Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2023 12:18 pm
"NATO's Mission"
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/10/2023
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
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“I Speak for the Georgian Legion – We Don’t Take Russian Soldiers Prisoner!”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 9, 2023
Henry Kamens
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
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/
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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/
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Regarding the names of the settlements of the DPR
January 10, 10:46
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
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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
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/
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/10/2023
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
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“I Speak for the Georgian Legion – We Don’t Take Russian Soldiers Prisoner!”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 9, 2023
Henry Kamens
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
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/
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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/
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Regarding the names of the settlements of the DPR
January 10, 10:46
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
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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
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/