Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Posted: Thu May 18, 2023 12:05 pm
lugansk
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 05/18/2023
Protagonists of the Donbass rebellion that in the summer of 2014 led to sovereignty referendums, the proclamation of the People's Republics and the start of a war that never ended, Donetsk and Lugansk have followed parallel paths, albeit with different nuances. Faced with a DPR in which a group of people willing to organize a political structure parallel to the Ukrainian authorities was created from the beginning, the start of the protests in Lugansk was much more turbulent. As Anna Matveeva details in her book “Through times of trouble. Conflict in South Eastern Ukraine”, the absence of figures willing to lead the protests politically was complete. The seizure of the SBU building in the capital of the former oblastguaranteed possession of an arsenal of weapons. However, still undecided about the direction in which to lead the protests, those people who had led the assault found themselves pressured by the population itself to continue. Matveeva cites what would be the first leader of the RPL, Igor Bolotov, explaining that it was the population of Lugansk gathered there that forced the group to continue.
From there, with a more solid start but also more prone to the first internal divisions, after a first proclamation in which not many believed, the two emerging People's Republics tried to organize a series of armed groups with which to defend themselves from the imminent Ukrainian assault. It was then that people like Alexey Mozgovoy or Alexander Jodakovsky began to organize the groups with which they would become known: the Prizrak and Vostok brigades. The appearance in Slavyansk of the armed group led by Igor Girkin, Strelkov , diverted all attention to the Donetsk region. Since then, the leading role has always fallen mainly on the development of events in the Donetsk region, with Lugansk as a secondary scenario to which little attention has been paid.
In military terms, the months of the active phase of the Donbass war occurred in parallel. The different localities organized their garrisons, not always well communicated with the center in Lugansk and from the beginning with coordination difficulties. The fall of Slavyansk had a domino effect that affected the two capitals of Donbass in the same way, which saw the front line come dangerously close. Closer to the Russian border than Donetsk, Lugansk experienced an aerial bombardment by Ukrainian aircraft on June 2, 2014 that caused the death of a dozen people in one of the main squares of the city. Although perhaps it was a miss-target and the Ukrainian troops wanted to catch up with the LPR militias then fighting for control of the border posts with the Russian Federation, a projectile perfectly visible in the recordings of that day hit a civilian building causing dramatic images. As Ukraine quickly began to spread conspiracy theories - the explosion of an air conditioner or the failure of a surface-to-air missile from theRussian troops -, a woman was bleeding to death in the street, with both legs amputated, asking for help. kyiv never admitted to the attack. Petro Poroshenko had been elected president of Ukraine just five days earlier and it was already clear that he had crossed a red line on a path that could only lead to open war.
As in Donetsk, internal fighting began quickly and the first leader of the RPL was replaced by Igor Plotnitsky, who would lead the Republic always questioned, mocked and sometimes hated. Bolotov, who never physically recovered from the war, died years later of a heart attack. And Plotnitsky, who was directly accused of having ordered the assassinations of several uncomfortable commanders such as Alexander Bednov, Batman , or Alexey Mozgovoy, was finally removed in a palace coup that brought Leonid Pasechnik to power, who would ultimately be in charge of signing , together with Denis Pushilin and Vladimir Putin, the documents in which the Russian Federation ratified the recognition of the People's Republics on February 22, 2022.
Focus of the press only to highlight the plight of the population, the cases of corruption or to compare it with African countries -the attitude of Ukraine and a significant part of the population towards the People's Republics has always included doses of racism and supremacism-, the lack of interest in Lugansk in recent years has been notable, and even in the Russian press, reports on the poorer of the two People's Republics have been scarce. During the winter of 2014-2015, with the media interest in the Donetsk airport and the battle for Debaltsevo, the situation in the RPL was critical and in some isolated areas, practically besieged by Ukraine and inaccessible to volunteers transporting humanitarian aid, cases of deaths due to hunger were recorded. And opposite Donetsk, much more developed, Lugansk was always behind. In these years of low-intensity war, economic blockade and economic dependence on Russia, the problems with trying to maintain industrial production, key in places like Alchevsk, have meant a perceptible loss of population on the streets. In front of the lively Donetsk, where the parks were filled with families, the streets seemed to have returned to civilian life and a part of the shops were working trying to maintain normality, Lugansk contrasted as a darker and empty city where the remains of the bombings they were perceptible in areas close to the most central places. It has meant a perceptible loss of population on the streets. In front of the lively Donetsk, where the parks were filled with families, the streets seemed to have returned to civilian life and a part of the shops were working trying to maintain normality, Lugansk contrasted as a darker and empty city where the remains of the bombings they were perceptible in areas close to the most central places. It has meant a perceptible loss of population on the streets. In front of the lively Donetsk, where the parks were filled with families, the streets seemed to have returned to civilian life and a part of the shops were working trying to maintain normality, Lugansk contrasted as a darker and empty city where the remains of the bombings they were perceptible in areas close to the most central places.
The beginning of the Russian military intervention has changed the reality in the People's Republics. Poorer and less strategic, Lugansk has always been worse defended by Ukraine. Beyond the most important places, mainly Stanitsa Luganskaya and Schastie, captured in the first hours of the special military operationwithout resistance, much of Lugansk lacked fortifications similar to those in the cities of the Donetsk region. The Russian advance north of Lugansk contrasted with the difficulties of advancing in any direction in the Donetsk region. Russia only collided head-on with Ukrainian resistance in the two big cities, Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, in 2014 defended by Alexey Mozgovoy and lost with a withdrawal in time when there was no way to defend them that summer. Although the breakout of the Kharkiv front brought the front line back to the LPR, by July 2023, Russian troops controlled the entire former Lugansk Oblast .
The geographical position of the region, close to the Russian border, and the retreat of the front have brought about a qualitative change in cities like Lugansk. Virtually desolate as soon as the sun went down in the war years in Donbass, Lugansk suddenly became a safer city than Donetsk, threatened daily by indiscriminate Ukrainian shelling. Contrasting also with the situation experienced in the summer of 2014, when the population had to survive without a running water supply, Lugansk has not suffered the problems of water cuts that Donetsk is experiencing and that have forced Russia to build a pipeline to transport water from the river Don.
Less important to kyiv than Donetsk, the Ukraine hadn't even bothered to bomb Lugansk. Increased security had allowed Russia to locate some of its logistically important structures for the entire Donbass front grouping there instead of in the DPR. However, and coincidentally coinciding with the announcement of the arrival in Ukraine of the new long-range missiles sent by the United Kingdom, things have changed in recent days. Ukraine, which first used its HIMARS against Perevalsk, also in the RPL, might have first used its Storm Shadows against the city of Lugansk, where it destroyed two industrial buildings over the weekend. The remoteness of their positions from the city of Lugansk makes it impossible to use 155-millimeter artillery, which Ukraine uses daily against Donetsk, but the selective bombardments have continued throughout these days. Bomb attacks have also begun. One person was killed and seven wounded in an attack apparently targeting LPR Interior Minister Igor Kornet.
Both shelling and attacks on the city are expected to increase as the Ukrainian counter-offensive approaches. As in other areas of the front, the objective is twofold: to destroy Russian military magazines and depots to undermine the combat capacity by complicating logistics and to intimidate the population. As in the case of Donetsk, Ukraine seeks to increase the uncertainty of the population, aware that there are no completely safe places, and create doubts about Russia's ability to defend the cities. The shadow of the British missiles, the precedents of the Ukraine's performance in the attacks to the rear and the lack of concern of Kiev for the civilian population that could be injured portend a worsening of the situation in cities that, like Lugansk,
https://slavyangrad.es/2023/05/18/27292/#more-27292
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An Historical Background to the US/NATO Proxy War Against Russia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 17, 2023
Ian Beddowes
Today the USA and its NATO allies have an overwhelming military presence throughout the world and are still trying to push that even further. They have the whole world divided into military commands. They have funded extremists everywhere, jihadists in the Middle East, Nazis in Ukraine. To call Russia imperialist’ in the present world order and under present conditions is to objectively support the continuation of NATO domination. Forward with the de-Nazification of Ukraine !! Forward with Reconstruction of Ukraine!! HANDS OFF RUSSIA !! The ZCP further calls for the rolling back of NATO and US domination everywhere and especially on our continent, Africa.
Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has challenged the right of the USA to implement regime change through the use of extremist groups, terrorism and media manipulation and then establish military bases in the territory of its newly acquired ‘ally’.
This is what USA is attempting to do with Ukraine.
NATO, formed in 1949 to advance the Cold War, mainly at the instigation of the USA, has in recent years, distinguished itself by the destruction of Yugoslavia, the bombing of Iraq, the destruction of Libya and the terrorising of Afghan peasants in a bloody and fruitless war. The USA has around 800 military bases around the world in some 80 countries. It has divided the world into military commands. No other country has, in the history of humanity, ever had such a worldwide military presence. Europe is under EUCOM (European Command), India is under PACOM (Pacific Command and Africa is under AFRICOM (Africa Command).
Already there are US bases in countries close to Russia such as Poland and Turkey. Russia does not have any bases next to the USA, and in fact when the Soviet Union started to put missile bases in Cuba in 1962, the USA threatened nuclear war.
Now let us study the historical relationship between Ukraine and Russia:
The Eastern Slavs were one people speaking one language up until 1000 years ago. And even today, there are people speaking dialects intermediate between Russian and Ukrainian.
Towards the end of the 9th century Prince Oleg of Novgorod relocated to Kyiv/Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine and established a kingdom of East Slavic people. This stretched across the land of modern central Russia and Ukraine west of the Urals, the concept of Russia and Ukraine as separate countries was unknown. Vladimir the Great, who was the first Russian Prince to make Orthodox Christianity the state religion, came to the throne in 980 and is recognised by Russians and Ukrainians alike.
Around 1240 came the Mongol invasion and the destruction of the old Rus, as it was known. It took another 200 years for new principalities to be formed as Mongol control weakened. In the 16th century, Prince Ivan III of Moscow, better known to history as Ivan the Terrible, united the Russian lands as the first Tsar. There was no specific territory or people known as ‘Ukraine’.
The Zaporzhian Cossacks, composed mostly of independent peasants who had run away from serfdom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and had settled around the Dnieper River are believed to have used the term ‘Ukraine’ in the 16th century. It is generally agreed that ‘Ukraine’ means ‘borderlands’ — and it had no fixed boundaries.
Some people speaking the dialect which later became the Ukrainian language settled in Galicia, then in the Austrian Empire, and it was from this group that Ukrainian nationalism spread. During the 19th century, various nationalist movements grew up in Europe based on ethnicity. They challenged the rule of big nations, but also could be cruel to others. This was a particular feature of the Ukrainian nationalists.
In 1917, during the chaos of the First World War, Symon Petlyura became a military leader of the Ukrainian nationalists and later ruler of a large section of Ukraine until finally defeated in 1920 by the Ukrainian Bolsheviks. Petlyura’s Army was known for ethnic cleansing and the slaughter of thousands of Jews who formed about 15% of the Ukrainian population at that time.
At the end of 1917, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was formed and eventually, as the Bolsheviks expanded their power during the Civil War, by 1920 had secured its rule over the whole of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic then joined the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the time of its formation at the end of December 1922.
Now we need to deal with one of the biggest slanders made against the Soviet government by the Ukrainian Nazis and their western backers. This is the often repeated lie that in 1932, the Soviet Union deliberately engineered a famine which killed 4 million Ukrainians. The formulators of falsified history refer to this as the ‘Holodomor’ and this idea is used to create hatred against Russians and against Communists among young Ukrainians. In fact the term ‘Holodomor’ was unknown before the early 1980s.
This hideous lie was perpetuated in the West by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute founded in 1975 but which received heavy funding after the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1981 which marked the beginning of the destructive neoliberal agenda. The pseudo-documentary film Harvest of Despair was then produced with the assistance of Ukrainian Nazis in Canada in 1985 and in 1986 British disinformation specialist Robert Conquest published his book Harvest of Sorrow which was taken apart in the well-researched Fraud, Famine and Fascism by Douglas Tottle written in 1987 and available online.
What are the facts?
1. Old Russia, including Ukraine, was subject to drought and famine every 8 to 10 years due to erratic rainfall patterns. The majority of peasants throughout the Russian Empire had suffered poverty, malnutrition and occasional starvation for hundreds of years.
2. V.I. Lenin, on 26th October 1917, the day after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, announced that all land belonged to those who worked on it. They no longer had to pay any form of rent to the landowners.
3. The Russian Empire as a whole had been a place of primitive agricultural methods. With industrialization under the Soviet Union came a growing urban population which needed to be fed.
4. The rich peasants known as the kulaks (fists), found it profitable to hoard grain in order to put up prices. They were holding the USSR to ransom.
5. In 1927, as part of the first 5-year plan, it was decided to mechanise and collectivise agriculture. The growing population of the USSR could not be fed by small-scale peasant production.
6. Landless peasants, poor peasants and many middle peasants were happy to sign up for the collective farms. The kulaks, who in Ukraine were supported by Ukrainian nationalists, were unhappy with collectivisation.
7. At Kharkov/Kharkiv in Ukraine, enthusiastic workers established a tractor factory outside of the 5-year plan.
8. 1932 was a hot and dry year. There was little rain. Hot and dry conditions led to a typhoid epidemic. It was also a time of collectivisation. Kulaks and Ukrainian nationalists destroyed livestock and burnt cops and boasted about it.
9. Realistic estimates show that around 1.8 million people died during this period, the majority from typhoid, and not all of them were in Ukraine as the drought affected surrounding areas of Russia and even Kazakhstan.
10. Due to collectivisation and improved agricultural techniques there was no famine anywhere in the Soviet Union after 1932, (Save during the Nazi occupation 1941-1944).
11. Written reports by German officers during the occupation show that although the Nazis asked the peasants to de-collectivise, they refused saying that they were better off under the collective.
12. Most of the stories about the ‘Holodomor’ used by Robert Conquest in Harvest of Sorrow come from the Hearst press and from ‘reporters’ who it can be shown, never visited Ukraine. William Randolph Hearst is known as the ‘Father of Yellow Journalism’ in the USA.
13. Most of the photos used in Harvest of Sorrow are actually stills made from a Soviet Famine Relief film made for the 1921-1922 Volga Famine which occurred in an area which had only come under Soviet control in 1920 at the end of the Civil War. None of the photos is actually of the 1932 famine.
It is important to go through this matter in a little detail as these lies are still being perpetrated inside Ukraine and in the West and have been an important factor in the war of falsification.
When the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, many Ukrainians in the extreme west of Ukraine joined the Nazis, and some 200,000 joined various Nazi formations, some directly under the German SS. The Ukrainian divisions were noted for their extreme cruelty massacring not only Jews but more than 100,000 Poles. They were also distinguished themselves as concentration camp guards.
The majority of the Ukrainian Nazis came from the regions of Volhynia and Galicia which had been annexed by Poland in 1919. Following the refusal of the West, including Poland to make a deal with the USSR in 1938, the USSR made a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939. Germany invaded Poland on 1st September 1939. The Red Army only entered eastern Poland on 17th September 1939 after the Polish government had gone into exile. The majority population of this region was Ukrainian. This much criticised agreement gave the USSR time to re-arm and extra territory once the inevitable Nazi invasion began in June 1941.
It was from these territories that had formed eastern Poland between the two World Wars that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian nationalists came. They were enthusiastic in their support for the German Nazis whose ideology they eagerly adopted. Their message was fostered by the USA and its allies after the Second World War and is largely responsible for the current war.
It should be noted that around 250,000 Ukrainians fought bravely in Soviet partisan units and 4.5 million in the Red Army.
As the German Nazis were being pushed westward by the Red Army in 1944, Ukrainian Nazis, including wanted war criminals fled towards the American lines where they were welcomed in preparation for the coming Cold War. In fact as soon as the war was over, the followers of Stepan Bandera began an anti-Soviet guerrilla campaign which lasted until 1955, they were armed by the USA and Britain.
The Communist hero, Kim Philby, a Soviet agent working for British intelligence became head of MI.6. Philby never in fact spied against Britain. In fact his job was to parachute Ukrainian Nazis into the Soviet Union, where of course, they were immediately picked up.
In 1991 came the betrayal by Gorbachev and Yeltsin and the elitist stratum which they represented and the consequent dissolution of the Soviet Union. At a referendum held early in 1991, 70% of Ukrainians voted to retain the Soviet Union, but following the dissolution of the USSR, the independence of Ukraine was recognised.
Despite all the problems, the Communist Party of Ukraine was still quite popular winning nearly 20% of the votes in 2001. Problems really started in 2004 with the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’. In 2004 Viktor Yanukovych was elected President with a very narrow majority over his rival Viktor Yushchenko. Supporters of Yushchenko, fed with the Holodomor narrative and funded by the USA, came to the streets and forced the Ukrainian Supreme Court to reverse the decision. Yushchenko had most of his support from western Ukraine and wanted closer links with the European Union, while Yanukovych drew most of his support from the east and supported strengthening existing relations with Russia.
In 2010. Yanukovych was again elected President. He remained in office until 2014 when he was driven out by the Nazi-led Maidan Coup. Because President Yanukovych had agreed to make closer links with Russia rather than with the European Union, demonstrations broke out led by CIA-funded Nazi groups. Right Sector, Aidar and in particular Azov Battalion trained by Blackwater, the US private security company which does undercover work for the US State Department. The Azov Battalion is openly racist and openly Nazi. It uses the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol. Since 2014 all Soviet War memorials have been removed from Ukraine and replaced either by statues of Stepan Bandrea or memorials to the ‘Holodomor’ an event which never happened except in Nazi/US propaganda.
In 2014, the first targets were trade union buildings which were burnt down with trade unionists still inside. Those trying to leave the burning buildings were shot by Nazis. This happened both in Kyiv and Odessa. The Communist Party of Ukraine was driven underground and soon after made illegal. Eastern Ukraine has never been Ukrainian-speaking historically and there was immediate rejection of the coup government ⸺ even in some areas of western Ukraine initially.
The Crimea had never been part of Ukraine historically and under the Soviet Union had only been transferred from the Russian Federation to Ukraine in 1954 for purely administrative reasons. In 2014 the population had no interest in remaining as part of fascist Ukraine. Similarly, Lugansk and Donetsk established independent republics but came under constant attack from the Azov Battalion and other fascists. War and associated atrocities including the shelling of civilians in the People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk continued for 8 years and accelerated under the Biden administration.
Since the time of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton there was an aggressive foreign policy against Russia which was softened under Donald Trump. Joe Biden is from the Clintonite camp of liberal-fascists; that is those in the Democratic Party who while mouthing ‘Human Rights’ are involved in the funding of terror groups and using them as a pretext for aggressive military expansion.
We should remember that the biggest war ever on African soil, the Congo War of 1998-2003 was funded and directed by the USA and initiated by Bill Clinton. The destruction of Africa’s most advanced country, Libya, was carried out by NATO under the presidency of Barrack Obama.
The Biden administration pushed Ukraine towards greater violence against Lugansk and Donetsk and to agitate for entry into NATO. Had Ukraine became a member of NATO, it had the right to ask other NATO countries to intervene in case of problems with Russia.
With attacks on the Russian-speaking population of Donetsk and Lugansk increasing, the Russian government had little option but to intervene against the hostile terrorist state on its doorstep. Having persuaded the Ukrainian government to ask to join NATO, the USA and EU has now refused to send troops against the might of the Russian army and has simply put sanctions against Russia, introducing censorship and blocking news from RT and Sputnik.
Blocking Russia from the Swift clearing system has merely ensured that it joins the Chinese clearing system. Putin has called their bluff.
As the Hungarian Workers’ Party has said in its statement:
“Russia has been dragged into this war by NATO, the US and the EU. The war was provoked by the West, prepared by the West, and now the West wants to shift responsibility to Russia.
“It was not Russia that sent soldiers to Mexico, but the United States to Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, and the Baltic States…
“We support the assessment of events by the Communists of Russia and Belarus. The NATO war is directed against their peoples, against the independence of their countries.”
There has been a personalised propaganda campaign against Vladimir Putin, including the prepetition of the words, ‘Putin’s War’ ⸺ even by some elements who regard themselves as ‘Communist’.
That Putin is a Russian nationalist and not a Communist, and that he has criticised Lenin and Stalin is beyond dispute, but that he is somehow responsible for this war?
This is against all known facts and against all logic.
From 1944, through the early 1950s and with a revival in the 1980s and again in 2004 and then 2014, the USA and Britain have pushed the Ukrainian Nazi agenda.
In 2014 the Nazi coup led to revulsion by many citizens of Ukraine ⸺ more particularly the Russian speakers of Crimea and the Donbass. The people of Crimea in particular had shown reluctance to remain as part of Ukraine from the beginning of the destruction of the USSR. It was also obvious that the USA had hoped to secure the Russian naval base at Sevastopol for themselves. In the event, 86% of the people of Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation. Subsequent polls by Western organisations have shown that only 7% believe that Crimea should have stayed with Ukraine and that around 67% of Ukrainian speakers in Crimea are happier belonging to the Russian Federation.
A series of agreements known as the Minsk accords was finalised in 2015. These gave The Donbass republics, the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Lugansk autonomous status within Ukraine. They would have allowed these people to use the Russian language.
In fact, before the coup of 2014, 44% of the population, mostly in eastern and southern Ukraine, spoke Russian as a first language and this had been so since the formation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922. Even after Ukraine obtained independence from the USSR in 1991, the status quo in terms of language remained until 2014. Russia continually tried to reach a negotiated settlement, but shelling of civilian populations increased until February 2022. It was only then, after 8 years of war between the Ukrainian government and the People’s Militias of Donbass that Putin finally launched Russia’s Special Military Operation. It was done with minimum force with the intention of forcing a negotiated settlement.
But the USA took this as a sign of weakness. Ukraine demanded that the Donbass and Crimea return to Ukraine despite the will of the population of those territories.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkle has since admitted that there was never any serious intent to make peace and that the Minsk Accords were there to give time to Ukraine to arm. It was during this period that the USA built the extensive Bakhmut military complex, currently falling to Russian forces.
President Putin has now made it clear that he now intends to incorporate all Russian-speaking areas into the Russian Federation but has no intention of trying to incorporate Ukrainian-speaking areas. All Russia wants to see there is de-Nazification and a neutral government.
The consequences of the US/NATO hybrid war have been enormous. Sanctions against Russia have rebounded. US companies which had penetrated Russia have now had their assets seized following the seizure of Russian assets in the USA. It has now been shown that without any doubt, the US sabotaged the Nordstream gas pipeline supplying cheap Russian gas to Germany. This has now severely undermined the German economy.
Russia has increased its exports to India and China. The attempts to weaponise the US dollar by confiscating (stealing) the assets of other countries in US banks have severely undermined trust in the dollar, and traditional allies of the USA such as Saudi Arabia and Japan are also de-dollarising.
The billions given to Ukraine for weapons (many of them being sold on the black market to Islamic extremists) has served to hasten the destruction of the economies of the USA and Europe and may well end the NATO alliance.
Two US banks have collapsed in the last couple of days and experts are predicting that by June this year, the USA will no longer be able to pay its debts. Inevitably, the USA will be forced to close its military bases.
BRICS and the other countries now joining will be creating a new international monetary regime. Not yet socialism, and new contradictions will arise. But US terrorism, military and financial will be severely undermined if not totally destroyed by the end of 2023.
The Zimbabwe Communist Party looks forward to a speedy victory and de-Nazification of Ukraine. We would remind people that across Ukraine, all war memorials commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany have been removed and replaced by memorials to Stepan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators and murderers; that Nazi gangs, including racist thugs from across Europe, are the ones in real control, not the clown President Volodomyr Zelensky. Some Communists have condemned Russia, and in particular President Putin, for taking military action, pointing out that Russia is no longer a socialist country and that Putin is anti-Communist. To this we reply: Because Russia is no longer socialist, is it acceptable for a NATO base to be established on its border by a country ruled by Nazi thugs?
We cannot, in a dogmatic fashion, look at the current world in the same way that Lenin looked at the world in 1916 in which there were two evenly balanced opposing imperialist blocs fighting each other.
“The living soul of Marxism is the concrete analysis of concrete conditions.”
– V.I. Lenin
Today the USA and its NATO allies have an overwhelming military presence throughout the world and are still trying to push that even further. They have the whole world divided into military commands. They have funded extremists everywhere, jihadists in the Middle East, Nazis in Ukraine. To call Russia imperialist’ in the present world order and under present conditions is to objectively support the continuation of NATO domination. Forward with the de-Nazification of Ukraine !! Forward with Reconstruction of Ukraine!! HANDS OFF RUSSIA !! The ZCP further calls for the rolling back of NATO and US domination everywhere and especially on our continent, Africa.
We call for the removal of all foreign bases from African soil. Down with AFRICOM !
! Down with the French occupation !!
HANDS OFF AFRICA !
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... st-russia/
Russian ‘Kinzhal’ Hypersonic Missile Destroys Kiev’s US-Made ‘Patriot’ Air Defense System
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 17, 2023
Drago Bosnic
For most of this month, the mainstream propaganda machine has been parroting the same story over and over again – a Russian 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missile was shot down by a US-made “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) system. The “conclusive” evidence cited by the political West is laughable at best, but it was enough to convince those without specific knowledge of how weapons actually work, which includes most of the population. Moscow didn’t really comment on the claims. Or to be exact, not until the early hours of May 16, when the actual response came in a very “non-rhetorical” form.
Namely, the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) launched a SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) mission over Kiev, with the operation including two “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles, which were used to neutralize at least one battery of the “Patriot” SAM system. While neither side commented on the variant of the destroyed US-made air defense system, video evidence shows that it was most likely one of the latest iterations, the PAC-3 MSE (Missile Segment Enhancement upgrade) that also includes the much-touted CRI (Cost Reduction Initiative) interceptors. The cost of a single CRI missile currently stands at close to $5,300,000, meaning that the 32 interceptors fired by the Kiev regime forces amounted to nearly $170,000,000.
Such a massive quantity of interceptors was still nowhere near enough to stop the Russian hypersonic weapons, although the Neo-Nazi junta announced that it shot down most of the missiles fired by the VKS, including the claim that it allegedly neutralized six “Kinzhals”, despite the fact that the Russian military used only two during this attack. Although Moscow didn’t publicly reveal this, the information is based on the comments from the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu himself. In response to the Kiev regime’s reverie, Shoigu stated laconically:
“The figures given by the Ukrainians about the interception of Russian missiles are [usually] three times higher than the amount [of weapons] we actually use.”
Several military experts estimate that the VKS used a lot of decoys of various types to bait the air defenses in and around Kiev, which would explain the claims of the local authorities that the Russian strike was “exceptional in density”. The Neo-Nazi junta officials stated that the attack also included cruise missiles and drones. Local air defense forces allegedly shot down 18 missiles and nine drones, including six “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles. The claims are widely ridiculed by military experts and numerous Telegram channels, with dozens of memes and practical jokes being posted by users and commenters.
Serhiy Popko, the head of the capital city’s military administration, stated: “The barrage was exceptional in its density, with the maximum number of missiles in the shortest time possible, but the vast majority of enemy targets in Kiev airspace were detected and destroyed.”
CNN, the flagship of the mainstream propaganda machine, immediately resorted to damage control to save the “Patriot’s” reputation, as it only arrived late last month and just recently entered service, claiming that “a US-made ‘Patriot’ air defense system was likely damaged, but not destroyed, as the result of a Russian missile barrage in and around Kiev early Tuesday morning local time”, citing a US official as its source. The report further claims that “the US is still assessing to what degree the system was damaged”, adding that “this will determine whether the system needs to be pulled back entirely or simply repaired on the spot by Ukrainian forces”. It also noted that “a US National Security Council spokesperson referred CNN to the Ukrainian government for comment”.
Such advice by the US government can only be interpreted by the fact that even Washington DC simply wants to avoid having to do anything with the Neo-Nazi junta’s ridiculous claims. The issue obviously lies in the fact that such laughable propaganda is not only completely unsubstantiated, but also makes the US itself look like a laughingstock of the world. This is particularly noticeable when looking at somewhat less propagandistic US media, such as The National Interest. Geoff LaMear, the author of one of the analyses recently published by the TNI, stated that “Patriot missiles won’t save Ukraine“, with the following assessment:
“‘Patriot’ systems are limited to pinpoint defense of major assets and are designed to operate in tandem with air defenses engaging targets at higher and lower altitudes. Without these additions, ‘Patriot’ will have too many threats to engage and the result will either be porous coverage that doesn’t protect its defended assets, or coverage that quickly subsides when ‘Patriot’ runs out of interceptors. Moreover, ‘Patriot’ systems are themselves vulnerable. Operating a ‘Patriot’ radar system gives away its location, making it an open target for Russian attacks. This means that ‘Patriot’ is not a one-stop-shop for defending Ukraine’s military assets or its people.”
Indeed, the “Patriot” is simply one segment of the US air defense/ABM (anti-ballistic missile) doctrine that also includes several other types of longer-range systems and interceptors. However, considering how lucrative air defense contracts are, the political West will surely continue suppressing any information about the destruction of its much-touted systems, while also parroting the ludicrous claims that Russian hypersonic weapons are being shot down by these same SAM systems. Such assertions come despite the fact that even top US officials repeatedly reiterated that there’s no viable defense against maneuvering hypersonic targets. This includes President Joe Biden himself, who stated last year that the “Kinzhal” cannot be intercepted.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... se-system/
Russian Kinzhal Missile Strikes US Patriot System in Kiev: The Fundamental Disadvantage West Faces
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 17, 2023
Update on the conflict in Ukraine for May 17, 2023
– Russia’s Ministry of Defense and US officials confirm Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missiles successfully targeted US-made Patriot air defense systems;
– Patriot systems launched approximately 30 missiles over 2 minutes, representing tens of millions of dollars of missiles that were already in short supply;
– Despite this, the Western media continues repeating obvious fabrications about Ukraine intercepting “all” incoming missiles and drones. The Patriot system falling victim to a Kinzhal missile despite firing upward to 30 missiles calls into question Ukraine’s previous claims of intercepting a Kinzhal days earlier;
– As Ukraine burns through Western weapons and ammunition, the West continues preparing to transfer other weapon systems including warplanes;
– European nations are preparing a “coalition” to purchase and provide F-16 fighters to Ukraine;
– F-16 warplanes have no specific capability beyond the aircraft that made up Ukraine’s original air force which is now mostly destroyed;
References:
TASS – Russia hits US-made Patriot air defense system in Kiev with Kinzhal hypersonic weapon (May 16, 2023): https://tass.com/defense/1618257
BBC – Ukraine war: Kyiv says it shot down Russian hypersonic missiles (May 17, 2023): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe…
CNN – US assessing potential damage of Patriot missile defense system following Russian attack near Kyiv (May 16, 2023): https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/po…
Lockheed Martin – New Lockheed Martin Facility To Support Increased PAC-3 Production (October 2022): https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2022-…
Guardian – UK and Netherlands agree ‘international coalition’ to help Ukraine procure F-16 jets (May 16, 2023): https://www.theguardian.com/world/202…
Politico – The end of Ukraine aid is rapidly approaching. Reupping it won’t be easy (May 5, 2023): https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05…
The Atlantic – The Case for Increasing Aid to Ukraine (May 116, 2023): https://www.theatlantic.com/newslette…
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... est-faces/
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Artemovsk. 05/18/2023
May 18, 13:23
Artemovsk. 05/18/2023
1. The enemy will lose the last positions in the city before the end of the week - the average forecast now on both sides is 1-3 days. What remains of the Artemovsk garrison will crawl back to Krasnoye and Khromovo with losses in the coming days. The rest will remain in the city, since they have already stopped taking prisoners there.
2. Since after the ousting of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from Artemovsk, the fighting will continue in the fields to the west of the city, as well as in the Khromovo and Krasnoy regions, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will continue to pretend that the "Bakhmut Fortress" is standing, after which, in 1-2 weeks, they will announce that "withdrew to more advantageous positions" and "in general, Bakhmut never mattered much."
3. The current attacks to the north and south of the city are unlikely to lead to significant breakthroughs in the front, but tactical successes may allow the Armed Forces of Ukraine to somewhat dampen the inevitable tantrums in Ukraine about the surrender of the Bakhmut Fortress.
4. In the middle of the day on May 18, the enemy continued attacks in the direction of Berkhovka and Kleshcheevka. There are intense battles. The enemy also continues attacks in the area of Sacco and Vanzetti. The village itself is held by our troops, the enemy is pressing from the northwest and north. Those reserves are now being used, which for a long time were collected in the area of Konstantinovka, Chasov Yar and Aleksandrovka.
5. With all the tactical troubles for us in the area of Bogdanovka, Kleshcheevka and Sacco and Vanzetti, the continuation of these attacks after the loss of Artemovsk by the enemy will allow, with competent command and control of the Russian Defense Ministry and the strengthening of the interaction of the RF Ministry of Defense with the Wagner PMC, to grind part of the enemy’s operational reserves in Slavyansko-Kramatorsk direction, which will be of no small importance in subsequent battles to break through the defense line of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Konstantinovka-Chasov Yar-Rai-Aleksandrovka, with the aim of a full-fledged entry into the Slavnya-Kramatorsk agglomeration. The fights here will also be heavy.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/86160 - the broadcast of hostilities continues as usual in the telegram, who are interested, subscribe
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8364097.html
Google Translator
Undermining in the Bakhchisaray district
May 18, 10:52 am
In the Bakhchisarai region of Crimea, a railway track was blown up early this morning.
8 wagons with grain derailed. Up to 50 meters of tracks were damaged.
Restoration work has been going on since morning. The Ministry of Transport of Crimea reports that by the evening the rails will be replaced and traffic will be restored.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8363808.html
*****
From Cassad's Telegram account:
forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
What we have in the moment.
1. The enemy has concentrated a strike group of troops of about 65 thousand people in the Zaporozhye direction, which was chosen as one of the main ones during the planned offensive operations.
The forces of about two army corps and air assault troops have been assembled.
2. The main units and formations of the group are located 80-100 km from the contact line.
The group is ready. The enemy is waiting for an order.
3. Before an attempt to break through, a massive rocket and artillery strike is planned against positions, locations, checkpoints, command posts, headquarters, warehouses, bases of the RF Armed Forces and civilian facilities both in Zaporozhye, Kherson regions, LDNR, in the Crimea and Sevastopol, and "old" territories RF.
4. An attempt to deliver a distracting strike in the direction of the Belgorod region of the Russian Federation is possible.
5. In the Kherson direction, engineering work was noted in preparation for an offensive with a forcing of the Dnieper - in a number of areas, mines are being cleared of approaches to a water barrier.
https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin
Google Translator
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 05/18/2023
Protagonists of the Donbass rebellion that in the summer of 2014 led to sovereignty referendums, the proclamation of the People's Republics and the start of a war that never ended, Donetsk and Lugansk have followed parallel paths, albeit with different nuances. Faced with a DPR in which a group of people willing to organize a political structure parallel to the Ukrainian authorities was created from the beginning, the start of the protests in Lugansk was much more turbulent. As Anna Matveeva details in her book “Through times of trouble. Conflict in South Eastern Ukraine”, the absence of figures willing to lead the protests politically was complete. The seizure of the SBU building in the capital of the former oblastguaranteed possession of an arsenal of weapons. However, still undecided about the direction in which to lead the protests, those people who had led the assault found themselves pressured by the population itself to continue. Matveeva cites what would be the first leader of the RPL, Igor Bolotov, explaining that it was the population of Lugansk gathered there that forced the group to continue.
From there, with a more solid start but also more prone to the first internal divisions, after a first proclamation in which not many believed, the two emerging People's Republics tried to organize a series of armed groups with which to defend themselves from the imminent Ukrainian assault. It was then that people like Alexey Mozgovoy or Alexander Jodakovsky began to organize the groups with which they would become known: the Prizrak and Vostok brigades. The appearance in Slavyansk of the armed group led by Igor Girkin, Strelkov , diverted all attention to the Donetsk region. Since then, the leading role has always fallen mainly on the development of events in the Donetsk region, with Lugansk as a secondary scenario to which little attention has been paid.
In military terms, the months of the active phase of the Donbass war occurred in parallel. The different localities organized their garrisons, not always well communicated with the center in Lugansk and from the beginning with coordination difficulties. The fall of Slavyansk had a domino effect that affected the two capitals of Donbass in the same way, which saw the front line come dangerously close. Closer to the Russian border than Donetsk, Lugansk experienced an aerial bombardment by Ukrainian aircraft on June 2, 2014 that caused the death of a dozen people in one of the main squares of the city. Although perhaps it was a miss-target and the Ukrainian troops wanted to catch up with the LPR militias then fighting for control of the border posts with the Russian Federation, a projectile perfectly visible in the recordings of that day hit a civilian building causing dramatic images. As Ukraine quickly began to spread conspiracy theories - the explosion of an air conditioner or the failure of a surface-to-air missile from theRussian troops -, a woman was bleeding to death in the street, with both legs amputated, asking for help. kyiv never admitted to the attack. Petro Poroshenko had been elected president of Ukraine just five days earlier and it was already clear that he had crossed a red line on a path that could only lead to open war.
As in Donetsk, internal fighting began quickly and the first leader of the RPL was replaced by Igor Plotnitsky, who would lead the Republic always questioned, mocked and sometimes hated. Bolotov, who never physically recovered from the war, died years later of a heart attack. And Plotnitsky, who was directly accused of having ordered the assassinations of several uncomfortable commanders such as Alexander Bednov, Batman , or Alexey Mozgovoy, was finally removed in a palace coup that brought Leonid Pasechnik to power, who would ultimately be in charge of signing , together with Denis Pushilin and Vladimir Putin, the documents in which the Russian Federation ratified the recognition of the People's Republics on February 22, 2022.
Focus of the press only to highlight the plight of the population, the cases of corruption or to compare it with African countries -the attitude of Ukraine and a significant part of the population towards the People's Republics has always included doses of racism and supremacism-, the lack of interest in Lugansk in recent years has been notable, and even in the Russian press, reports on the poorer of the two People's Republics have been scarce. During the winter of 2014-2015, with the media interest in the Donetsk airport and the battle for Debaltsevo, the situation in the RPL was critical and in some isolated areas, practically besieged by Ukraine and inaccessible to volunteers transporting humanitarian aid, cases of deaths due to hunger were recorded. And opposite Donetsk, much more developed, Lugansk was always behind. In these years of low-intensity war, economic blockade and economic dependence on Russia, the problems with trying to maintain industrial production, key in places like Alchevsk, have meant a perceptible loss of population on the streets. In front of the lively Donetsk, where the parks were filled with families, the streets seemed to have returned to civilian life and a part of the shops were working trying to maintain normality, Lugansk contrasted as a darker and empty city where the remains of the bombings they were perceptible in areas close to the most central places. It has meant a perceptible loss of population on the streets. In front of the lively Donetsk, where the parks were filled with families, the streets seemed to have returned to civilian life and a part of the shops were working trying to maintain normality, Lugansk contrasted as a darker and empty city where the remains of the bombings they were perceptible in areas close to the most central places. It has meant a perceptible loss of population on the streets. In front of the lively Donetsk, where the parks were filled with families, the streets seemed to have returned to civilian life and a part of the shops were working trying to maintain normality, Lugansk contrasted as a darker and empty city where the remains of the bombings they were perceptible in areas close to the most central places.
The beginning of the Russian military intervention has changed the reality in the People's Republics. Poorer and less strategic, Lugansk has always been worse defended by Ukraine. Beyond the most important places, mainly Stanitsa Luganskaya and Schastie, captured in the first hours of the special military operationwithout resistance, much of Lugansk lacked fortifications similar to those in the cities of the Donetsk region. The Russian advance north of Lugansk contrasted with the difficulties of advancing in any direction in the Donetsk region. Russia only collided head-on with Ukrainian resistance in the two big cities, Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, in 2014 defended by Alexey Mozgovoy and lost with a withdrawal in time when there was no way to defend them that summer. Although the breakout of the Kharkiv front brought the front line back to the LPR, by July 2023, Russian troops controlled the entire former Lugansk Oblast .
The geographical position of the region, close to the Russian border, and the retreat of the front have brought about a qualitative change in cities like Lugansk. Virtually desolate as soon as the sun went down in the war years in Donbass, Lugansk suddenly became a safer city than Donetsk, threatened daily by indiscriminate Ukrainian shelling. Contrasting also with the situation experienced in the summer of 2014, when the population had to survive without a running water supply, Lugansk has not suffered the problems of water cuts that Donetsk is experiencing and that have forced Russia to build a pipeline to transport water from the river Don.
Less important to kyiv than Donetsk, the Ukraine hadn't even bothered to bomb Lugansk. Increased security had allowed Russia to locate some of its logistically important structures for the entire Donbass front grouping there instead of in the DPR. However, and coincidentally coinciding with the announcement of the arrival in Ukraine of the new long-range missiles sent by the United Kingdom, things have changed in recent days. Ukraine, which first used its HIMARS against Perevalsk, also in the RPL, might have first used its Storm Shadows against the city of Lugansk, where it destroyed two industrial buildings over the weekend. The remoteness of their positions from the city of Lugansk makes it impossible to use 155-millimeter artillery, which Ukraine uses daily against Donetsk, but the selective bombardments have continued throughout these days. Bomb attacks have also begun. One person was killed and seven wounded in an attack apparently targeting LPR Interior Minister Igor Kornet.
Both shelling and attacks on the city are expected to increase as the Ukrainian counter-offensive approaches. As in other areas of the front, the objective is twofold: to destroy Russian military magazines and depots to undermine the combat capacity by complicating logistics and to intimidate the population. As in the case of Donetsk, Ukraine seeks to increase the uncertainty of the population, aware that there are no completely safe places, and create doubts about Russia's ability to defend the cities. The shadow of the British missiles, the precedents of the Ukraine's performance in the attacks to the rear and the lack of concern of Kiev for the civilian population that could be injured portend a worsening of the situation in cities that, like Lugansk,
https://slavyangrad.es/2023/05/18/27292/#more-27292
Google Translator
************
An Historical Background to the US/NATO Proxy War Against Russia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 17, 2023
Ian Beddowes
Today the USA and its NATO allies have an overwhelming military presence throughout the world and are still trying to push that even further. They have the whole world divided into military commands. They have funded extremists everywhere, jihadists in the Middle East, Nazis in Ukraine. To call Russia imperialist’ in the present world order and under present conditions is to objectively support the continuation of NATO domination. Forward with the de-Nazification of Ukraine !! Forward with Reconstruction of Ukraine!! HANDS OFF RUSSIA !! The ZCP further calls for the rolling back of NATO and US domination everywhere and especially on our continent, Africa.
Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has challenged the right of the USA to implement regime change through the use of extremist groups, terrorism and media manipulation and then establish military bases in the territory of its newly acquired ‘ally’.
This is what USA is attempting to do with Ukraine.
NATO, formed in 1949 to advance the Cold War, mainly at the instigation of the USA, has in recent years, distinguished itself by the destruction of Yugoslavia, the bombing of Iraq, the destruction of Libya and the terrorising of Afghan peasants in a bloody and fruitless war. The USA has around 800 military bases around the world in some 80 countries. It has divided the world into military commands. No other country has, in the history of humanity, ever had such a worldwide military presence. Europe is under EUCOM (European Command), India is under PACOM (Pacific Command and Africa is under AFRICOM (Africa Command).
Already there are US bases in countries close to Russia such as Poland and Turkey. Russia does not have any bases next to the USA, and in fact when the Soviet Union started to put missile bases in Cuba in 1962, the USA threatened nuclear war.
Now let us study the historical relationship between Ukraine and Russia:
The Eastern Slavs were one people speaking one language up until 1000 years ago. And even today, there are people speaking dialects intermediate between Russian and Ukrainian.
Towards the end of the 9th century Prince Oleg of Novgorod relocated to Kyiv/Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine and established a kingdom of East Slavic people. This stretched across the land of modern central Russia and Ukraine west of the Urals, the concept of Russia and Ukraine as separate countries was unknown. Vladimir the Great, who was the first Russian Prince to make Orthodox Christianity the state religion, came to the throne in 980 and is recognised by Russians and Ukrainians alike.
Around 1240 came the Mongol invasion and the destruction of the old Rus, as it was known. It took another 200 years for new principalities to be formed as Mongol control weakened. In the 16th century, Prince Ivan III of Moscow, better known to history as Ivan the Terrible, united the Russian lands as the first Tsar. There was no specific territory or people known as ‘Ukraine’.
The Zaporzhian Cossacks, composed mostly of independent peasants who had run away from serfdom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and had settled around the Dnieper River are believed to have used the term ‘Ukraine’ in the 16th century. It is generally agreed that ‘Ukraine’ means ‘borderlands’ — and it had no fixed boundaries.
Some people speaking the dialect which later became the Ukrainian language settled in Galicia, then in the Austrian Empire, and it was from this group that Ukrainian nationalism spread. During the 19th century, various nationalist movements grew up in Europe based on ethnicity. They challenged the rule of big nations, but also could be cruel to others. This was a particular feature of the Ukrainian nationalists.
In 1917, during the chaos of the First World War, Symon Petlyura became a military leader of the Ukrainian nationalists and later ruler of a large section of Ukraine until finally defeated in 1920 by the Ukrainian Bolsheviks. Petlyura’s Army was known for ethnic cleansing and the slaughter of thousands of Jews who formed about 15% of the Ukrainian population at that time.
At the end of 1917, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was formed and eventually, as the Bolsheviks expanded their power during the Civil War, by 1920 had secured its rule over the whole of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic then joined the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the time of its formation at the end of December 1922.
Now we need to deal with one of the biggest slanders made against the Soviet government by the Ukrainian Nazis and their western backers. This is the often repeated lie that in 1932, the Soviet Union deliberately engineered a famine which killed 4 million Ukrainians. The formulators of falsified history refer to this as the ‘Holodomor’ and this idea is used to create hatred against Russians and against Communists among young Ukrainians. In fact the term ‘Holodomor’ was unknown before the early 1980s.
This hideous lie was perpetuated in the West by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute founded in 1975 but which received heavy funding after the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1981 which marked the beginning of the destructive neoliberal agenda. The pseudo-documentary film Harvest of Despair was then produced with the assistance of Ukrainian Nazis in Canada in 1985 and in 1986 British disinformation specialist Robert Conquest published his book Harvest of Sorrow which was taken apart in the well-researched Fraud, Famine and Fascism by Douglas Tottle written in 1987 and available online.
What are the facts?
1. Old Russia, including Ukraine, was subject to drought and famine every 8 to 10 years due to erratic rainfall patterns. The majority of peasants throughout the Russian Empire had suffered poverty, malnutrition and occasional starvation for hundreds of years.
2. V.I. Lenin, on 26th October 1917, the day after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, announced that all land belonged to those who worked on it. They no longer had to pay any form of rent to the landowners.
3. The Russian Empire as a whole had been a place of primitive agricultural methods. With industrialization under the Soviet Union came a growing urban population which needed to be fed.
4. The rich peasants known as the kulaks (fists), found it profitable to hoard grain in order to put up prices. They were holding the USSR to ransom.
5. In 1927, as part of the first 5-year plan, it was decided to mechanise and collectivise agriculture. The growing population of the USSR could not be fed by small-scale peasant production.
6. Landless peasants, poor peasants and many middle peasants were happy to sign up for the collective farms. The kulaks, who in Ukraine were supported by Ukrainian nationalists, were unhappy with collectivisation.
7. At Kharkov/Kharkiv in Ukraine, enthusiastic workers established a tractor factory outside of the 5-year plan.
8. 1932 was a hot and dry year. There was little rain. Hot and dry conditions led to a typhoid epidemic. It was also a time of collectivisation. Kulaks and Ukrainian nationalists destroyed livestock and burnt cops and boasted about it.
9. Realistic estimates show that around 1.8 million people died during this period, the majority from typhoid, and not all of them were in Ukraine as the drought affected surrounding areas of Russia and even Kazakhstan.
10. Due to collectivisation and improved agricultural techniques there was no famine anywhere in the Soviet Union after 1932, (Save during the Nazi occupation 1941-1944).
11. Written reports by German officers during the occupation show that although the Nazis asked the peasants to de-collectivise, they refused saying that they were better off under the collective.
12. Most of the stories about the ‘Holodomor’ used by Robert Conquest in Harvest of Sorrow come from the Hearst press and from ‘reporters’ who it can be shown, never visited Ukraine. William Randolph Hearst is known as the ‘Father of Yellow Journalism’ in the USA.
13. Most of the photos used in Harvest of Sorrow are actually stills made from a Soviet Famine Relief film made for the 1921-1922 Volga Famine which occurred in an area which had only come under Soviet control in 1920 at the end of the Civil War. None of the photos is actually of the 1932 famine.
It is important to go through this matter in a little detail as these lies are still being perpetrated inside Ukraine and in the West and have been an important factor in the war of falsification.
When the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, many Ukrainians in the extreme west of Ukraine joined the Nazis, and some 200,000 joined various Nazi formations, some directly under the German SS. The Ukrainian divisions were noted for their extreme cruelty massacring not only Jews but more than 100,000 Poles. They were also distinguished themselves as concentration camp guards.
The majority of the Ukrainian Nazis came from the regions of Volhynia and Galicia which had been annexed by Poland in 1919. Following the refusal of the West, including Poland to make a deal with the USSR in 1938, the USSR made a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939. Germany invaded Poland on 1st September 1939. The Red Army only entered eastern Poland on 17th September 1939 after the Polish government had gone into exile. The majority population of this region was Ukrainian. This much criticised agreement gave the USSR time to re-arm and extra territory once the inevitable Nazi invasion began in June 1941.
It was from these territories that had formed eastern Poland between the two World Wars that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian nationalists came. They were enthusiastic in their support for the German Nazis whose ideology they eagerly adopted. Their message was fostered by the USA and its allies after the Second World War and is largely responsible for the current war.
It should be noted that around 250,000 Ukrainians fought bravely in Soviet partisan units and 4.5 million in the Red Army.
As the German Nazis were being pushed westward by the Red Army in 1944, Ukrainian Nazis, including wanted war criminals fled towards the American lines where they were welcomed in preparation for the coming Cold War. In fact as soon as the war was over, the followers of Stepan Bandera began an anti-Soviet guerrilla campaign which lasted until 1955, they were armed by the USA and Britain.
The Communist hero, Kim Philby, a Soviet agent working for British intelligence became head of MI.6. Philby never in fact spied against Britain. In fact his job was to parachute Ukrainian Nazis into the Soviet Union, where of course, they were immediately picked up.
In 1991 came the betrayal by Gorbachev and Yeltsin and the elitist stratum which they represented and the consequent dissolution of the Soviet Union. At a referendum held early in 1991, 70% of Ukrainians voted to retain the Soviet Union, but following the dissolution of the USSR, the independence of Ukraine was recognised.
Despite all the problems, the Communist Party of Ukraine was still quite popular winning nearly 20% of the votes in 2001. Problems really started in 2004 with the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’. In 2004 Viktor Yanukovych was elected President with a very narrow majority over his rival Viktor Yushchenko. Supporters of Yushchenko, fed with the Holodomor narrative and funded by the USA, came to the streets and forced the Ukrainian Supreme Court to reverse the decision. Yushchenko had most of his support from western Ukraine and wanted closer links with the European Union, while Yanukovych drew most of his support from the east and supported strengthening existing relations with Russia.
In 2010. Yanukovych was again elected President. He remained in office until 2014 when he was driven out by the Nazi-led Maidan Coup. Because President Yanukovych had agreed to make closer links with Russia rather than with the European Union, demonstrations broke out led by CIA-funded Nazi groups. Right Sector, Aidar and in particular Azov Battalion trained by Blackwater, the US private security company which does undercover work for the US State Department. The Azov Battalion is openly racist and openly Nazi. It uses the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol. Since 2014 all Soviet War memorials have been removed from Ukraine and replaced either by statues of Stepan Bandrea or memorials to the ‘Holodomor’ an event which never happened except in Nazi/US propaganda.
In 2014, the first targets were trade union buildings which were burnt down with trade unionists still inside. Those trying to leave the burning buildings were shot by Nazis. This happened both in Kyiv and Odessa. The Communist Party of Ukraine was driven underground and soon after made illegal. Eastern Ukraine has never been Ukrainian-speaking historically and there was immediate rejection of the coup government ⸺ even in some areas of western Ukraine initially.
The Crimea had never been part of Ukraine historically and under the Soviet Union had only been transferred from the Russian Federation to Ukraine in 1954 for purely administrative reasons. In 2014 the population had no interest in remaining as part of fascist Ukraine. Similarly, Lugansk and Donetsk established independent republics but came under constant attack from the Azov Battalion and other fascists. War and associated atrocities including the shelling of civilians in the People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk continued for 8 years and accelerated under the Biden administration.
Since the time of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton there was an aggressive foreign policy against Russia which was softened under Donald Trump. Joe Biden is from the Clintonite camp of liberal-fascists; that is those in the Democratic Party who while mouthing ‘Human Rights’ are involved in the funding of terror groups and using them as a pretext for aggressive military expansion.
We should remember that the biggest war ever on African soil, the Congo War of 1998-2003 was funded and directed by the USA and initiated by Bill Clinton. The destruction of Africa’s most advanced country, Libya, was carried out by NATO under the presidency of Barrack Obama.
The Biden administration pushed Ukraine towards greater violence against Lugansk and Donetsk and to agitate for entry into NATO. Had Ukraine became a member of NATO, it had the right to ask other NATO countries to intervene in case of problems with Russia.
With attacks on the Russian-speaking population of Donetsk and Lugansk increasing, the Russian government had little option but to intervene against the hostile terrorist state on its doorstep. Having persuaded the Ukrainian government to ask to join NATO, the USA and EU has now refused to send troops against the might of the Russian army and has simply put sanctions against Russia, introducing censorship and blocking news from RT and Sputnik.
Blocking Russia from the Swift clearing system has merely ensured that it joins the Chinese clearing system. Putin has called their bluff.
As the Hungarian Workers’ Party has said in its statement:
“Russia has been dragged into this war by NATO, the US and the EU. The war was provoked by the West, prepared by the West, and now the West wants to shift responsibility to Russia.
“It was not Russia that sent soldiers to Mexico, but the United States to Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, and the Baltic States…
“We support the assessment of events by the Communists of Russia and Belarus. The NATO war is directed against their peoples, against the independence of their countries.”
There has been a personalised propaganda campaign against Vladimir Putin, including the prepetition of the words, ‘Putin’s War’ ⸺ even by some elements who regard themselves as ‘Communist’.
That Putin is a Russian nationalist and not a Communist, and that he has criticised Lenin and Stalin is beyond dispute, but that he is somehow responsible for this war?
This is against all known facts and against all logic.
From 1944, through the early 1950s and with a revival in the 1980s and again in 2004 and then 2014, the USA and Britain have pushed the Ukrainian Nazi agenda.
In 2014 the Nazi coup led to revulsion by many citizens of Ukraine ⸺ more particularly the Russian speakers of Crimea and the Donbass. The people of Crimea in particular had shown reluctance to remain as part of Ukraine from the beginning of the destruction of the USSR. It was also obvious that the USA had hoped to secure the Russian naval base at Sevastopol for themselves. In the event, 86% of the people of Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation. Subsequent polls by Western organisations have shown that only 7% believe that Crimea should have stayed with Ukraine and that around 67% of Ukrainian speakers in Crimea are happier belonging to the Russian Federation.
A series of agreements known as the Minsk accords was finalised in 2015. These gave The Donbass republics, the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Lugansk autonomous status within Ukraine. They would have allowed these people to use the Russian language.
In fact, before the coup of 2014, 44% of the population, mostly in eastern and southern Ukraine, spoke Russian as a first language and this had been so since the formation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922. Even after Ukraine obtained independence from the USSR in 1991, the status quo in terms of language remained until 2014. Russia continually tried to reach a negotiated settlement, but shelling of civilian populations increased until February 2022. It was only then, after 8 years of war between the Ukrainian government and the People’s Militias of Donbass that Putin finally launched Russia’s Special Military Operation. It was done with minimum force with the intention of forcing a negotiated settlement.
But the USA took this as a sign of weakness. Ukraine demanded that the Donbass and Crimea return to Ukraine despite the will of the population of those territories.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkle has since admitted that there was never any serious intent to make peace and that the Minsk Accords were there to give time to Ukraine to arm. It was during this period that the USA built the extensive Bakhmut military complex, currently falling to Russian forces.
President Putin has now made it clear that he now intends to incorporate all Russian-speaking areas into the Russian Federation but has no intention of trying to incorporate Ukrainian-speaking areas. All Russia wants to see there is de-Nazification and a neutral government.
The consequences of the US/NATO hybrid war have been enormous. Sanctions against Russia have rebounded. US companies which had penetrated Russia have now had their assets seized following the seizure of Russian assets in the USA. It has now been shown that without any doubt, the US sabotaged the Nordstream gas pipeline supplying cheap Russian gas to Germany. This has now severely undermined the German economy.
Russia has increased its exports to India and China. The attempts to weaponise the US dollar by confiscating (stealing) the assets of other countries in US banks have severely undermined trust in the dollar, and traditional allies of the USA such as Saudi Arabia and Japan are also de-dollarising.
The billions given to Ukraine for weapons (many of them being sold on the black market to Islamic extremists) has served to hasten the destruction of the economies of the USA and Europe and may well end the NATO alliance.
Two US banks have collapsed in the last couple of days and experts are predicting that by June this year, the USA will no longer be able to pay its debts. Inevitably, the USA will be forced to close its military bases.
BRICS and the other countries now joining will be creating a new international monetary regime. Not yet socialism, and new contradictions will arise. But US terrorism, military and financial will be severely undermined if not totally destroyed by the end of 2023.
The Zimbabwe Communist Party looks forward to a speedy victory and de-Nazification of Ukraine. We would remind people that across Ukraine, all war memorials commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany have been removed and replaced by memorials to Stepan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators and murderers; that Nazi gangs, including racist thugs from across Europe, are the ones in real control, not the clown President Volodomyr Zelensky. Some Communists have condemned Russia, and in particular President Putin, for taking military action, pointing out that Russia is no longer a socialist country and that Putin is anti-Communist. To this we reply: Because Russia is no longer socialist, is it acceptable for a NATO base to be established on its border by a country ruled by Nazi thugs?
We cannot, in a dogmatic fashion, look at the current world in the same way that Lenin looked at the world in 1916 in which there were two evenly balanced opposing imperialist blocs fighting each other.
“The living soul of Marxism is the concrete analysis of concrete conditions.”
– V.I. Lenin
Today the USA and its NATO allies have an overwhelming military presence throughout the world and are still trying to push that even further. They have the whole world divided into military commands. They have funded extremists everywhere, jihadists in the Middle East, Nazis in Ukraine. To call Russia imperialist’ in the present world order and under present conditions is to objectively support the continuation of NATO domination. Forward with the de-Nazification of Ukraine !! Forward with Reconstruction of Ukraine!! HANDS OFF RUSSIA !! The ZCP further calls for the rolling back of NATO and US domination everywhere and especially on our continent, Africa.
We call for the removal of all foreign bases from African soil. Down with AFRICOM !
! Down with the French occupation !!
HANDS OFF AFRICA !
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... st-russia/
Russian ‘Kinzhal’ Hypersonic Missile Destroys Kiev’s US-Made ‘Patriot’ Air Defense System
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 17, 2023
Drago Bosnic
For most of this month, the mainstream propaganda machine has been parroting the same story over and over again – a Russian 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” air-launched hypersonic missile was shot down by a US-made “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) system. The “conclusive” evidence cited by the political West is laughable at best, but it was enough to convince those without specific knowledge of how weapons actually work, which includes most of the population. Moscow didn’t really comment on the claims. Or to be exact, not until the early hours of May 16, when the actual response came in a very “non-rhetorical” form.
Namely, the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) launched a SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) mission over Kiev, with the operation including two “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles, which were used to neutralize at least one battery of the “Patriot” SAM system. While neither side commented on the variant of the destroyed US-made air defense system, video evidence shows that it was most likely one of the latest iterations, the PAC-3 MSE (Missile Segment Enhancement upgrade) that also includes the much-touted CRI (Cost Reduction Initiative) interceptors. The cost of a single CRI missile currently stands at close to $5,300,000, meaning that the 32 interceptors fired by the Kiev regime forces amounted to nearly $170,000,000.
Such a massive quantity of interceptors was still nowhere near enough to stop the Russian hypersonic weapons, although the Neo-Nazi junta announced that it shot down most of the missiles fired by the VKS, including the claim that it allegedly neutralized six “Kinzhals”, despite the fact that the Russian military used only two during this attack. Although Moscow didn’t publicly reveal this, the information is based on the comments from the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu himself. In response to the Kiev regime’s reverie, Shoigu stated laconically:
“The figures given by the Ukrainians about the interception of Russian missiles are [usually] three times higher than the amount [of weapons] we actually use.”
Several military experts estimate that the VKS used a lot of decoys of various types to bait the air defenses in and around Kiev, which would explain the claims of the local authorities that the Russian strike was “exceptional in density”. The Neo-Nazi junta officials stated that the attack also included cruise missiles and drones. Local air defense forces allegedly shot down 18 missiles and nine drones, including six “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles. The claims are widely ridiculed by military experts and numerous Telegram channels, with dozens of memes and practical jokes being posted by users and commenters.
Serhiy Popko, the head of the capital city’s military administration, stated: “The barrage was exceptional in its density, with the maximum number of missiles in the shortest time possible, but the vast majority of enemy targets in Kiev airspace were detected and destroyed.”
CNN, the flagship of the mainstream propaganda machine, immediately resorted to damage control to save the “Patriot’s” reputation, as it only arrived late last month and just recently entered service, claiming that “a US-made ‘Patriot’ air defense system was likely damaged, but not destroyed, as the result of a Russian missile barrage in and around Kiev early Tuesday morning local time”, citing a US official as its source. The report further claims that “the US is still assessing to what degree the system was damaged”, adding that “this will determine whether the system needs to be pulled back entirely or simply repaired on the spot by Ukrainian forces”. It also noted that “a US National Security Council spokesperson referred CNN to the Ukrainian government for comment”.
Such advice by the US government can only be interpreted by the fact that even Washington DC simply wants to avoid having to do anything with the Neo-Nazi junta’s ridiculous claims. The issue obviously lies in the fact that such laughable propaganda is not only completely unsubstantiated, but also makes the US itself look like a laughingstock of the world. This is particularly noticeable when looking at somewhat less propagandistic US media, such as The National Interest. Geoff LaMear, the author of one of the analyses recently published by the TNI, stated that “Patriot missiles won’t save Ukraine“, with the following assessment:
“‘Patriot’ systems are limited to pinpoint defense of major assets and are designed to operate in tandem with air defenses engaging targets at higher and lower altitudes. Without these additions, ‘Patriot’ will have too many threats to engage and the result will either be porous coverage that doesn’t protect its defended assets, or coverage that quickly subsides when ‘Patriot’ runs out of interceptors. Moreover, ‘Patriot’ systems are themselves vulnerable. Operating a ‘Patriot’ radar system gives away its location, making it an open target for Russian attacks. This means that ‘Patriot’ is not a one-stop-shop for defending Ukraine’s military assets or its people.”
Indeed, the “Patriot” is simply one segment of the US air defense/ABM (anti-ballistic missile) doctrine that also includes several other types of longer-range systems and interceptors. However, considering how lucrative air defense contracts are, the political West will surely continue suppressing any information about the destruction of its much-touted systems, while also parroting the ludicrous claims that Russian hypersonic weapons are being shot down by these same SAM systems. Such assertions come despite the fact that even top US officials repeatedly reiterated that there’s no viable defense against maneuvering hypersonic targets. This includes President Joe Biden himself, who stated last year that the “Kinzhal” cannot be intercepted.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... se-system/
Russian Kinzhal Missile Strikes US Patriot System in Kiev: The Fundamental Disadvantage West Faces
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 17, 2023
Update on the conflict in Ukraine for May 17, 2023
– Russia’s Ministry of Defense and US officials confirm Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missiles successfully targeted US-made Patriot air defense systems;
– Patriot systems launched approximately 30 missiles over 2 minutes, representing tens of millions of dollars of missiles that were already in short supply;
– Despite this, the Western media continues repeating obvious fabrications about Ukraine intercepting “all” incoming missiles and drones. The Patriot system falling victim to a Kinzhal missile despite firing upward to 30 missiles calls into question Ukraine’s previous claims of intercepting a Kinzhal days earlier;
– As Ukraine burns through Western weapons and ammunition, the West continues preparing to transfer other weapon systems including warplanes;
– European nations are preparing a “coalition” to purchase and provide F-16 fighters to Ukraine;
– F-16 warplanes have no specific capability beyond the aircraft that made up Ukraine’s original air force which is now mostly destroyed;
References:
TASS – Russia hits US-made Patriot air defense system in Kiev with Kinzhal hypersonic weapon (May 16, 2023): https://tass.com/defense/1618257
BBC – Ukraine war: Kyiv says it shot down Russian hypersonic missiles (May 17, 2023): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe…
CNN – US assessing potential damage of Patriot missile defense system following Russian attack near Kyiv (May 16, 2023): https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/po…
Lockheed Martin – New Lockheed Martin Facility To Support Increased PAC-3 Production (October 2022): https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2022-…
Guardian – UK and Netherlands agree ‘international coalition’ to help Ukraine procure F-16 jets (May 16, 2023): https://www.theguardian.com/world/202…
Politico – The end of Ukraine aid is rapidly approaching. Reupping it won’t be easy (May 5, 2023): https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05…
The Atlantic – The Case for Increasing Aid to Ukraine (May 116, 2023): https://www.theatlantic.com/newslette…
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/05/ ... est-faces/
*******
Artemovsk. 05/18/2023
May 18, 13:23
Artemovsk. 05/18/2023
1. The enemy will lose the last positions in the city before the end of the week - the average forecast now on both sides is 1-3 days. What remains of the Artemovsk garrison will crawl back to Krasnoye and Khromovo with losses in the coming days. The rest will remain in the city, since they have already stopped taking prisoners there.
2. Since after the ousting of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from Artemovsk, the fighting will continue in the fields to the west of the city, as well as in the Khromovo and Krasnoy regions, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will continue to pretend that the "Bakhmut Fortress" is standing, after which, in 1-2 weeks, they will announce that "withdrew to more advantageous positions" and "in general, Bakhmut never mattered much."
3. The current attacks to the north and south of the city are unlikely to lead to significant breakthroughs in the front, but tactical successes may allow the Armed Forces of Ukraine to somewhat dampen the inevitable tantrums in Ukraine about the surrender of the Bakhmut Fortress.
4. In the middle of the day on May 18, the enemy continued attacks in the direction of Berkhovka and Kleshcheevka. There are intense battles. The enemy also continues attacks in the area of Sacco and Vanzetti. The village itself is held by our troops, the enemy is pressing from the northwest and north. Those reserves are now being used, which for a long time were collected in the area of Konstantinovka, Chasov Yar and Aleksandrovka.
5. With all the tactical troubles for us in the area of Bogdanovka, Kleshcheevka and Sacco and Vanzetti, the continuation of these attacks after the loss of Artemovsk by the enemy will allow, with competent command and control of the Russian Defense Ministry and the strengthening of the interaction of the RF Ministry of Defense with the Wagner PMC, to grind part of the enemy’s operational reserves in Slavyansko-Kramatorsk direction, which will be of no small importance in subsequent battles to break through the defense line of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Konstantinovka-Chasov Yar-Rai-Aleksandrovka, with the aim of a full-fledged entry into the Slavnya-Kramatorsk agglomeration. The fights here will also be heavy.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin/86160 - the broadcast of hostilities continues as usual in the telegram, who are interested, subscribe
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8364097.html
Google Translator
Undermining in the Bakhchisaray district
May 18, 10:52 am
In the Bakhchisarai region of Crimea, a railway track was blown up early this morning.
8 wagons with grain derailed. Up to 50 meters of tracks were damaged.
Restoration work has been going on since morning. The Ministry of Transport of Crimea reports that by the evening the rails will be replaced and traffic will be restored.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8363808.html
*****
From Cassad's Telegram account:
forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
What we have in the moment.
1. The enemy has concentrated a strike group of troops of about 65 thousand people in the Zaporozhye direction, which was chosen as one of the main ones during the planned offensive operations.
The forces of about two army corps and air assault troops have been assembled.
2. The main units and formations of the group are located 80-100 km from the contact line.
The group is ready. The enemy is waiting for an order.
3. Before an attempt to break through, a massive rocket and artillery strike is planned against positions, locations, checkpoints, command posts, headquarters, warehouses, bases of the RF Armed Forces and civilian facilities both in Zaporozhye, Kherson regions, LDNR, in the Crimea and Sevastopol, and "old" territories RF.
4. An attempt to deliver a distracting strike in the direction of the Belgorod region of the Russian Federation is possible.
5. In the Kherson direction, engineering work was noted in preparation for an offensive with a forcing of the Dnieper - in a number of areas, mines are being cleared of approaches to a water barrier.
https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin
Google Translator