Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2023 12:45 pm
the battle continues
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 03/15/2023
Among evidence of the advances of Russian troops in the battle for Artyomovsk, whose images contradict the Western propaganda of recent days, which has come to speak, based on the Ukrainian war reports and the interested information of the British intelligence of stalemate, Volodymyr Zelensky wanted yesterday to show signs of normality and control at the front. The Ukrainian president did not go to Bakhmut on this occasion, possibly because of the excessive danger that Ukrainian troops are currently facing, but he did bring together the senior officials of the political and military authorities to give an image of unity, chain of command and, above all, , a semblance of planning.
For several weeks now, the Western media, without ever giving up their strong support for Ukraine, have debated the importance of the battle for Artyomovsk. A part of the press has highlighted the symbolism of the city and its strategic value to avoid leaving Russia an "open field" for further advances in the Donetsk region. Added to this argument is the comment by the Russian military authorities on the importance of capturing Artyomovsk in order to achieve the objective of gaining control of the entire Donbass. However, neither Sergey Shoigu nor the General Staff have raised the battle for Artyomovsk in the terms used yesterday by Deutsche Welle, which claimed that “Russia says taking Bakhmut would allow it to capture the rest of the Donetsk region, a key war objective for the Kremlin.” Taking into account the composition of the front, the capture of Artyomovsk is essential for Russia in its objective of advancing on Slavyansk and Kramatorsk and aspiring, for example, to regain control of the water flow, a serious problem for Donetsk since last summer. However, the capture of the city by no means implies a decisive advance in that objective. With Donbass as one of the most populated and urban areas of the Ukrainian territory, there is no such thing as the "open field" that Zelensky referred to in one of his last speeches. However, the only way to Slavyansk is through Artyomovsk, hence the Russian insistence on capturing a city he has been fighting for for seven months.
In the case of Ukraine, its defense does not necessarily start from the strategic importance of the city, as several media outlets, mainly the American ones, have mentioned in recent days. Hence, from the establishment orderly withdrawal to the second line of defense has been advocated. However, a part of those who admit the lack of real importance of the city have supported Zelensky's position to fight to the last man. These are those media and experts who understand, probably wrongly, that Wagner's troops, who are leading the assault on this sector of the front, are the best combat-ready Russia has. Taking into account the paralysis of a large part of the other fronts, that the withdrawal from Kherson guaranteed the integrity of the best Russian regular troops and that these have not played any role in recent operations, logic indicates that this reserve is being used for activities offensive or defensive of greater depth. However, The idea of maintaining the fight as an element of a war of attrition to finish off Wagner, and thus with the operability of the Russian troops, has gained traction even despite the heavy casualties it is causing on the Ukrainian side. The idea of fighting to the last Ukrainian that Lindsey Graham mentioned seems to have been put into practice in the battle for Artyomovsk, albeit, yes, by accusing Russia of acting that way. Throughout the battle, the press has accused Russia of acting in hordes, fighting with shovels or "not counting the dead."
However, even British intelligence no longer denies the progress. Despite the difficulty of really knowing where the front line is located in a battle that is already urban in parts of the city, in recent hours there has been talk of Russian advances within the Artyomovsk perimeter. Over the next few hours or days it will become clear whether this is a first collapse of the Ukrainian defenses or a partial withdrawal from urban areas to try to carry out the counterattack that the Ukrainian military authorities announced, but which has failed in its efforts. first attempts. The idea of a Ukrainian counterattack has also been raised by Wagner's owner, Evgeny Prigozhin, especially prudent regarding the prospects of the battle and its development.
Prigozhin's words may be due, at least in part, to the confrontation he is having with the Russian military authorities, whom he accuses of not supplying the necessary amounts of ammunition. The accusation began by limiting itself to the soldiers of his company, Wagner, to later be extended to the troops in general. However, the advances in the last hours are undoubted and have occurred along three axes: the east, the south towards the closing of the siege and the north of the city, where yesterday Wagner was photographed at the Vostokmash facilities, one of the major industries in the city and that it will not be able to play the role that Azovstal did in Mariupol. Although Wagner's presence does not guarantee that the entire perimeter has been brought under the control of Russian troops, he indicates progress and is also a symbolic image.
Through his press service in Kiev, the Ukrainian president stated that "after considering the progress of the operation to defend the Bakhmut front, all members of the General Staff expressed the common position of continuing to hold and defend the city of Bakhmut." ”. As published by the Ukrainian media, members of the government, the security apparatus and law enforcement agencies attended the meeting and highlighted the presence of Andriy Ermak, head of the President's Office; Kirilo Budanov, head of military intelligence, Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces; Prime Minister Shmygal and the Chairman of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov. A few hours after revealing another corruption scandal in the Ministry of Defense, the holder of that portfolio is absent from that list,
Despite the fact that even the media and related experts affirm that Artyomovsk is not even the place where Russian troops are suffering the most attrition, Ukraine has chosen to publicly maintain the discourse of continuing the defense of a destroyed city, in which it suffers enormous low and whose strategic importance is questionable. The battle continues both on the front and in the media and symbolic field.
https://slavyangrad.es/2023/03/15/la-ba ... more-26844
Google Translator
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THE MIDDLE KINGDOM MAKES A POINT ABOUT THE MEDIOCRITY OF THE EXCEPTIONALIST
By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with
If China’s journalists, foreign intelligence analysts, and People’s Navy staff have needed an opportunity to demonstrate, if not to the Middle Kingdom audience, then to the US exceptionalist public how peripheral and how mediocre American legends have become, Seymour Hersh has provided it in an interview Hersh (lead image, right) recorded with China’s state broadcaster CGTN on Saturday.
For the first time since Hersh’s earlier interviews with American, British, German, and Russian reporters, Hersh faced skepticism and cross-examination of the account he published on February 8 of what he claimed then, and insists still, was a joint US and Norwegian operation to destroy the Nord Stream gas pipelines on September 26, 2022.
According to Hersh, the operation was directed by the White House and ordered by President Joseph Biden, with the reluctant support of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In his 28-minute interview with Liu Xin (left), Hersh repeats his original claims; makes fresh mistakes of fact; discloses new source information.
Hersh also reveals he is so confident of the seniority and veracity of his US intelligence ageny source – make that the CIA – he is not reading nor understanding the fresh evidence which has been published in the German mainstream media, the international internet, the US alt-media, and the New York Times. Dismissing it all, while revealing he has analyzed none of it, Hersh told Beijing television: “they are trying to divert attention from the story I wrote.”
Hersh also reveals that for verification of his story, he employed fact-checkers from the New Yorker, the most virulently anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian magazine in New York.
Listen and watch Liu’s interview with Hersh aired on March 10. Read CGTN’s partial English transcript here. For background on China’s legendary journalist, click to read. For background on the legendary Hersh story, read this from February 10 and then this sequel on February 19.
These are the dozen news-breaking points made by China’s CGTN:
*Asked by Liu interviewing whether it was “not possible for ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ to carry out this explosion”, Hersh answers “I know that the few things I know about the Ukrainian navy is they are capable of dropping mines. I’m not an expert on it. I just happen to ask questions after that story came out. They don’t have a working decompression chamber” – Minute 3:21. Liu was expressing skepticism from the start; her inverted negative and inverted commas were the clues which Hersh missed. Liu was implying that only a state agency could have carried out the attack. Hersh’s answer confirmed the point. But he made a mistake about Ukrainian Navy capability for deepsea diving operations of all kinds, and his claim about a “decompression chamber” reveals his source cannot have been a US Navy diver or US Navy intelligence source. For evidence on Ukrainian diving operations, click. Instead, Hersh was revealing that the source for his story was non-Navy; most likely the CIA at a remove from the actual operation planning committee. The New York Times reporting corroborates this.
*Asked why the New York Times leaked its story, and “what do you think they [US intelligence officials] are trying to send as a message”, Hersh replied: “They are trying to divert attention from the story that I wrote, which included enormous specifics” – Min. 5:38. This was narcissism on the reporter’s part: it blinded him to the second of Liu’s questions which focused on US intelligence officials. Since one of them had been Hersh’s acknowledged source, Liu was asking for his explanation of why others had leaked to the newspaper. He didn’t know.
*In his reply, Hersh went on to claim that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and White House officials “had a series of meetings at a secret room in the White House. They gave clues, I know the title of the room” – Min. 5:59. This location contradicts Hersh’s earlier reporting of the meeting-room in the Old Executive Office Building. His new claim that the room has a secret name he hasn’t reported yet and won’t reveal is nonsense.
*Asked what his investigation reveals about the recklessness of US officials, Hersh is evasive, claiming “those are questions above my paygrade” – Min. 7:21. Hersh doesn’t answer the question.
*“It’s not a bomb,” Hersh said, “it’s a mine” – Min. 10:09. This contradicts Hersh’s reporting that a cargo of up to half a ton of “volatile” C4 explosive was the operational weapon. Hersh’s new claim appears to confirm he has no naval source; he is uncertain what exactly the weapon was, and how it worked.
*“In the Baltic Sea there is no oil” – Min. 10:18. This is false. The Poles have operated the B3 oil and gasfield on the Baltic seabed for more than twenty years; and substantial gas reserves have been explored and proven under the seabed. However, they have been uneconomical to bring into production so long as Poland has been buying Russian and Norwegian gas.
*The vessel used by the divers to plant the explosives on the pipelines was a Norwegian Alta class minesweeper – this is a new disclosure by Hersh at Min.11:31. In a search of NATO, Swedish, US Navy, Pentagon, and other reports of the BALTOPS [Baltic Operations] 2022 exercise between June 5 and June 16, no such vessel has been identified. Click for background on this vessel. If there is a record of such a Norwegian vessel sailing in the area when Hersh claims the explosive charges were laid, no evidence of maritime trace, military press release, or other open-source journalism has appeared yet; Hersh has jumped the gun.
This is the Rauma, one of only two Alta-class minesweepers still in the Norwegian Navy’s active fleet. First built in the mid-1990s, three of the five original vessels in the class have beeN scrapped or sold. Open-source analyst Joe Galvin has reported that another Norwegian vessel of another class, "the M343 Hinnoy (MMSI: 259019000), did track near the sites of the blasts as reported by @DMA_SFS in June, but its track does not match up to what you'd expect (holding position over the sites for a period of time so the divers could deploy”. Galvin explicitly challenged Hersh’s reporting on February 23. Hersh has either ignored Galvin’s report of the tracking evidence, or he is ignorant of it.
*Hersh was asked by Liu for his understanding of the motivations of National Security Adviser Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He answered: “hatred of all things, particularly [President Vladimir] Putin, and also communism per se – they’re so Cold Warriors. They are really out of sorts” – Min.30-45. Hersh appears not to understand as much as his Chinese interlocutor of what US strategy is in Europe and the Pacific.
*The first Nord Stream pipeline was “stopped by Putin, so he controlled it” — Min. 14:42. This is false. Hersh misrepresents the impact of US and Canadian sanctions on the maintenance of Nord Stream-1’s turbines, and the consequences for the pipeline’s deliveries to Germany.
*Hersh’s idea of the US operational strategy is that it was intended to prevent German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lifting sanctions against Russian gas imports in order to keep “his businesses…his people warm” – Min. 15:30. Hersh reveals his ignorance of the evidence of German involvement in the operational plans and the German Green Party’s advocacy for the operation before Scholz’s meeting and press conference with Biden in Washington on February 7, 2022. Hersh’s story is concealing the German part of the Nord Stream secret; this is his CIA source talking.
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/
Note that when Scholz was asked to comment on Biden’s threat against Nord Stream, he gave an unqualified endorsement. “And possibly this is a good idea to say to our American friends: We will be united, we will act together, and we will take all the necessary steps. And all the necessary steps will be done by all of us together. [Q] And will you commit today — will you commit today to turning off and pulling the plug on Nord Stream 2? You didn’t mention it, and you haven’t mentioned it. CHANCELLOR SCHOLZ: As I’ve already said, we are acting together, we are absolutely united, and we will not be taking different steps. We will do the same steps, and they will be very, very hard to Russia, and they should understand.”
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/
As the interview went on, Liu became audibly and visibly skeptical of Hersh’s responses, and so she asked him how he judged “your source was reliable”– Min. 19:30. Repeating statements he has made before, Hersh avoided giving a direct answer. The implication revealed by Liu is that Hersh trusted his sole source because he ranks at a very high level of the CIA.
Questioned by Liu to identify who was the editor for his reporting on the Nord Stream story, and who proofed his text before he published it, Hersh tried to avoid answering concretely. Pressed by Liu, he said his editor is “a very prominent literary figure” from the London Review of Books (Min 23:45) and the fact-checkers he employed “work for the New Yorker” – Min. 24:07. Liu replied: “OK. Good, good. Well, it’s reassuring to know that.”...
https://johnhelmer.net/the-middle-kingd ... more-87669
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THE WAR IN UKRAINE: A YEAR ON
Posted by Greg Godels | Mar 13, 2023 | Featured Stories | 1
February 24th marked one year since Russian troops crossed the border with Ukraine and began its overt military intervention in what was a de facto civil war. From 2014 and the Western intervention resulting in that year’s coup against President Yanukovych, Ukraine has been a divided country engaged in a bitter, violent struggle over its future alignment. Indeed, that struggle had been simmering since Ukraine left the Soviet Union, with roots going back even further. Ukrainian nationalism has almost always sought to link independence with the protection of one powerful sponsor or another.
Like other civil wars, this war is the continuation of simmering, expanding political, economic, and social issues– politics by other, more violent, brutal, and dangerous means. Except for the Soviet period, there has never been a stable, viable, enduring Ukrainian state. Nor has there been a Western-style “democracy” with sufficient popular support and legitimacy.
But the war is something more than a civil war. It is also an imperialist war contested between great powers claiming to defend the interests of factions engaged in the civil war. As with other imperialist wars, the great powers are contesting over direct and indirect economic interests while seeking to maintain or establish spheres of interest.
Russia, for its part, as a relatively new, emergent capitalist power, has an unbalanced economy, relying heavily on the export of its abundant natural resources, principally gas and oil. As a result of Cold War aggression, Russia also has a highly developed military-weapons industry as a legacy of the Soviet Union. Its role in the imperialist conflict revolves around defending its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and the economic links established during the Soviet era, maintaining and expanding its share of the Western European energy market, and burnishing its position in supplying weaponry in the ever-expanding global armament frenzy.
The US, on the other hand, as the self-styled leader and police of the capitalist world order, opposes Russia’s independent foreign policy and economic and political influence in Eastern Europe. Support for Syria, a country at odds with US and Israeli interests in the Middle East, undoubtedly brought Russia into even sharper conflict with the US. The dream of unchallenged US global hegemony was, no doubt, interrupted by Russia’s failure to pay obeisance.
But the battle over natural gas markets– seen as the transitional “clean” carbon-based energy source– played an oversized role in motivating the conflict. With US potential natural gas production nearly limitless thanks to new technologies, the US urgently needed new markets. Most recently, investors were backing away from the industry because of low prices and shrinking profits.
As I wrote on February 2, 2022, more than three weeks before the Russian military invasion started:
…Biden’s administration harps on Trump-like sanctions aimed at the Russian economy and, not least of all, its energy sector.
If oil was a motivating factor in US foreign policy activism in the 1980s and 1990s, then natural gas is a decisive motivating factor today. Where the US was determined to secure oil resources in the past, energy independence and the fracking revolution motivate US policy makers to secure natural gas markets today.
In essence, the US is baiting the Russians into actions that will encourage the Europeans to reject their dependence upon cheap Russian natural gas. Instead, they want Europe to rely on expensive US liquified natural gas, a change that Europeans have, so far, resisted. War hysteria is meant to frighten the Europeans into rejecting the nearly completed Nord Stream pipeline and, instead, build costly liquified natural gas terminals to accept US gas. Thus, the underlying strategy is economic– a not-so-subtle bullying of Europe into aligning with US economic interests.
The goal is to restart the botched, overinvested, badly managed fracking revolution that would now ride the tide of high energy prices.
The criminal destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines by the US and its allies only underscores the above analysis.
Today, the US is the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG). Also, oil purchases from the US by the UK, Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany have increased by 344,000 barrels a day since last February, according to The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ article quotes Daniel Yergin, an oil energy historian and vice chairman of S&P Global: “America is back in the most predominant position it has been in world energy since the 1950s… U.S. energy now is becoming one of the foundations of European energy security.” Those who see US imperialism as in a stage of irreversible decline might find this statement sobering.
The stakes of inter-imperialist conflict were established well before the intervention of February 24. To anyone paying attention, the worsening conflict was about much more than Ukrainian self-determination, democracy, or sovereignty. The encroachment of NATO was motivated by far more than protecting Eastern Europe from Russian aggression. And the Russian interests were less idealistic than simply liberating Ukrainians from themselves or neo-Nazis.
In response to the many who found noble motives on one side or the other, I wrote on February 14, ten days before the operation:
Those who remain skeptical of the economic motives behind the US warmongering must explain why Biden placed natural gas politics ahead of any other matter before him and his German ally [Scholtz] in this first significant policy exchange. Biden’s glee– not shared by his German counterpart– reveals the importance the US government places on seizing the natural gas market from the Russians, their rival in the energy business.
The Ukraine crisis presents other economic advantages as well. In less than two weeks, the US has sent eight cargo planes to the Ukraine with military supplies, part of the $200 million Biden authorized in new military aid. The xenophobic, ultra-nationalist Baltic states and Poland have sent massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine as well, much of which is sourced from US corporations and will be replaced by aid or purchases from the US.
Whether Ukraine joins NATO or not, Ukraine is being militarized and will continue to be a destination for US arms. On this front, the US military-industrial establishment will win, regardless of the crisis outcome.
Adversaries on both sides of the Cold War-like divide will be armed to the teeth and the possibility of war raised accordingly.
US “aid” to Ukraine since last February is rapidly approaching 100 billion dollars– far more than US aid to any other country or any other country’s contribution to Ukraine’s war effort.
With the Russian military invading on several fronts on February 24 of last year, the civil war reached a qualitatively greater intensity, with NATO sharply increasing its participation. Weapons poured into Ukraine, guaranteeing a conflict of a dimension unseen in Europe since World War II. Predictably, the Western propaganda machine spoke with one voice, portraying Ukraine as a hapless victim of unprovoked Russian invasion.
Sadly, the social democratic and liberal left in Europe and the US– blinded by the missionary zeal of the twisted doctrine of “humanitarian interventionism” and intoxicated by a media smear of everything Russian– quickly fell in line with NATO’s militarization of Ukraine, going so far as calling for a military victory over Russia and regime change in Moscow.
Western ruling classes proved adept at winning the broad center-left to the bizarre notion that a moral defense of Ukraine constructed around the principle of self-determination could be applicable to a regime that itself violated the democratic principle of self-determination by staging a violent coup d’état eight years earlier.
As in 1914 in the early stages of World War I, the liberals and social democrats betrayed any anti-war principles to the fever of war. No anti-war movement was forthcoming from this camp.
In the US, this left-center opportunism is firmly held in place by fealty to the Democratic Party, whose imperial adventures are only softly challenged by liberals or social democrats.
Others on the left– whether from a nostalgic conflation of Russia with the Soviet Union or a failure to understand Russia’s role in the imperialist system– portrayed the Russian government as a liberator or as a paragon of anti-imperialism. This naive view turned reality on its head and imagined a corralling of imperialism– a step towards a multipolar utopia– as an anticipated result of Russia’s defeat of NATO’s surrogates on the battlefield of Ukraine.
How Russia prevailing or any other alternative military outcome could benefit the working classes of Ukraine, Russia, or the West is beyond credulity. Illusions of a Russian version of humanitarian intervention unfortunately infect some elements of the left. Meanwhile, the bodies are piling up, homes are destroyed, and families are forced to flee.
Too few of us on the left rejected the two misguided choices, recognizing the essence of the war as imperialist conflict.
As the war ground on, I wrote on May 9, 2022:
The great tragedy is that the broad left– the historical foil to war and imperialism– remains divided, confused, and inactive while a bloody, destructive war rages, threatening to expand and escalate. As the war continues with no resolution, the only winner is US imperialism.
Trade union militants in Italy and Greece took to the streets to oppose the war, along with Greek Communists. Thousands marched in Prague in September against rising energy and other costs as a result of the war in Ukraine. Yet no national action against the war occurred in the US, and little in the rest of Europe.
The fact that the Zelensky regime outlawed political parties, stripped labor regulations, and criminalized the opposition found most of the liberal and social democratic left unmoved (The AFL-CIO– a strong supporter of Zelensky– was eventually forced to object on behalf of its favored anti-Communist unions).
Efforts for a peaceful settlement were persistently undermined by the Western powers– the US, UK, and their NATO partners.
In the face of intransigent Western governments and a lame, disputatious left guilty of misguided partisanship, the cause of peace was left to others. The populist right has attempted to take on the role of peacekeeper, at least to the extent of questioning the unconditional support for the further escalation of the war. As the war stalemated, right-wing politicians in opposition found mismanagement of the war to be a fertile field for political advantages. For a vivid example of right-populist war skepticism, see Representative Matt Gaetz’s scathing rebuke of US Defense Department officials, concluding that US money spent on guaranteeing Ukrainian pensions would be better spent in the US on bolstering pension reserves here.
Democratic Party elected officials, on the other hand, have been unmoved, staying solidly behind Biden’s instigation and expansion of the war.
The notorious corruption of successive Ukrainian regimes, the mobilizing of more troops and the introduction of more lethal and longer-range weapons, and weariness over the dwindling prospect of early victories are spawning questions and doubts. As the conflict is prolonged, support in the opinion polls is now sagging. This is reflected in less cheerleading and more nuance in coverage by leading newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
A recent feature article in The Wall Street Journal, Domestic Political Troubles Return for Ukraine’s Zelensky, recounts both the checkered trajectory of Zelensky’s career and his immersion in a sea of corruption. Recently, a large number of his colleagues were ousted or forced to resign for serious corruption.
The article cites opposition politicians who portray the leader as “authoritarian” over his total dominance of the Ukrainian media. In addition, The WSJ reminds us that Ukrainian trust in Zelensky was down to 28% before the war. In short, the lengthy article tarnishes the image of the celebrity figure formerly viewed by the media as whistle-clean and selfless, perhaps a telling sign of some cracks in ruling class consensus.
Also, the sunny prospects of Ukrainian victory with advanced Western technologies are beginning to turn a little gloomy; in late February Zelensky fired a top general serving as the commander of the joint forces of Ukraine. Apparently, Russia has seized the military initiative in Eastern Ukraine to rhe chagrin of Ukraine’s leaders.
Most countries are refusing to be bullied by US efforts to steer them into condemning or sanctioning Russia. Both Peoples’ China and Lula’s Brazil have proposed plans for all parties to cease fighting and negotiate.
These and other changes and initiatives offer hope that resistance to the war will grow. This year, two encouraging national actions in opposition to the war were planned to rally in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, the organizers of the events engaged in bitter Internet battles where some questions of substance were poisoned by egos, turf wars, and pettiness. Historically, rival peace organizations settle their differences and validate their approach in practice. We have seen factional and sectarian conflict in the peace movement before. At least, there is now motion to halt the war and negotiate, with another rally scheduled for March 18.
Recent actions in Europe are encouraging, as well. Thousands have marched in Berlin, London, and other cities.
Maybe we are seeing the first shoots of a soon-to-blossom movement to end the war and reject militarism.
As I wrote last September 7:
The war in Ukraine is the logical outcome of the unwinding of globalization, a process that began with the 2007-2009 world economic crisis…
Competition intensified and rivalries became more virulent. Inevitably, economic competition leads to confrontation and confrontation leads to war.
The circumstances of war become less important and the deadly outcomes and possible escalations take center stage. Today, the likelihood of a long, bloody war and its potential expansion beyond borders demand action.
As this tragedy unfolds, the only answer– the working-class answer– is to pull out all stops to end it. We desperately need a militant movement to stop this war.
The need is even more urgent today.
https://mltoday.com/the-war-in-ukraine-a-year-on/
Greg's analysis of the likely outcome discounts Russia achieving it's stated goals. Though far from a 'sure thing' I wouldn't be so quick...things may come to a head sooner than many think.
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China’s peace plan for Ukraine
Originally published: Consortium News on March 3, 2023 by Tony Kevin (more by Consortium News) | (Posted Mar 13, 2023)
The tragic year-long war in Ukraine has already transformed the world’s geopolitical landscape.
Historic global power shifts towards the Eurasian heartland, centred on China, are accelerating. China and Russia have drawn together in a strong “no limits” partnership, that is attracting other major states in the Global South, especially India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, Brazil and South Africa.
The common link is on building stronger trading, infrastructure and diplomatic ties, consistent with the U.N.-based international security system. More and more, the Western camp led by the U.S. seems peripheral, a powerless spectator to these global changes.
The Ukraine crisis is a catalyst, accelerating changes that might have otherwise taken decades to work through.
Mediocre Western leaders like U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz, French President Emmanuel Macron and a conga line of weak British prime ministers, allied with the improbable former comedian heading a nationalist regime in Kiev united only by its fanatical hatred of all things Russian, have led the West into disastrous anti-Russian policies, causing self-inflicted wounds especially in Europe.
The root cause of the West’s current woes is the Washington elite’s refusal to come to grips with its own disasters at home: in a country increasingly weakened by stark ideological and economic contradictions.
Obsessed by the great power competition with Russia and China, the Washington elite at the same time repeatedly under-estimates Russian and Chinese diplomatic skills and will to survive. A bipartisan war party drains Washington’s budgets as America’s key infrastructure frays.
Hundreds of billions go to prop up NATO’s unwinnable proxy war against Russia in Ukraine: a war which actually began in February 2014, not 2022. Influential Americans saw Ukraine as a weapon to destabilise Russian President Vladimir Putin, by turning the two most populous ex-Soviet nation-states against each other. They connived with Ukrainian Banderite extreme nationalists to militarise and indoctrinate Ukraine against Russia.
For the U.S. whichever side won the U.S. arms industry prospered. Russian diplomatic efforts in 2014-21 to maintain peace with a sovereign Kiev through the Minsk process were negated by Western duplicity.
U.S.-Russian talks in Geneva, June 2021. (Kremlin)
Meanwhile the Ukrainian army was expanded and hardened by NATO weapons and training. A long-running artillery war waged by Kiev against its pro-Russian dissident eastern provinces Donetsk and Lugansk, ignored by Western media, left up to 14,000 dead and over 100,000 homeless.
Testing Putin’s Resolve
By December 2021, Washington and Kiev judged themselves strong enough to test Putin’s resolve. He was faced with lose-lose. If he allowed Kiev a genocidal victory over the Donbass rebel provinces, his credibility as Russian leader would slump.
He could only defend Donbass by invading sovereign Ukraine, possibly to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. He chose this lesser evil, seeing the Donbass crisis as having become an existential threat to Russia.
(Bubbling water)
Site of the Nord Stream 2 attack. (Danish Defense Ministry)
After an inconclusive first seven months, the war has turned in favour of a determined-to-win Russia. This is certainly how China and the global South see it, unconvinced by increasingly improbable claims by Ukrain’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO that Kiev can still win this war.
The China – Russia partnership is built on their mutual adherence to the U.N. Security Council rules-based order, and on their support for the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which was drafted by Chinese Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai in 1953 and adopted by the 1995 Non-Aligned Conference in Bandung.
Western Rules
In recent years an opportunistic U.S. and its Western allies have pressed for another kind of international order – a “rules-based order” in which the West sets the rules and decides when and how to enforce them on others.
Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, the dogma of eternal Sino-Soviet geopolitical rivalry has been holy writ in the West. It took the brilliantly inept Trump and Biden administrations to make enemies of both great powers simultaneously, pushing them together: while the Global South looked on appalled as Washington used its own “rules- based order” to bully weaker states.
The Ukraine war has magically clarified this imbroglio. The Global South now respects Russia and China as major status quo powers, and as united defenders of the U.N. Security Council-based global security order. The U.S. has been exposed as a reckless global bully and rules-breaker.
The East-West information war which in February 2022 seemed securely in Western hands has escaped from their control.
Restoring Peace session at World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 18, from left: CNN’S Fareed Zakaria, host; Polish President Andrzej Duda, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko, U.S. National Intelligence Director Avril Haines. (World Economic Forum/Mattias Nutt, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Western-supported terrorist actions in and around the Ukraine war – in the terrorist trifecta in September 2022 of the U.K.-Ukrainian sabotage attack on the Kerch Bridge, the U.S.-Norwegian sabotage of the Russian-German Baltic pipelines and the brutal murder near Moscow of Maria Dugina — sullied the West’s good name.
Large majorities in the Global South now trust Russia and China more than they trust the West. Notwithstanding some recent U.N. General Assembly votes – the result of heavy U.S. arm-twisting of vulnerable smaller states — the reality is there to be seen in shifting trade statistics and in the diplomatic dance.
Western Power Elites
In the G20, the Global South is no longer listening to the West. At Davos, Western power elites now speak only to themselves. After the Ukraine crisis, the Global South sees that China and Russia now offer more attractive global trading and reserve currency alternatives or supplements to the American-dominated dollar system, which Western sanctions have shown to be insecure. They are quietly spreading their risks, politically and economically.
With the discreet help of China, India, Iran and the Middle East entrepot city-states, Russia has sailed with ease through Western trade and banking sanctions. These have boomeranged to harm the U.S.-led bloc, especially through increasing energy costs and declining European trade competitiveness from blocking cheap Russian gas imports.
Once proud European states Germany and France have reverted to full lackey status, dependent on U.S. energy and weaponry.
Since 2014, Chinese-Russian diplomatic, trade and infrastructure links have grown robustly. Their equal-partner military cooperation is now entrenched.
China exports many dual-use high technology products to Russia. China does not need to supply Russia with weapons: but if it ever thought it needed to, it would. Because China knows that if Russia collapsed under Western sanctions, it would be next.
The importance of the Ukraine crisis has been to crystallize Chinese leadership perceptions of the U.S. as an untrustworthy partner, and the existential enemy of both China and Russia.
Even under President Donald Trump, the U.S. tried to provoke destabilization and regime change in China: around Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan and in the South China Sea. In trying so clumsily to portray China as an aggressor, the U.S. finally convinced China’s leadership that the U.S. has at least since 2014 pursued aggressive strategies towards Russia and China.
In the past month, the pace of Chinese global diplomacy has quickened. The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was received last week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov; Nikolai
Patrushev, head of national security, and Putin himself, when he visited Moscow as a precursor to a March-April visit by Chairman Xi Jinping which will announce far-reaching new economic cooperation.
China has recently launched an activist peace diplomacy, setting out its “Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis.” This impressive general document, based on the U.N. Charter and the Five Principles, indicates China’s support for an immediate ceasefire without preconditions; no more Western arms supplies; and offering massive reconstruction aid to a post-settlement new government in Ukraine.
It will be attractive to the Global South. It will cause consternation in the Western war party camp. Russia has welcomed it. We will see the Chinese peace plan talked about in coming weeks. It may offer the breakthrough for peace for which many Ukrainians pray.
https://mronline.org/2023/03/13/chinas- ... r-ukraine/
*****
Jihadi Julian is worried
March 14, 19:23
Jihadi Julian is worried about the situation in Artyomovsk.
Meanwhile. The first video has appeared from the territory of the Vostokmash plant liberated this morning in the AZOM industrial zone in Artemovsk.
(Video at link.)
Prigozhin confirmed the reports of the Ukrainian media about the advancement of the PMC "Wagner" in the center of Artemovsk, pointing out that the advanced positions are already close to the administration of Artemovsk (this is already the very center of the city).
Also, according to him, the entire grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Artemovsk region (not only in the city itself) is estimated at 70,000 soldiers and officers. According to him, due to the available forces, the enemy is preparing a counterattack in the city area in order to rectify the situation.
The broadcast of hostilities in Ukraine continues as usual in Telegram - if you are interested, subscribe
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8224171.html
Russian fighter jet shot down US MQ-9 Reaper drone
March 14, 20:38
Russian fighter jet shot down US MQ-9 Reaper drone
U.S. European Command statement regarding the Black Sea Incident: “Two Russian Su-27 aircraft made an unsafe and unprofessional
interception of a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 unmanned aircraft on a reconnaissance mission that was in international airspace over the Black Sea today.
03:03 AM (CET) One of the Russian Su-27 aircraft grazed the propeller of an MQ-9, causing US forces to shoot down the MQ-9 in international waters Several times before the collision, the Su-27 jettisoned fuel and flew in front of the MQ-9 reckless, in an environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional.
“Our MQ-9 aircraft was performing normal operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and shot down by a Russian aircraft, resulting in the crash and total loss of the MQ-9,” said an Air Force general. James B. Hecker, Commander, US Air Force Europe and Air Force Africa.
The State Department intends to hold consultations with the Russian Foreign Ministry on this incident.
Since the United States accused a Russian fighter pilot of pouring aviation kerosene onto an American drone in the air, it is certainly difficult not to recall the story of Vasily Tsymbal.
Rain of stinking kerosene...
Vasya Tsymbal was a graduate of the Armavir Aviation School and, like all the guys from there, he was famous for his ability to clearly fulfill the assigned combat missions, though ... Not quite standard and, I would even say, very extraordinary approaches. His favorite trick was tricks with fuel.
Another such trick just happened in the Far East, when one of the Japanese guards (moreover, carrying a couple of helicopters - a kind of unofficial aircraft carrier) crossed the border between neutral waters and the territory of the USSR. Unfortunately for the Japanese, Vasya Tsymbal was in the sky, and he quickly figured out what to do. Having made a couple of turns at an ultra-low altitude above the ship, he was convinced that he was not going to change course, and decided to try to scare the uninvited guests properly. Rising higher, he turned around and began to dive at the Japanese. They were seriously frightened - the provocation had gone too far, and no one knew whether the order had been given to the Soviet pilot to attack.
As a result, Tsymbal at cruising speed swept 5-6 meters above the deck and literally blew one of the helicopters into the water with a stream of air, after which, apparently, on a wave of excitement, he said shortly, but succinctly, on open air: “Fucked up a kitten!” The Japanese, having heard one of the most expressive expressions of the Russian mat, turned the ship 180 degrees and set off at full speed. But this was not enough for the show-off Vasya. While the Japanese ship was in the waters of the Soviet Union, Vasya decided to work out his favorite trick. Flying over the cuckoo's nest as unfortunate provocateurs, Tsymbal turned on the fuel drain and doused the military of the Land of the Rising Sun with kerosene rain. The descendants of the samurai could not stand such a shame and in droves ran to do hara-kiri to complain to higher authorities.
Almost immediately after Vasya returns to the base, he is called to the carpet (they also heard everything at the base) and, having learned the details, they sigh with relief - thank God, he didn’t kill anyone - and send him to the other end of the country so that, in which case, according to the good old tradition to declare that “the pilot is not ours”, and indeed “two weeks since he left for Murmansk”.
Once in the north, Vasily Tsymbal did not change his habits. In September 87, however, as always, it was restless near the Kola Peninsula - American and Norwegian NATO troops flew quite often, entering Soviet airspace several times a day, and aircraft carriers plowed the Barents Sea, from which these planes took off . When Vasya, for the seventh time in a day, ran to his faithful Su-27, putting on a helmet on the move ... He probably really wanted to use fire to kill and missiles with a nuclear warhead, just to be sure.
But the corresponding orders were not given, and Tsymbal was left only with his good old trick. Having persuaded his comrade, he, together with him, arranges a rain of smelly kerosene for the Americans. Oddly enough, this helped a lot - the Yankees began to appear much less in the region. And there were no consequences for Vasily.
(c) author Timofey Berdikin (more about Vasily here https://pikabu.ru/story/vozdushnyiy_khu ... al_6998356 )
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8224356.html
MQ-9 Reaper went into unguided flight
Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation about the incident with the American UAV MQ-9 Reaper.
The official statement of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the situation with the fallen American drone:
1. On the morning of March 14 of this year. over the waters of the Black Sea in the area of the Crimean peninsula, the airspace control of the Russian Aerospace Forces recorded the flight of an American MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle in the direction of the State Border of the Russian Federation;
2. The flight of an unmanned aerial vehicle was carried out with transponders turned off, violating the boundaries of the area of the temporary regime for the use of airspace, established for the purpose of conducting a special military operation, communicated to all users of international airspace and published in accordance with international standards;
3. In order to identify the intruder, fighters from the air defense forces on duty were raised into the air. As a result of sharp maneuvering around 9.30 (Moscow time), the MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle went into uncontrolled flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface;
4. Russian fighters did not use airborne weapons, did not come into contact with an unmanned aerial vehicle and returned safely to their home airfield.
* * *
According to the situation at 21:00.
About the incident over the Black Sea at 9 pm.
1. The United States intends through the State Department to discuss the incident with the Russian Foreign Ministry https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80443in the Black Sea, which led to the loss of the reconnaissance and strike UAV MQ-9 Reaper. It can also be assumed that there will be closed contacts along the line of "deconflicting" through the defense departments. The United States also announced that it would continue flights over the Black Sea.
2. The United States also expressed concern about the incident, a little earlier, in an official statement by the European command of the US Army, accusing the pilots of the Russian aircraft of unprofessionalism and violating the ecology of the Black Sea.
3. Formally, the United States cannot accuse Russia of destroying the UAV, since they themselves admit that they had to finish it off on their own. Therefore, they will rest on the fact that the discharge of kerosene and damage to the propeller had fatal consequences.
4. Depending on the configuration, the lost car could cost from 23 to 30 million dollars. It is worth noting that this is not the first loss of the MQ-9 Reaper with a "Russian trace". During the fighting in Libya in 2019-2020, 2 American and 1 Italian MQ-9 drone were shot down. In at least two episodes, the Wagner PMC, which was armed with the Pantsir air defense missile system, was accused of this. The official version was the actions of Haftar's LNA, which was also armed with the Pantsir air defense missile system in export configuration.
5. The Russian fighter jets involved in the incident over the Black Sea returned safely to the airfield in Crimea. One of them will draw a star for himself.
6. In the area of "tactical use of aviation kerosene" the forces of the Black Sea Fleet are searching for and recovering the wreckage of the fallen American reconnaissance and strike drone MQ-9 Reaper. Records of negotiations in the area where the drone fell https://t.me/milinfolive/97987 (second record) were also published, indicating the ongoing search. Perhaps something interesting will be able to catch. Judging by the negotiations, something has already been fished out. At one time, the Iranians filled up the RQ-4 Global Hawk and were able to catch something useful in the sea for their drone program. The US has denied that Russia has recovered the drone fragments, but the talks from the crash site are telling enough.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80451 - zinc
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80450 - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8224643.html
Zaliznyanskoye liberated
March 15, 2:49 p.m
PMC "Wagner" today liberated the village of Zaliznyanskoye to the north-west of Artemovsk. The fighting there continues to move towards Kramatorsk.
The battles for Orekhovo-Vasilyevka, Bogdanovka and Khromovo also continue (reports of the complete capture of Khromovo are ahead of events). The roads from Artemovsk are under constant fire control. The enemy there is suffering increasing losses in manpower and equipment.
Broadcast of hostilities in Ukraine as usual here https://t.me/boris_rozhin (if you are interested, subscribe)
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8225667.html
It turned out inconvenient
March 15, 13:09
Despite statements by the Pentagon that Russia did not recover the equipment of the MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance and strike UAV that fell in the Black Sea, fears are expressed in the United States (including by officials) that Russia has already gained access to the wreckage of the drone, which may be of technological value to study and subsequent reverse engineering. The recording of the recovery of engine fragments, published yesterday, aroused serious interest among experts, who admit that sufficiently large fragments of the drone may be in an acceptable state for study after recovery.
Despite the fact that Russia has previously gained access to fragments of the MQ-9 technology (downed vehicles in Libya, alleged familiarization with technologies that fell into the possession of Iran, etc.), of course, it is not the hull and engine that are of key importance, but the electronic filling of the machine , which is periodically updated by the Americans (due to which the cost of these drones is growing). Considering that Russia may share such information with Iran (which often comes into contact with the MQ-9 in its hybrid wars), the question can be much more important than just familiarizing yourself with the wreckage.
Hence the obvious desire of the Biden administration to put the brakes on this issue (not only we are laughing at the accusation of violating the environment) and the simultaneous attacks on it by the Trumpists, who have seized on another joint of the Biden administration.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8225363.html
Google Translator
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 03/15/2023
Among evidence of the advances of Russian troops in the battle for Artyomovsk, whose images contradict the Western propaganda of recent days, which has come to speak, based on the Ukrainian war reports and the interested information of the British intelligence of stalemate, Volodymyr Zelensky wanted yesterday to show signs of normality and control at the front. The Ukrainian president did not go to Bakhmut on this occasion, possibly because of the excessive danger that Ukrainian troops are currently facing, but he did bring together the senior officials of the political and military authorities to give an image of unity, chain of command and, above all, , a semblance of planning.
For several weeks now, the Western media, without ever giving up their strong support for Ukraine, have debated the importance of the battle for Artyomovsk. A part of the press has highlighted the symbolism of the city and its strategic value to avoid leaving Russia an "open field" for further advances in the Donetsk region. Added to this argument is the comment by the Russian military authorities on the importance of capturing Artyomovsk in order to achieve the objective of gaining control of the entire Donbass. However, neither Sergey Shoigu nor the General Staff have raised the battle for Artyomovsk in the terms used yesterday by Deutsche Welle, which claimed that “Russia says taking Bakhmut would allow it to capture the rest of the Donetsk region, a key war objective for the Kremlin.” Taking into account the composition of the front, the capture of Artyomovsk is essential for Russia in its objective of advancing on Slavyansk and Kramatorsk and aspiring, for example, to regain control of the water flow, a serious problem for Donetsk since last summer. However, the capture of the city by no means implies a decisive advance in that objective. With Donbass as one of the most populated and urban areas of the Ukrainian territory, there is no such thing as the "open field" that Zelensky referred to in one of his last speeches. However, the only way to Slavyansk is through Artyomovsk, hence the Russian insistence on capturing a city he has been fighting for for seven months.
In the case of Ukraine, its defense does not necessarily start from the strategic importance of the city, as several media outlets, mainly the American ones, have mentioned in recent days. Hence, from the establishment orderly withdrawal to the second line of defense has been advocated. However, a part of those who admit the lack of real importance of the city have supported Zelensky's position to fight to the last man. These are those media and experts who understand, probably wrongly, that Wagner's troops, who are leading the assault on this sector of the front, are the best combat-ready Russia has. Taking into account the paralysis of a large part of the other fronts, that the withdrawal from Kherson guaranteed the integrity of the best Russian regular troops and that these have not played any role in recent operations, logic indicates that this reserve is being used for activities offensive or defensive of greater depth. However, The idea of maintaining the fight as an element of a war of attrition to finish off Wagner, and thus with the operability of the Russian troops, has gained traction even despite the heavy casualties it is causing on the Ukrainian side. The idea of fighting to the last Ukrainian that Lindsey Graham mentioned seems to have been put into practice in the battle for Artyomovsk, albeit, yes, by accusing Russia of acting that way. Throughout the battle, the press has accused Russia of acting in hordes, fighting with shovels or "not counting the dead."
However, even British intelligence no longer denies the progress. Despite the difficulty of really knowing where the front line is located in a battle that is already urban in parts of the city, in recent hours there has been talk of Russian advances within the Artyomovsk perimeter. Over the next few hours or days it will become clear whether this is a first collapse of the Ukrainian defenses or a partial withdrawal from urban areas to try to carry out the counterattack that the Ukrainian military authorities announced, but which has failed in its efforts. first attempts. The idea of a Ukrainian counterattack has also been raised by Wagner's owner, Evgeny Prigozhin, especially prudent regarding the prospects of the battle and its development.
Prigozhin's words may be due, at least in part, to the confrontation he is having with the Russian military authorities, whom he accuses of not supplying the necessary amounts of ammunition. The accusation began by limiting itself to the soldiers of his company, Wagner, to later be extended to the troops in general. However, the advances in the last hours are undoubted and have occurred along three axes: the east, the south towards the closing of the siege and the north of the city, where yesterday Wagner was photographed at the Vostokmash facilities, one of the major industries in the city and that it will not be able to play the role that Azovstal did in Mariupol. Although Wagner's presence does not guarantee that the entire perimeter has been brought under the control of Russian troops, he indicates progress and is also a symbolic image.
Through his press service in Kiev, the Ukrainian president stated that "after considering the progress of the operation to defend the Bakhmut front, all members of the General Staff expressed the common position of continuing to hold and defend the city of Bakhmut." ”. As published by the Ukrainian media, members of the government, the security apparatus and law enforcement agencies attended the meeting and highlighted the presence of Andriy Ermak, head of the President's Office; Kirilo Budanov, head of military intelligence, Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces; Prime Minister Shmygal and the Chairman of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov. A few hours after revealing another corruption scandal in the Ministry of Defense, the holder of that portfolio is absent from that list,
Despite the fact that even the media and related experts affirm that Artyomovsk is not even the place where Russian troops are suffering the most attrition, Ukraine has chosen to publicly maintain the discourse of continuing the defense of a destroyed city, in which it suffers enormous low and whose strategic importance is questionable. The battle continues both on the front and in the media and symbolic field.
https://slavyangrad.es/2023/03/15/la-ba ... more-26844
Google Translator
*****
THE MIDDLE KINGDOM MAKES A POINT ABOUT THE MEDIOCRITY OF THE EXCEPTIONALIST
By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with
If China’s journalists, foreign intelligence analysts, and People’s Navy staff have needed an opportunity to demonstrate, if not to the Middle Kingdom audience, then to the US exceptionalist public how peripheral and how mediocre American legends have become, Seymour Hersh has provided it in an interview Hersh (lead image, right) recorded with China’s state broadcaster CGTN on Saturday.
For the first time since Hersh’s earlier interviews with American, British, German, and Russian reporters, Hersh faced skepticism and cross-examination of the account he published on February 8 of what he claimed then, and insists still, was a joint US and Norwegian operation to destroy the Nord Stream gas pipelines on September 26, 2022.
According to Hersh, the operation was directed by the White House and ordered by President Joseph Biden, with the reluctant support of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In his 28-minute interview with Liu Xin (left), Hersh repeats his original claims; makes fresh mistakes of fact; discloses new source information.
Hersh also reveals he is so confident of the seniority and veracity of his US intelligence ageny source – make that the CIA – he is not reading nor understanding the fresh evidence which has been published in the German mainstream media, the international internet, the US alt-media, and the New York Times. Dismissing it all, while revealing he has analyzed none of it, Hersh told Beijing television: “they are trying to divert attention from the story I wrote.”
Hersh also reveals that for verification of his story, he employed fact-checkers from the New Yorker, the most virulently anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian magazine in New York.
Listen and watch Liu’s interview with Hersh aired on March 10. Read CGTN’s partial English transcript here. For background on China’s legendary journalist, click to read. For background on the legendary Hersh story, read this from February 10 and then this sequel on February 19.
These are the dozen news-breaking points made by China’s CGTN:
*Asked by Liu interviewing whether it was “not possible for ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ to carry out this explosion”, Hersh answers “I know that the few things I know about the Ukrainian navy is they are capable of dropping mines. I’m not an expert on it. I just happen to ask questions after that story came out. They don’t have a working decompression chamber” – Minute 3:21. Liu was expressing skepticism from the start; her inverted negative and inverted commas were the clues which Hersh missed. Liu was implying that only a state agency could have carried out the attack. Hersh’s answer confirmed the point. But he made a mistake about Ukrainian Navy capability for deepsea diving operations of all kinds, and his claim about a “decompression chamber” reveals his source cannot have been a US Navy diver or US Navy intelligence source. For evidence on Ukrainian diving operations, click. Instead, Hersh was revealing that the source for his story was non-Navy; most likely the CIA at a remove from the actual operation planning committee. The New York Times reporting corroborates this.
*Asked why the New York Times leaked its story, and “what do you think they [US intelligence officials] are trying to send as a message”, Hersh replied: “They are trying to divert attention from the story that I wrote, which included enormous specifics” – Min. 5:38. This was narcissism on the reporter’s part: it blinded him to the second of Liu’s questions which focused on US intelligence officials. Since one of them had been Hersh’s acknowledged source, Liu was asking for his explanation of why others had leaked to the newspaper. He didn’t know.
*In his reply, Hersh went on to claim that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and White House officials “had a series of meetings at a secret room in the White House. They gave clues, I know the title of the room” – Min. 5:59. This location contradicts Hersh’s earlier reporting of the meeting-room in the Old Executive Office Building. His new claim that the room has a secret name he hasn’t reported yet and won’t reveal is nonsense.
*Asked what his investigation reveals about the recklessness of US officials, Hersh is evasive, claiming “those are questions above my paygrade” – Min. 7:21. Hersh doesn’t answer the question.
*“It’s not a bomb,” Hersh said, “it’s a mine” – Min. 10:09. This contradicts Hersh’s reporting that a cargo of up to half a ton of “volatile” C4 explosive was the operational weapon. Hersh’s new claim appears to confirm he has no naval source; he is uncertain what exactly the weapon was, and how it worked.
*“In the Baltic Sea there is no oil” – Min. 10:18. This is false. The Poles have operated the B3 oil and gasfield on the Baltic seabed for more than twenty years; and substantial gas reserves have been explored and proven under the seabed. However, they have been uneconomical to bring into production so long as Poland has been buying Russian and Norwegian gas.
*The vessel used by the divers to plant the explosives on the pipelines was a Norwegian Alta class minesweeper – this is a new disclosure by Hersh at Min.11:31. In a search of NATO, Swedish, US Navy, Pentagon, and other reports of the BALTOPS [Baltic Operations] 2022 exercise between June 5 and June 16, no such vessel has been identified. Click for background on this vessel. If there is a record of such a Norwegian vessel sailing in the area when Hersh claims the explosive charges were laid, no evidence of maritime trace, military press release, or other open-source journalism has appeared yet; Hersh has jumped the gun.
This is the Rauma, one of only two Alta-class minesweepers still in the Norwegian Navy’s active fleet. First built in the mid-1990s, three of the five original vessels in the class have beeN scrapped or sold. Open-source analyst Joe Galvin has reported that another Norwegian vessel of another class, "the M343 Hinnoy (MMSI: 259019000), did track near the sites of the blasts as reported by @DMA_SFS in June, but its track does not match up to what you'd expect (holding position over the sites for a period of time so the divers could deploy”. Galvin explicitly challenged Hersh’s reporting on February 23. Hersh has either ignored Galvin’s report of the tracking evidence, or he is ignorant of it.
*Hersh was asked by Liu for his understanding of the motivations of National Security Adviser Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He answered: “hatred of all things, particularly [President Vladimir] Putin, and also communism per se – they’re so Cold Warriors. They are really out of sorts” – Min.30-45. Hersh appears not to understand as much as his Chinese interlocutor of what US strategy is in Europe and the Pacific.
*The first Nord Stream pipeline was “stopped by Putin, so he controlled it” — Min. 14:42. This is false. Hersh misrepresents the impact of US and Canadian sanctions on the maintenance of Nord Stream-1’s turbines, and the consequences for the pipeline’s deliveries to Germany.
*Hersh’s idea of the US operational strategy is that it was intended to prevent German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lifting sanctions against Russian gas imports in order to keep “his businesses…his people warm” – Min. 15:30. Hersh reveals his ignorance of the evidence of German involvement in the operational plans and the German Green Party’s advocacy for the operation before Scholz’s meeting and press conference with Biden in Washington on February 7, 2022. Hersh’s story is concealing the German part of the Nord Stream secret; this is his CIA source talking.
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/
Note that when Scholz was asked to comment on Biden’s threat against Nord Stream, he gave an unqualified endorsement. “And possibly this is a good idea to say to our American friends: We will be united, we will act together, and we will take all the necessary steps. And all the necessary steps will be done by all of us together. [Q] And will you commit today — will you commit today to turning off and pulling the plug on Nord Stream 2? You didn’t mention it, and you haven’t mentioned it. CHANCELLOR SCHOLZ: As I’ve already said, we are acting together, we are absolutely united, and we will not be taking different steps. We will do the same steps, and they will be very, very hard to Russia, and they should understand.”
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/
As the interview went on, Liu became audibly and visibly skeptical of Hersh’s responses, and so she asked him how he judged “your source was reliable”– Min. 19:30. Repeating statements he has made before, Hersh avoided giving a direct answer. The implication revealed by Liu is that Hersh trusted his sole source because he ranks at a very high level of the CIA.
Questioned by Liu to identify who was the editor for his reporting on the Nord Stream story, and who proofed his text before he published it, Hersh tried to avoid answering concretely. Pressed by Liu, he said his editor is “a very prominent literary figure” from the London Review of Books (Min 23:45) and the fact-checkers he employed “work for the New Yorker” – Min. 24:07. Liu replied: “OK. Good, good. Well, it’s reassuring to know that.”...
https://johnhelmer.net/the-middle-kingd ... more-87669
*********
THE WAR IN UKRAINE: A YEAR ON
Posted by Greg Godels | Mar 13, 2023 | Featured Stories | 1
February 24th marked one year since Russian troops crossed the border with Ukraine and began its overt military intervention in what was a de facto civil war. From 2014 and the Western intervention resulting in that year’s coup against President Yanukovych, Ukraine has been a divided country engaged in a bitter, violent struggle over its future alignment. Indeed, that struggle had been simmering since Ukraine left the Soviet Union, with roots going back even further. Ukrainian nationalism has almost always sought to link independence with the protection of one powerful sponsor or another.
Like other civil wars, this war is the continuation of simmering, expanding political, economic, and social issues– politics by other, more violent, brutal, and dangerous means. Except for the Soviet period, there has never been a stable, viable, enduring Ukrainian state. Nor has there been a Western-style “democracy” with sufficient popular support and legitimacy.
But the war is something more than a civil war. It is also an imperialist war contested between great powers claiming to defend the interests of factions engaged in the civil war. As with other imperialist wars, the great powers are contesting over direct and indirect economic interests while seeking to maintain or establish spheres of interest.
Russia, for its part, as a relatively new, emergent capitalist power, has an unbalanced economy, relying heavily on the export of its abundant natural resources, principally gas and oil. As a result of Cold War aggression, Russia also has a highly developed military-weapons industry as a legacy of the Soviet Union. Its role in the imperialist conflict revolves around defending its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and the economic links established during the Soviet era, maintaining and expanding its share of the Western European energy market, and burnishing its position in supplying weaponry in the ever-expanding global armament frenzy.
The US, on the other hand, as the self-styled leader and police of the capitalist world order, opposes Russia’s independent foreign policy and economic and political influence in Eastern Europe. Support for Syria, a country at odds with US and Israeli interests in the Middle East, undoubtedly brought Russia into even sharper conflict with the US. The dream of unchallenged US global hegemony was, no doubt, interrupted by Russia’s failure to pay obeisance.
But the battle over natural gas markets– seen as the transitional “clean” carbon-based energy source– played an oversized role in motivating the conflict. With US potential natural gas production nearly limitless thanks to new technologies, the US urgently needed new markets. Most recently, investors were backing away from the industry because of low prices and shrinking profits.
As I wrote on February 2, 2022, more than three weeks before the Russian military invasion started:
…Biden’s administration harps on Trump-like sanctions aimed at the Russian economy and, not least of all, its energy sector.
If oil was a motivating factor in US foreign policy activism in the 1980s and 1990s, then natural gas is a decisive motivating factor today. Where the US was determined to secure oil resources in the past, energy independence and the fracking revolution motivate US policy makers to secure natural gas markets today.
In essence, the US is baiting the Russians into actions that will encourage the Europeans to reject their dependence upon cheap Russian natural gas. Instead, they want Europe to rely on expensive US liquified natural gas, a change that Europeans have, so far, resisted. War hysteria is meant to frighten the Europeans into rejecting the nearly completed Nord Stream pipeline and, instead, build costly liquified natural gas terminals to accept US gas. Thus, the underlying strategy is economic– a not-so-subtle bullying of Europe into aligning with US economic interests.
The goal is to restart the botched, overinvested, badly managed fracking revolution that would now ride the tide of high energy prices.
The criminal destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines by the US and its allies only underscores the above analysis.
Today, the US is the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG). Also, oil purchases from the US by the UK, Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany have increased by 344,000 barrels a day since last February, according to The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ article quotes Daniel Yergin, an oil energy historian and vice chairman of S&P Global: “America is back in the most predominant position it has been in world energy since the 1950s… U.S. energy now is becoming one of the foundations of European energy security.” Those who see US imperialism as in a stage of irreversible decline might find this statement sobering.
The stakes of inter-imperialist conflict were established well before the intervention of February 24. To anyone paying attention, the worsening conflict was about much more than Ukrainian self-determination, democracy, or sovereignty. The encroachment of NATO was motivated by far more than protecting Eastern Europe from Russian aggression. And the Russian interests were less idealistic than simply liberating Ukrainians from themselves or neo-Nazis.
In response to the many who found noble motives on one side or the other, I wrote on February 14, ten days before the operation:
Those who remain skeptical of the economic motives behind the US warmongering must explain why Biden placed natural gas politics ahead of any other matter before him and his German ally [Scholtz] in this first significant policy exchange. Biden’s glee– not shared by his German counterpart– reveals the importance the US government places on seizing the natural gas market from the Russians, their rival in the energy business.
The Ukraine crisis presents other economic advantages as well. In less than two weeks, the US has sent eight cargo planes to the Ukraine with military supplies, part of the $200 million Biden authorized in new military aid. The xenophobic, ultra-nationalist Baltic states and Poland have sent massive amounts of military equipment to Ukraine as well, much of which is sourced from US corporations and will be replaced by aid or purchases from the US.
Whether Ukraine joins NATO or not, Ukraine is being militarized and will continue to be a destination for US arms. On this front, the US military-industrial establishment will win, regardless of the crisis outcome.
Adversaries on both sides of the Cold War-like divide will be armed to the teeth and the possibility of war raised accordingly.
US “aid” to Ukraine since last February is rapidly approaching 100 billion dollars– far more than US aid to any other country or any other country’s contribution to Ukraine’s war effort.
With the Russian military invading on several fronts on February 24 of last year, the civil war reached a qualitatively greater intensity, with NATO sharply increasing its participation. Weapons poured into Ukraine, guaranteeing a conflict of a dimension unseen in Europe since World War II. Predictably, the Western propaganda machine spoke with one voice, portraying Ukraine as a hapless victim of unprovoked Russian invasion.
Sadly, the social democratic and liberal left in Europe and the US– blinded by the missionary zeal of the twisted doctrine of “humanitarian interventionism” and intoxicated by a media smear of everything Russian– quickly fell in line with NATO’s militarization of Ukraine, going so far as calling for a military victory over Russia and regime change in Moscow.
Western ruling classes proved adept at winning the broad center-left to the bizarre notion that a moral defense of Ukraine constructed around the principle of self-determination could be applicable to a regime that itself violated the democratic principle of self-determination by staging a violent coup d’état eight years earlier.
As in 1914 in the early stages of World War I, the liberals and social democrats betrayed any anti-war principles to the fever of war. No anti-war movement was forthcoming from this camp.
In the US, this left-center opportunism is firmly held in place by fealty to the Democratic Party, whose imperial adventures are only softly challenged by liberals or social democrats.
Others on the left– whether from a nostalgic conflation of Russia with the Soviet Union or a failure to understand Russia’s role in the imperialist system– portrayed the Russian government as a liberator or as a paragon of anti-imperialism. This naive view turned reality on its head and imagined a corralling of imperialism– a step towards a multipolar utopia– as an anticipated result of Russia’s defeat of NATO’s surrogates on the battlefield of Ukraine.
How Russia prevailing or any other alternative military outcome could benefit the working classes of Ukraine, Russia, or the West is beyond credulity. Illusions of a Russian version of humanitarian intervention unfortunately infect some elements of the left. Meanwhile, the bodies are piling up, homes are destroyed, and families are forced to flee.
Too few of us on the left rejected the two misguided choices, recognizing the essence of the war as imperialist conflict.
As the war ground on, I wrote on May 9, 2022:
The great tragedy is that the broad left– the historical foil to war and imperialism– remains divided, confused, and inactive while a bloody, destructive war rages, threatening to expand and escalate. As the war continues with no resolution, the only winner is US imperialism.
Trade union militants in Italy and Greece took to the streets to oppose the war, along with Greek Communists. Thousands marched in Prague in September against rising energy and other costs as a result of the war in Ukraine. Yet no national action against the war occurred in the US, and little in the rest of Europe.
The fact that the Zelensky regime outlawed political parties, stripped labor regulations, and criminalized the opposition found most of the liberal and social democratic left unmoved (The AFL-CIO– a strong supporter of Zelensky– was eventually forced to object on behalf of its favored anti-Communist unions).
Efforts for a peaceful settlement were persistently undermined by the Western powers– the US, UK, and their NATO partners.
In the face of intransigent Western governments and a lame, disputatious left guilty of misguided partisanship, the cause of peace was left to others. The populist right has attempted to take on the role of peacekeeper, at least to the extent of questioning the unconditional support for the further escalation of the war. As the war stalemated, right-wing politicians in opposition found mismanagement of the war to be a fertile field for political advantages. For a vivid example of right-populist war skepticism, see Representative Matt Gaetz’s scathing rebuke of US Defense Department officials, concluding that US money spent on guaranteeing Ukrainian pensions would be better spent in the US on bolstering pension reserves here.
Democratic Party elected officials, on the other hand, have been unmoved, staying solidly behind Biden’s instigation and expansion of the war.
The notorious corruption of successive Ukrainian regimes, the mobilizing of more troops and the introduction of more lethal and longer-range weapons, and weariness over the dwindling prospect of early victories are spawning questions and doubts. As the conflict is prolonged, support in the opinion polls is now sagging. This is reflected in less cheerleading and more nuance in coverage by leading newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
A recent feature article in The Wall Street Journal, Domestic Political Troubles Return for Ukraine’s Zelensky, recounts both the checkered trajectory of Zelensky’s career and his immersion in a sea of corruption. Recently, a large number of his colleagues were ousted or forced to resign for serious corruption.
The article cites opposition politicians who portray the leader as “authoritarian” over his total dominance of the Ukrainian media. In addition, The WSJ reminds us that Ukrainian trust in Zelensky was down to 28% before the war. In short, the lengthy article tarnishes the image of the celebrity figure formerly viewed by the media as whistle-clean and selfless, perhaps a telling sign of some cracks in ruling class consensus.
Also, the sunny prospects of Ukrainian victory with advanced Western technologies are beginning to turn a little gloomy; in late February Zelensky fired a top general serving as the commander of the joint forces of Ukraine. Apparently, Russia has seized the military initiative in Eastern Ukraine to rhe chagrin of Ukraine’s leaders.
Most countries are refusing to be bullied by US efforts to steer them into condemning or sanctioning Russia. Both Peoples’ China and Lula’s Brazil have proposed plans for all parties to cease fighting and negotiate.
These and other changes and initiatives offer hope that resistance to the war will grow. This year, two encouraging national actions in opposition to the war were planned to rally in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, the organizers of the events engaged in bitter Internet battles where some questions of substance were poisoned by egos, turf wars, and pettiness. Historically, rival peace organizations settle their differences and validate their approach in practice. We have seen factional and sectarian conflict in the peace movement before. At least, there is now motion to halt the war and negotiate, with another rally scheduled for March 18.
Recent actions in Europe are encouraging, as well. Thousands have marched in Berlin, London, and other cities.
Maybe we are seeing the first shoots of a soon-to-blossom movement to end the war and reject militarism.
As I wrote last September 7:
The war in Ukraine is the logical outcome of the unwinding of globalization, a process that began with the 2007-2009 world economic crisis…
Competition intensified and rivalries became more virulent. Inevitably, economic competition leads to confrontation and confrontation leads to war.
The circumstances of war become less important and the deadly outcomes and possible escalations take center stage. Today, the likelihood of a long, bloody war and its potential expansion beyond borders demand action.
As this tragedy unfolds, the only answer– the working-class answer– is to pull out all stops to end it. We desperately need a militant movement to stop this war.
The need is even more urgent today.
https://mltoday.com/the-war-in-ukraine-a-year-on/
Greg's analysis of the likely outcome discounts Russia achieving it's stated goals. Though far from a 'sure thing' I wouldn't be so quick...things may come to a head sooner than many think.
**********
China’s peace plan for Ukraine
Originally published: Consortium News on March 3, 2023 by Tony Kevin (more by Consortium News) | (Posted Mar 13, 2023)
The tragic year-long war in Ukraine has already transformed the world’s geopolitical landscape.
Historic global power shifts towards the Eurasian heartland, centred on China, are accelerating. China and Russia have drawn together in a strong “no limits” partnership, that is attracting other major states in the Global South, especially India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, Brazil and South Africa.
The common link is on building stronger trading, infrastructure and diplomatic ties, consistent with the U.N.-based international security system. More and more, the Western camp led by the U.S. seems peripheral, a powerless spectator to these global changes.
The Ukraine crisis is a catalyst, accelerating changes that might have otherwise taken decades to work through.
Mediocre Western leaders like U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz, French President Emmanuel Macron and a conga line of weak British prime ministers, allied with the improbable former comedian heading a nationalist regime in Kiev united only by its fanatical hatred of all things Russian, have led the West into disastrous anti-Russian policies, causing self-inflicted wounds especially in Europe.
The root cause of the West’s current woes is the Washington elite’s refusal to come to grips with its own disasters at home: in a country increasingly weakened by stark ideological and economic contradictions.
Obsessed by the great power competition with Russia and China, the Washington elite at the same time repeatedly under-estimates Russian and Chinese diplomatic skills and will to survive. A bipartisan war party drains Washington’s budgets as America’s key infrastructure frays.
Hundreds of billions go to prop up NATO’s unwinnable proxy war against Russia in Ukraine: a war which actually began in February 2014, not 2022. Influential Americans saw Ukraine as a weapon to destabilise Russian President Vladimir Putin, by turning the two most populous ex-Soviet nation-states against each other. They connived with Ukrainian Banderite extreme nationalists to militarise and indoctrinate Ukraine against Russia.
For the U.S. whichever side won the U.S. arms industry prospered. Russian diplomatic efforts in 2014-21 to maintain peace with a sovereign Kiev through the Minsk process were negated by Western duplicity.
U.S.-Russian talks in Geneva, June 2021. (Kremlin)
Meanwhile the Ukrainian army was expanded and hardened by NATO weapons and training. A long-running artillery war waged by Kiev against its pro-Russian dissident eastern provinces Donetsk and Lugansk, ignored by Western media, left up to 14,000 dead and over 100,000 homeless.
Testing Putin’s Resolve
By December 2021, Washington and Kiev judged themselves strong enough to test Putin’s resolve. He was faced with lose-lose. If he allowed Kiev a genocidal victory over the Donbass rebel provinces, his credibility as Russian leader would slump.
He could only defend Donbass by invading sovereign Ukraine, possibly to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. He chose this lesser evil, seeing the Donbass crisis as having become an existential threat to Russia.
(Bubbling water)
Site of the Nord Stream 2 attack. (Danish Defense Ministry)
After an inconclusive first seven months, the war has turned in favour of a determined-to-win Russia. This is certainly how China and the global South see it, unconvinced by increasingly improbable claims by Ukrain’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO that Kiev can still win this war.
The China – Russia partnership is built on their mutual adherence to the U.N. Security Council rules-based order, and on their support for the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which was drafted by Chinese Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai in 1953 and adopted by the 1995 Non-Aligned Conference in Bandung.
Western Rules
In recent years an opportunistic U.S. and its Western allies have pressed for another kind of international order – a “rules-based order” in which the West sets the rules and decides when and how to enforce them on others.
Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, the dogma of eternal Sino-Soviet geopolitical rivalry has been holy writ in the West. It took the brilliantly inept Trump and Biden administrations to make enemies of both great powers simultaneously, pushing them together: while the Global South looked on appalled as Washington used its own “rules- based order” to bully weaker states.
The Ukraine war has magically clarified this imbroglio. The Global South now respects Russia and China as major status quo powers, and as united defenders of the U.N. Security Council-based global security order. The U.S. has been exposed as a reckless global bully and rules-breaker.
The East-West information war which in February 2022 seemed securely in Western hands has escaped from their control.
Restoring Peace session at World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 18, from left: CNN’S Fareed Zakaria, host; Polish President Andrzej Duda, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko, U.S. National Intelligence Director Avril Haines. (World Economic Forum/Mattias Nutt, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Western-supported terrorist actions in and around the Ukraine war – in the terrorist trifecta in September 2022 of the U.K.-Ukrainian sabotage attack on the Kerch Bridge, the U.S.-Norwegian sabotage of the Russian-German Baltic pipelines and the brutal murder near Moscow of Maria Dugina — sullied the West’s good name.
Large majorities in the Global South now trust Russia and China more than they trust the West. Notwithstanding some recent U.N. General Assembly votes – the result of heavy U.S. arm-twisting of vulnerable smaller states — the reality is there to be seen in shifting trade statistics and in the diplomatic dance.
Western Power Elites
In the G20, the Global South is no longer listening to the West. At Davos, Western power elites now speak only to themselves. After the Ukraine crisis, the Global South sees that China and Russia now offer more attractive global trading and reserve currency alternatives or supplements to the American-dominated dollar system, which Western sanctions have shown to be insecure. They are quietly spreading their risks, politically and economically.
With the discreet help of China, India, Iran and the Middle East entrepot city-states, Russia has sailed with ease through Western trade and banking sanctions. These have boomeranged to harm the U.S.-led bloc, especially through increasing energy costs and declining European trade competitiveness from blocking cheap Russian gas imports.
Once proud European states Germany and France have reverted to full lackey status, dependent on U.S. energy and weaponry.
Since 2014, Chinese-Russian diplomatic, trade and infrastructure links have grown robustly. Their equal-partner military cooperation is now entrenched.
China exports many dual-use high technology products to Russia. China does not need to supply Russia with weapons: but if it ever thought it needed to, it would. Because China knows that if Russia collapsed under Western sanctions, it would be next.
The importance of the Ukraine crisis has been to crystallize Chinese leadership perceptions of the U.S. as an untrustworthy partner, and the existential enemy of both China and Russia.
Even under President Donald Trump, the U.S. tried to provoke destabilization and regime change in China: around Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan and in the South China Sea. In trying so clumsily to portray China as an aggressor, the U.S. finally convinced China’s leadership that the U.S. has at least since 2014 pursued aggressive strategies towards Russia and China.
In the past month, the pace of Chinese global diplomacy has quickened. The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was received last week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov; Nikolai
Patrushev, head of national security, and Putin himself, when he visited Moscow as a precursor to a March-April visit by Chairman Xi Jinping which will announce far-reaching new economic cooperation.
China has recently launched an activist peace diplomacy, setting out its “Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis.” This impressive general document, based on the U.N. Charter and the Five Principles, indicates China’s support for an immediate ceasefire without preconditions; no more Western arms supplies; and offering massive reconstruction aid to a post-settlement new government in Ukraine.
It will be attractive to the Global South. It will cause consternation in the Western war party camp. Russia has welcomed it. We will see the Chinese peace plan talked about in coming weeks. It may offer the breakthrough for peace for which many Ukrainians pray.
https://mronline.org/2023/03/13/chinas- ... r-ukraine/
*****
Jihadi Julian is worried
March 14, 19:23
Jihadi Julian is worried about the situation in Artyomovsk.
Meanwhile. The first video has appeared from the territory of the Vostokmash plant liberated this morning in the AZOM industrial zone in Artemovsk.
(Video at link.)
Prigozhin confirmed the reports of the Ukrainian media about the advancement of the PMC "Wagner" in the center of Artemovsk, pointing out that the advanced positions are already close to the administration of Artemovsk (this is already the very center of the city).
Also, according to him, the entire grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Artemovsk region (not only in the city itself) is estimated at 70,000 soldiers and officers. According to him, due to the available forces, the enemy is preparing a counterattack in the city area in order to rectify the situation.
The broadcast of hostilities in Ukraine continues as usual in Telegram - if you are interested, subscribe
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8224171.html
Russian fighter jet shot down US MQ-9 Reaper drone
March 14, 20:38
Russian fighter jet shot down US MQ-9 Reaper drone
U.S. European Command statement regarding the Black Sea Incident: “Two Russian Su-27 aircraft made an unsafe and unprofessional
interception of a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 unmanned aircraft on a reconnaissance mission that was in international airspace over the Black Sea today.
03:03 AM (CET) One of the Russian Su-27 aircraft grazed the propeller of an MQ-9, causing US forces to shoot down the MQ-9 in international waters Several times before the collision, the Su-27 jettisoned fuel and flew in front of the MQ-9 reckless, in an environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional.
“Our MQ-9 aircraft was performing normal operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and shot down by a Russian aircraft, resulting in the crash and total loss of the MQ-9,” said an Air Force general. James B. Hecker, Commander, US Air Force Europe and Air Force Africa.
The State Department intends to hold consultations with the Russian Foreign Ministry on this incident.
Since the United States accused a Russian fighter pilot of pouring aviation kerosene onto an American drone in the air, it is certainly difficult not to recall the story of Vasily Tsymbal.
Rain of stinking kerosene...
Vasya Tsymbal was a graduate of the Armavir Aviation School and, like all the guys from there, he was famous for his ability to clearly fulfill the assigned combat missions, though ... Not quite standard and, I would even say, very extraordinary approaches. His favorite trick was tricks with fuel.
Another such trick just happened in the Far East, when one of the Japanese guards (moreover, carrying a couple of helicopters - a kind of unofficial aircraft carrier) crossed the border between neutral waters and the territory of the USSR. Unfortunately for the Japanese, Vasya Tsymbal was in the sky, and he quickly figured out what to do. Having made a couple of turns at an ultra-low altitude above the ship, he was convinced that he was not going to change course, and decided to try to scare the uninvited guests properly. Rising higher, he turned around and began to dive at the Japanese. They were seriously frightened - the provocation had gone too far, and no one knew whether the order had been given to the Soviet pilot to attack.
As a result, Tsymbal at cruising speed swept 5-6 meters above the deck and literally blew one of the helicopters into the water with a stream of air, after which, apparently, on a wave of excitement, he said shortly, but succinctly, on open air: “Fucked up a kitten!” The Japanese, having heard one of the most expressive expressions of the Russian mat, turned the ship 180 degrees and set off at full speed. But this was not enough for the show-off Vasya. While the Japanese ship was in the waters of the Soviet Union, Vasya decided to work out his favorite trick. Flying over the cuckoo's nest as unfortunate provocateurs, Tsymbal turned on the fuel drain and doused the military of the Land of the Rising Sun with kerosene rain. The descendants of the samurai could not stand such a shame and in droves ran to do hara-kiri to complain to higher authorities.
Almost immediately after Vasya returns to the base, he is called to the carpet (they also heard everything at the base) and, having learned the details, they sigh with relief - thank God, he didn’t kill anyone - and send him to the other end of the country so that, in which case, according to the good old tradition to declare that “the pilot is not ours”, and indeed “two weeks since he left for Murmansk”.
Once in the north, Vasily Tsymbal did not change his habits. In September 87, however, as always, it was restless near the Kola Peninsula - American and Norwegian NATO troops flew quite often, entering Soviet airspace several times a day, and aircraft carriers plowed the Barents Sea, from which these planes took off . When Vasya, for the seventh time in a day, ran to his faithful Su-27, putting on a helmet on the move ... He probably really wanted to use fire to kill and missiles with a nuclear warhead, just to be sure.
But the corresponding orders were not given, and Tsymbal was left only with his good old trick. Having persuaded his comrade, he, together with him, arranges a rain of smelly kerosene for the Americans. Oddly enough, this helped a lot - the Yankees began to appear much less in the region. And there were no consequences for Vasily.
(c) author Timofey Berdikin (more about Vasily here https://pikabu.ru/story/vozdushnyiy_khu ... al_6998356 )
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8224356.html
MQ-9 Reaper went into unguided flight
Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation about the incident with the American UAV MQ-9 Reaper.
The official statement of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the situation with the fallen American drone:
1. On the morning of March 14 of this year. over the waters of the Black Sea in the area of the Crimean peninsula, the airspace control of the Russian Aerospace Forces recorded the flight of an American MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle in the direction of the State Border of the Russian Federation;
2. The flight of an unmanned aerial vehicle was carried out with transponders turned off, violating the boundaries of the area of the temporary regime for the use of airspace, established for the purpose of conducting a special military operation, communicated to all users of international airspace and published in accordance with international standards;
3. In order to identify the intruder, fighters from the air defense forces on duty were raised into the air. As a result of sharp maneuvering around 9.30 (Moscow time), the MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle went into uncontrolled flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface;
4. Russian fighters did not use airborne weapons, did not come into contact with an unmanned aerial vehicle and returned safely to their home airfield.
* * *
According to the situation at 21:00.
About the incident over the Black Sea at 9 pm.
1. The United States intends through the State Department to discuss the incident with the Russian Foreign Ministry https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80443in the Black Sea, which led to the loss of the reconnaissance and strike UAV MQ-9 Reaper. It can also be assumed that there will be closed contacts along the line of "deconflicting" through the defense departments. The United States also announced that it would continue flights over the Black Sea.
2. The United States also expressed concern about the incident, a little earlier, in an official statement by the European command of the US Army, accusing the pilots of the Russian aircraft of unprofessionalism and violating the ecology of the Black Sea.
3. Formally, the United States cannot accuse Russia of destroying the UAV, since they themselves admit that they had to finish it off on their own. Therefore, they will rest on the fact that the discharge of kerosene and damage to the propeller had fatal consequences.
4. Depending on the configuration, the lost car could cost from 23 to 30 million dollars. It is worth noting that this is not the first loss of the MQ-9 Reaper with a "Russian trace". During the fighting in Libya in 2019-2020, 2 American and 1 Italian MQ-9 drone were shot down. In at least two episodes, the Wagner PMC, which was armed with the Pantsir air defense missile system, was accused of this. The official version was the actions of Haftar's LNA, which was also armed with the Pantsir air defense missile system in export configuration.
5. The Russian fighter jets involved in the incident over the Black Sea returned safely to the airfield in Crimea. One of them will draw a star for himself.
6. In the area of "tactical use of aviation kerosene" the forces of the Black Sea Fleet are searching for and recovering the wreckage of the fallen American reconnaissance and strike drone MQ-9 Reaper. Records of negotiations in the area where the drone fell https://t.me/milinfolive/97987 (second record) were also published, indicating the ongoing search. Perhaps something interesting will be able to catch. Judging by the negotiations, something has already been fished out. At one time, the Iranians filled up the RQ-4 Global Hawk and were able to catch something useful in the sea for their drone program. The US has denied that Russia has recovered the drone fragments, but the talks from the crash site are telling enough.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80451 - zinc
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/80450 - zinc
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8224643.html
Zaliznyanskoye liberated
March 15, 2:49 p.m
PMC "Wagner" today liberated the village of Zaliznyanskoye to the north-west of Artemovsk. The fighting there continues to move towards Kramatorsk.
The battles for Orekhovo-Vasilyevka, Bogdanovka and Khromovo also continue (reports of the complete capture of Khromovo are ahead of events). The roads from Artemovsk are under constant fire control. The enemy there is suffering increasing losses in manpower and equipment.
Broadcast of hostilities in Ukraine as usual here https://t.me/boris_rozhin (if you are interested, subscribe)
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8225667.html
It turned out inconvenient
March 15, 13:09
Despite statements by the Pentagon that Russia did not recover the equipment of the MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance and strike UAV that fell in the Black Sea, fears are expressed in the United States (including by officials) that Russia has already gained access to the wreckage of the drone, which may be of technological value to study and subsequent reverse engineering. The recording of the recovery of engine fragments, published yesterday, aroused serious interest among experts, who admit that sufficiently large fragments of the drone may be in an acceptable state for study after recovery.
Despite the fact that Russia has previously gained access to fragments of the MQ-9 technology (downed vehicles in Libya, alleged familiarization with technologies that fell into the possession of Iran, etc.), of course, it is not the hull and engine that are of key importance, but the electronic filling of the machine , which is periodically updated by the Americans (due to which the cost of these drones is growing). Considering that Russia may share such information with Iran (which often comes into contact with the MQ-9 in its hybrid wars), the question can be much more important than just familiarizing yourself with the wreckage.
Hence the obvious desire of the Biden administration to put the brakes on this issue (not only we are laughing at the accusation of violating the environment) and the simultaneous attacks on it by the Trumpists, who have seized on another joint of the Biden administration.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8225363.html
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