Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2023 11:28 am
The role of Victoria Nuland
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/31/2023
Since the outbreak of the Maidan, which had an important international role, Victoria Nuland has been one of the recurring figures in Ukraine's recent history and on its way to becoming a satellite country of the West and more recently of NATO. Known for walking around the Maidan protests handing out cookies to protesters, something that would have been considered outside interference if carried out by a country opposed to the United States, Nuland was directly involved in negotiations with the opposition and in the formation of what a new government would be. That new government was born from the Maidan and from the breach of the power-sharing and electoral advancement agreement reached with President Yanukovych, which the protégés of the United States and the European Union never intended to comply with.
Nuland became famous in those days with the publication of a telephone conversation with the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Pyatt, possibly intercepted by the Russian secret services. From that leak, Victoria Nuland's “ fuck the EU ” was widely highlighted , an evident sign that in post-Maidan Ukraine the European Union would be the secondary partner of the United States, which would always rule the roost. However, the part in which Nuland perfectly described to Pyatt what the government that came out of that revolution after the overthrow of Yanukovych should be like was less highlighted. Yats _He is the man”, stated Nuland at the time, presenting Arseni Yatseniuk, a US protégé, from Yulia Timoschenko's party, as the person who should lead the Government. Yats , with political experience and favor with the Obama administration, was to "talk to Klitsch and Tyahnibok three times a week." Klitsch , the current mayor of Kiev Vitaly Klitschko, was Germany's protégé, the candidate of the European Union, who was not only not appointed prime minister, but was not even included in the government.
As Nuland pointed out, Arseniy Yatseniuk was the man of the moment and he would be the one to tell the press just one day after the announcement of the anti-terrorist operation , that Ukraine was already at war. It was April 2014 and Ukraine had decided to impose a military solution to a problem that, despite the appearance of Strelkov's armed group in Slavyansk the day before, was still political. The population of Donbass and part of its elites rejected the Maidan change of government and the political, economic and social changes that it implied. Faced with a western Ukraine that looked to the European Union as its path to the future, Donbass turned towards Russia, the main market for its industry, an economic sector of little interest to the European Union or the United States.
The anti-terrorist operationIt was always a war between the Ukrainian troops against the local militias that, with the help of Russian volunteers, managed to maintain a part of the territory that had risen up against the government of the man Victoria Nuland, who instead of inclusive dialogue offered Donbass talks in which only pro-Maidan groups and individuals participated and appointed a second-rate oligarch with little ties to the region, Sergey Taruta, as governor of the region. Russian aid managed to stop the Ukrainian advance in Ilovaisk, an important communication node against which Ukraine is firing its HIMARS these days. That military defeat in 2014, as would happen months later in Debaltsevo, forced Ukraine to sign the Minsk agreements, which both Ukraine and its partners now deny. Nevertheless,
As the latest statements by Boris Johnson have made clear, who defined the Minsk and Normandy talks as useless and practically described them as a negotiation simulation, this process was solely an initiative of the countries of the European Union, mainly Germany, especially interested in maintaining economic relations with Russia and preventing the war from spreading. The fact that Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Washington before the start of the Russian intervention made no mention of the Minsk agreements, the only existing document to resolve the internal Ukrainian conflict, without which it is impossible to imagine the war as it is as it is currently waged, reflects that for the United States, as for the United Kingdom, the peace talks were simply not a relevant factor. Still, for seven years, in which failure to comply with the Minsk terms justified maintaining and increasing sanctions against Russia and making relations between Berlin and Moscow difficult, even Washington pressed for kyiv to keep up appearances. According to what the media published at the time, in July 2015,Victoria Nuland personally intervened to force the President of Ukraine , Petro Poroshenko, to include in the constitutional reform a version of the special status that Minsk envisioned for Donbass. Although without the intention that this status would ever come into force. Nuland's objective was the same as that of Kurt Volker years later: to present a document that, even if it did not comply with the letter or the spirit of what was agreed in Minsk, Ukraine could use as an argument to claim that it had already complied with its obligations.
The special status for Donbass was also one of the main topics in the meetings held by Victoria Nuland in October 2021., when they were already beginning to talk about the real possibility of an invasion of Ukraine. The apparent harmony of Dmitry Kozak and Victoria Nuland regarding the importance of the Minsk agreements and the guarantee of special status for Donbass did not hide the fact that it was just another simulation of negotiations. In a context of contrary interpretation of the terms of the agreements, especially the special status for Donbass, Russia's willingness to demand compliance with the letter of the agreements and Ukraine's categorical refusal to do so made the Minsk process unfeasible, something of which all parties, including the United States, were aware. Nuland's carefree smile in Moscow after that meeting did not presage an agreement but rather a continuation of a situation that had lasted since 2015:
Although that stance was evident throughout the seven years in Minsk, statements like those by Hollande, Johnson and to a lesser extent Merkel can only increase mistrust. The widespread discourse that it was Russia that breached the terms of the Minsk agreements does not make reality disappear: Ukraine never had the intention of complying with agreements that it was forced to sign at two moments of military weakness in which it risked losing even more territory. Her partners were always aware of this, hence the demands to keep up appearances.
Therefore, the Russian indifference to Victoria Nuland's latest proposal, made at a hearing in the US Senate last week, cannot be surprising. The Undersecretary of State affirmed that the United States is willing to relax part of the sanctions against Russia in the event that real peace talks take place. Apart from the lack of credibility offered by the offer of one of the allies that protected Ukraine during its breach of the Minsk agreements, the proposal seems to be in line with the "peace plan" of Volodymyr Zelensky, which demands the surrender Russia and the withdrawal from all territories under Russian control as a prerequisite for negotiation. Taking into account the unconditional support of the United States for Ukraine, Nuland's “offer” is just one of the many surrender proposals that have been put to Moscow over the years. During the Minsk stage, the Russian capitulation resulted in the acceptance of the Ukrainian interpretation of the agreements, in practice the surrender of Donbass, as a way to resume normal relations and lift sanctions. Now, Crimea is also added to the demand for surrender in Donbass, but, as then, it is done in exchange for vague promises of the future with little credibility taking into account the precedents.
The US position in this war has been made clear: in addition to unconditional support for Ukraine, it has used circumstance to cut Russia out of the European Union's energy market, thus preventing a viable economic relationship between Berlin and Moscow and also undermining the competitiveness of German industry, Washington's only relevant competition on the continent. Hence, the most credible words in Nuland's statements before the Senate were precisely those referring to the Nord Stream explosions. Without blushing, the Undersecretary of State stated that "we are very pleased to know that the Nord Stream-2 has become a pile of scrap at the bottom of the sea."
https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/31/el-pa ... more-26531
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Will the NATOizaton of the Ukrainian Army Give the West a Victory?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 30, 2023
Salman Rafi Sheikh
While Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the way the West has supplied weapons to the Ukrainian army to fight the Russian forces has increasingly NATOized Ukraine’s forces. As I mentioned previously, Russia is fighting a conflict not with Ukraine but with NATO. This is evident not just in terms of the fact that the whole Western alliance against Russia happens to be part of NATO but also in terms of the very weapons that the Ukrainian forces are using. Importantly enough, this NATOization is not something that started to happen after Russia began its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. As NATO itself mentions on its website, the alliance has been supporting Ukraine since the 2014 Crimea events. The support includes, NATO says, “equipment and financial support” as well as “training for tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops.” It also mentions that the alliance has enhanced its support ever since February 2022.
The claim tells many things, but the most important one is that the ongoing conflict was neither inevitable nor unprovoked. What led to the present state of affairs was precisely this ongoing NATOization of Ukraine since 2014, a policy that actually laid the groundwork for Washington to push for Ukraine’s formal membership of NATO in 2021-22. The conflict would not have taken place if the West had eschewed arming Ukraine and using this territory to expand NATO. It is this Western strategy, rather than the so-called Russian “unprovoked aggression”, that made the present conflict inevitable.
The West, in keeping with its policy, is continuing its policy, which is evident from the recent decision of the UK government to provide Ukraine with its Challenger 2 Tanks. Ben Wallace, the UK’s Defence Secretary, called this supply “the most significant package of combat to date to accelerate Ukrainian success.”
While there are not enough tanks, the US has already announced to send Bradley infantry fighting vehicles to support tank warfare. A clear escalation is taking place, but the big question is: will it work to achieve the objective that the suppliers have in mind?
The US/NATO fought a twenty-year-long war in Afghanistan against a much weaker enemy, let alone a non-nuclear country, in Afghanistan. It withdrew after two decades without achieving its key objective i.e., dismantling global terrorism. Afghanistan today has many terror groups – al-Qaeda, the IS-K, the ETIM, and the TTP – operating from within its borders. Clearly, the presence of these groups reflects a US military defeat in terms of achieving its objectives even after spending billions of dollars.
The US has so far spent only a fraction of that money in Ukraine where NATO is fighting a country that has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. Keeping this in mind, the strategy not only seems unrealistic, but unworkable as well. Short of providing Ukraine with actual nuclear weapons and creating a nuclear deterrence vis-à-vis Russia – which is not even conceivable – there is no way NATO can arm the Ukrainian army and help Ukraine in ways to actually defeat Russia.
On the contrary, hawks in the West – especially, in the US and UK – continue to see it within the realm of possibility to achieve their objectives, which now include creating a situation favouring a coup in Russia against President Putin.
This NATOization is unlikely to work, not only because not everything can possibly be supplied to Ukraine – that is, unless the West wants a total, nuclear war – but also because Ukraine itself is fast running out of its capacity to fight a total war, let alone the present conflict.
Let’s see what the actual ground situation is. In and around Bakhmut, the Ukrainian forces lost 70 per cent of their fighting capacity in just one week in the second week of January. Does it make sense to continue to supply weapons to an army that is unlikely to win?
Many countries in the West think that it does not make sense. In a meeting held on American Ramstein Air Base in German on January 20 involving leaders from 50 countries, including NATO allies, the participants failed to reach a consensus on providing German Leopard Tanks to Ukraine. Although Germany has now decided to supply these tanks to Ukraine, the very fact that it took them so much time – and it involved lots of political pressure from Washington – to make this decision shows that the Western alliance is actually far from united. There are serious concerns that Germany itself shares.
As German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said after the January 20 meeting, Germany is not alone raising concerns. He said that “there are many allies who say we share the view that I have put forward here.” Of course, the UK is not amongst them, as it has already decided to supply Challenger 2 tanks. But the fact that the UK took a decision independent of the rest of Europe means that Europe, thanks to Brexit, itself is divided between the EU and the UK.
The root cause of this disagreement is simple to understand. Many Europeans, excluding the UK, have realised that mainland Europe, or the EU, is a victim of the US-UK politics of NATO expansion and that the continent has become a proxy land for the US to fight the war of its own survival as the global hegemon, supported by its strongest allies in London.
For the US, Russia’s success in Ukraine would be the end of NATO and the end of Washington’s influence in Europe. Many Europeans already want a European security system independent of the US and NATO. Were this to happen, Europe can most certainly rewrite its ties with Russia in ways that avoid confrontation. But if this happens, the global strategic landscape will change in ways in which Washington will no longer be the only centre. Hence, the US-UK sponsored intensification of the war as the last-ditch effort to save the system they have been dominating for many decades.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... a-victory/
A Panicked Empire Tries to Make Russia an ‘Offer it Can’t Refuse’
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 30, 2023
Pepe Escobar
Does US Secretary of State Antony Blinken think a Washington Post op-ed will move Russian Armed Forces Chief Valery Gerasimov to postpone his planned military offensive on Ukraine?
Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. But why should Moscow take indirect proposals seriously, especially on the eve of its new military advance and while it is in the winning seat?
Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall.
Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.
So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front.
As confirmed by a high-level US establishment source, a new directive on NATO vs. Russia in Ukraine was relayed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken, in terms of actual power, is nothing but a messenger boy for the Straussian neocons and neoliberals who actually run US foreign policy.
The secretary of state was instructed to relay the new directive – a sort of message to the Kremlin – via mainstream print media, which was promptly published by the Washington Post.
In the elite US mainstream media division of labor, the New York Times is very close to the State Department. and the Washington Post to the CIA. In this case though the directive was too important, and needed to be relayed by the paper of record in the imperial capital. It was published as an Op-Ed (behind paywall).
The novelty here is that for the first time since the start of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the Americans are actually proposing a variation of the “offer you can’t refuse” classic, including some concessions which may satisfy Russia’s security imperatives.
Crucially, the US offer totally bypasses Kiev, once again certifying that this is a war against Russia conducted by Empire and its NATO minions – with the Ukrainians as mere expandable proxies.
‘Please don’t go on the offensive’
The Washington Post’s old school Moscow-based correspondent John Helmer has provided an important service, offering the full text of Blinken’s offer, of course extensively edited to include fantasist notions such as “US weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force” and a cringe-worthy explanation: “In other words, Russia should not be ready to rest, regroup and attack.”
The message from Washington may, at first glance, give the impression that the US would admit Russian control over Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – “the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia” – as a fait accompli.
Ukraine would have a demilitarized status, and the deployment of HIMARS missiles and Leopard and Abrams tanks would be confined to western Ukraine, kept as a “deterrent against further Russian attacks.”
What may have been offered, in quite hazy terms, is in fact a partition of Ukraine, demilitarized zone included, in exchange for the Russian General Staff cancelling its yet-unknown 2023 offensive, which may be as devastating as cutting off Kiev’s access to the Black Sea and/or cutting off the supply of NATO weapons across the Polish border.
The US offer defines itself as the path towards a “just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” Well, not really. It just won’t be a rump Ukraine, and Kiev might even retain those western lands that Poland is dying to gobble up.
The possibility of a direct Washington-Moscow deal on “an eventual postwar military balance” is also evoked, including no Ukraine membership of NATO. As for Ukraine itself, the Americans seem to believe it will be a “strong, non-corrupt economy with membership in the European Union.”
Whatever remains of value in Ukraine has already been swallowed not only by its monumentally corrupt oligarchy, but most of all, investors and speculators of the BlackRock variety. Assorted corporate vultures simply cannot afford to lose Ukraine’s grain export ports, as well as the trade deal terms agreed with the EU before the war. And they’re terrified that the Russian offensive may capture Odessa, the major seaport and transportation hub on the Black Sea – which would leave Ukraine landlocked.
There’s no evidence whatsoever that Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the entire Russian Security Council – including its Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev – have reason to believe anything coming from the US establishment, especially via mere minions such as Blinken and the Washington Post. After all the stavka – a moniker for the high command of the Russian armed forces – regard the Americans as “non-agreement capable,” even when an offer is in writing.
This walks and talks like a desperate US gambit to stall and present some carrots to Moscow in the hope of delaying or even cancelling the planned offensive of the next few months.
Even old school, dissident Washington operatives – not beholden to the Straussian neocon galaxy – bet that the gambit will be a nothing burger: in classic “strategic ambiguity” mode, the Russians will continue on their stated drive of demilitarization, denazification and de-electrification, and will “stop” anytime and anywhere they see fit east of the Dnieper. Or beyond.
What the Deep State really wants
Washington’s ambitions in this essentially NATO vs. Russia war go well beyond Ukraine. And we’re not even talking about preventing a Russia-China-Germany Eurasian union or a peer competitor nightmare; let’s stick with prosaic issues on the Ukrainian battleground.
The key “recommendations” – military, economic, political, diplomatic – were detailed in an Atlantic Council strategy paper late last year.
And in another one, under “War scenario 1: The war continues in its current tempo,” we find the Straussian neocon policy fully spelled out.
It’s all here: from “marshaling support and military-assistance transfers to Kyiv sufficient to enable it to win” to “increase the lethality of military assistance transferred to include fighter aircraft that would enable Ukraine to control its airspace and attack Russian forces therein; and missile technology with range sufficient to reach into Russian territory.”
From training the Ukrainian military “to use Western weapons, electronic warfare, and offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, and to seamlessly integrate new recruits in the service” to buttressing “defenses on the front lines, near the Donbass region,” including “combat training focusing on irregular warfare.”
Added to “imposing secondary sanctions on all entities doing business with the Kremlin,” we reach of course the Mother of All Plunders: “Confiscate the $300 billion that the Russian state holds in overseas accounts in the United States and EU and use seized monies to fund reconstruction.”
The reorganization of the SMO, with Putin, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and General Armageddon in their new, enhanced roles is derailing all these elaborate plans.
The Straussians are now in deep panic. Even Blinken’s number two, Russophobic warmonger Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, has admitted to the US Senate there will be no Abrams tanks on the battlefield before Spring (realistically, only in 2024). She also promised to “ease sanctions” if Moscow “returns to negotiations.” Those negotiations were scotched by the Americans themselves in Istanbul in the Spring of 2022.
Nuland also called the Russians to “withdraw their troops.” Well, that at least offers some comic relief compared with the panic oozing from Blinken’s “offer you can’t refuse.” Stay tuned for Russia’s non-response response.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... nt-refuse/
At What Point Does NATO Stop Arming the Kiev Regime?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 30, 2023
Drago Bosnic
Almost anyone with a basic capability to process information has noticed a pattern in the relationship between the political West and its favorite Neo-Nazi puppet regime – Kiev asks for something, the United States, European Union and NATO “categorically deny” they would ever deliver such weapons in order to “avoid antagonizing Russia” and then a few weeks later (at most) there’s a “sudden change of heart”.
This rather comical back and forth started even before Russia launched its counteroffensive, when NATO provided thousands of ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) and MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) to Kiev. Since then, the scope of so-called “lethal aid” has expanded dramatically.
It would seem the same is true regarding the recently announced delivery of Western-made heavy tanks which were first denied and then approved just days later. Mere hours after the political West confirmed this, the Neo-Nazi junta once again started insisting on fighter jets. In a statement for Reuters, Yuriy Sak, currently serving as an adviser to Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov (now exposed for his involvement in a massive corruption scandal), said that the Kiev regime will keep pushing for the delivery of Western-made jets to replace its dwindling fleet of Soviet-era aircraft.
“The next big hurdle will now be the fighter jets,” Sak said, adding: “Every type of weapon we request, we needed yesterday. We will do everything possible to ensure Ukraine gets fourth-generation fighter jets as soon as possible.”
The “fourth-generation fighter jets” request also includes US-made F-16 fighters that have been at the top of the Neo-Nazi junta’s wish list at least since mid-March last year when Volodymyr Zelensky implored the US Congress to send jets to help “close the sky”. After the request proved to be quite unpopular with the American public, the Kiev regime frontman was instructed to “tone it down” as this boils down to enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. This would essentially mean direct armed confrontation between NATO and Russia, further inevitably leading to a world-ending thermonuclear exchange.
And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine is once again preparing its audiences for the eventual delivery of advanced combat aircraft to the Kiev regime. For instance, The Hill admitted that “Western fighter jets and longer-range artillery units, which would allow Ukraine to strike Russian forces deeper in occupied territory, will likely be the next debate for NATO.” If the aforementioned pattern continues, this will be yet another step toward uncontrollable escalation and the proxy conflict turning into a fully-fledged war. The Neo-Nazi junta is perfectly aware that its so-called “begmanding” approach is working and continues insisting on heavier and more advanced weapons.
“They didn’t want to give us heavy artillery, then they did. They didn’t want to give us HIMARS systems, then they did. They didn’t want to give us tanks, now they’re giving us tanks,” Sak boasted, further stating: “If we get them, the advantages on the battlefield will be just immense. It’s not just F-16s: fourth generation aircraft, this is what we want… …Apart from nuclear weapons, there is nothing left that we will not get.”
Given the pattern of incessant escalation, Yuriy Sak’s concluding remarks are quite alarming and could indicate that the Kiev regime never gave up on its quest to acquire WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). Given the sheer magnitude of the Neo-Nazi junta’s clinical Russophobia, fanned up to a hatred of genocidal proportions at this point, any such statement will surely be taken very seriously in Moscow. Despite these psychotically disturbing comments, the political West continues to expand its support for such extremist puppet regimes. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stated there are “constant discussions” with Kiev officials on what they need, adding that he “can’t blame the Ukrainians for wanting more and more systems”.
“It’s not the first time they’ve talked about fighter jets, but I don’t have any announcements to make on that front,” Kirby said.
Again, here we see the same back-and-forth pattern of the political West’s supposed “reluctance” with a “no” becoming “we’ll see” or “maybe” only to then be announced as “we have no choice due to Russia’s unprovoked aggression” at some point.
Unfortunately, debate on this disturbing issue is virtually completely absent from the public discourse. The blame for everything happening in Ukraine is simply cast on Moscow and any attempt to question this is immediately shut down. Even the question of whether Western-made tanks can actually help the Kiev regime forces might be “problematic” and the ones asking it run the risk of being labeled as supposedly “pro-Russian”. This nullifies even the slightest chance of a public debate on whether the political West should reassess its belligerence toward a nuclear-armed superpower, one which has shown remarkable restraint thus far. However, as Russian officials said so many times before, Moscow’s patience is not an endless resource.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... ev-regime/
Russian Ministry of Defense: 20,000 Documents Expose US Biowarfare Program in Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 30, 2023
Chief of Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force Igor Kirillov Russian Defence Ministry/TASS
Briefing on analysis of US military and biological activity documents by Chief of NBC Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov
January 30, 2023
The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation has repeatedly noted the signs of the implementation of ‘dual-purpose programmes’ by the USA and its allies outside their national territories, including within the operation of the biolaboratories funded by the Pentagon or its contractors.
The fact that the United States blocked the initiative to establish a monitoring mechanism of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) at the Ninth Review Conference once again confirms that Washington has something to hide, while the transparency of the biological research contradicts the interests of the USA.
We have previously informed about the works on enhancing the pathogenic characteristics of COVID-19 causative agent, carried out at Boston University with funds of the U.S. state budget, as well as the possible involvement of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the emergence of the new coronavirus.
The key role in the implementation of the abovementioned projects belongs to EcoHealth Alliance intermediary organisation. The available documents of the U.S. Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) confirm that since 2015,professionals of the abovementioned company have been studying the diversity in the population of bats, searching for new coronavirus strains, and mechanisms of its transmission from animals to humans. Over 2.5 thousandspecimen have been researched.
The project on zoonotic virus research in South-East Asia contain the following recommendations for the employees of EcoHealth Alliance: ‘… If any of the experiments proposed for Aim 1 result in a virus with a phenotype of enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility, enhanced growth by more than 10 fold when compared to wild type strains …, the recipient must immediately stop the work and notify the NIAID Program Officer, Grants Management Specialist, and appropriate institutional biosafety committee …’
The high degree of readiness of the U.S. mRNA vaccine manufacturers for a pandemic of the new coronavirus infection raises questions. One gets the impression that pharmaceutical companies had produced the vaccine preparations in advance, being unable to rapidly introduce them into the market due to specific characteristics of the virus that embodied in low efficiency of vaccination and numerous side effects.
It is to be reminded that on 18 October 2019, two months before the first official reports about the emergence of the new coronavirus infection in China, the John Hopkins University, supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, conducted Event 201 exercise in New York.
This exercise simulated the epidemic of a previously unknown coronavirus that, according to the scenario, was transmitted from bats to humans via pigs, the intermediate host.
Outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic precisely according to this scenario raises questions about its premeditated nature, involvement of the USA in this incident, as well as real objectives of the U.S. biological programmes aimed at enhancing the characteristics of dangerous pathogens.
We have repeatedly noted that the United States conduct the studies that are most controversial in terms of the international law outside the national territory.
The examples are the experiments related to HIV infection that have been carried out by U.S. specialists in Ukraine since 2019. It should be emphasized that the target groups include not only ‘high-risk infection patients’ (convicted or drug addicts), but also representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The premises of Pharmbiotest Medical Centre in Rubezhnoye were explored during the special military operation in the liberated territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic. It was a venue for clinical trials to test the medicinal products that caused serious side effects: they include medications for treating leukaemia, mental disorders, neurological diseases, epilepsy, and other dangerous illnesses.
In early 2023, residents of Lisichansk found a large landfill of biomaterial residues that belong to Pharmbiotest. The clinical samples and patients’ clinical records with their personal data were buried instead of being cremated or eliminated in appropriate manner, prescribed by the rules. This means that the evidence were being eliminated in extreme hurry.
The Russian Defence Ministry has received data on numerous facts of Ukrainian military personnel takingpsychostimulants and narcotics (tramadol, methadone, amphetamines). The facts about smuggling morphine into war zones have been revealed. It is to be reminded that in accordance with Ukrainian laws, illegal circulation and transportation of the abovementioned products is to be punished by deprivation of liberty ranging from eight to 12 years.
Russia considers the actions committed by the officials who carried out the research on Ukrainian personnel, whose blood contained high concentrations of antibiotics, narcotics, antibodies to the causative agents of infectious diseases, require appropriate legal assessment.
During the special military operation, Russian personnel acquired over 20,000 documents, reference and analytical materials, as well as surveyed witnesses and participants of the U.S. biological programmes. The abovementioned materials confirm that the Pentagon aimed at creating elements of a biological weapon, and testing it on the population of Ukraine and other countries along the perimeter of the Russian borders.
The Russian Defence Ministry has already mentioned the names of the participants of the military and biological programmes, including those of the U.S. Democratic Party representatives, employees of the U.S. military department, and the Pentagon’s contracting organisations.
The DTRA reports have led us to the new information about key persons involved in the so-called Ukrainian projects who have been staying in the shadow until now.
Among of them are:
Karen Saylors, CEO at Labyrinth Global Health and ex-director of Metabiota’s programmes in Central Africa. Since 2016, Saylors has worked in Ukraine as leading advisor at the UP-10 project, dedicated to studying ways of spreading of African swine fever.
Colleen B. Jonsson, an employee of the University of Tennessee, Director of the Institute for the Study of Host-Pathogen Systems. She observed the UP-8 project, dedicated to studying the capabilities of the Crimean-Congo fever’s causative agent in Ukraine. Jonsson managed the selection of biological samples from Ukrainian personnel, provided the cooperation between the contract specifiers in the USA and the Center for Public Health of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.
Lewis Von Thaer, President and CEO of Battelle company, a major contractor of the Pentagon and U.S. Department of Energy. Since 2003, the company has been responsible for organising research projects in Ukraine related to zoonotic infections.
Other persons involved in the Ukrainian projects are presented on the slide. The acquired materials will be submitted to the Investigative Committee for measures to bring those guilty to justice.
The active action of the Russian Defence Ministry has resulted in halting the military biological programmes in Ukraine. In this regard, the Pentagon is actively relocatingthe studies, that have not been completed within the Ukrainian projects, to Central Asia and Eastern Europecountries. At the same time, the cooperation with African and Asia-Pacific countries – Kenya, Singapore, and Thailand – is being actively enhanced.
Under the pressure from the international community, Washington changes its approaches to organising its military biological activity, transferring the functions of the customer to purely civilian departments: the Department of Health, Department of Energy, and the Agency for International Development. This will allow the U.S. authorities to avoid criticism at international venues, and deflect a blow from the Department of Defense and DTRA.
Within curtailing the military biological activities in Ukraine, the United States actively use the material base of chemical and pharmacological enterprises of Poland and Baltic countries, where the equipment from the Ukrainian territory was sent to.
The funding, imposed by the collective West, makes the post-Soviet countries conceal the true nature of these works. The European Union is actively promoting the initiative to deploy a network of centres of ‘excellence’ in the field of nuclear, biological and chemical protection, thatprovides for placing EU-funded biolaboratories in the territories of the former Soviet Union. The prospective partners are highly recommended ‘… not to advertise this initiative due to its extreme sensitivity for the Russian Federation …’
At the same time, it is stressed that the Central Asian countries ‘… are already taking benefit from technical cooperation with the European Union …’
In 2022, the USA, Canada, and EU countries initiated programmes to employ and relocate the Ukrainian professionals, who had been involved in military biological works before, to Western countries. It is primarily due to the concerns that the Russian law enforcement can receive additional testimonies to the illegal activities carried out in violation of international obligations.
It is to be emphasised that the strategy of ‘military and biological expansion’ is not fundamentally new, and it was founded by the United States back in the period of the Korean conflict.
Since the 1950s, biological laboratories were established in Africa, Central and South America, as well as South-East Asia, with the priority role of the U.S. Navy. Their main objective was to sample causative agents of highly dangerous infections, and determine the level of morbidity among local population.
The areas, where these laboratories located, witnessed a deterioration in the epidemic situation regarding highly dangerous infections, as well as now. New diseases, uncharacteristic for these regions, emerged. One of the examples is the outbreak of Rift Valley Fever in 1977 in Cairo, where the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit Three was located.
This disease had previously been recorded only south of the Sahara, but then it suddenly emerged in Egypt, simultaneously infecting 18,000 people. Further analysis of the samples taken from the population showed that the total number of infected people was around 2,000,000.
A whole array of proofs reveal the artificial nature of this outbreak and the involvement of the U.S. laboratory.
First, several months before the epidemic started, its staff had been vaccinated against Rift Valley Fever, although there had been no records of an outbreak of this infection in that region, whilst in the endemic regions of Africa, it proceeded as a light influenza-like illness that caused no human deaths.
Second, the causative agent suddenly acquired high pathogenicity for humans during the epidemic in Egypt. The disease caused haemorrhage, severe eye and nervous system lesion. The virus became highly pathogenic and almost could be compared with smallpox, Marburg and Lassa fevers in this regard. It is extremely difficult to define the sudden change in pathogenicity of the virus by its natural evolution.
The analysis of initial focus shape is of particular interest.The form of this epidemiological focus reminds an aerosol cloud trace that can emerge in case of intentional dispersion of a biomaterial or its accidental release into the environment.
Despite the available evidential base about the artificial nature of the outbreak, the U.S. leadership has done everything to conceal the involvement of the laboratory in this incident. Only in 2019, it was decided to relocate it to the U.S. Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, to continue the research on highly dangerous pathogens, including coronaviruses.
In conclusion, I would like to note that the disclosure of the content of the Pentagon’s military biological programmesin Ukraine by the Russian Federation has gained a wide public response. Mass demonstrations against the activities of the U.S.-funded laboratories were held in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Non-governmental organisations of the Eurasian Economic Union adopted a resolution against the Pentagon-funded biolaboratories.
Various investigations were initiated in the United States itself. The U.S. law enforcement has paid attention to the topics related to bribing employees of social networks and mass media while broadcasting the cause of the new coronavirus infection, as well as manipulating the public opinion about the U.S. vaccines against COVID-19 commissioned by biotechnological and pharmaceutical corporations.
It is to be reminded that lobbying the interests of large pharmaceutical companies by the U.S. government is a common practice. Back in 2010, the operation of a U.S. Navy Medical Biological Centre in Jakarta was ceased due to a ‘conflict of interests’ and various violations.
The Americans performed their works outside the agreed research programme, carried out unauthorised sampling, and refused to inform the Indonesian government on the purposes of their works and the results achieved. These biomaterials turned out to be used to the benefit of the Gilead company, affiliated with the Pentagon, that tested their preparations in Ukraine and Georgia (including, but not limited to).
The Indonesian example was followed by Malaysia: the government of that country decided to establish special control over the activities of the U.S.-funded biolaboratory.
Therefore, the concerns of the international community, related to the activities of the Pentagon-funded biolaboratories, is gradually increasing. The issues, raised by the Russian Federation at the international venues – the Nineth Review Conference of BTWC Member States, and the UN Security Council – have revealed the reluctance of the USA to conduct a substantive dialogue. Russiaconsiders it extremely important that the disclosure of the facts that reveal the illegal military and biological activities have caused various countries to consider possible consequences of their biosafety cooperation with the USA, and take a fresh look at the necessity and rationale of this kind of cooperation.
The Russian Defence Ministry will continue its work in this direction and report on it.
Documents
Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... n-ukraine/
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From Cassad's Telegram account:
Colonelcassad
And hysterically, "Oh, horror, Soviet street names are being returned in Melitopol. This is a terrible conspiracy of the communists." I don’t know who these people are holding the audience for.
1. All names are rolled back synchronously in the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. This is not a local solution. This is a decision of the authorities of the regions and it concerns not only Melitopol. As you might guess, the regional authorities do not act independently and do not gather in secret meetings to make the same decisions separately from Moscow.
2. As you might guess, such political decisions are under the control of the supervising bodies in Moscow, including the Presidential Administration. So when you are told tales about the fact that the "communists in Melitopol" have loosened their belts, then this is broadcast either by people who do not know how the process of managing new territories is established, or by those who know, but for various reasons misleading the audience. Obviously, the synchronous decisions to roll back all names by 2014 have been approved by the political bloc in Moscow.
3. The cancellation of all renamings made since 2014 is not due to the fact that there are too many communists in the administration of new regions, and even more so in the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation (I wonder if there is at least 1 there?), But in order to eliminate any legally binding traces of the actions of the Maidan authorities on the territory new regions of Russia. This is a purely technological action that is being systematically implemented during 2022.
4. After the end of the war, the inhabitants of the regions will be able to democratically decide on controversial issues like Artemovsk / Bakhmut, which the authorities of the same DPR have already clearly explained against the backdrop of hysterics running on social networks. The easiest way, controversial issues are tied to the first elections after the end of the war as part of a single voting day (including to save money on individual local plebiscites), where it is the locals themselves who decide what they want to call their city and what the street will be called where they want to live. And certainly not screamers running around social networks shouting about Rosa Luxembourg. If people want to live on Rosa Luxemburg Street, they will live on Rosa Luxembourg Street. If they don't want to, they will live on the street, which will be called differently. But all these changes will already be within the framework of the Russian legal field, in no way connected with the Maidan and Ukraine.
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Colonelcassad
Donetsk direction
situation as of 20.00 January 30, 2023
On the Toretsk sector , units of the 5th Assault Regiment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are equipping positions in the vicinity of the village of Druzhba , and minefields are being set up at the front lines.
In the Avdeevsky sector , combined assault detachments of the RF Armed Forces are attacking from the side of Experienced and Vodyanoye in the direction of the village of Severnoye . The Armed Forces of Ukraine equipped a large fortified area on the outskirts of the settlement.
In addition, the fighters of the RF Armed Forces advanced towards Nevelskoye , knocking out the formations of the 59th motorized infantry brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from strongholds on the outskirts of the village. Control over Vodyany and Nevelskoye will allow Pervomaiskoye to be covered from the south and north.
Engineering units of the 110th Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine equipped additional fortifications in the Novokalinovo area , and several Leleka-100 UAVs were put into service with the 110th Ombre from Dnepropetrovsk .
Fighting continues in Maryinka. The intensity of the assault decreased slightly as part of the regrouping. At the moment, Russian troops are trying to dislodge the combined forces of 79 odshbr and 35 obrmp of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The presence of supply lines allows Ukrainian formations to hold the city.
In order to strengthen control over the main transport routes, reinforcements were deployed to the Ugledar-Novomikhaylovka section of the highway.
In the Ugledar sector , heavy fighting continues in a dacha area southeast of Vugledar . The Armed Forces of Ukraine transferred reinforcements, practically knocking out the RF Armed Forces from the territory. However, with the support of artillery, the Marines of the 155th brigade of the Pacific Fleet repelled the attack and, with losses, drove the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the outskirts of houses.
The assault groups of the 72nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered heavy losses in manpower. During the fighting in the 72nd brigade, more than three dozen people and five armored vehicles, including tanks and armored vehicles, were killed.
Part of the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was withdrawn from Ugledar to the area of the Yuzhno-Donbass mine , where a field medical center was equipped. The rest were withdrawn deep into the city, and the roads and approaches, including those on Shakhterskaya Street , were remotely mined.
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Colonelcassad
Starobelsk direction
situation as of 15.00 January 30, 2023
In the Kupyansko-Svatovsky section, the Russian RDG conducted reconnaissance in force at the turn of Dvurechnoye - Gryanikovka . As a result of a successful throw to the position of the 32nd combined troop battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, one of the units fell into the operational encirclement.
The command of 32 OSB requested support to lift the blockade. In the event of a breakthrough and crossing of the Oskol River , engineering units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine mined the bridges in Kolodeznoye and Monachinovka .
From Kharkov , through Korobochkino , in the direction of the Kupyansk-Lozovaya line, another convoy passed in the amount of 40 units of various equipment and about 400 people .
Mutual artillery shelling continues in the Limansky sector . Soldiers of the 144th Motor Rifle Division of the RF Armed Forces are conducting a positional attack on Ukrainian positions using armored vehicles.
Members of Ukrainian formations spread information about huge losses among various formations, one of the companies has completely ceased to exist.
There are at least four HIMARS MLRS crews operating along the front line from Podliman to Izyum . The supply of jet systems is carried out from the arsenal in Balakliya .
At the moment, there are no significant changes in the situation. Russian units are gradually advancing in the Kupyansky and Limansky sectors , improving their tactical position.
Nevertheless, Ukrainian formations are transferring reserves to the Svatovsky sector , probably in preparation for a renewed offensive. The concentration of American MLRS in this area confirms the possibility of such actions.
***
Colonelcassad
Soledar direction
situation as of 13.00 January 30, 2023
In the Soledar sector, the assault detachments of the Wagner PMC are moving south from Blagodatny to Paraskovievka and Krasnaya Gora . During the fighting, control was established over two company strongholds of the 4th battalion of the 46th detachment and the 1st battalion of the 77th detachment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Violent clashes continue in the vicinity of Paraskovievka and Krasnaya Gora. At the moment, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are regrouping forces to hold settlements. On the northern outskirts of Bakhmut , formations of 4 detachment were transferred.
In Bakhmut, the “Wagnerites” storm the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU) on the eastern outskirts in Zabakhmutovka and near the meat processing plant . During the fighting, the NGU detachments were driven out from three strongholds.
Russian troops are gradually pushing through the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the directions of Krasnoye and Stupochka , where they are holding the defense of units of 3 oshbr and 116 arr of TRO. As a result of an artillery strike on the deployment point of the 116th brigade, more than a dozen people were liquidated.
Part of the personnel of 116 arr refused to perform combat missions. Detachments of Arabic-speaking mercenaries were deployed to Krasnoe to prepare the line of defense. The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is trying to hide the participation of foreigners in the battles for Bakhmut.
The Ukrainian command is waiting for the activation of units of the RF Armed Forces on Dyleevka . Reconnaissance groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with copters are reconnaissance of the areas of advancement of Russian troops along the line of contact.
https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin
Google Translator
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 01/31/2023
Since the outbreak of the Maidan, which had an important international role, Victoria Nuland has been one of the recurring figures in Ukraine's recent history and on its way to becoming a satellite country of the West and more recently of NATO. Known for walking around the Maidan protests handing out cookies to protesters, something that would have been considered outside interference if carried out by a country opposed to the United States, Nuland was directly involved in negotiations with the opposition and in the formation of what a new government would be. That new government was born from the Maidan and from the breach of the power-sharing and electoral advancement agreement reached with President Yanukovych, which the protégés of the United States and the European Union never intended to comply with.
Nuland became famous in those days with the publication of a telephone conversation with the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Pyatt, possibly intercepted by the Russian secret services. From that leak, Victoria Nuland's “ fuck the EU ” was widely highlighted , an evident sign that in post-Maidan Ukraine the European Union would be the secondary partner of the United States, which would always rule the roost. However, the part in which Nuland perfectly described to Pyatt what the government that came out of that revolution after the overthrow of Yanukovych should be like was less highlighted. Yats _He is the man”, stated Nuland at the time, presenting Arseni Yatseniuk, a US protégé, from Yulia Timoschenko's party, as the person who should lead the Government. Yats , with political experience and favor with the Obama administration, was to "talk to Klitsch and Tyahnibok three times a week." Klitsch , the current mayor of Kiev Vitaly Klitschko, was Germany's protégé, the candidate of the European Union, who was not only not appointed prime minister, but was not even included in the government.
As Nuland pointed out, Arseniy Yatseniuk was the man of the moment and he would be the one to tell the press just one day after the announcement of the anti-terrorist operation , that Ukraine was already at war. It was April 2014 and Ukraine had decided to impose a military solution to a problem that, despite the appearance of Strelkov's armed group in Slavyansk the day before, was still political. The population of Donbass and part of its elites rejected the Maidan change of government and the political, economic and social changes that it implied. Faced with a western Ukraine that looked to the European Union as its path to the future, Donbass turned towards Russia, the main market for its industry, an economic sector of little interest to the European Union or the United States.
The anti-terrorist operationIt was always a war between the Ukrainian troops against the local militias that, with the help of Russian volunteers, managed to maintain a part of the territory that had risen up against the government of the man Victoria Nuland, who instead of inclusive dialogue offered Donbass talks in which only pro-Maidan groups and individuals participated and appointed a second-rate oligarch with little ties to the region, Sergey Taruta, as governor of the region. Russian aid managed to stop the Ukrainian advance in Ilovaisk, an important communication node against which Ukraine is firing its HIMARS these days. That military defeat in 2014, as would happen months later in Debaltsevo, forced Ukraine to sign the Minsk agreements, which both Ukraine and its partners now deny. Nevertheless,
As the latest statements by Boris Johnson have made clear, who defined the Minsk and Normandy talks as useless and practically described them as a negotiation simulation, this process was solely an initiative of the countries of the European Union, mainly Germany, especially interested in maintaining economic relations with Russia and preventing the war from spreading. The fact that Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Washington before the start of the Russian intervention made no mention of the Minsk agreements, the only existing document to resolve the internal Ukrainian conflict, without which it is impossible to imagine the war as it is as it is currently waged, reflects that for the United States, as for the United Kingdom, the peace talks were simply not a relevant factor. Still, for seven years, in which failure to comply with the Minsk terms justified maintaining and increasing sanctions against Russia and making relations between Berlin and Moscow difficult, even Washington pressed for kyiv to keep up appearances. According to what the media published at the time, in July 2015,Victoria Nuland personally intervened to force the President of Ukraine , Petro Poroshenko, to include in the constitutional reform a version of the special status that Minsk envisioned for Donbass. Although without the intention that this status would ever come into force. Nuland's objective was the same as that of Kurt Volker years later: to present a document that, even if it did not comply with the letter or the spirit of what was agreed in Minsk, Ukraine could use as an argument to claim that it had already complied with its obligations.
The special status for Donbass was also one of the main topics in the meetings held by Victoria Nuland in October 2021., when they were already beginning to talk about the real possibility of an invasion of Ukraine. The apparent harmony of Dmitry Kozak and Victoria Nuland regarding the importance of the Minsk agreements and the guarantee of special status for Donbass did not hide the fact that it was just another simulation of negotiations. In a context of contrary interpretation of the terms of the agreements, especially the special status for Donbass, Russia's willingness to demand compliance with the letter of the agreements and Ukraine's categorical refusal to do so made the Minsk process unfeasible, something of which all parties, including the United States, were aware. Nuland's carefree smile in Moscow after that meeting did not presage an agreement but rather a continuation of a situation that had lasted since 2015:
Although that stance was evident throughout the seven years in Minsk, statements like those by Hollande, Johnson and to a lesser extent Merkel can only increase mistrust. The widespread discourse that it was Russia that breached the terms of the Minsk agreements does not make reality disappear: Ukraine never had the intention of complying with agreements that it was forced to sign at two moments of military weakness in which it risked losing even more territory. Her partners were always aware of this, hence the demands to keep up appearances.
Therefore, the Russian indifference to Victoria Nuland's latest proposal, made at a hearing in the US Senate last week, cannot be surprising. The Undersecretary of State affirmed that the United States is willing to relax part of the sanctions against Russia in the event that real peace talks take place. Apart from the lack of credibility offered by the offer of one of the allies that protected Ukraine during its breach of the Minsk agreements, the proposal seems to be in line with the "peace plan" of Volodymyr Zelensky, which demands the surrender Russia and the withdrawal from all territories under Russian control as a prerequisite for negotiation. Taking into account the unconditional support of the United States for Ukraine, Nuland's “offer” is just one of the many surrender proposals that have been put to Moscow over the years. During the Minsk stage, the Russian capitulation resulted in the acceptance of the Ukrainian interpretation of the agreements, in practice the surrender of Donbass, as a way to resume normal relations and lift sanctions. Now, Crimea is also added to the demand for surrender in Donbass, but, as then, it is done in exchange for vague promises of the future with little credibility taking into account the precedents.
The US position in this war has been made clear: in addition to unconditional support for Ukraine, it has used circumstance to cut Russia out of the European Union's energy market, thus preventing a viable economic relationship between Berlin and Moscow and also undermining the competitiveness of German industry, Washington's only relevant competition on the continent. Hence, the most credible words in Nuland's statements before the Senate were precisely those referring to the Nord Stream explosions. Without blushing, the Undersecretary of State stated that "we are very pleased to know that the Nord Stream-2 has become a pile of scrap at the bottom of the sea."
https://slavyangrad.es/2023/01/31/el-pa ... more-26531
Google Translator
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Will the NATOizaton of the Ukrainian Army Give the West a Victory?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 30, 2023
Salman Rafi Sheikh
While Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the way the West has supplied weapons to the Ukrainian army to fight the Russian forces has increasingly NATOized Ukraine’s forces. As I mentioned previously, Russia is fighting a conflict not with Ukraine but with NATO. This is evident not just in terms of the fact that the whole Western alliance against Russia happens to be part of NATO but also in terms of the very weapons that the Ukrainian forces are using. Importantly enough, this NATOization is not something that started to happen after Russia began its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. As NATO itself mentions on its website, the alliance has been supporting Ukraine since the 2014 Crimea events. The support includes, NATO says, “equipment and financial support” as well as “training for tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops.” It also mentions that the alliance has enhanced its support ever since February 2022.
The claim tells many things, but the most important one is that the ongoing conflict was neither inevitable nor unprovoked. What led to the present state of affairs was precisely this ongoing NATOization of Ukraine since 2014, a policy that actually laid the groundwork for Washington to push for Ukraine’s formal membership of NATO in 2021-22. The conflict would not have taken place if the West had eschewed arming Ukraine and using this territory to expand NATO. It is this Western strategy, rather than the so-called Russian “unprovoked aggression”, that made the present conflict inevitable.
The West, in keeping with its policy, is continuing its policy, which is evident from the recent decision of the UK government to provide Ukraine with its Challenger 2 Tanks. Ben Wallace, the UK’s Defence Secretary, called this supply “the most significant package of combat to date to accelerate Ukrainian success.”
While there are not enough tanks, the US has already announced to send Bradley infantry fighting vehicles to support tank warfare. A clear escalation is taking place, but the big question is: will it work to achieve the objective that the suppliers have in mind?
The US/NATO fought a twenty-year-long war in Afghanistan against a much weaker enemy, let alone a non-nuclear country, in Afghanistan. It withdrew after two decades without achieving its key objective i.e., dismantling global terrorism. Afghanistan today has many terror groups – al-Qaeda, the IS-K, the ETIM, and the TTP – operating from within its borders. Clearly, the presence of these groups reflects a US military defeat in terms of achieving its objectives even after spending billions of dollars.
The US has so far spent only a fraction of that money in Ukraine where NATO is fighting a country that has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. Keeping this in mind, the strategy not only seems unrealistic, but unworkable as well. Short of providing Ukraine with actual nuclear weapons and creating a nuclear deterrence vis-à-vis Russia – which is not even conceivable – there is no way NATO can arm the Ukrainian army and help Ukraine in ways to actually defeat Russia.
On the contrary, hawks in the West – especially, in the US and UK – continue to see it within the realm of possibility to achieve their objectives, which now include creating a situation favouring a coup in Russia against President Putin.
This NATOization is unlikely to work, not only because not everything can possibly be supplied to Ukraine – that is, unless the West wants a total, nuclear war – but also because Ukraine itself is fast running out of its capacity to fight a total war, let alone the present conflict.
Let’s see what the actual ground situation is. In and around Bakhmut, the Ukrainian forces lost 70 per cent of their fighting capacity in just one week in the second week of January. Does it make sense to continue to supply weapons to an army that is unlikely to win?
Many countries in the West think that it does not make sense. In a meeting held on American Ramstein Air Base in German on January 20 involving leaders from 50 countries, including NATO allies, the participants failed to reach a consensus on providing German Leopard Tanks to Ukraine. Although Germany has now decided to supply these tanks to Ukraine, the very fact that it took them so much time – and it involved lots of political pressure from Washington – to make this decision shows that the Western alliance is actually far from united. There are serious concerns that Germany itself shares.
As German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said after the January 20 meeting, Germany is not alone raising concerns. He said that “there are many allies who say we share the view that I have put forward here.” Of course, the UK is not amongst them, as it has already decided to supply Challenger 2 tanks. But the fact that the UK took a decision independent of the rest of Europe means that Europe, thanks to Brexit, itself is divided between the EU and the UK.
The root cause of this disagreement is simple to understand. Many Europeans, excluding the UK, have realised that mainland Europe, or the EU, is a victim of the US-UK politics of NATO expansion and that the continent has become a proxy land for the US to fight the war of its own survival as the global hegemon, supported by its strongest allies in London.
For the US, Russia’s success in Ukraine would be the end of NATO and the end of Washington’s influence in Europe. Many Europeans already want a European security system independent of the US and NATO. Were this to happen, Europe can most certainly rewrite its ties with Russia in ways that avoid confrontation. But if this happens, the global strategic landscape will change in ways in which Washington will no longer be the only centre. Hence, the US-UK sponsored intensification of the war as the last-ditch effort to save the system they have been dominating for many decades.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... a-victory/
A Panicked Empire Tries to Make Russia an ‘Offer it Can’t Refuse’
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 30, 2023
Pepe Escobar
Does US Secretary of State Antony Blinken think a Washington Post op-ed will move Russian Armed Forces Chief Valery Gerasimov to postpone his planned military offensive on Ukraine?
Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. But why should Moscow take indirect proposals seriously, especially on the eve of its new military advance and while it is in the winning seat?
Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall.
Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.
So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front.
As confirmed by a high-level US establishment source, a new directive on NATO vs. Russia in Ukraine was relayed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken, in terms of actual power, is nothing but a messenger boy for the Straussian neocons and neoliberals who actually run US foreign policy.
The secretary of state was instructed to relay the new directive – a sort of message to the Kremlin – via mainstream print media, which was promptly published by the Washington Post.
In the elite US mainstream media division of labor, the New York Times is very close to the State Department. and the Washington Post to the CIA. In this case though the directive was too important, and needed to be relayed by the paper of record in the imperial capital. It was published as an Op-Ed (behind paywall).
The novelty here is that for the first time since the start of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the Americans are actually proposing a variation of the “offer you can’t refuse” classic, including some concessions which may satisfy Russia’s security imperatives.
Crucially, the US offer totally bypasses Kiev, once again certifying that this is a war against Russia conducted by Empire and its NATO minions – with the Ukrainians as mere expandable proxies.
‘Please don’t go on the offensive’
The Washington Post’s old school Moscow-based correspondent John Helmer has provided an important service, offering the full text of Blinken’s offer, of course extensively edited to include fantasist notions such as “US weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force” and a cringe-worthy explanation: “In other words, Russia should not be ready to rest, regroup and attack.”
The message from Washington may, at first glance, give the impression that the US would admit Russian control over Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – “the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia” – as a fait accompli.
Ukraine would have a demilitarized status, and the deployment of HIMARS missiles and Leopard and Abrams tanks would be confined to western Ukraine, kept as a “deterrent against further Russian attacks.”
What may have been offered, in quite hazy terms, is in fact a partition of Ukraine, demilitarized zone included, in exchange for the Russian General Staff cancelling its yet-unknown 2023 offensive, which may be as devastating as cutting off Kiev’s access to the Black Sea and/or cutting off the supply of NATO weapons across the Polish border.
The US offer defines itself as the path towards a “just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” Well, not really. It just won’t be a rump Ukraine, and Kiev might even retain those western lands that Poland is dying to gobble up.
The possibility of a direct Washington-Moscow deal on “an eventual postwar military balance” is also evoked, including no Ukraine membership of NATO. As for Ukraine itself, the Americans seem to believe it will be a “strong, non-corrupt economy with membership in the European Union.”
Whatever remains of value in Ukraine has already been swallowed not only by its monumentally corrupt oligarchy, but most of all, investors and speculators of the BlackRock variety. Assorted corporate vultures simply cannot afford to lose Ukraine’s grain export ports, as well as the trade deal terms agreed with the EU before the war. And they’re terrified that the Russian offensive may capture Odessa, the major seaport and transportation hub on the Black Sea – which would leave Ukraine landlocked.
There’s no evidence whatsoever that Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the entire Russian Security Council – including its Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev – have reason to believe anything coming from the US establishment, especially via mere minions such as Blinken and the Washington Post. After all the stavka – a moniker for the high command of the Russian armed forces – regard the Americans as “non-agreement capable,” even when an offer is in writing.
This walks and talks like a desperate US gambit to stall and present some carrots to Moscow in the hope of delaying or even cancelling the planned offensive of the next few months.
Even old school, dissident Washington operatives – not beholden to the Straussian neocon galaxy – bet that the gambit will be a nothing burger: in classic “strategic ambiguity” mode, the Russians will continue on their stated drive of demilitarization, denazification and de-electrification, and will “stop” anytime and anywhere they see fit east of the Dnieper. Or beyond.
What the Deep State really wants
Washington’s ambitions in this essentially NATO vs. Russia war go well beyond Ukraine. And we’re not even talking about preventing a Russia-China-Germany Eurasian union or a peer competitor nightmare; let’s stick with prosaic issues on the Ukrainian battleground.
The key “recommendations” – military, economic, political, diplomatic – were detailed in an Atlantic Council strategy paper late last year.
And in another one, under “War scenario 1: The war continues in its current tempo,” we find the Straussian neocon policy fully spelled out.
It’s all here: from “marshaling support and military-assistance transfers to Kyiv sufficient to enable it to win” to “increase the lethality of military assistance transferred to include fighter aircraft that would enable Ukraine to control its airspace and attack Russian forces therein; and missile technology with range sufficient to reach into Russian territory.”
From training the Ukrainian military “to use Western weapons, electronic warfare, and offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, and to seamlessly integrate new recruits in the service” to buttressing “defenses on the front lines, near the Donbass region,” including “combat training focusing on irregular warfare.”
Added to “imposing secondary sanctions on all entities doing business with the Kremlin,” we reach of course the Mother of All Plunders: “Confiscate the $300 billion that the Russian state holds in overseas accounts in the United States and EU and use seized monies to fund reconstruction.”
The reorganization of the SMO, with Putin, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and General Armageddon in their new, enhanced roles is derailing all these elaborate plans.
The Straussians are now in deep panic. Even Blinken’s number two, Russophobic warmonger Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, has admitted to the US Senate there will be no Abrams tanks on the battlefield before Spring (realistically, only in 2024). She also promised to “ease sanctions” if Moscow “returns to negotiations.” Those negotiations were scotched by the Americans themselves in Istanbul in the Spring of 2022.
Nuland also called the Russians to “withdraw their troops.” Well, that at least offers some comic relief compared with the panic oozing from Blinken’s “offer you can’t refuse.” Stay tuned for Russia’s non-response response.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... nt-refuse/
At What Point Does NATO Stop Arming the Kiev Regime?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 30, 2023
Drago Bosnic
Almost anyone with a basic capability to process information has noticed a pattern in the relationship between the political West and its favorite Neo-Nazi puppet regime – Kiev asks for something, the United States, European Union and NATO “categorically deny” they would ever deliver such weapons in order to “avoid antagonizing Russia” and then a few weeks later (at most) there’s a “sudden change of heart”.
This rather comical back and forth started even before Russia launched its counteroffensive, when NATO provided thousands of ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) and MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) to Kiev. Since then, the scope of so-called “lethal aid” has expanded dramatically.
It would seem the same is true regarding the recently announced delivery of Western-made heavy tanks which were first denied and then approved just days later. Mere hours after the political West confirmed this, the Neo-Nazi junta once again started insisting on fighter jets. In a statement for Reuters, Yuriy Sak, currently serving as an adviser to Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov (now exposed for his involvement in a massive corruption scandal), said that the Kiev regime will keep pushing for the delivery of Western-made jets to replace its dwindling fleet of Soviet-era aircraft.
“The next big hurdle will now be the fighter jets,” Sak said, adding: “Every type of weapon we request, we needed yesterday. We will do everything possible to ensure Ukraine gets fourth-generation fighter jets as soon as possible.”
The “fourth-generation fighter jets” request also includes US-made F-16 fighters that have been at the top of the Neo-Nazi junta’s wish list at least since mid-March last year when Volodymyr Zelensky implored the US Congress to send jets to help “close the sky”. After the request proved to be quite unpopular with the American public, the Kiev regime frontman was instructed to “tone it down” as this boils down to enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. This would essentially mean direct armed confrontation between NATO and Russia, further inevitably leading to a world-ending thermonuclear exchange.
And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine is once again preparing its audiences for the eventual delivery of advanced combat aircraft to the Kiev regime. For instance, The Hill admitted that “Western fighter jets and longer-range artillery units, which would allow Ukraine to strike Russian forces deeper in occupied territory, will likely be the next debate for NATO.” If the aforementioned pattern continues, this will be yet another step toward uncontrollable escalation and the proxy conflict turning into a fully-fledged war. The Neo-Nazi junta is perfectly aware that its so-called “begmanding” approach is working and continues insisting on heavier and more advanced weapons.
“They didn’t want to give us heavy artillery, then they did. They didn’t want to give us HIMARS systems, then they did. They didn’t want to give us tanks, now they’re giving us tanks,” Sak boasted, further stating: “If we get them, the advantages on the battlefield will be just immense. It’s not just F-16s: fourth generation aircraft, this is what we want… …Apart from nuclear weapons, there is nothing left that we will not get.”
Given the pattern of incessant escalation, Yuriy Sak’s concluding remarks are quite alarming and could indicate that the Kiev regime never gave up on its quest to acquire WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). Given the sheer magnitude of the Neo-Nazi junta’s clinical Russophobia, fanned up to a hatred of genocidal proportions at this point, any such statement will surely be taken very seriously in Moscow. Despite these psychotically disturbing comments, the political West continues to expand its support for such extremist puppet regimes. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stated there are “constant discussions” with Kiev officials on what they need, adding that he “can’t blame the Ukrainians for wanting more and more systems”.
“It’s not the first time they’ve talked about fighter jets, but I don’t have any announcements to make on that front,” Kirby said.
Again, here we see the same back-and-forth pattern of the political West’s supposed “reluctance” with a “no” becoming “we’ll see” or “maybe” only to then be announced as “we have no choice due to Russia’s unprovoked aggression” at some point.
Unfortunately, debate on this disturbing issue is virtually completely absent from the public discourse. The blame for everything happening in Ukraine is simply cast on Moscow and any attempt to question this is immediately shut down. Even the question of whether Western-made tanks can actually help the Kiev regime forces might be “problematic” and the ones asking it run the risk of being labeled as supposedly “pro-Russian”. This nullifies even the slightest chance of a public debate on whether the political West should reassess its belligerence toward a nuclear-armed superpower, one which has shown remarkable restraint thus far. However, as Russian officials said so many times before, Moscow’s patience is not an endless resource.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... ev-regime/
Russian Ministry of Defense: 20,000 Documents Expose US Biowarfare Program in Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 30, 2023
Chief of Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force Igor Kirillov Russian Defence Ministry/TASS
Briefing on analysis of US military and biological activity documents by Chief of NBC Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov
January 30, 2023
The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation has repeatedly noted the signs of the implementation of ‘dual-purpose programmes’ by the USA and its allies outside their national territories, including within the operation of the biolaboratories funded by the Pentagon or its contractors.
The fact that the United States blocked the initiative to establish a monitoring mechanism of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) at the Ninth Review Conference once again confirms that Washington has something to hide, while the transparency of the biological research contradicts the interests of the USA.
We have previously informed about the works on enhancing the pathogenic characteristics of COVID-19 causative agent, carried out at Boston University with funds of the U.S. state budget, as well as the possible involvement of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the emergence of the new coronavirus.
The key role in the implementation of the abovementioned projects belongs to EcoHealth Alliance intermediary organisation. The available documents of the U.S. Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) confirm that since 2015,professionals of the abovementioned company have been studying the diversity in the population of bats, searching for new coronavirus strains, and mechanisms of its transmission from animals to humans. Over 2.5 thousandspecimen have been researched.
The project on zoonotic virus research in South-East Asia contain the following recommendations for the employees of EcoHealth Alliance: ‘… If any of the experiments proposed for Aim 1 result in a virus with a phenotype of enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility, enhanced growth by more than 10 fold when compared to wild type strains …, the recipient must immediately stop the work and notify the NIAID Program Officer, Grants Management Specialist, and appropriate institutional biosafety committee …’
The high degree of readiness of the U.S. mRNA vaccine manufacturers for a pandemic of the new coronavirus infection raises questions. One gets the impression that pharmaceutical companies had produced the vaccine preparations in advance, being unable to rapidly introduce them into the market due to specific characteristics of the virus that embodied in low efficiency of vaccination and numerous side effects.
It is to be reminded that on 18 October 2019, two months before the first official reports about the emergence of the new coronavirus infection in China, the John Hopkins University, supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, conducted Event 201 exercise in New York.
This exercise simulated the epidemic of a previously unknown coronavirus that, according to the scenario, was transmitted from bats to humans via pigs, the intermediate host.
Outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic precisely according to this scenario raises questions about its premeditated nature, involvement of the USA in this incident, as well as real objectives of the U.S. biological programmes aimed at enhancing the characteristics of dangerous pathogens.
We have repeatedly noted that the United States conduct the studies that are most controversial in terms of the international law outside the national territory.
The examples are the experiments related to HIV infection that have been carried out by U.S. specialists in Ukraine since 2019. It should be emphasized that the target groups include not only ‘high-risk infection patients’ (convicted or drug addicts), but also representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The premises of Pharmbiotest Medical Centre in Rubezhnoye were explored during the special military operation in the liberated territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic. It was a venue for clinical trials to test the medicinal products that caused serious side effects: they include medications for treating leukaemia, mental disorders, neurological diseases, epilepsy, and other dangerous illnesses.
In early 2023, residents of Lisichansk found a large landfill of biomaterial residues that belong to Pharmbiotest. The clinical samples and patients’ clinical records with their personal data were buried instead of being cremated or eliminated in appropriate manner, prescribed by the rules. This means that the evidence were being eliminated in extreme hurry.
The Russian Defence Ministry has received data on numerous facts of Ukrainian military personnel takingpsychostimulants and narcotics (tramadol, methadone, amphetamines). The facts about smuggling morphine into war zones have been revealed. It is to be reminded that in accordance with Ukrainian laws, illegal circulation and transportation of the abovementioned products is to be punished by deprivation of liberty ranging from eight to 12 years.
Russia considers the actions committed by the officials who carried out the research on Ukrainian personnel, whose blood contained high concentrations of antibiotics, narcotics, antibodies to the causative agents of infectious diseases, require appropriate legal assessment.
During the special military operation, Russian personnel acquired over 20,000 documents, reference and analytical materials, as well as surveyed witnesses and participants of the U.S. biological programmes. The abovementioned materials confirm that the Pentagon aimed at creating elements of a biological weapon, and testing it on the population of Ukraine and other countries along the perimeter of the Russian borders.
The Russian Defence Ministry has already mentioned the names of the participants of the military and biological programmes, including those of the U.S. Democratic Party representatives, employees of the U.S. military department, and the Pentagon’s contracting organisations.
The DTRA reports have led us to the new information about key persons involved in the so-called Ukrainian projects who have been staying in the shadow until now.
Among of them are:
Karen Saylors, CEO at Labyrinth Global Health and ex-director of Metabiota’s programmes in Central Africa. Since 2016, Saylors has worked in Ukraine as leading advisor at the UP-10 project, dedicated to studying ways of spreading of African swine fever.
Colleen B. Jonsson, an employee of the University of Tennessee, Director of the Institute for the Study of Host-Pathogen Systems. She observed the UP-8 project, dedicated to studying the capabilities of the Crimean-Congo fever’s causative agent in Ukraine. Jonsson managed the selection of biological samples from Ukrainian personnel, provided the cooperation between the contract specifiers in the USA and the Center for Public Health of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.
Lewis Von Thaer, President and CEO of Battelle company, a major contractor of the Pentagon and U.S. Department of Energy. Since 2003, the company has been responsible for organising research projects in Ukraine related to zoonotic infections.
Other persons involved in the Ukrainian projects are presented on the slide. The acquired materials will be submitted to the Investigative Committee for measures to bring those guilty to justice.
The active action of the Russian Defence Ministry has resulted in halting the military biological programmes in Ukraine. In this regard, the Pentagon is actively relocatingthe studies, that have not been completed within the Ukrainian projects, to Central Asia and Eastern Europecountries. At the same time, the cooperation with African and Asia-Pacific countries – Kenya, Singapore, and Thailand – is being actively enhanced.
Under the pressure from the international community, Washington changes its approaches to organising its military biological activity, transferring the functions of the customer to purely civilian departments: the Department of Health, Department of Energy, and the Agency for International Development. This will allow the U.S. authorities to avoid criticism at international venues, and deflect a blow from the Department of Defense and DTRA.
Within curtailing the military biological activities in Ukraine, the United States actively use the material base of chemical and pharmacological enterprises of Poland and Baltic countries, where the equipment from the Ukrainian territory was sent to.
The funding, imposed by the collective West, makes the post-Soviet countries conceal the true nature of these works. The European Union is actively promoting the initiative to deploy a network of centres of ‘excellence’ in the field of nuclear, biological and chemical protection, thatprovides for placing EU-funded biolaboratories in the territories of the former Soviet Union. The prospective partners are highly recommended ‘… not to advertise this initiative due to its extreme sensitivity for the Russian Federation …’
At the same time, it is stressed that the Central Asian countries ‘… are already taking benefit from technical cooperation with the European Union …’
In 2022, the USA, Canada, and EU countries initiated programmes to employ and relocate the Ukrainian professionals, who had been involved in military biological works before, to Western countries. It is primarily due to the concerns that the Russian law enforcement can receive additional testimonies to the illegal activities carried out in violation of international obligations.
It is to be emphasised that the strategy of ‘military and biological expansion’ is not fundamentally new, and it was founded by the United States back in the period of the Korean conflict.
Since the 1950s, biological laboratories were established in Africa, Central and South America, as well as South-East Asia, with the priority role of the U.S. Navy. Their main objective was to sample causative agents of highly dangerous infections, and determine the level of morbidity among local population.
The areas, where these laboratories located, witnessed a deterioration in the epidemic situation regarding highly dangerous infections, as well as now. New diseases, uncharacteristic for these regions, emerged. One of the examples is the outbreak of Rift Valley Fever in 1977 in Cairo, where the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit Three was located.
This disease had previously been recorded only south of the Sahara, but then it suddenly emerged in Egypt, simultaneously infecting 18,000 people. Further analysis of the samples taken from the population showed that the total number of infected people was around 2,000,000.
A whole array of proofs reveal the artificial nature of this outbreak and the involvement of the U.S. laboratory.
First, several months before the epidemic started, its staff had been vaccinated against Rift Valley Fever, although there had been no records of an outbreak of this infection in that region, whilst in the endemic regions of Africa, it proceeded as a light influenza-like illness that caused no human deaths.
Second, the causative agent suddenly acquired high pathogenicity for humans during the epidemic in Egypt. The disease caused haemorrhage, severe eye and nervous system lesion. The virus became highly pathogenic and almost could be compared with smallpox, Marburg and Lassa fevers in this regard. It is extremely difficult to define the sudden change in pathogenicity of the virus by its natural evolution.
The analysis of initial focus shape is of particular interest.The form of this epidemiological focus reminds an aerosol cloud trace that can emerge in case of intentional dispersion of a biomaterial or its accidental release into the environment.
Despite the available evidential base about the artificial nature of the outbreak, the U.S. leadership has done everything to conceal the involvement of the laboratory in this incident. Only in 2019, it was decided to relocate it to the U.S. Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, to continue the research on highly dangerous pathogens, including coronaviruses.
In conclusion, I would like to note that the disclosure of the content of the Pentagon’s military biological programmesin Ukraine by the Russian Federation has gained a wide public response. Mass demonstrations against the activities of the U.S.-funded laboratories were held in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Non-governmental organisations of the Eurasian Economic Union adopted a resolution against the Pentagon-funded biolaboratories.
Various investigations were initiated in the United States itself. The U.S. law enforcement has paid attention to the topics related to bribing employees of social networks and mass media while broadcasting the cause of the new coronavirus infection, as well as manipulating the public opinion about the U.S. vaccines against COVID-19 commissioned by biotechnological and pharmaceutical corporations.
It is to be reminded that lobbying the interests of large pharmaceutical companies by the U.S. government is a common practice. Back in 2010, the operation of a U.S. Navy Medical Biological Centre in Jakarta was ceased due to a ‘conflict of interests’ and various violations.
The Americans performed their works outside the agreed research programme, carried out unauthorised sampling, and refused to inform the Indonesian government on the purposes of their works and the results achieved. These biomaterials turned out to be used to the benefit of the Gilead company, affiliated with the Pentagon, that tested their preparations in Ukraine and Georgia (including, but not limited to).
The Indonesian example was followed by Malaysia: the government of that country decided to establish special control over the activities of the U.S.-funded biolaboratory.
Therefore, the concerns of the international community, related to the activities of the Pentagon-funded biolaboratories, is gradually increasing. The issues, raised by the Russian Federation at the international venues – the Nineth Review Conference of BTWC Member States, and the UN Security Council – have revealed the reluctance of the USA to conduct a substantive dialogue. Russiaconsiders it extremely important that the disclosure of the facts that reveal the illegal military and biological activities have caused various countries to consider possible consequences of their biosafety cooperation with the USA, and take a fresh look at the necessity and rationale of this kind of cooperation.
The Russian Defence Ministry will continue its work in this direction and report on it.
Documents
Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... n-ukraine/
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From Cassad's Telegram account:
Colonelcassad
And hysterically, "Oh, horror, Soviet street names are being returned in Melitopol. This is a terrible conspiracy of the communists." I don’t know who these people are holding the audience for.
1. All names are rolled back synchronously in the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. This is not a local solution. This is a decision of the authorities of the regions and it concerns not only Melitopol. As you might guess, the regional authorities do not act independently and do not gather in secret meetings to make the same decisions separately from Moscow.
2. As you might guess, such political decisions are under the control of the supervising bodies in Moscow, including the Presidential Administration. So when you are told tales about the fact that the "communists in Melitopol" have loosened their belts, then this is broadcast either by people who do not know how the process of managing new territories is established, or by those who know, but for various reasons misleading the audience. Obviously, the synchronous decisions to roll back all names by 2014 have been approved by the political bloc in Moscow.
3. The cancellation of all renamings made since 2014 is not due to the fact that there are too many communists in the administration of new regions, and even more so in the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation (I wonder if there is at least 1 there?), But in order to eliminate any legally binding traces of the actions of the Maidan authorities on the territory new regions of Russia. This is a purely technological action that is being systematically implemented during 2022.
4. After the end of the war, the inhabitants of the regions will be able to democratically decide on controversial issues like Artemovsk / Bakhmut, which the authorities of the same DPR have already clearly explained against the backdrop of hysterics running on social networks. The easiest way, controversial issues are tied to the first elections after the end of the war as part of a single voting day (including to save money on individual local plebiscites), where it is the locals themselves who decide what they want to call their city and what the street will be called where they want to live. And certainly not screamers running around social networks shouting about Rosa Luxembourg. If people want to live on Rosa Luxemburg Street, they will live on Rosa Luxembourg Street. If they don't want to, they will live on the street, which will be called differently. But all these changes will already be within the framework of the Russian legal field, in no way connected with the Maidan and Ukraine.
***
Colonelcassad
Donetsk direction
situation as of 20.00 January 30, 2023
On the Toretsk sector , units of the 5th Assault Regiment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are equipping positions in the vicinity of the village of Druzhba , and minefields are being set up at the front lines.
In the Avdeevsky sector , combined assault detachments of the RF Armed Forces are attacking from the side of Experienced and Vodyanoye in the direction of the village of Severnoye . The Armed Forces of Ukraine equipped a large fortified area on the outskirts of the settlement.
In addition, the fighters of the RF Armed Forces advanced towards Nevelskoye , knocking out the formations of the 59th motorized infantry brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from strongholds on the outskirts of the village. Control over Vodyany and Nevelskoye will allow Pervomaiskoye to be covered from the south and north.
Engineering units of the 110th Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine equipped additional fortifications in the Novokalinovo area , and several Leleka-100 UAVs were put into service with the 110th Ombre from Dnepropetrovsk .
Fighting continues in Maryinka. The intensity of the assault decreased slightly as part of the regrouping. At the moment, Russian troops are trying to dislodge the combined forces of 79 odshbr and 35 obrmp of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The presence of supply lines allows Ukrainian formations to hold the city.
In order to strengthen control over the main transport routes, reinforcements were deployed to the Ugledar-Novomikhaylovka section of the highway.
In the Ugledar sector , heavy fighting continues in a dacha area southeast of Vugledar . The Armed Forces of Ukraine transferred reinforcements, practically knocking out the RF Armed Forces from the territory. However, with the support of artillery, the Marines of the 155th brigade of the Pacific Fleet repelled the attack and, with losses, drove the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the outskirts of houses.
The assault groups of the 72nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered heavy losses in manpower. During the fighting in the 72nd brigade, more than three dozen people and five armored vehicles, including tanks and armored vehicles, were killed.
Part of the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was withdrawn from Ugledar to the area of the Yuzhno-Donbass mine , where a field medical center was equipped. The rest were withdrawn deep into the city, and the roads and approaches, including those on Shakhterskaya Street , were remotely mined.
***
Colonelcassad
Starobelsk direction
situation as of 15.00 January 30, 2023
In the Kupyansko-Svatovsky section, the Russian RDG conducted reconnaissance in force at the turn of Dvurechnoye - Gryanikovka . As a result of a successful throw to the position of the 32nd combined troop battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, one of the units fell into the operational encirclement.
The command of 32 OSB requested support to lift the blockade. In the event of a breakthrough and crossing of the Oskol River , engineering units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine mined the bridges in Kolodeznoye and Monachinovka .
From Kharkov , through Korobochkino , in the direction of the Kupyansk-Lozovaya line, another convoy passed in the amount of 40 units of various equipment and about 400 people .
Mutual artillery shelling continues in the Limansky sector . Soldiers of the 144th Motor Rifle Division of the RF Armed Forces are conducting a positional attack on Ukrainian positions using armored vehicles.
Members of Ukrainian formations spread information about huge losses among various formations, one of the companies has completely ceased to exist.
There are at least four HIMARS MLRS crews operating along the front line from Podliman to Izyum . The supply of jet systems is carried out from the arsenal in Balakliya .
At the moment, there are no significant changes in the situation. Russian units are gradually advancing in the Kupyansky and Limansky sectors , improving their tactical position.
Nevertheless, Ukrainian formations are transferring reserves to the Svatovsky sector , probably in preparation for a renewed offensive. The concentration of American MLRS in this area confirms the possibility of such actions.
***
Colonelcassad
Soledar direction
situation as of 13.00 January 30, 2023
In the Soledar sector, the assault detachments of the Wagner PMC are moving south from Blagodatny to Paraskovievka and Krasnaya Gora . During the fighting, control was established over two company strongholds of the 4th battalion of the 46th detachment and the 1st battalion of the 77th detachment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Violent clashes continue in the vicinity of Paraskovievka and Krasnaya Gora. At the moment, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are regrouping forces to hold settlements. On the northern outskirts of Bakhmut , formations of 4 detachment were transferred.
In Bakhmut, the “Wagnerites” storm the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU) on the eastern outskirts in Zabakhmutovka and near the meat processing plant . During the fighting, the NGU detachments were driven out from three strongholds.
Russian troops are gradually pushing through the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the directions of Krasnoye and Stupochka , where they are holding the defense of units of 3 oshbr and 116 arr of TRO. As a result of an artillery strike on the deployment point of the 116th brigade, more than a dozen people were liquidated.
Part of the personnel of 116 arr refused to perform combat missions. Detachments of Arabic-speaking mercenaries were deployed to Krasnoe to prepare the line of defense. The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is trying to hide the participation of foreigners in the battles for Bakhmut.
The Ukrainian command is waiting for the activation of units of the RF Armed Forces on Dyleevka . Reconnaissance groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with copters are reconnaissance of the areas of advancement of Russian troops along the line of contact.
https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin
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