anti-traditional values. Russia stands on the front line in this potentially global confrontation, by virtue of its geographical position on the Western periphery, its failed move toards the West after the Cold War, and a long history of troubled and complex relations with the West that have engendered a dominant security vigilance norm in Russian political and security culture.

The world split could become far more institutionalized than the first Cold War, drawing in more of the ‘rest’ separate from the West and centered in a Sino-Russian organized Greater Eurasia. There are several elements to the construction of the rest-West bifurcation. They include: (1) the Sino-Russian organization of Greater Eurasia, locking out the U.S. and Europe given the present world schism; (2) the attendant Sino-Russian expansion through Greater Eurasian IOs to the southern hemisphere, capitalizing on ‘Third World’ anti-Western anti-colonialism resentment to draw the South into institutions such as OBOR and BRICS; (3) the Sino-Russian anti-colonialism supplemented by the Eurasianist idea of ‘civilizational pluralism’ as a ideological foundation for a multipolar structure for an international system; (4) a new European and global security architectUre as the foundation for a new global political order; and (5) America’s turn to open regime change policy regarding the Putin regime in Russia and in the interim deepening Europe’s economic and security dependence on the U.S. The core, defining characteristic of the world split apart anew is Sino-Russian global confrontation with the U.S. and the West over the structure of a new world order or preservation of the old American unipolar system.

The West’s Separation from Russia
The story of the West’s ‘international isolation of Russia’—better thought of as the West’s and only the West’s alienation and rejection of Russia is well-known and needs little detailing here. NATO and, to a lesser extent, EU expansion alienated Russia, and Russia’s reactions to said expansion led the West to wholly reject Russia and to a alarge extent, visa versa. Although there are occasional loopholes, exceptions, and dissenters in the Western sanctions against Russia—some gas bought here, a turbine provided there, a space agreement here, SWIFT cutoff for only some Russian banks there—the West’s sanctions are isolating Russia from the West. Western businesses have removed from Russia almost en masse, and Russian businesses, athletes, and culture have been expelled from the West. Sanctions in general force countries to substitute imports by making them produce the sanctioned goods themselves. Russia has been doing this since 2014 and now will intensify and broaden that process.

The West’s decade-long sanctions regime against Russia is the central tool for isolation, but this tool inadvertently inspired a search for self-reliance and a turn to China as Moscow’s new strategic partner. While the Yamal LNG project, in the Russian arctic, two bridges in Russia’s Far East, and the Power of Siberia pipeline are the most notable bilateral successes, there are many other burgeoning projects. China’s Silk Road Fund helps to finance investment in Sibur, Russia’s largest petrochemical firm. During Xi’s 2019 visit to Moscow, a deal was signed to use Huawei equipment in its 5G trials was announced just as the Chinese firm was subject to greater Western scrutiny. China and Russia have worked together to develop alternative global navigation satellite systems with both commercial and military applications. Russia’s GLONASS system, which attained operational capacity of 24 satellites until 1995, and China’s BeiDou satellite network, completed in 2020 and claiming to have over 400 million users in 120 countries, are being coordinated, with a 2018 agreement establishing a committee to do this work, including trials to their equipment along Belt and Road transportation routes. Also, the parties agreed to host each other’s base stations (Jonathan Hillman, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws. ... Russia.pdf, pp. 8-9). It is important to note that many Sino-Russian joint projects signed on to still remain on paper only, but the post-February 2022 conflict and the Pelosi provocation on Taiwan can only add to motivation. However, incentives, driven by Western sanctions and antagonism, as well as ambitions have led to notable accomplishments in economic, financial, energy, communications cooperation and integration.

De-Westernization of trade in Russia and other Eurasian states was already declining considerably before the present war and resulting sanctions. China has been Russia’s largest trading partner for over a decade if one does not take the EU as a single entity, but Sino-Russian trade turnover has grown precipitously since Russia’s post-February ‘isolation’ began. Trade turnover between Russia and China in the first seven months of 2022 grew by 29 percent to $97.7 billion, with exports from Russia to China grew by 48.8 percent (www.ng.ru/monitoring/2022-08-10/7_8508_monitoring.html). By 1 October 2022, Sino-Russian trade turnover growth had accelerated, showing a projected 32.5 percent increase for the year attaining $136 billion, with Chinese exports to Russia increasing by 10.3 percent and Russian exports to China increasing by an impressive 51.6 percent (www.ng.ru/monitoring/2022-10-26/7_8575_monitoring.html). Four years ago, the parties announced the goal of $200 billion in trade by 2024—a goal that seems unlikely to be met, with the figure reaching only $101 billion in 2020. Notably, Russian natural gas sales are being switched from the West to ‘the rest’, especially China, as Europe attempts to quit its Russian gas habit and other economic ties with Moscow, Russo-Western economic trade turnover is set to collapse precipitously.

Already, from 2014-2020 the share of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union’s trade turnover with the Sino-Russian-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization grew from 16.3 percent to 24.1 percent and with the Asia-Pacific Economic Community from 29.6 percent to 36.4 percent; that is, by 50 percent and 25 percent, respectively. This, while the share of EEU’s overall trade turnover conducted with the EU fell from 46.2 percent in 2015 to 36.7 percent in 2020 and with the U.S. in the same period that figure fell by 18.1 percent (https://expert.ru/2022/02/25/sanktsii-i ... et-column/). Now Russia is pursuing aggressively new trade ties with those non-Western powers refusing to abide by Washington’s sanctions; secondary sanctions on those partners will further isolate Russia and those eastern and southern partners from the West.

Some in the West, for their part, are planning to extend ‘Russia’s isolation’ in scale, scope, and duration. In a recent interview former NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen acknowledged that plans are afoot to establish “economic deterrence as a way to counter authoritarian coercion.” The plan is to divide the world into democratic (ostensibly Western) countries and authoritarian countries (ostensibly most of the rest of the world’s states). Developing their “Economic Article 5”—modeled on NATO’s Article 5, which requires NATO member-states to support any member-sate that comes under attack—the designers hope to rally all members of the ‘democratic community of nations’ in the event a member-state experiences economic aggression. For example, a “common market of democracies” would assist a member threatened by economic aggression from China through “trade deals, investment agreements, transfers of technology, or…credit facilities to enable companies with production facilities in China to move operations to other low-cost countries.” Rasmussen notes:

A new world order is emerging that will involve less economic interaction between autocracies and democracies. Globalization is entering a new phase (www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/france-has ... ar-AAZGVyk).

Such isolation of Russia, China, and the rest will be with the West alone and will deepen the Sino-Russian strategic semi-alliance and entice the rest to further integrate among themselves with Beijing and Moscow and insulate from the West. This is where the creation of a network of network of states organizing an alternative economic and financial global order and an anti-NATO military-political alliance among the rest comes in. Three years ago at the annual Valdai Club forum, Putin decribed the Sino-Russian relationship that as “an allied relationship in the full sense of a multifaceted strategic partnership. This is reflected in the economy” (Vladimir Putin, “Valdai Discussion Club Session,” (speech, Valdai Discussion Club, Moscow, October 3, 2019), http:// en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61719).

In response to Western hegemony, regime change policies, NATO expansion, and fears over their state sovereignty especially over territorial integrity such as Taiwan for China and newly annexed Crimea, Russia and China have been deepening their economic, political, military, and intelligence cooperation. Russia and China have been growing major business opportunities with each other and much of the rest of the non-Western world for some time—from energy (natural gas, oil, nuclear, even coal) to other commodities (gold, silver, diamonds, titanium) to weapons and wheat. Now Western sanctions are forcing Russia to increase its dependence on China and the rest of the rest, consolidating Russia’s break with the West and strengthening both Russia’s domestic market and the rest. Thus, Russia has been able to rapidly replace its Western partners with Chinese as well as Indian, Saudi energy and other industrial sector customers and investors. Russia has demonstrated its ability to survive this transformation, as sanction-violating deliveries continue under various rebranding and smuggling schemes even with NATO member states. As prices rise precipitously, Russian gas profits skyrocket and Western economies suffer from sticker shock.

In terms of autonomy and self-reliance, ‘de-dollarization’, repatriation of offshore finances, diversification, import substitution, and the development of closed-cycle production processes are underway (https://expert.ru/2022/02/25/sanktsii-i ... et-column/). In terms of a ‘new dependence’, Western sanctions are driving Russia to greater but more diversified dependency on the ‘rest’ as well—most notably, democratic but anti-colonial India—and rallying countries in Eurasia dependent on Russia or unable to afford sanctions to the side of China and by association Russia. England’s seizure of all of Venezuela’s gold held in the Bank of England in late 2021, U.S. seizure of Iran’s exchange reserves, and the U.S.’s most recent seizure of Russian reserves—including $320 billion in gold reserves and $120 billion in dollar currency—held in the U.S. have intensified the division of the world between the West and Eurasia. China also lowered its dollar reserve below the symbolic $1 trillion to $850 billion this year, as coordinated U.S.-EU sanctions on trade connected to chip and soy production loom (https://www.ng.ru/economics/2022-10-31/ ... china.html). Isolation of the West from the rest consequently has locked in the Sino-Russian ‘strategic partnership’ for decades to come.

Moreover, China and Russia are nearing an official military alliance to consummate the unofficial one, supporting each other to one degree or another with intelligence exchanges, coordinated propaganda campaigns, and on policies such as Taiwan, Ukraine, international economics and finances, opposition to Western, especially American foreing policies. China has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine morally if not materially by placing the blame for the conflict going on NATO’s expansion east and Western-cultivated ‘color revolutions’ against Russia’s allies and neighbors. Moscow is Beijing’s largest arms supplier, providing 70 percent of China’s arms imports between 2014 and 2018 (Hillman, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws. ... Russia.pdf, p. 3).

The triangular relationship between the U.S., China, and Russia is now clearly more acute than isosceles and in fact is a bipolar straight line with a Sino-Soviet pole and a Western pole. China and Russia are becoming intentionally, by policy, interdependent economically, politically and strategically. Most importantly, Russia and its main strategic partner, China, are now fully motivated by will and opportunity to complete plans to establish an alternative world order—political, economic, financial, monetary, and military—autonomous from the West’s hegemony, tutelage, and control. In turn, much of the rest is rallying around the Sino-Russian pole on key issues and maintaining a slightly pro-Russian neutrality regarding the Ukrainian conflict.

The Sino-Russian Pole and the Rest of ‘the Rest’
At the same time, the West’s former colonial conquests, while leaving some victims less antagonistic towards the West than Russia and China presently are, have no love lost for the West. Even those states tending towards neutrality on issues such as Ukraine, Taiwan, and the ‘new cold war’ are inclined to rally around the new pole in the international system, forming a more bipolar or at least multipolar structure in which the West is just one component. China and the overwhelming part of the rest of the rest have refused to implement any sanctions against Russia no less the kind of broad and radical sanctions demanded by Washington and Brussels. All of the world’s most populous states besides the U.S. (China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Mexico), almost the entire Muslim world, as well as other states have not implemented sanctions against Russia. Thus, the UN vote that saw 141 of 181 countries vote to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had no teeth. It was a symbolic gesture that allowed the majority of the 141 ‘for’ states to get off the hook by virtue signaling and retain their pro-Russian neutrality.

Moreover, non-Western countries have stepped in to increase imports from Russia since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the onset of the resulting sanctions. Accordong to the New York Times, India increased its imports since February 2022 by 430% (!), Turkey by 213%, Brazil—166%, China—98%, and Saudi Arabia—45%. Exports to Russia fell for all countries, except for Turkey (+113%) and China (+24%). Some Western and Western-allied countries also increased their Russian imports: Netherlands—74%, Japan—40%, Germany—38%, and Norway—21%. Overall Russian-Belgian trade volume increased by 84%. For now, Western trade with Russia while reduced is still significant but no longer vital for Russia. Thirteen EU countries increased imports from Russia, while fourteen reduced them(www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/30/ ... e-war.html and https://news.ru/world/new-york-times-ra ... %3Ftext%3D citing the New York Times). In other words, we see a substantial decline in trade with Europe along with a major, in some cases extraordinary increase in trade with non-Western states. Isolation is now becoming a hard and fast Western policy concensus not just in relation to Russia but also in relation to China. Washington is preparing new sanctions against China, and Germany, having ‘learned the lesson of the dangers of dependence on Russia,’ has developed a concensus that Berlin must limit its economic ties with Beijing in order to avoid the risk of dependence on this even greater authoritarian powerhouse (https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/31/ge ... t-problem/).

Moreover still, Western sanctions produced counter-sanctions, from tactical ones such as Russia’s new demand that payments for natural gas sales be made in rubles to geostrategic ones such as the formation of a new alternative ‘global’ monetary-financial system to draw in the rest of the rest. Russian and Eurasian de-dollarization was underway in Russia and Eurasia before the February Russian offensive, prompted by the Russo-Western Ukrainian crisis of 2013-2014. Thus, from the first Ukraine-related sanctions introduced in 2014 through 2020, the use of dollar declined in international trade settlements from 60.2 percent to 46.7 percent. The EEU’s use of the dollar declined from 26.3 percent to 20.0 percent.

Already as a result of the post-2013 sanctions, Russia developed its own system of electronic money transfers—the System for Financial Transfer Communications (SPFS) of the Russian Central Bank and a credit card system ‘Mir’, which is tied to China’s own system ‘Union Pay’ and is used for both domestic and international bank transfers. Now this system will receive international support and states that fall to secondary Western sanctions will likely join with the new Sino-Russian infrastructure (https://expert.ru/2022/02/25/sanktsii-i ... et-column/).

Washington’s seizure of Russia’s foreign reserves in April and ban of Russia from foreign markets have given motivation to Russia (and China) to follow through on threats to de-dollarize fully. Moscow now seeks to substitute the American and world reserve currency with national currencies and then a new exchange-traded and commodities-backed currency for trade with Asian and African states, creating a new monetary system. One day into the new stage of the war, former government minister Sergie Glazev suggested that Russia propose to its “Asian partners” the introduction of a new “global payment-accounts currency based on an index of national currencies and market goods” (https://expert.ru/2022/02/25/sanktsii-i ... et-column/). In the longer-term, Russia and its strategic partner are most likely to pursue a semi-global reserve currency, for example the yuan, which now accounts for only 5 percent of trade payment settlements globally, compared to 80 percent for the dollar. According to the IMF, central bank currencies have declined from 70 to 60 percent in dollars since 2000, with the yuan having picked up 2 percent of such holdings in that period (https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-war-in ... entury/and https://americanmind.org/memo/dethronin ... %ef%bf%bc/).

China and Russia initiated financial and monetary autonomy cooperation before the Ukraine crisis. They began using their own currencies for bilateral trade as early as 2010 and inaugurated their first currency swap line in 2014. Now China, Russia, great power India, Iran, and others are increasing trade in their own currencies. Saudi Arabia and China began talks in March on Chinese yuan replacing the ‘petrodollar’ as payment currency for some of its oil purchases from the Kingdom. Before Russia’s February 2022 escalation, Sino-Russian cooperation on alternative digital payment systems expanded but remained limited by Russia’s relatively small market and aversion to currency digitalization. In 2019, Yandex.Checkout—a joint venture between Russia’s diversifying tech company Yandex and its largest bank, SberBank—became the first online Russian retailer to accept China’s WeChat Pay. At the same time, China’s AliPay began working on a joint venture with Russia’s Mail.ru to establish digital payment services to Russian customers (Hillman, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws. ... Russia.pdf, p. 5).

Alternatives to the Brussels-based SWIFT system were embryonic but significant before February 2022. China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) as of April 2020 had participants in 95 countries. After Japan, Russia has the second-largest number of banks using CIPS. Russia’s SFPS expanded in 2019 to include the EEU’s members (Hillman, https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws. ... Russia.pdf, pp. 5-6). After February 2022 when the West froze half of Russia’s gold reserves inexplicably placed abroad by Moscow’s Central Bank, Russia, the Eurasian Economic Union, and China announced they were moving to create an alternative currency and financial system, including the formation of an alternative SWIFT by combining the Russian and Chinese payment systems, and the founding of a new international currency. Countries sanctioned by the West such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and North Korea would likely join these systems, and many states will now begin to think twice about holding its gold or money reserves in American and even European institutions, facilitating the rise of an alternative monetary-financial system. To be sure, the transition to a bipolar monetary-financial order will take years, as the dollar still is involved in 80 percent of transactions worldwide; the Euro—35 percent. A yuan or ruble bridgehead to a new Eurasian-global currency is impractical given the yuan’s 5 percent involvement in transactions and the impracticality if not impossibility of a Chinese transition to solely yuan-based transactions, given the structural and import-centric nature of China’s economy. And a Sino-Russian-backed new Eurasian/global currency will require careful planning, close coordination between China in transitioning the yuan and ruble, and confidence that many states in the rest of the rest will soon join the new currency sphere. But the train has left the station, and an alternative reserve currency may be inevitable now.

Moscow and Beijing also are increasingly cooperating in civilian and military space projects. Soviet and Russian assistance helped create the Chinese space program, transferring know-how on manned space flights, the creation of space suits, and training methodology for astronauts. China’s space program is now the world’s leading program, with four cosmodromes, more than 100 satellites launched, and the leading number of space launches per year: 37 in 2018 and 55 in 2021 (https://nvo.ng.ru/armament/2022-10-06/7_1209_sky.html). In 2017 Russia’s Roscosmos and China’s space agency signed a 5-year space cooperation program, and Russia and China are discussing a joint project to set up a Moon research base. In February of 2021, Roscosmos confirmed its readiness to sign an agreement with China “on cooperation to create the International Lunar Research Station,” and in March 2021 the two space agencies concluded a memorandum of understanding. The two countries signed another agreement to create a joint data center to assist cooperation in future missions to the Moon and deep space. Both Russia and China are testing counterspace weapons that could threaten NATO satellites (https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws. ... keKlcwqqks, p. 13). Chinese and Russian accomplishments in space capture the imagination of lesser developed countries, such as Iran and India, which are drawn to these great powers in the hope of reaping benefits that will lead to similar successes.

On a background of growing tensions with Washington, American sanctions, and “deforeignization” (mostly de-Westernization) of foreign firms operating in China, Beijing, in contrast to the last decades of the 20th century and this century’s first, is instituting a two-tier economy to insulate itself from U.S. efforts to use the dollar-based financial system and engage in democracy-promotion for political and military-strategic purposes. A catalyzer of the new attempt at a soft autarchy was Washington’s case against Huawei for breaking U.S. law by trading with Iran and clearing payments through U.S. banks. Moving to limit foreign influence while maintaining its global economic presence and expansion, Beijing is forming two Chinese economies in what it calls a “dual circulation” system, in effect, two economies: “a domestic economic circuit, which is insulated from the rest of the world, and a global circuit that relies on political connections (the Belt and Road Initiative) to open markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America” and, of course, Russia and Eurasia (my emphasis). Both circuits are controlled by the CCP and insulated as much as possible from foreign pressure (https://unherd.com/2022/10/china-has-gi ... -the-west/; https://asiasociety.org/australia/china ... -year-plan; and https://asiasociety.org/australia/china ... -year-plan). One can suspect that Moscow and perhaps others among the rest will formally beign implementing such a system even more systematically that it is already as the economic, cultural and political distance from the West grows and those from China lessen. It is no coincidence that it is precisely now that China and Russia are moving forward with plans to expand BRICS, SCO and other Eurasian and global initiatives to establish sovereignty from the West through a network of networks.

PART 2 TO FOLLOW SOON

https://mronline.org/2023/01/14/the-wor ... nd-part-1/

*********

From Cassad's Telegram Account:

Colonelcassad

Image

Starobelsk direction
situation as of 16.00 January 15, 2023

🔻There are no significant changes in the situation in the Kupyansky section . The Armed Forces of Ukraine carry out a planned rotation of the personnel of the territorial defense units along the front line and use UAVs to target howitzers and mortars.

🔻In the Svatovsko-Limansky section , fighters of the 3rd Motor Rifle Division of the 20th Army of the RF Armed Forces are advancing at the Ploshchanka-Makeyevka line in the direction of Zhuravka Balka. With the support of armored vehicles, they return the positions lost in the fall.

▪️In addition, the Russian servicemen carried out a successful assault on the firing positions of the 25th airborne brigade of the Airborne Forces of Ukraine in the Zarechnoye-Torskoye direction , knocking out Ukrainian paratroopers from the defensive lines.

▪️The command of the enemy grouping in Liman is planning a counterattack to regain control over the lost strongholds. Reinforcements of 80 odshbr were deployed to the area southeast of Dibrov, and 19 of the consolidated troop battalion were deployed to Krasnopopovka.

🔻In the Lisichansky sector , detachments of the 90th battalion of the 81st detachment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine equipped a forward command post in Serebryanka , where a maneuverable electronic intelligence group arrived the day before.

▪️At the same time, interruptions in communications through the Starlink satellite communication systems are increasingly being observed along the entire line of contact.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

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

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 16, 2023 1:05 pm

next phase
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/16/2023

Image

Months after the battle began and after a number of casualties that can hardly be reduced since it has been based on population by population frontal assaults until reaching the city itself, Russia this week has achieved its first tangible success in months. The capture of Soledar, a city whose tactical importance is limited and is even less important in strategic terms, has meant a repetition of the usual exchange of declarations, the escalation of a new Ukrainian offensive in search of more Western weapons and the race to achieve the more creative argument to justify a defeat that, although local and limited, breaks the halo of invincibility that Ukraine wants to give its army. It is possible that the six months of the battle for Artyomovsk-Soledar,

The city's population, around 10,000 before the war, its destruction and the objective lack of strategic importance in a war that will not be defined by this battle made it easy to present a retreat in time as a victory. However, with no other confrontations on which to focus the speech, Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to focus on Artyomovsk-Soledar. In recent weeks, Zelensky had described the Russian performance in the region, and especially its constant attempts to advance in the area despite casualties, time and resources invested without major advances for months, as madness. Your de facto vice president, Andriy Ermak, has joined the epic this week by comparing it with that of Verdun. Earlier, in his speech in the United States Congress, the Ukrainian president had compared it to the Battle of Saratoga, the turning point in the United States' war of independence. The objective was twofold: to exaggerate the epic and the importance of the battle to highlight the value of the Ukrainian troops, capable of preventing the Russian advance, and to demand the shipment of more weapons. Thus, the dialectic between the idea of ​​Ukrainian unbeatability and the extreme weakness of a country that needs the support of its partners for simple survival was repeated.

Just days before the loss of Soledar, the Ukrainian side upped the ante and began presenting the fight as their Stalingrad. Obviously, for a team that has been seasoned in the field of communication and that perfectly masters the art of building narratives, the excess of epic now requires the construction of a story with which to explain the situation. The press, which, following the Ukrainian narrative, has published in recent months analyzes of various future scenarios of the war, all of them pointing to different degrees of Russian defeat, has had to carry out a similar exercise.

There have been three main arguments with which the Western press has explained the battle for Soledar, which really should not be given more importance than a local victory on a front that has been stagnant for several months. The most obvious, presented for example by The GuardianIt is the idea of ​​a Pyrrhic, insignificant victory, a way of downplaying the first advance in months on this front, one of the main ones in the war, instead of presenting reality. Any advance protects the rear and in this case, the positions in Soledar can be used for a broader offensive against the entire Artyomovsk-Seversk line, the rupture of which would force Ukraine to withdraw to the Kramatorsk-Slavyansk line, already endangering the front. from Donetsk. So, for the moment, the advance on Soledar can be described as negligible, although a further advance could mean a change of initiative at least in the Donetsk region. “Soledar opens the way for artillery fire towards Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka,” admits The Wall Street Journalin an article in which he also follows Ukraine's guidelines giving credence to the idea that the battles for the city continue.

The second argument of the press has been that of withdrawal. In this case, media such as The Telegraph have justified the Russian capture of the city with a withdrawal that, according to Ukraine, has not occurred. This idea is inextricably linked to the third argument: that of downplaying the importance of the battle and the city. A pervasive argument that fails to explain why kyiv has sought to highlight the epic of the battle for months and continues to send and burn reserves in an area of ​​no tactical or strategic importance where continued fighting only ensures further destruction. and more suffering for the small civilian population that still remains in those cities.

To these three arguments must be added the denial of reality. On Saturday, the Ukrainian authorities displayed a blue and yellow flag on one of the towers of one of the mines in the city of Soledar. The precedent for the street-to-street battle of Mariupol rightly foreshadowed that as long as a single Ukrainian soldier remained in or around Soledar, Ukraine would claim control of the city. However, this time, kyiv has gone a step further. That flag, the removal of which poses an unnecessary risk considering that it is clear that Ukrainian troops are still in the area, was proof enough to deny reality for a few more hours.

Yet sometimes even the well-planned and executed Ukrainian narrative is hard to defend even for its most loyal associates. Yesterday, in its daily report, the Institute for the Study of War, a source that regularly draws on British intelligence and that shows the day-to-day advances on the front always from the Ukrainian point of view, wrote that "it is highly It is unlikely that Ukrainian forces will hold positions within the limits of the city of Soledar itself. Although the increasing number of Russian reports from the city made it clear from the middle of last week that control of the area had passed to Russia, it was not until Sunday night that Ukraine began to admit the reality. On Monday morning, international media begin to quote Ukrainian commanders who admit that Russian troops captured the last remnants of the industrial zone, located to the west of the city. "From now on, the front will be close, but outside the city limits. A positional war was taking place in this direction”, a Ukrainian commander admitted yesterday. For the moment, the political authorities have not commented on this admission that they have tried so hard to delay.

In any case, Ukraine has already achieved one of its objectives. Any escalation of the battle, any victory or defeat for kyiv always leads to the same path: the search for more Western weapons. On this occasion, Zelensky demands the dispatch of Western tanks. Although the goal is to get German and American tanks, for the moment, the first country to respond to the call has been the United Kingdom. In a phone call with the Ukrainian president, Rishi Sunak confirmed the shipment of a dozen British Challenger 2 main battle tanks, inferior in quality to the coveted German Leopards, but a gesture kyiv hopes is just the start of a larger flow. of western tanks towards the Ukrainian front. The pressure has not been long in coming. Yesterday afternoon, the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, He stated that Germany must supply Leopard-2 tanks, the most awaited equipment currently by the Government of Ukraine. The new phase of weapons supply has begun.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/16/26429/#more-2642

Google Translator

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

France Is Absolutely Involved In The Ukrainian Conflict: Russia

Image
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) and French President Emmanuel Macron (R). | Photo: Twitter/ @lsiafrica

Published 13 January 2023

The Russian officer recalled that this European country plans to provide the Ukrainian army with the nationally-produced AMX 10-RC war tanks within two months.


On Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova rejected the declaration made by French Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna, who alleged that sending military vehicles to Kyiv does not make Paris part of the armed conflict in Ukraine.

“Do not be shy. Recognize it! France is absolutely involved,” Zakharova stated, arguing that this country plans to provide the Ukrainian army with the nationally-produced AMX 10-RC war tanks within two months.

“We viewed as reckless and irresponsible this move, which will provoke further conflict escalation and more deaths,” she stressed, recalling the Ukrainian army used the France-produced Caesar artillery system to attack pro-Russia civilians.

Zakharova insisted that the weapons supplies contrast with the statements made by the French government on the need to maintain a dialogue with Russia and respect its demands for security guarantees.


"In those statements, there is a dichotomy because several news and communication agencies controlled by the French government promote the arm confrontation while calling to defeat Russia," she stated.

Zakharova recalled that the AMX 10-RC, whose delivery to Ukraine was approved by French President Emmanuel Macron, would be the first war vehicles designed in the West to be used by the Ukrainian army.

“We urge the French government to stop taking its people into a desert of misinformation and make clear their true position on this armed conflict,” the Russian officer said.

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

Russian President Notes Balance of Operation in Ukraine

Image
The Russian president told the national media that "the dynamics is positive. Everything is developing according to the plan of the Defense Ministry and the General Staff. Jan. 15, 2023. | Photo: Twitter: @worldnews24eu

Published 15 January 2023 (2 hours 1 minutes ago)

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, declared that "I hope that our fighters will please us with their results in the operations".


Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday described the dynamics of the special military operation in Ukraine as positive while assuring that the plan drawn up by the Defense Ministry and the General Staff is being fulfilled.

The Russian president told the national media that "the dynamics is positive. Everything is developing according to the plan of the Defense Ministry and the General Staff. I hope that our fighters will please us with their results in combat operations more than once".

Similarly, the head of state stressed that "the economic situation is stable, moreover, it is much better than the forecasts, not only those of our opponents but also our own."


In this sense, the head of the Kremlin pointed out that the national unemployment rate has been maintained at its historical minimum, meanwhile, he pointed out that the inflation trend is satisfactory when a decrease from 11.9 to 5 percent is foreseen for this year.

For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed on Friday the seizure of control of the town of Soledar while emphasizing that this is key "for the successful continuation of the offensive operations in the direction of Donetsk".

Accordingly, the official spokesman of the military organization, Igor Konashenkov, stressed that this victory of the Russian troops will allow to disrupt the supply routes of the Ukrainian forces in the city of Artyomovsk.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Armed Forces appointed Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov as the new commander of the Joint Troop Grouping in Ukraine in accordance with "raising the level of management of the military operation".

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Rus ... -0003.html

Hey! That picture ain't Putin!

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

High costs now a worry for Europeans
By EARLE GALE in London | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2023-01-14 07:43

Image
An employee places several melons in a fruit shop on Jan 2 in Madrid. CARLOS LUJAN/GETTY IMAGES

Money worries are keeping Europeans awake at night, according to a new poll that found 45 percent of European Union citizens now say their personal finances are their biggest single concern.

The Eurobarometer survey found that Europeans have developed fears for their financial future because of the continent's cost of living crisis triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the resulting shortage of fossil fuels and skyrocketing prices for oil and natural gas.

The cost of living crisis, in which pay rises have fallen well short of fast-rising price inflation, means people are becoming poorer and many are now becoming increasingly worried about the future, the pollsters found.

Nearly 46 percent of people questioned told the pollsters their standard of living had already fallen because of the crisis, and 39 percent said they are expecting their standard of living to fall further in the year ahead. Only 14 percent said they did not expect their lifestyle to change in the immediate future, according to the poll, which was released by the European Parliament on Thursday.

The findings were based on face-to-face interviews with more than 26,000 EU citizens conducted between October and November right across the 27-member bloc.

"In every member state, over 7 respondents out of 10 stated they are worried about increasing cost of living," the first of the new Eurobarometer survey's concluded.

The pollsters found people in Cyprus felt most strongly that their standard of living had already fallen because of the cost of living crisis, with 70 percent saying it was so.

Fallen standard

Nearly 66 percent of respondents in Greece, 65 percent in Malta and 62 percent in France also said their standard of living had already fallen noticeably because of the cost of living crisis.

Across the bloc, some 39 percent of respondents said they are already having trouble paying their monthly bills "from time to time", with 9 percent saying they are now struggling to meet their monthly payments "most of the time".

In addition, most survey respondents said the EU is not doing enough to alleviate the situation, with 56 percent saying they were dissatisfied with the bloc's interventions.

Overall, 93 percent of Europeans said they were worried about the cost of living crisis.

"The price rises, including energy and food prices, were felt by each sociodemographic group," the report said.

The poll also found people were worried that the Russia-Ukraine conflict will spill over into other European countries, which was their third biggest single concern, after their fear of social exclusion because of poverty.

"The citizens expect the EU to keep working at potential solutions to mitigate the aggravating effects of the multiple crises that have affected the continent," the Eurobarometer report added.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... a9892.html

***********

Top 20 Most Cringeworthy Zelensky PR Moments

Image

The US empire’s proxy war in Ukraine has had many jaw-dropping instances of imperialist sociopathy, propagandistic audacity and brazen journalistic malpractice that we’ve discussed in this space many times, but one of the most cringeworthy and degrading aspects of the globe-spanning narrative control campaign surrounding this war has been the way the nation’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has been turned into an ever-present corporate mascot for the most aggressive ad campaign ever devised. The way the most powerful institutions in the western world have been throwing their puppet in everyone’s face to sell the empire’s proxy warfare puts Ronald McDonald to shame.

Here are 20 of the cringiest moments of establishment PR using Zelensky to market the McProxy War to the western world, in no particular order.

(much more...)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/01/14 ... r-moments/

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

Russian Ministry of Defense Report on Missile Strikes and Military Operations in Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 15, 2023
Summary of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the special military operation in the territory of Ukraine (15.01.2023)

On January 14, 2023, missile strikes were launched against Ukraine’s military control system and associated energy facilities. All designated facilities were hit. The objective of the strike was achieved.

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue to conduct a special military operation.

In the Kupyansk direction, strikes by army aviation and artillery of the Western Military District hit units of the 14th and 92nd mechanized brigades of the AFU in the areas of Dvurechnoye, Sinkovka in the Kharkiv region and Novoselovskoye in the Luhansk People’s Republic. Up to 50 Ukrainian soldiers, an armored fighting vehicle and two vehicles were destroyed as a result of the fire and decisive actions of the Western Military District units in this direction during the day.

In the Krasno-Limansky direction, artillery fire from units of the Central Military District and strikes by army and air assault aircraft against accumulations of manpower hit units of the 66th, 92nd Mechanized and 95th Airborne Assault Brigades of the AFU in the areas of Makiivka, Stelmakhivka and Kuzmino of the Luhansk People’s Republic. In addition, artillery strikes and actions by units of the Airborne Troops repulsed an attack by assault groups of the 71st Ukrainian SSU Jaeger Brigade in the area of Chervonaya Dibrova settlement in the Luhansk People’s Republic. As a result of the defeat, the enemy was pushed back to their initial positions. Total losses of the AFU in this direction amounted to more than 115 servicemen, three armored combat vehicles and three pickup trucks.

In the Donetsk direction, assault detachments in cooperation with units of the Airborne Troops supported by army aviation, rocket troops and artillery of the Southern Military District developed success in the direction of the northern outskirts of Artemovsk in the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Sol railway station. During the fighting, more than 80 Ukrainian servicemen, two tanks, three armored fighting vehicles and three vehicles were destroyed in 24 hours.

On the South Donets direction, artillery and motorized rifle units of the Eastern Military District, as well as marines of the Pacific Fleet, inflicted fire on accumulations of AFU manpower in the areas of Vladimirovka and Ugledar settlements of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Also in the vicinity of the village of Sladkoye, a sabotage and reconnaissance group of the Ukrainian armed forces was destroyed. Total losses of the Ukrainian armed forces during the day amounted to 50 servicemen, three pickup trucks and a vehicle.

Operational and tactical aviation, missile troops and artillery of groups of troops (forces) of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation hit an ammunition depot and rocket launcher repair base near the village of Konstantinovka in Donetsk People’s Republic.

Also during the day, 103 AFU artillery units, manpower and military equipment in 123 areas were hit in firing positions. A launcher of the Ukrainian Osa-AKM anti-aircraft missile system was destroyed near the village of Novoselovka, Zaporizhia region.

In the course of the counter-battery warfare during the day destroyed: US-made M777 artillery system near the settlement of Shlyakhovoye, Kherson region; a D-20 howitzer near the settlement of Krasny Liman, Donetsk People’s Republic; a 2C3 Acacia self-propelled howitzer near the settlement of Umanske, Donetsk People’s Republic; Two Msta-B howitzers near Georgiyevka and Skudnoe settlements of the Donetsk People’s Republic; two Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers near Gulyaypole settlements of the Zaporozhye region and Shevchenko settlement of the Donetsk People’s Republic; a D-30 howitzer near Serebryanka settlement of the Donetsk People’s Republic. In addition, a US-made AN/TPQ-36 counter-battery radar station was destroyed near Konstantinovka settlement of Donetsk People’s Republic.

Anti-aircraft defense forces destroyed two Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles near Nikolskoye, Donetsk People’s Republic, and Krasnorechenskoye, Luhansk People’s Republic. In addition, eight shells of HIMARS and Uragan multiple rocket launchers were intercepted in the areas of Kremenna, Lisichansk of Luhansk People’s Republic, Vasilievka, Podgornoe and Novomikhailovka of Zaporizhia region.

A total of 372 aircraft, 200 helicopters, 2,882 unmanned aerial vehicles, 401 anti-aircraft missile systems, 7,525 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 982 multiple rocket launcher combat vehicles, 3,836 field artillery and mortar guns, and 8,052 special military vehicle vehicles have been destroyed since the start of the special military operation.

Operational and tactical aviation, missile troops and artillery of groups of troops (forces) of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation hit an ammunition depot and a rocket launcher repair base near the village of Konstantinovka, Donetsk People’s Republic.

Also during the day, 103 AFU artillery units, manpower and military equipment in 123 areas were hit in firing positions. A launcher of the Ukrainian Osa-AKM anti-aircraft missile system was destroyed near the village of Novoselovka, Zaporizhia region.

In the course of the counter-battery warfare during the day destroyed: US-made M777 artillery system near the settlement of Shlyakhovoye, Kherson region; a D-20 howitzer near the settlement of Krasny Liman, Donetsk People’s Republic; a 2C3 Acacia self-propelled howitzer near the settlement of Umanske, Donetsk People’s Republic; Two Msta-B howitzers near Georgiyevka and Skudnoe settlements of the Donetsk People’s Republic; two Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers near Gulyaypole settlements of the Zaporozhye region and Shevchenko settlement of the Donetsk People’s Republic; a D-30 howitzer near Serebryanka settlement of the Donetsk People’s Republic. In addition, a US-made AN/TPQ-36 counter-battery radar station was destroyed near Konstantinovka settlement of Donetsk People’s Republic.

Anti-aircraft defense forces destroyed two Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles near Nikolskoye, Donetsk People’s Republic, and Krasnorechenskoye, Luhansk People’s Republic. In addition, eight shells of HIMARS and Uragan multiple rocket launchers were intercepted in the areas of Kremenna, Lisichansk of Luhansk People’s Republic, Vasilievka, Podgornoe and Novomikhailovka of Zaporizhia region.

A total of 372 aircraft, 200 helicopters, 2,882 unmanned aerial vehicles, 401 anti-aircraft missile systems, 7,525 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 982 multiple rocket launcher combat vehicles, 3,836 field artillery and mortar guns, and 8,052 special military vehicle vehicles have been destroyed since the start of the special military operation.

Минобороны России

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... n-ukraine/

Ukraine: Russia Outlines the Endgame for the Conflict
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 14, 2023

Image

Opportunity to conclude the SMO will only present itself once Ukraine stops posing a threat to Russia and discriminating Russian-speaking Ukrainians. If this result can be achieved through negotiations, we stand ready for this scenario.

Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC briefing on Ukraine

Mr.President,

Frankly speaking, we do not quite get it why convene this meeting. Is it so we can listen to a briefing by USG DiCarlo based on the “credible information” thoughtfully provided by so-called “independent sources” and “independent commissions”? Was there anything new that we heard from the statements of our former Western colleagues today? Was there anything that we have not heard being repeated in every way and manner in the past year?

There is a novel titled “Vanity Fair” by British author Willian Makepeace Thackeray, who is widely known in Russia. And there are meetings on the issue of Ukraine that are called by our Western colleagues, which increasingly remind us of a “Hypocrisy Fair”, where the hypocrisy of collective West and the Kiev regime assumes bizzare forms.

For example, our Ukrainian neighbors, who until recently threatened us with terrible punishments and were almost going to start an offensive on Moscow, now are trying on the peacekeeper’s boots. That’s what we took from yesterday’s remarks of Ms.Dzhaparova, and before that – from the initiatives of her boss, Mr.Kuleba. Now Ukraine is fussing around with the idea of some “peace summit”, implying that it is Russia that wants no peace. Clearly, this is an attempt to strike a chord with Western audience, which have come to ask more and more questions as to how Kiev spends its allotted money, and also wonder why Ukraine would rule out realistic initiatives for mediation one after another.

Seemingly, here it is – a laurel branch in Kiev’s hands! “Peace summit”, what can be more important or noble than that? Even upon a quick look into the matter, it becomes clear that this fancy wrapping covers the rotten inside and hidden agenda. Kiev does not conceal that “Ukrainian peace” means a capitulation of Russia that should be recorded by the international community. That is why when making this shallow propagandist proposal for peace, Mr.Kuleba voiced a reservation that Russia is not anticipated to take part in it.

The notorious peace initiative follows the same hypocritical and inherently flawed logic. To those who believed in the peaceful intentions of the Ukrainian dictator at least for a minute, I would like to remind that on 30 September 2022 Ukraine ruled out the very opportunity for a dialogue with our country at the legislative level. Having signed Decree #679, Zelensky literally “stated the impossibility of negotiations with President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin”. This legislative provocation cannot be explained other than by the willingness of Kiev and its Western sponsors to continue fighting “until the last Ukrainian”.

By the way, it is hard to get rid of an impression that the Kiev regime and its most ardent patrons forgot the meaning of the word “peace”. Not accidental that the European Union is financing arms deliveries to Kiev through the European Peace Fund, without even giving a second thought to how mockingly it sounds and looks.

Dear colleagues,

Ukrainian authority once again revealed its true face (which is far not peaceful) in March 2022, when revoking their own proposed realistic elements for a peace deal that we were ready to discuss. Whether Kiev made this fatal steps by themselves or upon the prompting of their patrons in London, Washington, or Brussels, is not that important now. What is important is the fact that at the same moment, the Kiev regime developed an illusion (that is at odds with facts and common sense) that given the ever-growing direct military assistance of NATO, Ukraine would be able to defeat Russia on the battlefield. Ukraine’s dictator still sticks to this dangerous delusion, even though many Western leaders have come to view the situation more soberly.

Basically, Ukraine has turned into NATO’s private military company. Ukraine is paid money, supplied with weapons and recon data, advised where to shoot and what to attack. Who suffers from that? The people of Ukraine, who are forced to fight for someone else’s objectives. Defense Minister of Ukraine O.Reznikov also confirmed that. He said, “We’re carrying out NATO’s mission today, without shedding their blood. We shed our blood, so we expect them to provide weapons and ammunition in return”. Here it is – the NATO formula of a proxy war “until the last Ukrainian”, it can’t be put in words better than that! It also discloses the real cynical rationale behind any Ukrainian peace initiatives.

Mr. President,

I am sure that after my words, many colleagues had a legitimate question: what does it take for peace to come to Ukraine? This question appears all the more logical now that the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors are trying to convince everyone that the goal of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine is the destruction of Ukraine as a state, almost its de-Ukrainization and forced Russianization. We never declared such goals.

It is important to understand that we are not fighting against the Ukrainian people. We are fighting against the criminal nationalist regime which came to power in 2014 after a Western-supported anti-constitutional coup and resolved to remove from Ukraine everything that is related to Russia, and to glorify Nazi accomplices. This felonious policy resulted in an 8-year-long deadly war on the people of Donbas who opposed the new authority. Putting an end to that war was the main goal of our special military operation.

For the people of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics, the war did not pause for a minute in the course of those eight years. How did civilians of the region live under fire? What did they aspire to? What did they do to achieve this? We will cover these topics at an informal Arria-meeting of the Council on 20 January. We believe that all states, and first of all the new members of the Council, as well as everyone interested in this topic will find this meeting very useful, as it will provide first-hand accounts by eyewitnesses, foreign journalists, and researchers who visited Donbas.

Everything could have ended differently for Ukraine, had Kiev implemented the UNSC resolution-endorsed Minsk Agreements. However, this was never a plan either for Zelensky, his predecessors, or (as we know from the revelations of Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande) for France and Germany as the guarantors of Minsk. Besides, we learned that the Minsk process only served as a smokescreen behind which they secretly armed Ukraine in order to set it against Russia.

The beginning of the special military operation in February 2022 undermined those plans. Opportunity to conclude the SMO will only present itself once Ukraine stops posing a threat to Russia and discriminating Russian-speaking Ukrainians. If this result can be achieved through negotiations, we stand ready for this scenario. If not – then our tasks will be achieved by military means.


So far neither the Kiev regime nor its Western sponsors have drawn the right conclusions from the Ukrainian disaster. What’s more, given connivance of collective West, Zelensky’s regime turned into an authoritarian dictatorship, which by itself is a solid obstacle on the way to peace. Recently, the persecution of dissidents and opposition leaders in Ukraine has been supplemented by the desire to destroy the only canonical church in the country – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This may have gravest implication for the international peace and security. We believe that this situation requires close attention of UNSC members. Therefore, we request the Japanese Presidency to schedule another UNSC meeting on this issue in the afternoon of January 17.

Thank you.

PERMANENT MISSION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION TO THE UNITED NATIONS

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... -conflict/

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

NATO Secretary Expects West To Increase Supply Weapons to Kiev

Image

Published 15 January 2023 (15 hours 40 minutes ago)

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hopes that Ukraine's supporters will be able to announce new military aid after the January 20 meeting in Ramstein.


NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expects Western countries to increase the supply of heavy weaponry to Ukraine soon.

"This will be one of the issues we will discuss in Ramstein (U.S. air base in Germany). Ukraine will be represented. The recent pledges to provide heavy combat equipment are very important, and I expect more in the near future," Stoltenberg said in an interview with the German daily Handelsblatt.

Stoltenberg also hopes that Ukraine's supporters will be able to announce new military aid after the January 20 meeting in Ramstein.


"I welcome the decision by Germany and the US to supply armored personnel carriers. As well as France's agreement to supply light battle tanks. I am sure that other allies will also announce new support at Ramstein," the alliance secretary noted.

According to Stoltenberg, NATO allies know that Ukraine needs battle tanks, such as the German Leopard 2, and he stressed that a decisive phase of the conflict is now underway.
"It is important that we provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs to win, and to continue to exist as an independent state. It may seem paradoxical, but military support for Ukraine is the fastest path to peace," the NATO secretary concluded.

Russia sent protest notes to all countries supplying arms to Ukraine, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that any shipment with weapons to Kiev will become a legitimate target for the Russian Armed Forces.

In his turn, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented that attempts to saturate Ukraine with armaments are not conducive to the progress of negotiations and will have a negative impact on the situation.

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

*********

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
🔹Chronicle of a special military operation
for January 14-15, 2023 On

Saturday afternoon, Russian troops again launched massive strikes against Ukraine's energy infrastructure facilities. Among the facilities hit were an industrial enterprise in Zaporozhye , Burshtynska TPP in Ivano-Frankivsk region, an energy infrastructure facility in Lviv, as well as other targets in Kiev, Vinnitsa, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

🔻Border territories of the Russian Federation:

▪️In the Bryansk region , the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried to launch a missile attack on nearby cities in the region. Russian air defense systems intercepted a missile in the Klintsovsky district, no one was injured.
➖The enemy unsuccessfully attacked one of the electrical substations of Bryansk using a drone. One of the dropped projectiles did not work, and the other was covered by the object's guard with his body. The man is currently in intensive care.

▪️Ukrainian formations fired at the shopping malls in Shebekino in the Belgorod region. There were no casualties.
➖An enemy DRG operates in the Dronovka region in the Belgorod Region . Its task is to search for Russian firing positions in the border zone.

🔻North Ukrainian direction:

Image

▪️In the Kharkiv region , Ukrainian troops are equipping defensive positions in case of a possible new offensive by the Russian Armed Forces. Javelin ATGMs have been delivered to positions along the border with Russia.

▪️The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine sent forces of up to 5 thousand people to the Sumy region in exchange for the territorial defense units that had departed for the Soledar direction.

▪️In the north of the Chernihiv region , Ukrainian engineering units are mining approaches to border settlements. Fortifications were equipped in the area of ​​Avtunichi and Repka.

🔻Starobelsk direction:

Image

▪️There are no changes on the front line in the Kupyansko-Svatovsky sector . The enemy command rotates and conducts reconnaissance of the positions of the RF Armed Forces.

▪️In the Svatovsko-Limansky section, Russian servicemen from the 3rd Motor Rifle Division of the 20th Army, with the support of armored vehicles, are advancing at the Ploshchanka-Makeyevka line near the Zhuravka gully, recapturing positions lost in the fall.
➖At the same time, the military personnel of the RF Armed Forces successfully stormed several strongholds of the Ukrainian army in the direction of Zarechnoye - Torskoye . The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine plans to conduct a counterattack with reinforcements deployed in the vicinity of Dibrova and Chervonopopovka.

▪️Ukrainian formations fired from MLRS on Kremennaya , Tarasovka , Rubizhne , Novopskov and Svatovo. At least four civilians were killed, civilian infrastructure facilities were damaged.

🔻Soledar direction:

Image

▪️In the Soledar sector , the fighters of the PMC "Wagner" completed the cleansing of Soledar from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In the western part of the city, the neighborhood of the 7th salt mine was taken under control. At the same time, there are still remnants of Ukrainian troops in the underground communications.
➖Russian units are advancing in the village of Sol from several directions, as well as on the outskirts of Blagodatny.
➖West of Berestovoye , the Russian Armed Forces stormed the stronghold of the 54th Ombre of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, destroying five enemy fighters.
➖Southwest of Soledar , the RF Armed Forces are advancing on Ukrainian positions from the north, east, and south. Russian military personnel also advanced in the vicinity of Paraskovievka.

▪️The units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine intend to counterattack in the east of Bakhmut on the positions of PMC "Wagner" at the factory of sparkling wines.
➖Southwest of Bakhmut, the "Wagnerites" took up positions of the 60th Ombre in the south and southeast of Kleshcheevka . The loss of an important settlement will allow Russian forces to take fire control of the Chasov Yar-Bakhmut highway.

🔻Dnipropetrovsk region:

▪️On Saturday in Dnepropetrovsk , one of the entrances to a residential building on the Pobedy embankment was destroyed. The exact reason is unknown: according to one version, it could have been a cruise missile that went off course as a result of interception by Ukrainian air defense systems. At least 30 civilians were killed.

Image

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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

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

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 17, 2023 1:05 pm

Revenge
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/17/2023
Original article: Dmitry Steshin / Komsomolskaya Pravda

Image

It is indecent to go to Donetsk with an empty car. Mine was full to the ceiling, the last few packages pushed in with my knee. The Moscow sniper returns to the front with me. He's spent a few days on leave in the rear looking for quadcopters with thermal vision. People with a good conscience have gotten them. They have also purchased special sniper cloaks for him, which hide them from thermal vision imaging, charge-operated heated vests, first-aid kits, and many necessary goods, including masala tea for heating and Alyonka chocolates.

The couple of my colleague, a KP correspondent, knitted ten pairs of woolen socks during the holidays and put a pack of cigarettes in each one. I also have soap. My brother is dedicated to making them, he has a large production, around 100,000 per month. He has prepared a special batch of coniferous antiseptic soap for the medical unit of the Vostok battalion. So the car carries the pine forest scent of a hot summer day. Tatiana, a Gomel citizen who has heard about my streams on the KP website, he gave me 12 kilograms of condensed milk for a scouting unit to sweeten the lives of the boys and two devices to treat colds, the main problem in the winter trenches. They're made in Belarus, not China, and I'm a bit envious of that.

The DPR border is now an administrative thing. They open the three doors of the car and the customs officer randomly picks up a green bag. “What is this?” he asks himself. I answer that they are my belongings. He doesn't open it, my word is enough for him, so we continue. Five minutes to cross the border is a record for me in nine years in Donbass. "You won't recognize the city," Moscva tells me on the way, "with what has happened in the last month." Moscowhe doesn't go to Donetsk very often from the front line either, but he notices the changes. They are visible. On Sunday, all the roads were empty. They are only reviving hypermarkets. The center, its main geographical point of Pushkin Boulevard, is extinct. In the center of the boulevard, along the galleries, people try not to be seen, they press against the walls. The courtyard of the building I live in now used to always be full of cars. It is "the golden mile" of Donetsk, the office area. But after a series of attacks in the center, by decree of the interim president of the DPR, all that population has gone to work remotely and the wealthiest residents of the city have left. I, instead, come back.

“They gave it to me for the holidays”, says Rotislav proudly, my landlord and friend since I was 14 years old. “You will have water. The washing machine, the bathroom and the shower work”. I still can not believe it. How is it possible? I come across a fantastic design in the kitchen: a half-ton water tank. The electric pump is hidden under the kitchen table and the tubes run throughout the apartment.

“Where does the water tank come from?”

“I drove her to the curb and pushed her into the house through the window. By the way, the water is not drinkable. She's decontaminated, but that's it. You can wash. If you save, it will drop two or three handspans a day”. He shows me the level of the tank with his hand while I experience a kind of culture and technical shock , but, at the same time, I am proud of my indomitable compatriot. I play the drums. They are hot, everything is ready.

Saying goodbye, I tell Rotislav the good news. The whole area near the Uspenka border is full of trucks: they carry pipes with a diameter of one meter for a water pipe. From the part of the DPR, it is the same. They have already laid the framework for a huge pumping station. They work until Sundays. There will be water! My friend's face is impenetrable. In Donetsk, changes are perceived only when they are a fact. I think it's a consequence of living in a city where a projectile can hit any corner and at any time. Reality has corrected the perception of the world. Nine years is enough to blink. As long as no shell falls, we're alive. One fell and I was lucky. Or not.

I don't stay in the center. She put things on the floor to lighten the car at least a little. On the way there are some impassable roads that I hope are frozen. After twenty minutes driving through the city, a familiar forest appears and the sound of a mortar literally going over my car. Sigh. “Compatriot, once again it has been about to happen. As soon as I go out towards you, they start shooting mortars in my ear”. Moscva smiles: “It's not just because of you. Based on my observations of several months, they are waiting for any car to pass. The mortar fires and fires”. Moscowdownload quickly, I see you're in a hurry. Nobody helps her, the boys are in her position. He tells me to turn the car around. I ask what the mortar is hitting. “A Marinka farm. Go, go, don't stay here." The Grads join the mortar and I realize you don't do anything here if you don't have a special task. We parted quickly.

In the yard, I hide the car under the wall of the house and go to the store. I pay 2,000 rubles [€28], but I don't realize what I'm buying with them: some sausages, a cheese, two homemade pizzas, milk, bread and some water to drink. The prices are higher than in Moscow and I honestly don't understand why they haven't fallen since the border disappeared. Nobody understands it. It can be said that this is a rhetorical question of the entire population of Donbass.

In the morning, I wake up to shelling. The building shakes. I automatically look at the clock: 8:40. Shells, possibly HIMARS, have hit the shopping center on Ilyich Street. This is the busiest avenue of entry to Donetsk, there are even traffic jams here. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have not chosen this place at random. I gather my things and leave quickly. It takes me around ten minutes by car, everything is close here. There is not a single exterior wall left in the mall. There's a beat up and dusty SUV. Next to him is an older man with a bandage on his head and already with dried blood on his sweater, cuts from the glass. I ask the most important thing: “Is the engine intact?”

“Okay, okay. It even starts." Dmitry doesn't have much to say. He is a retired soldier, by age and by health. He was going to work when there was an explosion and the car was hit, but he didn't flip. Dmitry believes that Ukraine is taking revenge on Donetsk. For all. Because he once rebelled, because of Soledar, because of the explosion of an apartment building in Dnipropetrovsk. It's not our fault, but who cares on the other side of the front. Revenge is the general opinion of all the people who approach the burning ruins.

A woman approaches us, Elena, a retired engineer. “Have you seen the Pressa store? My friend works there. Today she had the day off and the person who did that shift was late. She has saved herself and helped save others. Normally, they open at eight in the morning. As they say, she has been reborn. The pharmacy has not been so lucky.

Here we discuss the bombings as in Moscow they talk about the weather. The Kalininsky district was only shelled in 2014, since then it had had a long rest until December last year, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces designated the Kalinin hospital as a target. Firefighters try to put out the smoke from the ruins. “Silent mode” has already been announced several times, but no one has responded. The family of a missing girl waits by the dirty road, they know she was in the building. I don't go near them, now is not the time to torment these people. Especially when there is still hope.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/17/venganza/#more-26440

Google Translator

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

GERMAN GENERAL TELLS US GENERALS TO LOSE THE UKRAINE WAR AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO PREVENT LOSING THE EMPIRE IN EUROPE

Image

By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

The German generals are trying it again. That’s the Wolf’s Lair plot of July 20, 1944.

To save themselves, they are begging their counterparts in Washington, DC, to find a way to lose the war in the Ukraine as quickly as possible without losing the US empire in Germany. This means overruling or replacing, not only Vladimir Zelensky’s regime in Kiev but also the Green Party ministers in power in Berlin, Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, and maybe Chancellor Olaf Scholz to boot.

The Wehrmacht plotter this time is a retired brigadier general named Erich Vad (lead image, right). As German military officers go, he’s unusual. He was trained by a German-born Israeli infantry general turned academic. Vad then reached general’s rank, according to a senior German politician, but “never led a battalion, never led a brigade, and was never deployed in active operations”; he is a “desk general”.

Vad’s self-advertisements mention no active service or combat command. Instead, he has filled advisor posts at the Bundestag (2000-2006) and the Chancellery (2006-2013) when Angela Merkel was chancellor. Since 2014 he has been selling his advice either through Vad’s own consulting firm in Munich or a Swiss intermediary company in Zurich.

Merkel appointed Vad for the German military and the armaments industry to have a voice inside her office. Because they didn’t regard Vad as one of their own, Merkel promoted him to general’s rank.

The bomb Vad has just placed under Zelensky’s table and under the Green ministers’ desks in Berlin can be spotted in an interview he published last week in Cologne.

In his new press statement, as in every one of them since he left the Chancellery in Berlin, Vad is a supporter of war with Russia and its allies. “It was and is right to support Ukraine,” he declares at the beginning, “and of course Putin’s attack is not in accordance with international law.”

In July 2014, in his German press debut, Vad supported Germany’s role, alongside the US, in bombing Serbia. “As is well known, the situation for thousands of innocent people only changed when NATO soldiers set foot on Balkan soil.”

As Vad wrote this, Merkel had participated in the US overthrow of the Yanukovich government in Kiev; she had also begun her secret plan to rearm the Ukraine, and deceive Moscow of the German intention. A few days after Vad’s interview, after the Kiev regime arranged the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Merkel vetoed a Dutch scheme for a NATO intervention in the Donbass. Vad had been warning Merkel to rearm Germany and the Ukraine before committing forces – Merkel had adopted Vad’s buy-time line.

In 2014 Vad didn’t mention the word “Ukraine”, but he expressly supported Merkel’s notion of rearming Ukraine to fight Russia, particularly if it was profitable for German business: “A responsible security policy,” he said in mid-July 2014, “also means supporting our partners [Ukraine] in the world across the entire spectrum of our capabilities, from development aid and good governance to equipment assistance and arms exports. As a global economic and financial power, we must not shirk our international responsibility. It is hardly comprehensible that pacifism in this country can go so far that we must not enable countries that act or want to act politically in our interest with the necessary means – e.g. with armaments – without the usual cries of horror. If we Germans ourselves do not want to or should not become militarily active worldwide, then we must at least be allowed to help those who are important for our national security interests in the hot spots of this world.”

In 2016, when asked to describe in detail what he had advised and agreed with Merkel in the earlier years, Vad said next to nothing.

In his latest press statement, dated January 13, 2023, Vad has warned that the Scholz government’s decision to supply the German-made Marder infantry fighting vehicle, in a joint rearmament plan with the US and France, “is a military escalation, also in the perception of the Russians, even if the 40-year old Marder is not a miracle weapon. We go on a slide. This could develop a momentum of its own that we can no longer control.”

Vad means the war in the Ukraine has already passed the point at which the US and German military believe they can control the outcome. “Now the consequences must be finally be considered” – this is Vad’s acknowledgement the war against Russia is being lost in the Ukraine.

Asked what “consequences” he means,Vad has replied with rhetorical questions: “Do they want to reconquer Donbass or Crimea? Or do they even want to defeat Russia completely?” Vad was identifying the goals of the civilian leaders in Berlin and in the State Department.

“We have a military operational stalemate, but we cannot resolve it militarily”, he noted, adding “this is also the opinion of the American Chief of Staff Mark Milley.” What Vad was implying was not “stalemate” but defeat – defeat by the Russian Army of the war allies in the Ukraine, including all the NATO reinforcements and operational plans. Those, Vad has dismissed: “There is no realistic end-state definition”.

He has then attacked the Green Party ministers in the German ruling coalition — explicitly Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and implicitly Economy Minister and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck. “I am glad that we finally have a foreign minister in Germany, but it is not enough to just engage in war rhetoric and walk around Kiev or the Donbass with helmets and flak vests… I do not understand the Green’s mutation from a pacifist to a war party. I myself don’t know of any Green who has even done military service…The fact that a single party has so much political influence that it can manoeuvre us into a war is worrying.”.

Image
February 8, 2022 – Annalena Baerbock (right) with Ukrainian military escort in the Donbass.

Vad also attacked Scholz. Asked if he were his military adviser, what advice would he have given in February 2022. “I would have advised him to support Ukraine militarily, but in a measured and prudent manner in order to avoid the effect of sliding into a war party. And I would have advised him to influence our most important politically ally. Because the key to a solution to the war lies in Washington and Moscow.”

Vad repeated this message. “The key to resolving the conflict does not lie in Kiev, nor does it lie in Berlin, Brussels or Paris.” Vad’s interviewer didn’t notice the German general had not included London, and was ignoring the British in NATO and in their “special relationship” with the US.

Vad was also attempting to appeal to the Pentagon to save the situation. General Milley, Vad said, “has spoken an inconvenient truth. A truth that, by the way, was hardly published in the German media…. What is being waged in Ukraine is a war of attrition… This strategy did not work militarily then [1914-18] – and will not do so today”. To his German audience, Vad was also reminding them of the threats to German economic survival and political independence which followed the armistice of November 1918 and terms of the Versailles peace treaty of June 1919, and then led into World War II.

Image
General Mark Milley, November 17, 2022.

He then attacked the Scholz coalition for propagandizing the older German war aim without the military capacity to implement it against the Russian forces. “Military experts [and those] who know what is going on among the secret services, what it looks like on the ground and what war really means – are largely excluded from the [German public] debate. They do not fit in with the formation of media opinion. We are largely experiencing a coordination of the media, the likes of which I have never experienced before in the Federal Republic.”

Vad was implying there had been a stronger resistance to the war policies of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, but not now against Baerbock, Habeck, or Scholz. “[From the German press] this is pure propaganda. And not on behalf of the state, as is known from totalitarian regimes but out of pure self-empowerment.”

“The Greens, FDP [Free Democratic Party] and the bourgeois opposition – flanked by largely unanimous media – are exerting such pressure that the chancellor can hardly resist it.”

Their war against Russia, Vad is warning, is not only lost in the Ukraine. It is threatening to destroy Germany in “a Third World War. And that’s exactly what doesn’t get into the minds of politicians and journalists here in Germany!”

“Germany is and remains an endangered nation”, Vad declared, adding that only the Americans can save the Germans from themselves now. “I myself am a convinced transatlanticist. I tell you honestly, when in doubt, I would rather live under American hegemony than under Russian or Chinese hegemony.”

He then revealed what he, his allies in the German General Staff and in German business circles want the Pentagon to negotiate with the Kremlin before the Russian Army advances to “the further destruction of Ukraine. What is left of this country? It is razed to the ground.”

“It is true that we must signal to the Russians: this far and no further!” How far across Ukrainian territory is that — Vad wasn’t asked and didn’t say. Nor did he disclose the terms which he and his German and US associates think can be negotiated in an agreement with Moscow against the resumption of the war against Russia in future. In fact, he doesn’t abandon the US-German war against Russian “hegemony” at all.

According to Vad, if the Pentagon concedes Russia’s “very specific geopolitical interests in the Black Sea region”, if the Donbass and Crimea remain Russian, “the territorial integrity of Ukraine would have to be restored, with certain Western guarantees. And the Russians also need such a security guarantee”. Exactly what “guarantee” can be negotiated after Merkel and ex-French President Francois Hollande have admitted their deception planning, Vad hasn’t advised, at least not in public.

“The West can send 100 Marders and 100 Leopards – they do not change the overall military situation. And the all-important question is how to deal with such a conflict with a belligerent nuclear power – mind you, the strongest nuclear power in the world! – without going into a Third World War. And that’s exactly what doesn’t get into the minds of politicians and journalists here in Germany!”

Image
Left – the Schützenpanzer Marder 1, produced by Rheinmetall Landsysteme Maschinenbau in Kiel, between 1969 and 1975. Right, the Leopard main battle tank by Rheimetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann Maschinenbau of Kiel. Kiel voters think war against Russia is good for their incomes and have voted Green to achieve that result. In the last federal election of 2021, the Kiel vote saw the Greens gain almost 14% to score 28% of the total, while the Social Democratic Party lost ground but held on to the seat with 29.5%. Just over two thousand votes separated them. The anti-war Left and AfD candidates lost ground in Kiel, ending up with 5% and just over 7,000 votes each.

How does Vad and the Germans he is speaking for distinguish themselves now from the Wolf’s Lair plotters who believed – with secret US encouragement between 1943 and 1945 — that if the Wehrmacht could get rid of Hitler, they would make their deal with President Franklin Roosevelt to preserve Germany and continue the fight against the Kremlin? On one point, Vad is conceding the Russian Army is now more powerful by several magnitudes than it was in 1945, and Germany weaker by even greater magnitudes. And the US too, in Europe. This is the meaning of Vad’s phrase describing Russia – “mind you, the strongest nuclear power in the world!”

In such a balance of forces, Vad has calculated that Germany cannot survive as it has until now if the US protectorate is defeated in the Ukraine. He is also implying that the US protectorate which has now replaced Russian-made or locally made arms in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Greece, and Cyprus in exchange for expensive US rearmament, will also collapse into a rout.

“Excellent!” A veteran German banker with longstanding ties to the Chancellery in Berlin comments. “For once a moderating voice!”

From the German media Vad has been attacked for publishing “the opposite reasoning of the US State Department and other military experts”, and for whitewashing the war crimes of the Wehrmacht. According to Volksverpetzer, which claims to be a crowd-funded fact-checker, “under the guise of ‘expert status,’ [Vad] can then circulate narratives that almost coincide with Russian propaganda and are celebrated by those who spread pro-Russian narratives and disinformation. In his role as an ‘expert’, he first announces the defeat of Ukraine, then downplays attacks by Russia, talks about a nuclear war if heavy weapons are supplied, and denies, contrary to the assessment of many other experts, that Ukraine can win the war. There are other military experts who deserve this status without fear that there might be a politically tinged agenda behind their argument (source). All in all, the favourite general of the New Right seems more like a mouthpiece of Putin than a voice that can seriously assess the current situation.”

NOTE: To understand how committed the German military were, still are, to war for the destruction of Russian “hegemony”, read the works of German historian Christian Gerlach, now at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Start with Gerlach’s interview. Then his book, Chapter 9, “Hunger policies and mass murder”. According to Gerlach, for months before the attack on the Soviet Union began in June 1941, it was German military strategy to capture an area of Russia 2,000 kilometres deep and 1,600 km wide, seize all its crops and livestock to feed the German army and occupation forces, and starve the 30 million Russians to death. “This starvation policy [was] one of the biggest mass murder plans in human history [and] was designed earlier than any specific plans to kill European Jews, and was intended to kill far more [Russian] people.” For reference, the territory of the Ukraine in 2014 was 1,316 kms west to east, and 893 km north to south.

http://johnhelmer.net/german-general-te ... more-70493

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

AWAITING FOR NEW STAGE OF RUSSIAN MILITARY OPERATIONS IN UKRAINE

(Video at link.)

The war in Ukraine may soon move to a new stage, as the situation on certain fronts began to develop rapidly.

While the Kiev regime and the Ukrainian media continue to proudly “defend” Soledar, the city came under the control of Russian forces on January 10. Wagner fighters have established full control over the residential quarters in the city and are finishing the mop up operation in the salt mines and underground utilities.

On January 12, reports were confirmed that Russian fighters flushed Ukrainian units out from the Artemsol plant, the largest salt extraction and sale enterprise in Central and Eastern Europe.

According to unconfirmed reports, the Ukrainian military command and President Zelensky hope to regain control of the city and have transferred reserves to the area. Russian sources confirmed the pathetic attempts of a counteroffensive on the outskirts of Soledar, due to this the losses of the Ukrainian Army have increased.

According to RussiaToday, the losses of the Ukrainian side in Soledar since the beginning of autumn may amount to about 20-25 thousand servicemen.

Ukrainian units are trying to gain a foothold on the western outskirts and prevent a Russian breakthrough into Blagodatnoye.

Meanwhile, to the north of the city, Russian fighters have pushed through the Ukrainian defense lines and are fighting for the Sol railway station. The loss of such a strategically important railway junction will put the entire Ukrainian grouping in the Seversk area at risk of a flank attack.

Intense fighting continues in the area of the village of Krasnaya Gora, which is being stormed by units of Russian paratroopers.

The Ukrainian command attempts to create strike groups in Paraskovievka and counterattack the advancing Russian forces, in an attempt to break through the encirclement of Soledar.

The Russian offensive in Bakhmut also brings new successes.

After prolonged fighting, Wagner fighters confirmed full control of Opytne located on the southern outskirts of the city.

The Ukrainian garrison in Bakhmut risks falling in to an operational encirclement in the near future. Of the 3 roads leaving the city, two have been cut. The third is under the fire control of Russian artillery.
Front lines in other regions remain unchanged.

Despite the false statements about Ukrainian victories, Kiev is worried about the possibility of a Russian offensive from the territory of Belarus. In the north of the country, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are mining the roads and strengthening new military positions. The possibility of opening of new fronts, the Russian successes in Soledar, as well as personnel changes in the top command of the Russian forces in Ukraine can serve as signals of the upcoming new phase of hostilities.

https://southfront.org/awaiting-for-new ... perations/

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

All Quiet (Panic) on the Western Front
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 16, 2023
Pepe Escobar

Image

Shadows are falling / And I’ve been here all day / It’s too hot to sleep / And time is running away / Feel like my soul / has turned into steel /I’ve still got the scars / That the sun didn’t heal / There’s not even room enough / To be anywhere / Lord it’s not dark yet, / but it’s getting there

Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet


Lights! Action! Reset!

The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Davos Freak Show is back in business on Monday.

The mainstream media of the collective West, in unison, will be spinning non-stop, for a week, all the “news” that are fit to print to extol new declinations of The Great Reset, re-baptized The Great Narrative, but actually framed as a benign offer by “stakeholder capitalism”. These are the main planks of the shady platform of a shady NGO registered in Cologny, a tony Geneva suburb.

The list of Davos attendees was duly leaked. Proverbially, it’s an Anglo-American Exceptionalist fun fest, complete with intel honchos such as the US Director of National Intelligence, Avril “Madam Torture” Haines; the head of MI6 Richard Moore; and FBI director Christopher Wray.

Remixed Diderot and D’Alembert Encyclopedias could be written about the Davos pathology – where a hefty list of multibillionaires, heads of state and corporate darlings (owned by BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and co.) “engage” in selling Demented Dystopia packages to the unsuspecting masses.

But let’s cut to the chase and focus on a few panels next week – which could easily be mistaken for Straight to Hell sessions.

The Tuesday, January 17 list is particularly engaging. It features a “De-Globalization or Re-Globalization?” panel with speakers Ian Bremmer, Adam Tooze, Niall Ferguson, Péter Szijjártó and Ngaire Woods. Three Atlanticists/Exceptionalists stand out, especially the ultra-toxic Ferguson.

After “In Defense of Europe”, featuring a bunch of nullities including Poland’s Andrjez Duda, attendees will be greeted with a Special Season in Hell (sorry, Rimbaud) featuring none other than EC dominatrix Ursula von der Leyen, known by a vast majority of Germans as Ursula von der Leichen (“Ursula of Cadavers”) in a tag team with WEF mastermind, Third Reich emulator Klaus “Nosferatu” Schwab.

Rumors are that Lucifer, in his privileged underground abode, is green with envy.

There’s also “Ukraine: What Next?” with another bunch of nullities, and “War in Europe: Year 2” featuring Moldova woke chick Maia Sandu and Finnish party girl Sanna Marin.

In the War Criminal section, pride of place goes to “A Conversation with Henry Kissinger: Historical Perspectives on War”, where Dr. K. will sell all his trademark Divide and Rule permutations. Added sulphur will be provided by Thucydides strangler Graham Allison.

In his Special Address, “Liver Sausage” Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be side by side with Nosferatu, hoping he won’t be – literally – grilled.

Then, on Wednesday, January 18, comes the apotheosis: “Restoring Security and Peace” with speakers Fareed Zakaria – the US establishment’s pet brown man; NATO’s Jens “War is Peace” Stoltenberg; Andrzej Duda – again; and Canadian warmonger Chrystia Freeland – widely rumored to become the next NATO Secretary-General.

And it gets juicier: the coke comedian posing as warlord may join via zoom from Kiev.

The notion that this panel is entitled to emit judgments about “peace” deserves nothing less than its own Nobel Peace Prize.

How to monetize the whole world

Cynics of all persuasions may be excused for lamenting Mr. Zircon – currently on oceanic patrol encompassing the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and of course “Mare Nostrum” Mediterranean – won’t be presenting his business card at Davos.

Analyst Peter Koenig has developed a convincing thesis that the WEF, the WHO and NATO may be running some sort of sophisticated death cult. The Great Reset does mingle merrily with NATO’s agenda as agent provocateur, financer and weaponizer of the proxy Empire vs. Russia war in black hole Ukraine. NAKO – an acronym for North Atlantic Killing Organization – would be more appropriate in this case.

As Koenig summarizes it, “NATO enters any territory where the ‘conventional’ media lie-machine, and social engineering are failing or not completing their people-ordaining goals fast enough.”

In parallel, very few people are aware that on June 13, 2019 in New York, a secret deal was clinched between the UN, the WEF, an array of oligarch-weaponized NGOs – with the WHO in the front line – and last but not least, the world’s top corporations, which are all owned by an interlinked maze with Vanguard and BlackRock at the center.

The practical result of the deal is the UN Agenda 2030.

Virtually every government in the NATOstan area and the “Western Hemisphere” (US establishment definition) has been hijacked by Agenda 2030 – which translates, essentially, as hoarding, privatizing and financializing all the earth’s assets, under the pretext of “protecting” them.

Translation: the marketization and monetization of the entire natural world (see, for instance, here, here and here.)

Davos superstar shills such as insufferable bore Niall Ferguson are just well rewarded vassals: western intellectuals of the Harvard, Yale and Princeton mould that would never dare bite the hand that feeds them.

Ferguson just wrote a column on Bloomberg titled “All is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front” – basically to peddle the risk of WWIII, on behalf of his masters, blaming of course “China as the arsenal of autocracy”.

Among serial high-handed inanities, this one stands out. Ferguson writes, “There are two obvious problems with US strategy (…) The first is that if algorithmic weapons systems are the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons, Putin may eventually be driven to using the latter, as he clearly lacks the former.”

Cluelessness here is a euphemism. Ferguson clearly has no idea “algorithmic weapons” mean; if he’s referring to electronic warfare, the US may have been able to maintain superiority for a while in Ukraine, but that’s over.

Well, that’s typical Ferguson – who wrote a whole Rothschild hagiography just like his column, drinking from the Rothschild archives that appeared to have been sanitized as he knows next to nothing meaningful about their history.

Ferguson has “deduced” that Russia is weak and China is strong. Nonsense. Both are strong – and Russia is more advanced technologically than China in their advanced offensive and defensive missile development, and can beat the US in a nuclear war as Russian air space is sealed by layered defenses such as the S-400 all the way to the already tested S-500s and designed S-600s.

As far as semiconductor chips, the advantage that Taiwan has in chip manufacture is in mass production of the most advanced chips; but China and Russia can fabricate the chips necessary for military use, though not engage in mass commercial production. The US has an important advantage here commercially with Taiwan, but that’s not a military advantage.

Ferguson gives away his game when he carps about the need to “deter a nascent Axis-like combination of Russia, Iran and China from risking simultaneous conflict in three theaters: Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.”

Here we have trademark Atlanticist demonization of the top three vectors of Eurasia integration mixed with a toxic cocktail of ignorance and arrogance: it’s NATO that is stoking “conflict” in Eastern Europe; and it’s the Empire that is being expelled from the “Far East” (oh, that’s so colonial) and soon from the Middle East (actually West Asia).

An AMGOT tale

Nobody with an IQ over room temperature will expect Davos next week to discuss any aspect of the NATO vs. Eurasia existential war seriously – not to mention propose diplomacy. So I’ll leave you with yet another typical tawdry story about how the Empire – who rules over Davos – deals in practice with its vassals.

While in Sicily earlier this year I learned that an ultra high-value Pentagon asset had landed in Rome, in haste, as part of an unscheduled visit. A few days later the reason for the visit was printed in La Repubblica, one of the papers of the toxic Agnelli clan.

That was a Mafia scam: a face-to-face “suggestion” for the Meloni government to imperatively provide Kiev, as soon as possible, with the costly anti-Samp-T missile system, developed by an European consortium, Eurosam, uniting MBDA Italy, MBDA France and Thales.

Italy possesses only 5 batteries of this system, not exactly brilliant against ballistic missiles but efficient against cruise missiles.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had already called Palazzo Chigi to announce the “offer you can’t refuse”. Apparently that was not enough, thus the hasty envoy trip. Rome will have to toe the line. Or else. After all, never forget the terminology employed by US generals to designate Sicily, and Italy as a whole: AMGOT.

American government occupied territory.

Have fun with the Davos freak show.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... ern-front/

Operation Belladonna: CIA Involvement in Ukranian Nationalism
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 16, 2023
Red Street Media Collective

Image
File:Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (B&W).svg - Wikipedia

OPERATION BELLADONNA

Image
NOTE: To decode CIA Terms & Cryptonyms, use a Research Aid.

If we analyze publicly available declassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, we can learn quite a bit about the United States and its role in the historical development of Ukrainian Nationalism. To view the February 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict, in isolation, would be a mistake.

In a declassified CIA document outlining the details of Operation Belladonna, we can see the United States had already made contact with Ukrainian Nationalists that were keen to ally with the Americans against the USSR, primarily through influencing the development of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR). The subject discussed in the document was used to gather intelligence on the USSR and Soviet operations both at home and abroad.

Image

Later on in the document, we can see the known affiliations of the UHVR that the CIA was aware of, specifically the Bandera & Melnyk factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), in addition to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The document goes on to outline the scale of the UHVR apparatus, noting how many countries its members are stationed in and the extent of suggested reports.
>As the CIA expanded its operations in Ukraine, additional projects came to light, Notably, Project AERODYNAMIC (formerly CARTEL, ANDROGEN, AECARTHAGE), which operated between the years of 1949-1970 before being reclassified under Project named QRDYNAMIC in 1970 and later PDDYNAMIC in 1974, and finally QRDYNAMIC/QRPLUMB (formerly AEBEEHIVE) as it operated until 1991.

There are thousands of documents that contain sensitive information regarding these project names and the activities involved. A treasure trove of United States history that seems to have gone under the radar of the mainstream press. Declassified documents from 1950 reveal one of the initial project outlines for CARTEL.

Image

As we can see, by the 1950s, the CIA had successfully established a network for counter intelligence with Ukrainian underground nationalists. Under Project CARTEL, it is worth noting that each document refers to a list of subjects by the name Cartel-1, Cartel-2, and so on…

Image

If we refer to our Research Aid, we can decipher some of the code names to understand who the CIA initially worked with during this project and what their cryptonyms were.

Ivan Hrinioch, Mykola Lebed, are a few of the subjects within CARTEL that play a significant role throughout other declassified documents. In this specific document, it outlines their involvement along with other CARTEL members with regards to setting up communication channels and procurement of weaponry. The document goes on to outline a supply list for the different CARTEL members, along with the item name and associated costs.

In a 1966 declassified document, we can see the noted objective of AERODYNAMIC at that time. It notes that the underlying objective is ‘Nationalist flare-ups’ in widely scattered areas of the Soviet Union, particularly in Ukraine. The document goes on to outline the usage of anti-Soviet emigres in collaboration with the ZP/UHVR to achieve their aims. We can see a reappearance of Ivan Hrinioch and Mykola Lebed as well, though in this document they are under different cryptonyms.

Image

One interesting piece of information in this document is the admission that ZP/UHVR clandestine activities conducted through the Prolog Research and Publishing Association, Inc in New York. AECASSOWARY-2 aka, Mykola Lebed, appointed as the president of Prolog, becoming the principal agent of Project AERODYNAMIC.

Image

The operations were not just isolated to New York. Another declassified document reveals some additional objectives of Project AERODYNAMIC, one of which is to utilize broadcast time available on the KUBARK (Cryptonym for CIA) radio station in Athens, Greece. Its operation was intended to deliver communications to multiple groups, namely the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and members of the Indigenous populations to maintain a national consciousness, and to encourage pride in the heritage and individuality of their culture.

Along with the stoking of nationalist tendencies, the document also revealed clear intentions to create dissatisfaction amongst Ukrainian military personnel against the USSR.

Image

In case there were any further questions with regards to the CIA’s involvement and development of Ukrainian nationalism, we can look no further than a document from 1958 which reveals quote:

I emphasized that the main rationale of our support of the AECASSOWARY’s was to have a foothold in the whole subject of Ukrainian nationalism in order to be able to exploit it in various parts of the world, with ultimate targeting, of course, at the Ukrainian SSR.

Image

It is important to note that there are many projects that operate in tandem along side Project AERODYNAMIC. CAPELIN is one of them. The area of operations for CAPELIN were Munich, Germany, where its first noted primary aim is counter espionage information on CASSOWARIES and CAVATINAS subjects. If we reference our Research Aid, we can see who these subjects are, one of them a cryptonym for Stefan Bandera.

Image

The document illustrates that one of the project subjects, CAPELIN, was recruited as early as 1946. The document goes on to reveal intricate details about the project’s estimated cost, special equipment, cover, etc…

The principal agent of this project is being noted as a Counterintelligence/Counterespionage informant which they note has provided valuable information on Ukrainian emigre organizations, personalities, and intelligence agencies from many different countries. An interesting part of this document is another admission of intent to take advantage of nationalistic tendencies.

His penetration of the SB has been of particular value to the CE section by providing net only information on ZCh/OUN activities but also an opportunity to direct or influence those activities in certain insances.

Image

Although this article only covers a miniscule portion of declassified documents from the CIA, it is important to note that these projects define half a century of support for Ukrainian nationalism, and there are still thousands more to analyze.

The role the United States played in the historical development of Ukrainian nationalism, with all of its ugly side effects, should be examined closely. The massive collective effort of the internet can surely shed more light on this history.

Image
Front page of New York Times newspaper February 24, 2022

The Invasion of Ukraine

In late February 2022, the Russian Federation announced a military operation in-which its aims were the complete ‘demilitarization’ and ‘denazification’ of Ukraine. President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, alongside the announcement of a military operation, recognized the independence of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic.

Almost immediately after the military operation, western media began publishing a barrage of opinion pieces and articles that attempted to push back on the claim President Putin made regarding ‘denazification.’

Article after article painted the picture of Putin exaggerating the claims of Ukrainian nationalism fermenting neo-Nazi ideologies. If one has only learned about the country of Ukraine in 2022, it would be easy to take this barrage of information at face value.

Image
Screenshots of Washington Post, Politico, NPR, and MSNBC headlines

Before the Invasion

Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, western media seemed to have the complete opposite point of view with regards to the question of Neo-Nazi & Nationalistic tendencies within the Ukrainian populace. It appeared the mainstream press were well aware of Ukraine’s problem with white supremacy and nationalism prior to February 2022. For instance, Time Magazine reported on how a far-right white supremacist militia relies on social

Image

In fact, the prominence of Neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine was such a widely reported topic within the western media, they received a barrage of memes targeted at them, poking fun at their sudden change in narrative. Of course Russians themselves took part in the fun as reported by The Guardian.

The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who enjoys prodding foreign media, wrote a “request to the mass disinformation outlets of the USA and Britain – Bloomberg, the New York Times, the Sun etc – announce the schedule of our ‘invasions’ for the coming year. I’d like to plan my vacation”.

A day earlier, she wrote: “February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day of the failure of western war propaganda. Humiliated and destroyed without firing a shot.” Source: The Guardian

The Azov Battalion

Ukraine has a multitude of battalions at their disposal within the National Guard or SBU. A lot of attention surrounding the Neo-Nazi topic of Ukraine is centered on the Azov Battalion. The Azov Battalion is an officially recognized unit of the National Guard of Ukraine and has been at the center of a lot of media controversy since the 2014 Maidan protests. It is clear that the west, primarily the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, are putting their support behind Ukraine during Russia’s military operation. How far does this support go?

In 2014, then Senator John McCain visited Ukraine to reaffirm the United State’s commitment to the Ukrainian project. Not only has the United States been a valuable supporter of Ukraine, but its neighbor, Canada, has also offered its assistance in the training of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis. As James Carden from The Nation wrote in 2016, the United States government revoked a ban on funding Neo-Nazis from its year-end spending bill.

The Contradiction

The western media was attempting to frame a narrative in-which President Putin was exaggerating, or lying, about his claims of Neo-Nazis atrocities in Ukraine, fueled by the continued rise of nationalism. We end up with a contradiction where the west claims it has no clue, or denies entirely, the rise of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, while these very same outlets have reported extensively on the rise of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine in the past.

If we only look at the past decade, we can see the west supported and continues to support nationalists in Ukraine. If we step back even further, we can see the past decade is only a drop in the bucket compared to half a century of continued support from the United States, and all of the atrocities that followed.

(An assortment of Twitter screenshots follows.)

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... tionalism/

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

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
About the next UAV raid on the Crimean Peninsula

This morning, Ukrainian formations made another attempt to raid the territory of the Crimean Peninsula from Odessa using Mugin-5 drones equipped with a grenade drop system.

🔻Chronicle of events

▪️At 06.00, a group of five Mugin-5 drones took off from the Shkolny airfield in Odessa in the direction of Cape Tarkhankut along an already “run-in” route. An hour later, a second wave of UAVs headed for the Crimea from the same airfield along a similar path.

▪️After reaching a certain point over the Black Sea, both groups of drones corrected the route, heading for Karkinitsky Bay and Bakalskaya Spit .

▪️After that, Ukrainian UAVs through the village of Steregushchey in the Razdolnensky district of Crimea entered the airspace of the republic. Three Mugins were shot down on approach, the rest leaked further in the direction of Novoozernoye .

▪️The two remaining UAVs were destroyed by units of the 31st Air Defense Division in the Novoozernoye area, and the rest returned to the coastal Black Sea area through the Donuzlav Bay .

▪️Four more drones were hit in the area of ​​​​the northern pier in Sevastopol in the direction of Cape Khersones and Belbek airfield , and one fell into the sea near Novofedorovka .

🔻Features

Firstly , the Armed Forces of Ukraine have changed the time of the raid. Almost every previous attack was made at night or early in the morning. However, this time the interval from 08.00 to 10.00 was chosen.

Secondly , strike attempts were again carried out without the objective control of reconnaissance aircraft of NATO countries. The raid on the peninsula on December 24 last year was similar.

Thirdly , the selected site for infiltration into the territory of Crimea completely coincides with previous attempts to strike. The ultimate targets were most likely Russian Aerospace Forces airfields on the peninsula, including Saki and Belbek .

For the past few days, the NATO satellite constellation has been actively filmingof these objects in high detail, as well as in Gvardeisky , Dzhankoy, the parking of the Black Sea Fleet ships in Sevastopol and the positions of mobile air defense units .

🔻What's next?

The Ukrainian command varies the tactics of deploying drones, periodically changing the time of attack and the types of drones used, ranging from commercial Mugins to balloons. Today, more UAVs were sent in two waves compared to previous raids.

The purpose of the morning action of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was the same - to assess the state of air defense by identifying the positions of air defense systems and mobile units and the least protected areas in air defense.

Probably, in the coming days, attempts at strikes will continue. Moreover, this time, with a high degree of probability, the actions of the RF Armed Forces will be monitored by the US RQ-4B UAV, which flew from the Sigonella airbase to the Larissa airbasein Greece.

This will increase the efficiency of using the RQ-4B near the Russian borders. Eight MQ-9A Reaper UAVs have already been stationed at the Greek base since November, and the arrival of the Global Hawk demonstrates the increased role of Greece in the American geopolitical containment strategy.

Image

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

******

"Deceptions"
January 17, 6:02 am

Image

"Deceptions"

On the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, dummies of self-propelled guns made of ram and sticks are being set up to divert forces and means in the event of an attack by Russian troops from the North. According to the plan, the enemy should spend shells and missiles on such mock-ups, and real equipment in theory will suffer less losses ("Driver" inside, apparently to create a thermal signature for the "tree SAU"). But seriously, there is little sense from such "tricks" with rare exceptions. Against the backdrop of such creativity, Soviet, British, German and American layouts of the Second World War look like the height of hi-tech.

An interesting observation.

When the Russians came up with any field modification, the public on both sides of the front line greeted it with a moronic blare. When such field modifications (even the most senseless and insane) are used by the Ukrainian side, experts, again from both sides of the conflict, are delighted. I wonder why?

Remember how forcedly they laughed at Russian inflatable tanks and "anti-javelin" bars on the towers? Now the "non-brothers" themselves place mesh screens around the M777 howitzers to protect against the "Lancets" and build mock-ups from straw and sticks.

https://t.me/panzwaffle/1802 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8105954.html

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

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

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 17, 2023 11:46 pm

Ukraine SitRep - Media Ignorance, Counter-Artillery War, Three Lost Armies

Yves Smith asks:

What if Russia Won the Ukraine War but the Western Press Didn’t Notice?

She points to several headlines which, despite decisive Russian victories like its taking of Soledar, present the Ukraine as winning the war:

Nevertheless, Soledar has fallen and the loss of Bakhmut looks baked in, absent horrific Russian errors. The so-called Zelensky line is breaking even before Russia has put its recently-mobilized forces to work in a serious way. Regular commentators are waiting for the Russian hammer to fall, although Russia may simply grind more forcefully by pressing harder at more points along the very long line of contact. Remember one concern on the Russian side is avoiding “winning” in a way that leads to NATO panic and desperate action ... not that the Collective West’s fragile emotional state can be readily managed.
With that context, you’d expect some members of the press to have worked out that things are not going very well for Ukraine and the classic cowboy movie rescue of the calvary riding over the hill (here in the form of tanks and artillery) will be too little, too late.

Instead, the media seems to be trying to integrate snippets of facts on the ground with the heroic tale of inevitable Ukraine victory.


That is certainly correct for the wide majority of the stories, which claim that Soledar and Bahkmut, are irrelevant towns, but some pieces are creeping up that differ. A few days ago the Washington Post headlined:

Bloody Bakhmut siege poses risks for Ukraine

Ukraine faces difficult choices about how much deeper its military should get drawn into a protracted fight over the besieged city of Bakhmut, as Kyiv prepares for a new counteroffensive elsewhere on the front that requires conserving weapons, ammunition and experienced fighters.
Russia has escalated its assault in the area in recent days, unleashing savage fighting that has underscored the high cost of the battle. Russian mercenaries and released convicts from the Wagner group pushed into the neighboring salt-mining town of Soledar and inched closer to Bakhmut, the capture of which has eluded them for months despite an advantage in firepower and the willingness to sacrifice troops.


The piece quotes several Ukrainian soldiers which speak of huge losses on their side. But the U.S. is still egging them on:

The senior U.S. official cautioned against completely dismissing Bakhmut or neighboring Soledar as nonstrategic places that Kyiv can simply relinquish, noting that the salt and gypsum mines give the area economic significance. Theoretically, the Russians could use the deep salt mines and tunnels to protect equipment and ammunition from Ukrainian missile strikes. Moscow has also endowed the city with import.
“To some degree, Bakhmut matters to [Ukraine] because it matters so much to the Russians,” the senior U.S. official said, noting that control of Bakhmut is not going to have a huge impact on the conflict or imperil Ukraine’s defensive or offensive options in the country’s eastern Donbas region.

The official added, “Bakhmut is not going to change the war.”


I believe the senior U.S. official to be very wrong. Soledar and Bakhmut are bleeding the Ukrainian army dry. That is of relevance. Look at the insane number of Ukrainian units deployed on that only 50 kilometer (30mi) long sector of the front.

Image
Source: Military Land Deployment Map

I count the equivalent of some 27 brigade size formations in that area. The usual size of a brigade is some 3,000 to 4,000 men with hundreds of all kinds of vehicles. If all brigades had their full strength that force would count as 97,500 men. In a recent interview the Ukrainian military commander Zaluzhny said that his army has 200,000 men trained to fight with 500,000 more having other functions or currently being trained. The forces which are currently getting mauled in the Bakhmut area constitute 50% of Ukraine's battle ready forces.

Zaluzhny has pulled units from other fronts like the Kreminna and Svatove sector further north in Luhansk province to feed them into Bakhmut. That has minimized any chance that the Ukrainian forces in those sectors will be able to make any progress.

What nearly all reports from Ukraine seem to miss is the huge damage that Russia artillery is causing on a daily base. Ukraine has little artillery left to respond to that and whatever it still has is getting less by the day.

A few weeks ago the Russian military started a systematic counter artillery campaign which has since made great progress. The typical western way of detecting enemy artillery units is by radar. The flight path of the projectile is measured and the coordinates of its source are calculated enabling ones own artillery to respond. But counter-artillery radar itself depends on radiating. It is thereby easily detectable and vulnerable to fire. Over the last months Russia deployed a very different counter-artillery detection systems with the rather ironic name of Penicillin:

Penicillin or 1B75 Penicillin is an acoustic-thermal artillery-reconnaissance system developed by Ruselectronics for the Russian Armed Forces. The system aims to detect and locate enemy artillery, mortars, MLRs, anti-aircraft or tactical-missile firing positions with seismic and acoustic sensors, without emitting any radio waves. It locates enemy fire within 5 seconds at a range of 25 km (16 mi; 13 nmi). Penicillin completed state trials in December 2018 and entered combat duty in 2020.
The Penicillin is mounted on the 8x8 Kamaz-6350 chassis and consists of a 1B75 sensor suite placed on a telescopic boom for the infrared and visible spectrum as well as of several ground-installed seismic and acoustic receivers as a part of the 1B76 sensor suite. It has an effective range for communication with other military assets up to 40 kilometres (25 mi) and is capable to operate even in a fully automatic mode, without any crew. One system can reportedly cover an entire division against an enemy fire. Besides that, it co-ordinates and corrects a friendly artillery fire.


Image

The Penicillin system can hide in the woods and stick up its telescopic boom to look at and listen to the battlefield. As it does not radiate itself there is no good way for an enemy to detect it.

The system pinpoints Ukrainian guns as they fire. They are then eliminated by immediate precise counter-fire. As the artillery relevant part of today's 'clobber' list provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense claims:

Operational-Tactical Aviation, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have neutralised an artillery ordnance depot of 114th Territorial Defence Brigade near Veliky Burluk (Kharkov region), as well as 82 artillery units at their firing positions, manpower and hardware at 98 areas.

Counterbattery warfare operations have resulted in destruction of:

one Polish-manufactured Krab howitzer near Peschanoye (Kharkov region);
one U.S.-manufactured M109 Paladin howitzer, and one fighting vehicle equipped with Grad multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) near Lozovaya (Kharkov region);
one D-20 howitzer near Terny (Donetsk People's Republic);
two Giatsint-B howitzers near Maryinka and Orlovka (Donetsk People's Republic);
two Akatsiya self-propelled howitzers near Nevskoye (Lugansk People's Republic), and Preobrazhenka (Zaporozhye region);
five D-30 howitzers near Zmiyevka, Novokairy (Kherson region), Sofiyevka (Donetsk People's Republic), and Orekhov (Zaporozhye region).
Four U.S.-manufactured counterbattery warfare radars have been destroyed:

two AN/TPQ-50 stations near Mylovoye and Dudchany (Kherson region),
one AN/TPQ-36 counterbattery warfare radar near Ugledar (Donetsk People's Republic),
one U.S.-manufactured AN/TPQ-48 counterbattery warfare radar near Senkovo (Kharkov region).
Air defence facilities have shot down six Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles near Kremennaya (Lugansk People's Republic), Nikolskoye, and Petrovskoye (Donetsk People's Republic).

14 rocket-propelled projectiles launched by HIMARS and Olkha MLRS have been intercepted near Udy (Kharkov region), Smolyaninovo (Lugansk People's Republic), Donetsk, and Khartsyzsk (Donetsk People's Republic).

One U.S.-manufactured anti-radiation missile has been shot down near Radensk (Kherson region).

One Ukrainian Tochka-U ballistic missile has been shot down near Berdyansk (Zaporozhye region).


The above is the equivalent of two artillery companies (batteries with six guns each) eliminated in just one day. Ukrainian counter-battery fire against Russian artillery is no longer possible as the necessary detection equipment gets eliminated and as Ukrainian counter-fire is shot down by Russian air defenses.

This Russian counter-artillery campaign has been going on for several weeks. It has disabled large parts of what was left of Ukrainian longer range capabilities. Meanwhile the Russian artillery keeps on knocking down Ukranian troops that hold the frontline. Only when all parts of the Ukrainian trenches have been hit by intense fire will the Russian infantry move in to clean up whatever is left behind.

This form of battle is causing huge losses on the Ukrainian side while the Russian forces incur just a minimum of casualties.

In his recent talks Col (ret.) Douglas Macgregor put the deaths in Ukraine forces at 150,000 and casualties at 450,000. I, like Yves Smith, doubt that number of wounded is that high. As the system of Ukrainian battlefield extradition and hospitalization is in a bad state there will be less wounded and likely more dead.

In a huge contrast to U.S. waged wars, the civilian death count on the Ukrainian side is remarkably low:

Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential staff, said at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos, “We have registered 80,000 crimes committed by Russian invaders and over 9,000 civilians have been killed, including 453 children.”

Feeding more troops into the battle in the Bakhmut sector, as the Ukrainian side has been doing, is not a good use of resources.

We can state that Ukraine has by now lost the nominal equipment of two larger armies.

At the beginning of the war the Ukrainian army was said to have some 2,500 tanks, 12,500 armored vehicles and 3,500 large artillery systems. It is doubtful that more than half of those were in a usable state but they may have received enough repair to be workable.

The Russia military claims that most of those have been eliminated:

7,549 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 984 fighting vehicles equipped with MLRS, 3,853 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 8,081 units of special military equipment have been destroyed during the special military operation.
If one doubts those numbers one has to ask why the Ukraine has needed to import so many more weapons and is still short of them:

410 Soviet-era tanks delivered by NATO members in former communist bloc, including Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia.
300 [Armored/Infantry Fighting Vehicles], including 250 Soviet-designed IFVs from former communist states.
1,100 [Armored Personnel Carriers], including 300 M113 troop carriers and 250 M117s.
300 towed howitzers. 400+ pieces of self-propelled artillery, of which 180 is on order.
95 [Multiple Rocket Launchers]


There were also a number of fighter airplanes, helicopter and air-defense systems. The above was the second army, after Ukraine's original one was mostly gone, that has by now been nearly eliminated.

The Russian clobber list now regularly reports of combat with Ukraine forces that kills, for example, one tank, three armored vehicles and a number of pick-ups and motor vehicles:

One Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group has been eliminated near Liman Pervy (Kharkov region). The enemy has lost over 50 Ukrainian personnel, one tank, two infantry fighting vehicles, and two pickups.
...
[In Donetsk direction] over 60 Ukrainian personnel, one tank, three armoured fighting vehicles, and six motor vehicles have been eliminated.
...
Two AFU sabotage and reconnaissance groups have been eliminated in the area to the north of Levadnoye and Vladimirovka (Donetsk People's Republic). The enemy has lost up to 40 Ukrainian personnel, two armoured fighting vehicles, and three motor vehicles.


Pick-ups and unarmored motor vehicles should avoid the frontline and certainly not be part of force attacking the immediate frontline. If these reports reflect the current structure of Ukrainian forces, as I believe they do, than its state is indeed dire.

In his Economist interview General Zeluzhny has requested a third army to be delivered to him immediately:

“I know that I can beat this enemy,” he says. “But I need resources. I need 300 tanks, 600-700 IFVs [infantry fighting vehicles], 500 Howitzers.”

As the Economist writer dryly noted:

The incremental arsenal he is seeking is bigger than the total armoured forces of most European armies.

The stocks of two complete armies have by now been destroyed in Ukraine. The resources for a smaller third one will be delivered in the next rounds of 'western' equipment deliveries during the next months. Russia will dully destroy Ukraine's third army just as it has destroyed the first and second one. It is doubtful that the 'West' has enough material left to provide Ukraine with a fourth one.

That then leaves only two options. Send in 'western' armies with the equipment they still have or declare victory and go home.

The neo-conservatives as ever favor the first option. President Joe Biden may still be against sending U.S. soldiers but this could change if he indeed gets blackmailed into doing it:

[A]s the ‘classified documents’ scandal gains momentum, the malleable president will likely fall-in-line and do whatever the hawkish foreign policy establishment demands of him. In short, the documents flap is being used by behind-the-scenes powerbrokers who are blackmailing the president to pursue their own narrow interests. They have Brandon over-a-barrel.

There is no evidence that this is happening but the signs are there.

The second option is to declare a non-existent victory and to forget about the whole issues.

But will the 'western' media, as Yves asks, notice any of this?

As commentator David correctly remarks at Yves' site:

I’ve said for a long time now that the West will be able to claim “victory”, or at least not defeat, by establishing fantastical victory conditions that the Russians never had and never wanted, and then claiming credit for frustrating them. With luck, this will just about enable western elites to hang onto power, at least temporarily.
"Putin tried to conquer Europe but we stopped him in Ukraine," sounds like victory to me. But it is of course extremely far from the truth. Anyway, the press may well buy it:

But in the wider sense, we’re seeing the latest and most degenerate stage of the stupidity and ignorance which has afflicted the western media and pundit class over the last year. They didn’t know about the war in the Donbas, nobody told them Russia had the strongest army in Europe, nobody knew about the defensive lines in Donbas, nobody understood the seriousness of the Russian threats, nobody realised the Russians hoped for a short, sharp war to bring the Ukrainians to their senses, nobody understood why Russia went over to Plan B while it mobilised, nobody realised the Russians had been stockpiling weapons and ammunition for years; nobody knew what attrition warfare was …. In other words, the most disgraceful example of ignorance and stupidity of any ruling class in modern times. It will go on to the end, and “victory” will be proclaimed.

The war the U.S. provoked in Ukraine has been won by Russia even when no one wants to note it.

Posted by b on January 17, 2023 at 18:14 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/01/u ... .html#more

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

The Plan To Carve Up Russia
JANUARY 16, 2023

Image
Map of western dreamed divided Russia. File photo.

By Mike Whitney – Jan 5, 2023

For decades, the idea of dismantling the Soviet Union and Russia has been constantly cultivated in Western countries. Unfortunately, at some point, the idea of using Ukraine to achieve this goal was conceived. In fact, to prevent such a development, we launched the special military operation (SMO). This is precisely what some western countries –led by the United States– strive for; to create an anti-Russian enclave and then threaten us from this direction. Preventing this from happening is our primary goal. Vladimir Putin

Here’s your geopolitical quiz for the day: What did Angela Merkel mean when she said “that the Cold War never really ended, because ultimately Russia was never pacified”?

1- Merkel was referring to the fact that Russia has never accepted its subordinate role in the “Rules-based Order.”
2- Merkel was referring to the fact that Russia’s economic collapse did not produce the ‘compliant state’ western elites had hoped for.
3- Merkel is suggesting that the Cold War was never really a struggle between democracy and communism, but a 45 year-long effort to “pacify” Russia.
4- What Merkel meant was that the western states –particularly the United States– do not want a strong, prosperous and independent Russia but a servile lackey that does as it is told.
5- All of the above.

If you chose (5), then pat yourself on the back. That is the right answer.

Image

Last week, Angela Merkel confirmed what many analysts have been saying for years, that Washington’s hostile relations with Russia –which date back more than a century– have nothing to do with ideology, ‘bad behavior’ or alleged “unprovoked aggression”. Russia’s primary offense is that it occupies a strategic area of the world that contains vast natural resources and which is critical to Washington’s “pivot to Asia” plan. Russia’s real crime is that its mere existence poses a threat to the globalist project to spread US military bases across Central Asia, encircle China, and become the regional hegemon in the world’s most prosperous and populous region.

So much attention has been focused on what Merkel said regarding the Minsk Treaty, that her more alarming remarks have been entirely ignored. Here is a short excerpt from a recent interview Merkel gave to an Italian magazine:

The 2014 Minsk Accords were an attempt to give Ukraine time. Ukraine used this period to become stronger, as seen today. The country of 2014/15 is not the country of today….

We all knew that it was a frozen conflict, that the problem was not solved, but this was precisely what gave Ukraine precious time.” (“Angela Merkel: Kohl took advantage of his voice and build”, Corrier Della Sera)


Russia-Ukraine Crisis, a Bonanza for US


Merkel candidly admits that she participated in a 7 year-long fraud that was aimed at deceiving the Russian leadership into thinking that she genuinely wanted peace, but that proved not to be the case. In truth, the western powers deliberately sabotaged the treaty in order to buy-time to arm and train a Ukrainian army that would be used in a war against Russia.

But this is old news. What we find more interesting is what Merkel said following her comments on Minsk. Here’s the money-quote:

I want to talk to you about an aspect that makes me think. It’s the fact that the Cold War never really ended, because ultimately Russia was never pacified. When Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, he was excluded from the G8. In addition, NATO has deployed troops in the Baltic region, to demonstrate its readiness to intervene. And we too have decided to allocate 2% of GDP to military expenditure for defence. CDU and CSU were the only ones to have kept it in the government programme. But we too should have reacted more quickly to Russia’s aggressiveness. (“Angela Merkel: Kohl took advantage of his voice and build”, Corrier Della Sera)

Image
Global Affairs.org

This is an astonishing admission. What Merkel is saying is that ” the Cold War never ended” because the primary goal of weakening (“pacifying”) Russia –to the point that it could not defend its own vital interests or project power beyond its borders– was not achieved. Merkel is implying that the main objective of the Cold War was not to defeat communism (as we were told) but to create a compliant Russian colony that would allow the globalist project to go forward unimpeded. As we can see in Ukraine, that objective has not been achieved; and the reason it hasn’t been achieved is because Russia is powerful enough to block NATO’s eastward expansion. In short, Russia has become the greatest-single obstacle to the globalist strategy for world domination.

It’s worth noting, that Merkel never mentions Russia’s alleged “unprovoked aggression” in Ukraine as the main problem. In fact, she makes no attempt to defend that spurious claim. The real problem according to Merkel is that Russia has not been ‘pacified’. Think about that. This suggests that the justification for the war is different than the one that is promoted by the media. What it implies is that the conflict is driven by geopolitical objectives that have been concealed behind the “invasion” smokescreen. Merkel’s comments clear the air in that regard, by identifying the real goal; pacification.

In a minute we will show that the war was triggered by “geopolitical objectives” and not Russia’s alleged “aggression”, but first we need to review the ideas that are fueling the drive to war. The main body of principles upon which America’s foreign policy rests, is the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the first draft of which was presented in the Defense Planning Guidance in 1992. Here’s a short excerpt:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

There it is in black and white: The top priority of US foreign policy “is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.” This shows the importance that Washington and its allies place on the territory occupied by the Russian Federation. It also shows the determination of western leaders to prevent any sovereign state from controlling the area the US needs to implement its grand strategy.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Russia’s transformation into a strong and independent state has not only put it squarely in Washington’s crosshairs, but also greatly increased the chances of a direct confrontation. Simply put, Russia’s return to the ranks of the great powers has placed it on Washington’s ‘enemies list’ and a logical target for US aggression.

So, what does this have to do with Merkel?

Implicit in Merkel’s comments is the fact that the dissolution of the communist state and the collapse of the Russian economy was not sufficient to leave Russia “pacified”. She is, in fact, voicing her support for more extreme measures. And she knows what those measures will be; regime change followed by a violent splintering of the country.

Image
Image
The United States spends more on defense than the next 11 countries combined

Putin is well-aware of this malignant plan and has discussed it openly on many occasions. Take a look at this 2-minute video of a meeting Putin headed just weeks ago:

“The goal of our enemies is to weaken and break up our country. This has been the case for centuries.. They believe our country is too big and poses a threat (to them), which is why it must be weakened and divided. For our part, we always pursued a different approach; we always wanted to be a part of the so-called ‘civilized (western) world.’ And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we thought we would finally become a part of that ‘world’. But, as it turned out, we weren’t welcome despite all our efforts. Our attempts to become a part of that world were rejected. Instead, they did everything they could– including assisting terrorists in the Caucasus– to finish off Russia and break-up the Russian Federation.” Vladimir Putin

The point we’re making is that Merkel’s views align seamlessly with those of the neocons. They also align with the those of the entire western political establishment that has unanimously thrown its support behind a confrontation with Russia. Additionally, the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy and the Congressional Research Service’s latest report, have all shifted their focus from the war against international terrorism to a “great power competition” with Russia and China. Not surprisingly, the documents have little to do with ‘competition’, rather, they provide an ideological justification for hostilities with Russia. In other words, the United States has laid the groundwork for a direct confrontation with the world’s biggest nuclear superpower.

Check out this brief clip from the Congressional Research Service Report titled Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress:

The U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia… is a policy choice reflecting two judgments: (1) that given the amount of people, resources, and economic activity in Eurasia, a regional hegemon in Eurasia would represent a concentration of power large enough to be able to threaten vital U.S. interests; and (2) that Eurasia is not dependably self-regulating in terms of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons, meaning that the countries of Eurasia cannot be counted on to be able to prevent, though their own actions, the emergence of regional hegemons, and may need assistance from one or more countries outside Eurasia to be able to do this dependably.”….

From a U.S. perspective on grand strategy and geopolitics, it can be noted that most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are located not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. In response to this basic feature of world geography, U.S. policymakers for the last several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia. Although U.S. policymakers do not often state explicitly in public the goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia, U.S. military operations in recent decades—both wartime operations and day-to-day operations—appear to have been carried out in no small part in support of this goal.” (“Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress”, US Congress)

It sounds alot like the Wolfowitz Doctrine, doesn’t it? (Which suggests that Congress has moved into the neocon camp.)

Image

There are a few things worth considering in this short excerpt:

1- That “the U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia” has nothing to do with national defense. It is a straightforward declaration of war on any nation that successfully uses the free market to grow its economy. It is particularly unsettling that China on Washington’s target-list when US corporate outsourcing and offshoring have factored so large in China’s success. US industries moved their businesses to China to avoid paying anything above a slave wage. Is China to be blamed for that?
2- The fact that Eurasia has more “people, resources, and economic activity” than America, does not constitute a “threat” to US national security. It only represents a threat to the ambitions of western elites who want to use the US Military to pursue their own geopolitical agenda.
3- Finally: Notice how the author acknowledges that the government deliberately misleads the public about its real objectives in Central Asia. He says: “U.S. policymakers do not often state explicitly in public the goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia, U.S. military operations in recent decades—both wartime operations and day-to-day operations—appear to have been carried out in no small part in support of this goal.” In other words, all the claptrap about “freedom and democracy” is just pablum for the masses. The real goals are “resources, economic activity” and power.


The National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy are equally explicit in identifying Russia as a de facto enemy of the United States. This is from the NSS:

Russia poses an immediate and ongoing threat to the regional security order in Europe and it is a source of disruption and instability globally…

Russia now poses an immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability….

Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order … This decade will be decisive, in setting the terms of …managing the acute threat posed by Russia.. (“The 2022 National Security Strategy”, White House)


And lastly, The 2022 National Defense Strategy reiterates the same themes as the others; Russia and China pose an unprecedented threat to the “rules-based order”. Here’s short summary from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:

The 2022 National Defense Strategy… makes clear that the United States …. sees the subjugation of Russia as a critical stepping stone toward the conflict with China.… The eruption of American imperialism… is more and more directly targeting Russia and China, which the United States sees as the principal obstacles to the untrammeled domination of the world. US strategists have long regarded the domination of the Eurasian landmass, with its vast natural resources, as the key to global domination.” (“Pentagon national strategy document targets China”, Andres Damon, World Socialist Web Site)


What these three strategic documents show is that the Washington BrainTrust had been preparing the ideological foundation for a war with Russia long before the first shot was ever fired in Ukraine. That war is now underway although the outcome is far from certain.

The strategy going forward appears to be a version of the Cheney Plan which recommended a break up of Russia itself, “so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.” Here’s more from an article by Ben Norton:

“Former US Vice President Dick Cheney, a lead architect of the Iraq War, not only wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union; he also wanted to break up Russia itself, to prevent it from rising again as a significant political power…The fact that a figure at the helm of the US government not-so-secretly sought the permanent dissolution of Russia as a country, and straightforwardly communicated this to colleagues like Robert Gates, partially explains the aggressive posturing Washington has taken toward the Russian Federation since the overthrow of the USSR.

The reality is that the US empire will simply never allow Russia to challenge its unilateral domination of Eurasia, despite the fact that the government in Moscow restored capitalism. This is why it is not surprising that Washington has utterly ignored Russia’s security concerns, breaking its promise not to expand NATO “once inch eastward” after German reunification, surrounding Moscow with militarized adversaries hell bent on destabilizing it.” (“Ex VP Dick Cheney confirmed US goal is to break up Russia, not just USSR”, Ben Norton, Multipolarista)

The carving up of Russia into several smaller statelets, has long been the dream of the neoconservatives. The difference now, is that that same dream is shared by political leaders across the West. Recent comments by Angela Merkel underscore the fact that western leaders are now committed to achieving the unrealized goals of the Cold War. They intend to use military confrontation to affect the political outcome they seek which is a significantly weakened Russia incapable of blocking Washington’s projection of power across Central Asia. A more dangerous strategy would be hard to imagine.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-plan-to-carve-up-russia/

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

Ukrainian bombing of Donetsk leaves at least three dead

Image
The day before, 61 rescuers and 20 special media participated in search and rescue work. | Photo: EFE
Published 17 January 2023

The discovery of three lifeless bodies under the rubble was reported, it would be, according to local authorities, a man and two women.

At least three people were killed in the Donetsk region by the impact of missiles fired by the Ukrainian armed forces on civilian facilities, civilian authorities in the region incorporated into Russia reported on Monday.

Sources from the Ministry of Emergencies of the Donetsk People's Republic (RPD) reported the discovery of three lifeless bodies under the rubble of a man and two women.


The day before, 61 rescuers and 20 special media participated in search and rescue work after three people were injured by the bombing.


According to local authorities, the Ukrainian army fired three rockets from a multiple launcher into a neighborhood in eastern Donetsk on Monday morning. The projectiles hit a supermarket located in a three-story building, which collapsed.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/tres-mue ... -0008.html

Google Translator

*******************
REPRISE

End of Cold War Illusions
by Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy
(Nov 01, 2022)

Image
An air-to-air right side view of a Fighter Squadron 43 (VF-43) F-16N Fighting Falcon aircraft making a high-speed run over the bombing range at Dare County bombing range (October 19, 1990). Contributed to Wikimedia Commons by National Archives at College Park - Still Pictures as part of a cooperation project. Public Domain, Link.
Harry Magdoff was coeditor of Monthly Review from 1969 until 2006. Paul M. Sweezy was a founding editor of Monthly Review (along with Leo Huberman) and coedited the magazine from 1949 until 2004.
The emergence in our time of a New Cold War has naturally raised the question of whether the Old Cold War ever actually ended—or, from today’s perspective, how the New Cold War reemerged out of the embers of the Old. We are therefore republishing here the “Notes from the Editors” by Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy from the February 1994 issue of Monthly Review, which was aimed at answering this question.—Eds.
Has the Cold War ended? In one sense of course it has. The primary meaning of “war” is an armed conflict between two or more nations, or more generally, power centers. The war is called “cold” if the conflict stops short of shooting and killing. In this sense the relation that has existed during most of the second half of the twentieth century between the United States and its allies on one side and the Soviet Union and its allies on the other is a classic (perhaps better the classic) case of cold war. It ended when the Soviet side threw in the towel in 1989–1990. Hardly anyone is likely to dispute this statement of the facts.

But the term war is used in other senses as well, particularly as a loose synonym for almost any kind of conflict, usually with the implication that it involves or could involve violence. Two all-too familiar examples these days are the so-called wars against drugs and poverty, ill-defined but real phenomena that have more than a little to do with each other.

There are those who maintain that the Cold War, despite what happened in 1989–1990, has not ended. Is there any sense in which this is true? What makes them hold this belief? To answer this question, it helps to pose a different question: what would you expect to happen if the Cold War had really ended? Surely the answer is that both sides would stop doing all the enormously expensive, dangerous, and ultimately disastrous things they were doing in the period when the common assumption was that at any minute the Cold War might turn hot. On the Soviet side this is what happened—chaotically to be sure, but quite decisively. For them the Cold War was indeed over. On the American side nothing of the kind happened. “National Defense” outlays in 1989 stood at $290.4 billion; four years later in 1993 (the last year for which an official estimate is available) the figure was $389.3 billion. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was much talk in this country of a large and growing “peace dividend” that would be available for all kinds of good works. No more. For us, it seems, the Cold War is anything but over.

All of which suggests that there was/is considerably more to the Cold War than meets the naked eye. If it can be over for one side but not the other, then surely the objectives of the two sides must have been different from the outset. And indeed they were. The Soviet Union was on the winning side in the very hot Second World War. It was determined to hold onto the substance of what it had gained. The United States and its allies were equally determined that this should not happen. But that was not all: they saw in the ensuing conflict with the Soviet Union what they had been looking for ever since the Russian Revolution of 1917, a golden opportunity to get rid of “communism,” i.e., a society organized on noncapitalist principles, the very existence of which cannot but be a standing threat to capitalism everywhere. Their objective was thus to push the Soviets back and in the process to overthrow their form of society. The chosen method was to impose an open-ended arms race on the Soviet Union which the Western ruling classes shrewdly calculated could be sustained more successfully by their own economies than by the less developed Soviet one.

It worked as planned. The Soviet economy collapsed; the leadership withdrew from the Cold War; the system disintegrated, the stampede to restore capitalism began. The United States could not have won a more decisive victory in the Cold War. Why, then, does it continue to act as though the Cold War is still on?

There are at least three plausible reasons. The first is inertia, the tendency to keep on doing what you have been doing, a ubiquitous force in history which has its roots in both psychology and vested interests and is the more powerful the longer the conduct in question has been in operation. This has no doubt played a role, but in this case it should not be overestimated. Almost everyone claims, sincerely enough, to be glad to be relieved from the pressures and sacrifices of waging the Cold War. Yet four years after the surrender of the enemy, little has been done to take advantage of this new-found freedom. More than inertia must be involved.

The second reason has to do with what the U.S. ruling class sees as the global leadership responsibilities of the one remaining superpower. It is not enough to have a military bigger than that of any other power; it must be bigger than that of any plausible combination of other powers, and this applies of course not only to the immediate situation but to what might be the situation five or ten years from now. Given all these weighty considerations, it is hardly surprising that U.S. policy makers, having inherited from the Cold War by far the world’s largest military apparatus, have decided to hold onto it and see what happens. It never even occurs to them that actively pushing a policy of general arms reduction might be a wiser alternative.

The third reason complements and reinforces the second. The declared objective of the Cold War was to defeat an imaginary threat of Soviet expansionism. The real objective was to rid the world of “communism,” meaning any and all forms of society organized on any but “free-market,” i.e., capitalist, lines. The imaginary threat has now been forgotten. What about the real objective? Has communism been finished off? The answer is no. There are still a number of countries controlled by Communist Parties (China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea). At the present time all of them are showing signs of moving toward capitalism. But no dyed-in-the-wool capitalists like those that rule the United States are likely to believe that these countries are safely in the fold unless and until they develop and restore to power their own bourgeoisies. In the meantime they are all being treated as though they were Cold War enemies.

This, however, is hardly the end of the communist story in today’s world. Capitalism has never been as all-encompassing and powerful as it is right now. At the same time it has never been more prone to uncontrolled crises and disasters. It is an explosive mix which is everywhere polarizing societies on an unprecedented scale. And in the lower reaches, the communist virus, always present in the capitalist organism but largely dormant in recent years, is coming back to life in unexpected ways and places. Don’t for a minute think that those who sit in the seats of capitalist power are unaware of what is happening or that they are not preparing to deal with it in the only way they understand, i.e., by naked military power. For them the Cold War that ended four years ago is no more than the most recent round in a struggle that will last as long as capitalism itself.

https://monthlyreview.org/2022/11/01/en ... illusions/

*********

Ukrainian presidential adviser resigns over Dnipro missile attack remarks
From CNN's Sebastian Shukla and Maria Kosentko

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has proposed his resignation, after he suggested the rocket that hit an apartment block in Dnipro was downed by Ukraine.

“I wrote a letter of resignation. I want to set an example of civilized behaviour. A fundamental mistake means resignation," Oleksiy Arestovych, posted on Facebook alongside a photo of his resignation letter.

Arestovych initially suggested that the rocket that hit the apartment block had been downed by Ukrainian air defense systems, rather than a direct hit. The rocket was a Kh-22.

However, the Ukrainian Air Force said Sunday that they did not have the capability to shoot down that type of rocket. Therefore, the attack was a direct hit.

Arestovych posted on Facebook ahead of his resignation that he acknowledges he had made “a serious mistake” on Ukrainian national TV following the Dnipro attack.

“I sincerely apologize to the victims and their relatives, the residents of the Dnipro and everyone who was deeply wounded by my premature error version of the reason the Russian missile hit a residential building," he added.
At least 44 people died, including four children, after a Russian cruise missile struck the nine-story block in the central Ukrainian city. President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attack and said Russia's actions amount to a "war crime."

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ru ... 453b794a6c

Doncha hate when the truth slips out like that? Oleksiy Arestovych will be lucky if the Nazis don't make an example of him.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

Post Reply