Russia today

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blindpig
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 14, 2024 3:45 pm

Moscow's "GULAG Museum" Suspends Operations
November 14, 17:12

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The Gulag History Museum has suspended operations

The museum will temporarily close for an indefinite period due to fire safety violations.

The GULAG History Museum in Moscow will temporarily close on November 14, the institution’s website reports.

“As a result of an inspection of the museum by specialists from the Center for Expertise, Research, and Testing in Construction, fire safety violations were identified. According to the conclusion, they pose a threat to the safety and comfortable stay of museum visitors and must be eliminated,” the museum explained the reason for the closure.

Visitors who have purchased tickets can return them at any time. The period of suspension of work is not specified.

The GULAG History Museum is a state institution located in the center of Moscow, on 1st Samotechny Lane. It was founded in 2001, and the exhibition opened three years later.

The museum was founded by Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, a historian, publicist, and public figure, the son of revolutionary Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko. Antonov-Ovseenko’s mother was arrested in 1929 and committed suicide in 1936; father was shot in 1938. The founder of the museum himself was arrested in 1940 (he was 20 years old then). In prisons and camps, he spent a total of about 13 years. In 1956-1957, father and son Antonov-Ovseenko were rehabilitated. Anton Antonov-Ovseenko was first the director of the museum, then its honorary president. He died in 2013.

The museum contains documents, letters, personal belongings, memoirs of former GULAG prisoners, items from the locations of the camps. The exhibition covers the period of the formation of the camp system in the USSR from 1918 to the end of the terror in 1956, with an emphasis on the influence of the GULAG on the fates of people.

https://vott.ru/entry/643655 - zinc

The time will come and this garbage dump will be closed permanently. Together with the Yeltsin Center.
Read more about this kublo here https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/5234073.html

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9495703.html

Expertise for the Kremlin's pennies
November 14, 15:57

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Funny.
Trump yesterday nominated Tulsi Gabbard for the post of Director of National Intelligence of the United States, while even before the elections he said that he wanted to strengthen control over the rest of the US intelligence agencies with the help of his man as Director of National Intelligence. And then the figure of Gabbard emerges, who is listed as an agent of the Kremlin in Ukraine and who was a very frequent guest on Russia Today.
And so, a non-zero probability appears (unless, of course, the intelligence services do not disrupt this appointment), when a person added by the Nazis to the "Peacemaker" website heads the American intelligence agencies.
There are 3...2...1... left before Gabbard's page disappears from "Peacemaker"

. P.S. If Gabbard is appointed, I will be able to say that I am on the same list as the Director of National Intelligence of the United States.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9495491.html

Foreign agents will not receive royalties
November 14, 14:18

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Foreign agents will not receive royalties

Today, November 14, deputies will submit to the State Duma a bill on special accounts for foreign agents' income from intellectual activity and brands, said Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house. The authors of the initiative want to prohibit foreign agents from using money from special accounts until the status is cancelled. Later, the bill will be supplemented with a similar provision regarding income from property.

Any income from the creative activity of foreign agents will be credited to a special ruble account. Its opening will become mandatory. If the foreign agent does not do this, the person who transfers him royalties will have to open a special account. By a court decision, money from special accounts can be transferred to the budget.
Deputies plan to consider the bill next week in the first reading. By the second reading, an amendment will be introduced to the document on crediting funds of foreign agents from the sale of movable and immovable property, its lease and other income to a special account.

491 people are recognized as foreign agents in Russia. According to the State Duma speaker, most of them live abroad, “but receive royalties from Russia.” “They allow themselves to continue insulting our country and its citizens. They shamelessly say that they spend the money they receive, among other things, on supporting the Ukrainian armed forces. This is unacceptable,” Mr. Volodin wrote on Telegram.
Mr. Volodin reported back in March that the initiative to reward foreign agents was being discussed in the State Duma. The authorities had previously passed a law completely banning advertising on foreign agent resources.

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7298842 - zinc

They left a loophole for repentant foreign agents.
And they complicated the procedure for confiscating income in favor of the state by adding a filter in the form of a court decision.

P.S. And it seems that they are going to ban this Russophobic piece of work after its release.

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But you have to have no self-respect at all to pay assholes like Grigorovich.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9495073.html

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What Was CIA Director William Burns Doing in Armenia?
By Valeriy Krylko - November 11, 2024 1

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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan greets CIA Director William Burns, Yerevan, July 15, 2022. [Source: azatutyun.am]

Armenia is another battleground of the new cold war

In July 2022, CIA Director William Burns made a surprise visit to Yerevan in Armenia. He was there officially to support his Agency’s financing of “non-profit organizations” whose stated purpose is to “spread democratic values.”

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at the time announced provision of grants totaling more than $100 million for NGOs in Armenia.[1]

In 2021, the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cutout that specializes in fomenting regime change and propaganda, provided grants totaling $2,702,445 to Armenian organizations.

Armenia has emerged as a key battleground in the new Cold War, with the U.S. working to pry it away from the Russian orbit.

A March 2024 RAND Corporation report suggested that the U.S. could provide Armenia with short-range air defense technologies and counter-drone systems and that the Pentagon could initiate military training programs to help engender greater loyalty to the U.S. Also it was suggested that the State Department could work to try to facilitate better relations between Armenia and Turkey, a traditional rival to Russia.

Armenia’s current Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has begun to distance Armenia from Russia somewhat because of Russia’s perceived inaction as Azerbaijan, Armenia’s historic rival, crushed Armenian-backed resistance forces in Nagorno Karabakh.

With U.S. backing, Azerbaijan has aimed to occupy Nagorno-Karabakh to profit from its natural resources and mineral wealth, which includes gold and copper.

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The circled territory is Nagorno-Karabakh which Armenians consider to be Azeri occupied territory. [Source: britannica.com]

Armenia’s close ties with Russia were established in the 19th century when Russia functioned as a protector of beleaguered Christian populations in the Ottoman Empire. In the 20th century, Armenia became part of the Soviet Union and close bilateral relations were established with the Russian Federation after Armenia gained independent nationhood in 1991.[2]

During his visit to Yerevan, Burns met with the Secretary of the Security Council of the Republic of Armenia, Armen Grigoryan, and Prime Minister Pashinyan.

Many Armenians were suspicious of Burns’s true purpose in visiting Yerevan, believing he was there to undermine the country’s sovereignty.

Nikol Pashinyan has been a highly polarizing figure who is distrusted by many Armenians.

Pashinyan came to power in the 2018 “Velvet Revolution” when he earned the reputation as “Soros’s man.” George Soros is the billionaire Hungarian-American investor who has financed pro-Western color revolutions across Eastern Europe and Central Asia and is a gung-ho proponent of the war in Ukraine.

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Scene from 2018 “Velvet Revolution” in Yerevan. [Source: en.wikipedia.org]

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Nikol Pashinyan [Source: oc-media.org]

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George Soros [Source: nytimes.com]

Armen Grigoryan has faced particular criticism for his role in shepherding Armenia’s defeat in the Second Karabakh War.

Although he had a hand in ending the conflict, it is believed that the decisions on unpopular measures in this matter were dictated from outside. There is indirect evidence of this: Grigoryan is the most steadfast tin soldier of Pashinyan’s team. At a time when the personnel of the power bloc are openly shaking, the chair under this guy does not even wobble.

In 2018-2020, five heads of the National Security Service of Armenia were replaced. And one of the NSS directors of that period, Mikael Hambardzumyan, who had the share of leading the special service during the hottest phase of the Second Karabakh War, served in his post for only one month—from October 8 to November 8, 2020. Grigoryan’s predecessor, Argishti Kyaramyan, was appointed to the high position of the head of the state security bodies at the age of 29, without any experience in the special services or specialized education.

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Armen Grigoryan [Source: mfa.am]

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Argishti Kyaramyan [Source: panorama.am]

Thus, the leaders changed and the responsibility for the defeat in the war was smeared with a thin layer.

However, the process of fragmentation of the power bloc with the separation of a foreign intelligence agency, which Grigoryan so joyfully announced, is likely to lead to even worse consequences for the state security, especially if the new structure becomes a place for distribution of U.S. grants.

Speaking of the cadre steadfastness of the head of the Security Council, it seems to be connected primarily with the fact that he is a link between the Armenian leadership and Western, primarily American, special services.

This is eloquently evidenced by the facts: Not long after his appointment on October 24, 2018, Grigoryan personally met U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton at Yerevan’s Zvartnots Airport.

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John Bolton shaking hands with Armen Grigoryan. [Source: aysor.am]

Bolton is infamous for promoting all kinds of political skullduggery. He once stated: “As someone who has planned more than one coup—not here, of course, but in other countries—I can tell you that it takes painstaking work.”[3]

The process of the U.S. ideological expansion in Armenia did not start in 2022 or even in 2015. However, the active injection of funds combined with Armenia’s turn away from former allies have been taking place over the past two years.

The fact is that, since gaining sovereignty, the Republic of Armenia has pursued a policy of “complimentarism,” which implies cooperation with two or more subjects of international relations, including those competing with each other for political, ideological or economic reasons.

An Armenian scholar wrote that complimentarism national diplomacy “for many years allowed for a very adequate response to many challenges and threats in conditions of a rather narrow space for geopolitical maneuver.”

The development of a military-political alliance with the Russian Federation did not cause any contradictions with the parallel development of partnership relations with the EU, the United States and the NATO bloc. Moreover, such an approach was perceived in Armenia’s political-forming circles as a certain “balance of power between regional and extra-regional actors that have been established since the 1990s.”

It is noteworthy that Moscow has never forced Yerevan to choose, to accept one of the parties, which cannot be said about the policy of the collective West, specifically the European Union.

For example, at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius in November 2013, there were plans to sign an association agreement between Armenia and the European Union but, on September 3, at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Serzh Sargsyan (the leader overthrown in the Soros-backed “Velvet Revolution” of 2018) confirmed Yerevan’s desire to join the Customs Union and join the process of forming the Eurasian Economic Union (independent alliance of Central Asian countries).[4]

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Serzh Sargsyan [Source: en.wikipedia.org]
This decision caused criticism from European structures and expert circles, which stated that Armenia had allegedly “practically interrupted negotiations with Europe,” which made it impossible to initial the association agreement with the EU.[5]

Outside forces have generally been called upon to “help” Armenia to turn away from Russia. It is not difficult to trace where and for what funds set aside for these are spent.

There are more than 9,000 non-governmental organizations operating in Armenia today. Most of these organizations have external funding. They are divided into several types, according to the nature of their activities. Here is an example of the most representative ones.

Organizations that work with targeted tasks in the socio-political and electoral spheres. Among them are International IDEA, World Vision Armenia, International Organization for Migration (IOM), NDI, IREX, Open Society Institute (OSI) and others.

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International IDEA [Source: idea.int]


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NDI [Source: ndi.org]

The Armenian branch of the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation (OSIAFA) has traditionally had a relatively large influence on Armenia’s public sector and media sphere. Under the patronage of the Soros Foundation, more than 100 NGOs operate in Armenia, influencing the internal and foreign policy of the republic. The Armenian branch of the Foundation officially separated from the global network in 2022.[6]

Foundations that shape the information agenda and public opinion in Armenia also have great influence: “National Endowment for Democracy” (NED), “European Endowment for Democracy” (EED), “National Institute for Democracy” (NDI), and others. They finance media resources, including the International Network of Journalists “Umbrella,” the information and analytical website Evnreport.com, the newspaper of the current Prime Minister “Armenian Time” (until 2018), etc.

Whether Armenia’s statehood can still be saved under the current environment is a big question. The protests in the country are not subsiding, and the external threat from Azerbaijan remains critically important. Armenia cannot survive without Russian support. However, the American actors have already prepared methodologies by which the pre-trained activists will be able to accuse the Russian Federation of this.


1.USAID has a history of fronting for CIA activities. ↑



2.As an example of the close alliance, Armenia sent military doctors and engineers to Syria as part of Russia’s military intervention in support of Bashar al-Assad. ↑



3.https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics ... ad-vpx.cnn



4.https://www.ra.am/archives/2691/?ysclid ... 5270849876



5.https://aze.az/news_ekspert_armenii_ne_96887.html



6.https://newsarmenia.am/news/armenia/arm ... r356228109

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/1 ... n-armenia/

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Armenia: Delivery of Indian SAMs
November 13, 2024
Rybar

All analysts and observers interested in the Transcaucasus are following the ongoing Indian TV series in Armenia. And yesterday, Bharat Electronics Limited announced that the first battery of the Akash SAM system had been sent to Armenia.

The contract for the supply of the medium-range air defense missile system was announced in December last year. It is an analogue of the Soviet "Cube", capable of hitting air targets at a distance of 4 to 25 km.

Some Armenian officials are indignant at how Indian media outlets are disseminating information about each delivered complex and each signed contract on the Internet. Although they can be understood – for them, Armenia is the first importer of its own weapons in such volumes and quantities.

Pro-government Armenian channels speak about this with pride, noting that Armenia has beneficial relations with various countries and does not need Russia. Recently, they have also emphasized that the Russian Armed Forces have begun to use the Tor air defense missile systems , which were intended for the Armenians.

Only the Armenian authorities forget that the Tors were produced back in 2022, but due to the start of the Second World War, logistics through Georgia were disrupted, and the Armenians were offered to pick up their air defense systems themselves, which they were not in a hurry to do due to Armenia’s new course.

And then they even accused Russia of breaking the agreements, although they had the ability to remove the purchased equipment, but it was not in their interests.

https://rybar.ru/armeniya-postavka-indijskih-zrk/

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

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blindpig
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 15, 2024 3:50 pm

Glenn Diesen: Russia Changes Nuclear Doctrine & Prepares for War
November 14, 2024
By Glenn Diesen, Substack, 10/24/24

(Video at link.)

I had a conversation with Professor Sergey Karaganov and Alexander Mercouris about Russia changing its nuclear doctrine. Karaganov was an advisor to Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin. He has been the main proponent of lowering Russia’s nuclear threshold. Putin had previously told Karaganov that Russia was not prepared to change the nuclear doctrine, however Putin has reversed his position and is now changing the nuclear doctrine according to Karaganov’s recommendations.

Nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent and can therefore be a source of stability and peace by making war between the great powers unacceptable. The irony of the nuclear deterrent is that the immensely destructive power of nuclear weapons, possibly ending human civilisation, can reduce the credibility that an opponent would use them. The nuclear peace therefore requires communicating a credible readiness to destroy the world.

NATO’s escalations in the Ukraine War have convinced the Kremlin that its nuclear deterrent has been severely weakened and must be restored. For example, Biden initially warned against sending F-16s as it would likely trigger World War 3, but then decided later to approve supplying F-16s to Ukraine while NATO countries dismissed Russia’s nuclear deterrence as unacceptable “nuclear blackmail”. On the third year of the war, Ukraine invaded Kursk with NATO weapons and likely US intelligence – which was met with Western support and exuberance.

The dilemma for how Russia can respond has been: 1) retaliate against NATO and risk uncontrolled escalation possibly resulting in nuclear war, or 2) do not to retaliate but then embolden NATO to escalate further and thus risk nuclear war. The plan by the US and UK to supply Ukraine with long-range precision missiles became the final straw for Moscow. This would be considered a direct attack on Russia since these missiles would need to be operated by American or British soldiers and guided by their satellites.

The changes primarily entail 1) allowing the use of nuclear weapons if attacked by a non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear state (to address war through proxy), 2) placing Belarus under the Russian nuclear umbrella to address the possibility of a NATO nuclear attack on Belarus as a step up the escalation ladder. Obama’s national-security team secretly staged a war game in 2016 in which it was recommended to respond to a Russian use of nuclear weapon with a NATO nuclear attack on Belarus – “a nation that had played no role whatsoever in the invasion of the NATO ally but had the misfortune of being a Russian ally”.

Changing the nuclear doctrine does not suggest Russia is planning a nuclear strike as there are still further steps on the escalation ladder:

-Confront and destroy NATO reconnaissance drones over the Black Sea that provide targets to Ukraine

-Use conventional weapons to attack NATO’s military targets that are used to put a blockade on Kaliningrad (if the decision is made)

-Destroy NATO satellites used to guide missiles that attack Russian territory

-Destroy NATO’s critical infrastructure such as underwater cables or through cyber attacks

-Destroy Ukrainian warplanes stationed in Poland and Romania

-Destroy military logistics centres on NATO territory for weapons being sent to Ukraine

-Attacks on US military bases abroad, either through proxies or direct attacks

However, once any of these retaliatory actions are taken against NATO, both sides could lose control of the situation and rapidly head up the escalation ladder.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2024/11/gle ... s-for-war/

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PORTON DOWN LABORATORY HEAD GIVEN LICENCE TO LIE IN NOVICHOK SHOW TRIAL

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by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

Anthony Hughes, the retired judge (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley) directing the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry in London, opened the questioning of a senior British Government chemical warfare agent on Wednesday by telling him “you’re not bound by your statement, but by all means use it to refresh your recollection” — page 5.

This is a licence to lie. The head of chemical and biological analysis at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down was given the cipher MK26 to conceal his name — his face screened from view in the videotape of the hearing — to do just that.

Hughes also arranged for his assisting counsel, Andrew O’Connor KC, to give the government official this version of the witness oath. “May I ask you,” O’Connor said, “whether you have had an opportunity to read through this statement before giving evidence today? A. Yes, I have. Q. Are its contents true to the best of your knowledge and belief? A. Yes, they are. Q. Thank you.”

As Hughes and O’Connor know very well, the official oath in British courtroom practice is that witness swears his testimony “shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” In this case, the judge and his lawyer gave the witness a licence not to tell the whole truth.

Just in case these licences to lie and to evade the truth were spotted by the public, O’Connor told MK26 that he and Hughes accepted his “statement does not contain everything that you can say about these matters because there are some further issues, further material that is covered by the restriction [secrecy] orders. A. Yes, that’s correct. Q. As a result, it’s right, is it not, that you will be coming back when the Inquiry sits in its closed sessions to give further evidence and on that occasion you will be able to provide the Chair with the information which you cannot provide today? A. Yes.” — page 6.

According to the exhibits MK26 had signed for the Inquiry, of the two pages of witness statement he had signed to the police on July 16, 2018, everything has been blacked out except one short paragraph giving the official accreditation of the workshops MK26 headed at the DSTL Porton Down. A second witness statement MK26 signed for the Coroners Court on August 20, 2019, comprises five pages, but they have all been censored. The only lines which remain say: “I have complied with, and will continue to comply with, my duty to the court to provide independent assistance by way of objective unbiased opinion in relation to matters within my expertise.” At the Bar this is recognized as the Queen Gertrude defence for lying; it comes from “the lady doth protest too much, methinks”, the well-known line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A Defence Ministry employee cannot be independent, or objective, or unbiased in relation to his official work orders.

The political significance of the Porton Down lying has been international. It was the foundation of the claim the British Government made to its NATO allies five weeks after Sergei and Yulia Skripal’s collapse that the UK was the target of a Novichok attack by Russia.

According to a letter sent to the NATO headquarters by Sir Mark Sedwill, then the Prime Minister’s national security advisor and supervisor of intelligence operations, “I would like to share with you and Allies further information regarding our assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian state was responsible for the Salisbury attack. Only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and the motive. The OPCW’s. [Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons] analysis matches the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory’s [DSTL Porton Down] own, confirming once again the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical of high purity that was used in Salisbury. OPCW have always been clear that it was their role to identify what substance was used, not who was responsible… of course, the DSTL analysis does not identify the country or laboratory of origin of the agent used in this attack…We therefore continue to judge that only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and motive for the attack on the Skripals and that it is highly likely that the Russian state was responsible. There is no plausible alternative explanation.”

Sedwill was lying. Porton Down was lying. OPCW repeated the lies it was given by the British. There was, there still is, a plausible alternative explanation.

In his appearance at Hughes’s hearing this week, MK26 tried to conceal this with what an independent British organic chemist with comparable expertise to MK26 describes as “camouflage science – faulty assumptions, missing chemical names, speculative findings, a day of witchcraft.”


At the beginning of the Porton Down official’s appearance, Hughes warned him to stick to the official narrative that Novichok was the Russian weapon. “Don’t tell us anything that we ought not to know,” Hughes let slip, “and still less anything that other hostile people of any kind ought not to know.” — page 46. This was a ruling by the judge that lying to the Russians or to skeptical members of the British public was not only necessary, but the duty of the witness.

Hughes also intervened to correct a question asked of MK26 by a lawyer representing the Sturgess family.

“[Q] ‘Over the past weekend, [Russian] foreign minister [Sergei] Lavrov said that the Russian Federation had somehow obtained information to suggest that the chemical used was identified by a world leading laboratory as BZ. In fact, the four OPCW designated laboratories did not detect BZ in any of the samples collected in Salisbury.’ Is that then confirming that there was no other analysis –“

“LORD HUGHES: Well, hang on a minute, never mind what a British Government representative may have said: was there any BZ in the samples that you looked at?”

“A [MK26]. There was no BZ in any of the samples that we looked at, either in our labs at Porton Down or, as they’re saying there, in any of the samples that were submitted to the OPCW laboratories. The only related chemical to BZ was in the control sample included by the OPCW as a quality control measure and that was a precursor, not BZ itself.” — page 205.

Hughes was implying that MK26 was not a British Government representative when the judge knew that to be false. Porton Down is an agency of the UK Ministry of Defence; MK26 is a British government employee; testifying in front of Hughes, he was representing the British Government’s chemical warfare laboratory. Earlier in the hearing, Hughes himself had reminded him of his official orders not to disclose government-classified information.

A British source was asked to assess MK26’s testimony and witness statements with the independence of not being employed or contracted by a government agency, not under state secrecy orders, and not vetted or rehearsed by Hughes, his lawyers or police advisors. The source is a British organic chemist who describes himself as a “published academic in the field of high resolution chromatography.” He has requested the same anonymity which Hughes ordered for the Porton Down agent.

He disputes the scientific validity of a question-and-answer exchange between MK26 and Hughes’s assisting counsel at page 83-84 of the hearing transcript.

“Q. If we just read the bottom line of this page [of MK26’s witness statement], going over to the next, it says: ‘Samples from both Yulia Skripal and Sergei Skripal were positive for the presence of a Novichok-butyrylcholinesterase nonapeptide, a characteristic marker for exposure to a particular nerve agent of the Novichok class.’ This is very much the territory we were discussing earlier.

A.[MK26] Yes.

Q. That those tests indicated the presence of a particular Novichok?

A. Yes.

Q. The same particular Novichok within both of their bodies; is that right?

A. Yes, that’s correct.”

The source says this is incorrect. “The nonapeptide described cannot through mass spectrometry be described as “Novichok- butyrylcholinesterase. Two reasons. The nerve agent loses an atom when the reaction with the butyryl cholinesterase occurs. In the case of what we know of A232 and A234 [Novichok], the atom lost from the nerve agent would be fluorine.”

“However, when the atom is not known, then using the structure of the nonapeptide to identify the nonapeptide, which is claimed to have been detected, is not good science.

The lost atom could have been fluorine, chlorine, bromine, or astatine. The structure is not properly identified — the ‘free’ unreacted ‘Novichok’ has not been identified in this analysis. In the South Korean Defense Ministry research paper of June 2021, the nonapeptide was identified, but the parent ion — the actual molecule — needs to be present, so that proper identification is possible. No parent ion, with only the nonapeptide, as MK26 reports, means that his lab does not know which atom fell off the molecule of the nerve agent when it bounded to the AChE [Acetylcholinesterase].”

The source insists that the mass spectrometry which MK26 claims to have used to detect Novichok cannot have done so.

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Left, a current-generation Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) machine. Right, a diagrammatic representation of how the technology works. For clearer understanding, click to view video.

“The LC-MS/MS [liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry] would be used to identify the spectrum of the nonapeptide adduct where the A234 [Novichok] molecule has bound to the nonapeptide — nona means nine, that’s the carbon chain length of the peptide. Note the fluorine (F) atom is now missing. The fluorine atom would be needed to properly identify the original nerve agent. So a chemist using the mass spectral information to elucidate the structure of the original, the unbound nerve agent, could not do so. MK26 cannot assume, he should not have assumed that the nerve agent contained a fluorine atom in the first place. But DSTL are claiming that unbound, unreacted ‘free’ Novichok was also detected. They need that claim in order to identify the particular nerve agent in the blood sample.

However, the literature does not show A234 (or A232 ) spectra. MK26’s evidence is that he needed the unreacted nerve agent to be found in the sample, in order to make his ‘identify the identical match’ claim.”

“Of course, if he and DSTL were totally convinced of the work they have done, then the specific chemical would be named. A234 is Ethyl (1- (diethylamino) ethylidene) phosphoramidofluoridate. Why won’t they confirm this? Why is the hearing being told that Novichok was identified but the chemical name of what MK26 and his lab claim to have identified is being withheld? Why is Porton Down not naming the specific chemical they claim to have found?”

The source points out that the international research literature shows that well before the alleged Russian attack in Salisbury in March 2018, A234 Novichok had been synthesized and stocked by military laboratories in the US, South Korea, and Iran, as well as in the UK. This means that Porton Down already had stocks of Novichok, and that MK26’s evidence confirms samples of this Novichok were used by MK26 to provide the “matches” he claims pinpointed Russian Novichok. That is a lie, according to the expert source.

Sedwill’s claim in his NATO letter, repeated in parliament by then-Prime Minister Theresa May and in the press by then-Foreign Minister Boris Johnson that “only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and the motive” for the Novichok reportedly found on the Skripals, their front door-handle, Sturgess, and the perfume bottle on her kitchen table – that claim was false.

The source is also skeptical of MK26’s evidence on how his laboratory measured and concluded that “the toxic chemical was of high purity. The latter is concluded from the almost complete absence of impurities.” — page 115.

“Scientifically,” the source has responded, “to determine if something is of high purity, there are two ways of determining this. First, compare the sample with a reference material. If in the example of alcohol, if I had a reference material which had a known purity, e.g. 99% ethanol, then I could calculate that my whiskey contained 40% ethanol. Second, measure all the expected impurities (including the unknown ones!), add them up, and the balance is the calculated purity of the chemical. The second version is unpopular, as it expensive to source ‘pure’ impurities, so that becomes a spiral of factoring in that the impurity reference material is not 100% pure. So the first method is very much preferred.”

“However, you need a reference material of known purity, in order to calculate the purity of the sample. This means MK26 is admitting that Porton Down already had the reference ‘Novichok’.”

The source is also suggesting that if Porton Down already had high-purity Novichok in stock, there is alternative explanation for the appearance of the alleged Russian Novichok in Salisbury between March and June of 2018; and that alternative should have been examined in the public hearing. However, no lawyer for the Skripals or for Sturgess rose in front of Hughes on Wednesday to cross-examine MK26. His hearsay evidence is thus missing proof that what was reported to have been discovered as a Russian attack weapon had not been fabricated by Porton Down, on orders from the Defence Ministry, Sedwill and Prime Minister May.

The judge’s assisting counsel O’Connor did ask one crucial question.

“Q. MK26, you will be aware that in other publications and other places on the internet, an even more straightforward allegation has been made that Porton Down did, in fact, make Novichok, did, in fact, perhaps make the Novichok that was involved in this case. From that paragraph and those other references, there are obvious questions that arise, including, for example, did DSTL have the
capacity in 2018 to synthesise Novichok; if so, had it in fact produced Novichok at that time and in what quantities; and also is there any possibility at all that any Novichok produced at Porton Down could have been involved in either the Salisbury or the Amesbury poisonings? Those and other questions arise, MK26, but is there anything you can say about those issues today in open, or do we need to explore them in closed?”

A. No, there is nothing I can say in open.” — page 47.

“This is telling,” the source comments. “If the head of chemical analysis at DSTL knew the answer to be no, he would have said so at the hearing. This means that in the closed session, he is going to say yes. That means that Porton Down did and can make Novichok. The lawyers and the press should have been all over this.”

A lawyer source comments: “This is an example of hearsay defending itself by proposing to whisper.”

To assist readers understand the organic chemistry, biomedical terms, and technology which have been used in the presentation of Porton Down’s evidence for Novichok, the expert source was asked to provide this summary in layman’s language.

What does a nerve agent do, and how does Liquid Chromatography combined with Mass Spectrometry held the scientist find out what is going on?

Our nervous system uses two simple molecules acetyl and choline which when combined form the imaginatively named Acetylcholine.

Acetylcholine is needed by our nervous system, but too much of it causes muscles to spasm and our nervous system to misfire.

Technically: AChE’s primary role is to terminate neuronal transmission and signaling between synapses. It does this by rapidly breaking down ACh molecules, preventing them from acting for too long and allowing them to be recycled.

Image

Acetylcholine Esterase ( AChE) breaks down the acetylcholine molecule back to its original two components, so AChE performs the role of moderator of the acetylcholine levels in the body, and also allows the acetyl and choline molecules to be reused, rather than new starting materials to be made. AChE performs this breakdown of acetylcholine many billions of times every second.

When an organophosphate (OP) is ingested or breathed in, or applied to the skin, the OP disrupts, or more correctly, inhibits the function of AChE enzyme.

Another esterase performing the same function is butyrylcholine esterase. Scientists like studying this one as it is present in plasma, and we know scientist like working with blood.

Both acetylcholine esterase AChE and butyrlcholine esterase BuChE are inhibited by the OP. They stop working; acetylcholine is not broken down; the nervous system goes into overdrive.

How do scientists discover what’s going on and what do they measure? It is relatively simple to measure AChE and BuChE. There are medicines which are sometime given to Alzheimer’s and dementia patients to reduce acetylcholine esterase levels — in other words to stimulate the nervous system. So clinicians have relatively simple medical devices to measure AChE and BuChE.

Knowing the esterase level is low, but not knowing what caused the inhibition requires another technique. This is Liquid Chromatography combined with Mass Spectrometry, or LC-MS as we scientists call it.

Simply put, samples, such as blood extracts, are introduced to a short column, where they are separated from each other, and then introduced to a spectrometer. The separated compounds are then ionised; that is they become charged, and their masses are accurately determined.

Some, and in fact most chemicals fall apart to some extent during this process. This is not a bad thing, as seeing a picture (spectrum) of not just the intact molecule, but also knowing the weight of the fragments allows the computer to match the molecule and its fragment ions against a library of stored spectra.

If you get a good match, then maybe your compound which is in the blood sample can be identified.

In the DSTL testimony, MK26 explained that a peptide, which was a fragment of the BuChE molecule, had a piece of the purported Novichok attached to it. This meant the picture produced by the sample (the spectrum) holds very important information.

The first part is the nonapeptide (a short chain of amino acids, in this instance nine) but even more significantly, the OP nerve agent is stuck to it. That means in the case of DSTL and the Skripal blood samples and Dawn Sturgess too, that the nerve agent can be 100% identified by LC-MS.

But wait, let’s re-run Porton Down’s decision-making.

In the action of the nerve agent bonding to the nonapeptide, one or maybe more of the atoms which make up the nerve agent are lost. Maybe the fluorine atom, maybe not. As the structure is not a complete picture, then the scientist cannot identify the actual structure of the nerve agent, because at least one of the atoms of the molecule is missing.

Image

But wait, take another look.

It seems the blood sample contains the nerve agent itself. Not bound or reacted to anything, just there on its own. With this knowledge, if true, comes great danger.

How does the scientist know that the picture produced by the mass spectrometer really is the nerve agent? Well, we have a reference sample, don’t we? No, we don’t, because we have been told repeatedly that only Russia can make it.

Now it is beginning to look like the picture, (spectrum) for the nerve agent is not a very good one, technically or legally speaking. But not to worry – we have a library spectrum to compare it to, don’t we? No we don’t. This material is too secret to put in a commercial software library.


So let’s look at the academic literature. There it looks like the US, Iran and South Korea have made the same nerve agent and have run their samples on their own LC-MS.


https://johnhelmer.net/porton-down-labo ... more-90609

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Will they ever learn? Kiev déjà vu in Tbilisi

Stephen Karganovic

November 15, 2024

Good governance promotes the exercise of the widest possible spectrum of liberties, but the practice of those liberties must be tempered.

Experienced students of colour revolution technologies should have been dismayed several days ago to observe in Tbilisi an ominous replay of a scenario last witnessed ten years ago in Kiev, when the subversive upheaval that wrecked Ukraine was at its height. Now it seems to be Georgia’s turn to be wrecked if, that is, having learned nothing the Georgian government repeats the ruinous errors of their Ukrainian counterparts and the Georgian people stand idly by as their country is subjected to systematic assault by professional foreign con artists and their local disciples.

The ominous spectacle in question is the invasion of the Georgian capital by a bevy of mostly washed out European Union politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden and Finland. The purpose of their unsolicited visit was not to enjoy the health benefits of the mineral water springs of Borjomi but to incite the dwindling crowds of gullible Georgian citizens, deluded by the propaganda of Western-funded “NGOs.” They came to harangue the crowds to continue to insist that the results of the free and fair elections recently held in their country be annulled, that the current democratically elected government be overthrown, and that a regime subservient to the collective West, whose interests the visitors represent, should be installed to replace it.

Why did the Georgian government allow those uninvited agitators to disembark in their country’s sovereign territory and to act as if they already owned it, all without hindrance? The obvious and natural question is who controls the Tbilisi airport? Why did the government tolerate the presence of foreign subversives, however high-ranking in their countries of origin, who came for the specific purpose of ultimately destroying it? Why weren’t these agitators detained on arrival at the airport and put aboard the next outbound flight back to where they came from?

These are the logical questions that in 2014 could have been put also to the Ukrainian government of that period that was targeted for destruction by the same hostile foreign interests, using a similar methodology. In both cases, one may speculate concerning the motive for the inexplicable and in the Ukrainian case now demonstrably fatal ineptness that was on display. On any list of probable reasons for this strange conduct, impermissible to a responsible government, the deep-seated inferiority complex that immobilises East European political elites in their dealings with the collective West is a factor that occupies a prominent position.

They are genuinely convinced that their legitimacy derives from aping Western “values.” The deliberately elusive norms that those servile elites have embraced for their guidance are, however, no more than vacuous propaganda slogans manufactured to befuddle indigenous simpletons. But they are hardly at all practiced in the countries which invoke them in order to manipulate yokels who take them at face value. Spell bound by sumptuous mirages, local elites slavishly seek acceptance and confirmation of status from those illusionists.

Anxious to prove themselves by outperforming their unworthy Western models in the practice of “democracy,” native elites resort to misguided mimicry in seeking therapy for their inferiority complex. They overlook as they do that both the fundamental tenets of genuine democracy and the perennial rules of good governance.

In the case at hand, Georgian authorities appear to have forgotten that democracy in its varied expressions (actually, liberty is a more precise and meaningful word for the purpose) is useful only to the extent that its operation secures the freedom and sovereignty of the country and ensures the liberty of Georgian citizens. It does not apply in an absolute sense to intruding foreigners. Citizens of Georgia dissatisfied with their country’s political direction should have the right, within reasonable limits set by law, to express their dissent, to peacefully assemble, and to publicly voice their opinions, even if those run contrary to majority sentiments, as we clearly saw after the recent elections that in Georgia they do. That right, however, does not extend to foreign officials and agitators who come to promote an agenda that is hostile to the programme of the country’s legitimate government and which ultimately seeks that government’s dissolution by violent and revolutionary means.

The tragic Ukrainian experience should serve as a stark lesson to every government facing challenges of this nature.

The Georgian government certainly was on the right track earlier this year when it enacted a foreign agents transparency law which mandates that data pertaining to the financing of the thousands of foreign funded and directed “NGOs” in Georgia must be made publicly available. That is a good and informative start because it identifies foreign agents that loyal citizens ought to shun. However, it will be remembered as no more than an ineffective half measure unless further steps are taken to ensure national sovereignty and the liberty of the Georgian people in the face of foreign encroachment.

Beneficial as it is, the foreign agents transparency law cannot guarantee that deeply indoctrinated sections of the population will make rational use of the data which enforcement of that law places at their disposal. The fruits of such indoctrination and in many cases detachment from reality we have already witnessed in Ukraine. We observe that also in Georgia today, with frenzied crowds succumbing to incitement to demand their country’s political reorientation toward the collapsing European Union and urge hostility to Russia. Unsuspected by these simpletons, the latter of these demands aims, for the sole benefit of their indoctrinators, to organise a military confrontation with Russia, a disaster in which many of them would undoubtedly perish.

The instructive Ukrainian example, which only needs to be heeded for countries to remain unharmed and lives to be saved, demonstrates that given enough brainwashing current minorities can be engineered into becoming majorities, or at least acquiescent bystanders. Dissident citizens must be given an ample opportunity to freely express their views, no matter how erroneous or delusional, but not beyond the point where such expression becomes incompatible with the national interest and the stability of the state which guarantees and protects it.

Good governance promotes the exercise of the widest possible spectrum of liberties, but the practice of those liberties must be tempered, and whenever necessary the wings of the abusers must be clipped, by the rigorous application of the ancient principle which today has lost none of its pertinence: Salus patriae suprema lex.

That is the lesson that the Georgian government would be well advised to take if it is seriously intent on defending its beleaguered country from the designs of its enemies, foreign and domestic.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... n-tbilisi/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 16, 2024 4:20 pm

UnHerd: Would you move to Mother Russia? Putin is wooing the West’s workers
November 15, 2024 natyliesb
By Malcom Kyeune, UnHerd, 10/24/24

Last year, Tucker Carlson scandalised America by travelling to Russia and interviewing Vladimir Putin. As US viewers denounced the idea that one ought to speak to an enemy such as Putin, Tucker strolled around Moscow, filming himself taking the subway, buying a burger from the new Russian McDonalds, and going grocery shopping in a Moscow supermarket. Behaving, in fact, like he was in the West.

Back home, Tucker had some good things to say about Putin, as well as some bad things. But it was the streets and shops of Moscow that really “radicalised” him. The West likes to paint Russia as poor, miserable and oppressed, but Tucker described a perfectly ordinary modern society. The discrepancy between what Tucker had been taught to expect and what he actually saw in Russia didn’t just unnerve him — it made him angry.

Of course, one might point out that Moscow and St Petersburg are Potemkin villages of sorts, covering up the reality of deep poverty in much of the rest of the country. But none of this is ultimately a matter of facts. The conflict between the West and Russia today is now seen as ideological and existential, just as the conflict between communism and capitalism once was. To say something nice about the Russian enemy is to take his side; to say something nice about him that also happens to be true is seen as even more treasonous. Communist Russia was rife with stories about American workers being treated like dirt, toiling under truly awful living standards. After all, America was capitalist, and a capitalist society could never be a good place for a worker to live.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the epic tension that had built up over the decades between the US and Russia fell apart rapidly. Russians queued up to eat at McDonald’s or to buy blue jeans, and they also emigrated to America in droves. Some of them wanted a more stable place to raise their children than the dystopian nightmare that was Nineties Russia, others saw in America a more agreeable form of culture and ideology, and others still just wanted to make money. In 1980, the number of foreign-born Russian speakers in the US numbered less than 200,000. In 2011, that number had hit 900,000.

Since then, however, things have changed a great deal. The US is no longer the Mecca of foreign talent it once was, as it dives deeper into a geopolitical showdown with Russia, China, and the Brics more generally. The West is faltering both militarily and economically; the US empire is overstretched, practically insolvent, and facing growing exhaustion and disillusionment at home. To complicate this, the West’s own ideological tenets about freedom of speech and respect for human rights ring increasingly hollow. Even Westerners are losing faith in the American project.

While Tucker Carlson’s trip to Russia was a one-off, there has been a small but growing trickle of news stories in Western media featuring Americans deciding to brave the Iron Curtain in the other direction. The reasons they give are eerily similar to the ones heard from dissidents in the past: the political system in the West is broken and the politicians have lost the plot; the ruling ideology is out of touch with ordinary people; the standard of living is falling and the cost of living too high. Mostly, the reasons given today have to do with politics rather than economics: in this telling the West is just too “woke”, too materialist, and too sclerotic. Russia, for its part, seems eager to offer “political asylum” to any Westerner with a big enough bone to pick with their home country.

It’s easy to dismiss what’s going on here as an irrelevant fringe phenomenon, but that might turn out to be a very grave mistake in the decade ahead. The ideological angle to these stories — that Russia is engaged in some fanciful or vain project of sheltering the “unwoke” out of some kind of humanitarian concern — is nothing but a fable. It is a velvet glove, hiding a far more calculating economic fist.

The truth of the matter is that Russia — like many other Brics countries now preparing their collective challenge to the West — has been struggling with the question of immigration for quite a long time now. After slowly recovering from the runaway brain-drain that hit it in the Nineties, the Russian state has cautiously moved to reform and rationalise its immigration system, particularly with an eye towards streamlining new channels for highly-skilled migrants. In other words, just the kind of migrants who tend to be in short supply and high demand worldwide. The fact that the Russians are entering into this competition decades late is certainly not lost upon them. During the unipolar moment, the West monopolised the pool of skilled migrants available, while also retaining all the high-value labour created at home. In the dawning multipolar world, however, the West appears not just as a competitor to be bested, but also as a potential goldmine from which an increasing number of migrants can be sourced.

It is only when one understands that the West could potentially become a victim, rather than a beneficiary of future brain drain that recent policy changes within Russia can begin to make sense. To wit, Russia recently announced that anyone living in a Western country “opposed to Russia” shall have access to a special, expedited visa process, exempt from all ordinary immigration requirements. There are no quotas for this kind of immigration, no tests on language skills or knowledge of Russian law, and all the other aspects of this visa process are tailored to be as generous as possible. Applicants only have to demonstrate that they wish to move to Russia due to a disagreement with their home country’s policies that contradict “traditional” Western or Russian values. Even if you’re not interested in Russia, Russia is now interested in you.

“Even if you’re not interested in Russia, Russia is now interested in you.”

Law and consultancy firms that offer help to clients looking to move to Russia aren’t exactly new, and there are a decent number to choose from. This new push toward “Shared Values Visas” from the Russian state, however, is notable in that it coincides with far more sleek and ideologically savvy new ventures into the market. A good example of this trend is “ArkVostok”, the company behind the website movetorussia.com. With the founders having mostly Western educational backgrounds as well as experience working inside Western consultancy firms, the pitch offered here is clearly tailored to appeal precisely to the sort of feelings that Tucker Carlson has recently given voice to. Tired of culture war and DEI? Worried about national debt and unsustainable pension funds? Paranoid about bugs in your burger and GMO-food slowly poisoning your body? Whatever you’re in the market to buy, Russia is in the market to sell.

It is tempting to dismiss this out of hand. What kind of traitor would ever contemplate leaving our glorious Free World ™ to shack up with the enemy, all for the worldly promise of a flat 13% tax rate? Unfortunately, the answer to that question, as history has borne out time and time again, is almost always “more people than you’d think”. While ideology and righteousness are always comforting things to have, consider this quote from Tucker Carlson himself on his experience inside that Moscow supermarket: “Everybody [in the film crew] is from the United States … and we didn’t pay any attention to cost, we just put in the cart what we would actually eat over a week. We all [guessed] around $400 bucks. It was $104 U.S. here. And that’s when you start to realise that ideology doesn’t matter as much as you thought.”

One can say that you can’t put a price on freedom, or morality; that the privilege of living in a free society cannot be measured in something so vulgar as dollars and cents. That’s a nice sentiment, but the reality of the human condition is that these things do have a price. Moreover, this price is often much lower than most of us would like to admit. Communists in the USSR, lest we forget, used to think that no human being would ever abandon socialism just for a pair of blue jeans. If we in the West want to ignore recent history and instead cling to the hope that nobody will ever switch sides just because someone floats an offer of better schools, safer streets, cheaper apartments, and lower taxes, we do so at our own peril.

Besides, to try to minimise the danger presented here by criticising Russia or attacking Putin is to catastrophically miss the point. Though the Shared Values Visa programme tries to present itself as a fairly niche culture war phenomenon, its true nature is not cultural or ideological. It is driven by a ruthless economic logic that is much bigger than Russia itself. Even if Russia’s various attempts at wooing Westerners end up being unsuccessful, it is merely the first vulture to start circling overhead. Many more scavengers are likely to appear before long, each one with a bewitching song of higher real wages, cheaper groceries, and lower taxes.

There are at least two big economic reasons that force this development. First, skilled immigration is simply a good deal. If you can poach a highly educated person of prime working age without paying for his education, you have secured a very expensive and limited resource without having to pay any of the costs involved in training, childcare, and healthcare. This is the main reason that brain drain as a phenomenon has been consistently popular inside the West, even as it has long been hated everywhere else: one side pays all the costs, the other side reaps all the benefits.

The economic logic behind the Shared Values Visa is more ominous, however. It’s often said that Russia has terrible demographics, and in many ways, this is true. Russia’s total fertility rate is around 1.4 children per woman, which is far lower than the replacement rate. Unfortunately, this is actually a completely normal fertility rate in 2024. Very few countries in the EU have fertility rates that are much better than this, and a good number of them are significantly worse. This is not an unknown problem in the West, and the hoped-for solution has long been immigration, preferably of the more highly-skilled kind. Without sufficient immigration, European social welfare systems risk collapsing under the weight of too many old people dependent on taxes levied onto too few young workers.

All this means that Europe is highly vulnerable to the poaching of workers. And indeed, because of how our welfare systems are set up, any outmigration cannot help but trigger a very destructive chain reaction: as people migrate due to high taxes, there’s less workers, meaning taxes will get higher, meaning the push factors to emigrate become even stronger. In this environment of stagnation, an extremely vicious game of musical chairs is likely to dominate, as all countries face the pressure to steal workers from somewhere else, in order to ease the tax burden on the workers that already have citizenship. With an extremely low public debt of around $300 billion and an income tax rate that tops out at 15%, Russia is far better prepared for this kind of competition than most people seem willing to admit. For comparison, America pays three times that amount in annual interest on its whopping $35 trillion debt.

This threat is real, and it is much closer than many think. In fact, the UK in particular is already in a slow-rolling brain-drain crisis. Education is getting increasingly expensive, the population is ageing, and real wages are no longer keeping up with inflation. For now, the main actors trying to poach talent are other countries inside the Western bloc, with America as the principal looter-in-chief. That order of affairs might not last for much longer, however, and America might find itself vulnerable to the same kind of asset-stripping before long. It’s hard to see how brain drain can possibly work out as a net benefit to the West in the years and decades ahead: the great majority of Western countries are now stuck in the same sort of malaise as the UK, with economies entering what now looks like a phase of almost permanent stagnation due to the energy crisis. There is no light at the end of the tunnel: opinion polls instead show an increasingly catastrophic loss of faith among the public in their parties and political institutions.

Brain drain often has ruinous effects on the countries that fall victim to it, even in cases where there’s not a looming demographic crisis threatening to upturn all welfare systems. Russia might be using honeyed words as it tempts people with family values and GMO-free burgers, but those Westerners who now glibly mock the velvet glove might end up bitterly regretting not taking the iron gauntlet hidden underneath more seriously. All of this is strictly business: it is the groundwork being laid in order to loot the West of talent the moment a crisis or moment of weakness strikes, leaving hollowed-out economies and dying communities in its wake. After all, the Russians probably figure, it’s only fair: we did the exact same thing to them.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2024/11/unh ... s-workers/

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Moscow continues to warn the West about the risk of nuclear escalation

Lucas Leiroz

November 16, 2024

Maria Zakharova’s recent statement makes it clear that Russia, even while prioritizing diplomacy, will not give up on “devastating” measures if these are necessary to respond to Western aggression.

Tensions over the issue of “deep” strikes continue to escalate. Kiev continues to demand permission to strike targets in the Russian Federation’s demilitarized zone, while Moscow continues to make it clear that it will interpret such maneuvers as a declaration of war by NATO. In a recent statement, Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, emphasized how Ukrainians and their partners are “playing with fire” with such threats, promising an “immediate and devastating” response in the event of a long-range strike.

The Russian government has repeatedly stated that the long-range weapons systems supplied by the West to Ukraine cannot be operated without the presence of NATO specialists, who would provide the necessary training and logistical support to the Ukrainians. This is because such weapons are not compatible with the Ukrainian military infrastructure, which depends on continuous intelligence support and strategic guidance provided by the Atlantic alliance. Moscow’s position is clear: authorizing the use of these missiles for strikes outside the official conflict zone, in addition to representing an expansion of Western involvement, would constitute direct NATO intervention in the conflict. Russia would regard any use of these weapons in such circumstances as a direct aggression against its sovereignty by the Western countries themselves, which would require an “immediate and devastating” retaliation.

The discussion about the deployment of Storm Shadow missiles and other advanced weapons systems in “deep” Russian territory is a clear demonstration of the dangerous game the West is playing, ignoring all the limits imposed by Russia. NATO’s role in the war in Ukraine has been a sensitive issue since the beginning of the conflict. Although Western powers insist on their position of supporting Ukraine as a legitimate right to defend it against what they call a Russian “invasion”, many analysts and officials point out that the interventions of the powers of the Atlantic alliance, both in terms of weapons and intelligence, have led to an unnecessary prolongation of the conflict, dragging Ukraine into a proxy war that puts the world on the brink of a nuclear confrontation.

By offering more powerful and sophisticated weapons, the West is not only strengthening Kiev’s military capabilities – which seem to have little strategic relevance at the moment – but also risks turning the local conflict into a war of global proportions. Moscow’s concern is legitimate, considering that the absence of limits on Western involvement in Ukraine could lead to a situation of unrestricted aggression against the Russian people, including even demilitarized cities far from the zone disputed by Kiev.

Indeed, the eventual authorization of the use of long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia would place Moscow and NATO facing the near inevitability of a nuclear confrontation. As spokeswoman Zakharova has made clear, Russia is on high alert for the use of advanced missiles against its territory. Moscow has repeatedly stated that if such attacks occur, Russia’s response will be strong and decisive. This would not only imply a military escalation, but also a redefinition of relations between Russia and the West, with the possibility of unpredictable consequences for international stability.

The recent changes in Russia’s nuclear doctrine, allowing a nuclear response to deep strikes by non-nuclear powers supported by nuclear states (just like in the Ukraine-NATO case), were a clear attempt by Moscow to de-escalate the current situation through rhetoric and indirect deterrence. At first, the measure seemed sufficient to calm public pressure from some NATO figures for the authorization of the strikes. However, it is difficult to predict what the Democratic “administration” plans to do in its final days in power, and it is possible that Biden and his team will go into “suicide mode” and put the entire global security architecture at risk, despite Russian warnings.

In the end, Western powers need to reconsider their actions before it is too late. The escalation of the conflict and the lack of dialogue only increase the risk of a global catastrophe. Russia, for its part, continues to prepare to defend its people and its sovereignty, knowing that diplomacy, despite difficult, remains the only viable alternative to avoid a total collapse of the international order. However, once diplomatic means have been exhausted, the Russians will take whatever measures are necessary to respond appropriately to the violation of its red lines.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... scalation/

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St Petersburg Travel Notes, installment five: Russia’s kontraktniki and Blood Money

(Gilbert is such a petty bourgeois pig...but there's a good bit of information here despite his disdain for 'lower class people'.)

<snip>

Tomorrow I expect to cross the border into Estonia on my way home to Brussels. Accordingly this fifth installment of my travel notes is the last of the series and will cover a variety of topics as I wind up my stay here.

I begin with the issue flagged in the title above, the Blood Money being offered to Russian men of all ages who sign up to join the fight on the battlefield of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine.

In medieval German and Anglo-Saxon Wergeld money was paid by those responsible for someone’s death in compensation to put an end to enmity. You could also say it was an approximation of the monetary value of a person’s life.

This concept came to mind as I looked over some of the many recruitment posters that you find at bus stops, on public transport and elsewhere here in the Greater Petersburg area. I put that together with information on radio and television these past few days about the new, higher levels of compensation that the government will be paying to those who have experienced contusions, amputations and other life-changing events while serving in the SMO. These pay-outs vary with specific categories of injury and loss. But the amount to be paid out in case of death was named: it is now 3 million rubles, approximately 30,000 euros, which is 50 per cent more than the sum paid till now.

Meanwhile the sign-up payment by the federal government to new recruits (kontraktniki) shown on the posters is several hundred percent above what it was a year ago. The new rate is 2 million rubles at sign-up and 200,000 (2,000 euros) per month for each month spent in the war zone, which I believe lasts 6 months. It is understood that a much lower monthly pay is issued during the training period preceding dispatch to the front.

I also note that this sign-up payment probably represents a leveling up from the schedule of payments put in place in the early months of the SMO. Back then the fairly modest lump sum from the federal budget was complemented by a lump sum from the regional government which varied widely according to the prosperity of the region. Given that the financial incentive is more important in the poorer regions of Russia from which a disproportionately higher share of recruits can be expected to come, the leveling up, if that is what it is, makes good sense.

All in all, if you add the death pay-out to the sign-up pay-out, we may conclude that the Wehrgeld or average value of a working age male in Russia is presently 50,000 euros.

In a minute, I will put that number in the context of general salaries here for lower class people, who are the main body of the population that goes off to war. But first I must explain that the crass financial considerations approach is only one vector of the poster campaign for recruitment. I believe it is directed at middle aged Russian males who make up a large percentage of the soldiers and officers on the ground in this war, as you can see from television coverage. My advice to armchair analysts in the United States, including some very highly considered professors whom you see weekly on youtube, is that they should take a look at Russian war reporting before they open their mouths to mourn the loss of young men sent to war by old men in power. I have heard acquaintances who intended to enlist reason along the following lines: ‘I married, I have had kids, I have fulfilled my biological mission and am ready to take my chances in the army.’

Another vector of the recruitment campaign is clearly directed at young men. It carries the message: ‘Join your own,’ meaning join your coevals, young and patriotic men like yourself. Since this variety of poster is at least as widely disseminated as the ruble and kopeks poster, I assume that it works and brings in lots of recruits.

Now, returning to the question of what males actually earn in wages here in Russia. I make reference to an article in the Financial Times which I cited on these pages several months ago. Their reporter said the Rosstat figures showed that average wages doubled in the last year, and the results were most striking in the depressed regions, many of them in the Urals, which had one-factory towns that never recovered from the shutdown of those factories in the 1990s economic crisis. Now they are enjoying full employment thanks especially to defense industry orders. Due to labor shortages, wages have gone up from 30,000 rubles per month to 60,000 or more (600 euros). In this case the total death benefits of a recruit killed in action equals 7 times his annual earnings at present conditions at the bottom of the pecking order.

Of course, not all ships rise with the incoming tide. There are always losers as well as winners. I present as examples what I heard from two taxi drivers these past few days. One was the driver of a new Chinese crossover in the livery of Yandex Go that he had bought for the equivalent of 30,000 euros, presumably paid in cash given the rest of his story. He wanted me to know that he has an engineering degree and had been working as the head of an engineering unit with 20 men under him before the SMO. He had been living very well, earning a monthly salary of 500,000 rubles plus housing allowance and other generous benefits. Back then he assumed everyone else was doing well and did not pay attention to the poverty in Russian society. However, the war put an end to his easy life. His unit was a subsidiary of an Austrian company that halted operations and left the Russian market after the war began. He then looked around to find another job in engineering but discovered that salaries were too low to meet his life style requirements. And so he opted to become a taxi driver and now takes home 160,000 rubles (1600 euros) a month.

Another taxi driver in Pushkin who shared his personal experience with me works for a local taxi company and presumably has a harder time getting customers who order a ride to the city (15 euros), having to settle for point to point fares in the immediate vicinity (2.50 euros a ride). He also has a new Chinese car, but in a lower price range. He purchased it with a bank loan set at 16 percent annual interest. Friends say he did well, but the accumulating interest is formidable and he is doing his best to pay off the loan ahead of schedule by tightening his belt on home expenses. Nonetheless, he is upbeat and coping with the financial stress well. I did not ask his monthly take home pay.

*****

I have spoken briefly in earlier Travel Notes about my visits to the neighborhood supermarkets in various price categories from Economy to Premium. I reconfirm here that they are all very well stocked including with exotic fruits that you would imagine are sold only in the most exclusive. In our Economy standard Verny supermarket, they offer not just the sharon fruit (rock hard as usual) but also the fragile, shall we say voluptuous genuine persimmons that presumably are imported from Iran, along with the salted pistachios that are ubiquitous here and some very good stalk celery and iceberg lettuce.

I will go one step further: these Russian supermarkets seem to have better stock control than our leading Delhaize (the Lion) chain in Belgium (now Dutch owned) which frequently runs out of this or that in what I assume is an effort to cut working capital requirements and spoilage.

Meanwhile, I wish to say something about municipal investments in vehicles and infrastructure both in downtown Petersburg and here in Pushkin, which is an outlying city borough.

In Pushkin, I note that all city buses seem to be newly acquired. In the city center, most of the trams are also new and more stylish than what they have replaced. For their part, the electric trolleybuses now operate from batteries when they are not attached to overhead electrical feed. This means that they are not stuck in the middle of traffic when the connection above detaches as used to be the case to the annoyance of all. Such hybrid trolleys exist in Western Europe, where I have seen them in France. But they are new to Russia and they are making their appearance now during wartime when you would expect the government to have other concerns on its mind.

It is also worth mentioning that at long last Russian Railways seems to be upgrading the commuter trains to the suburbs. The other day I took what looked unchanged from the outside but on the inside was a train with comfortable seats and amenities like a big luggage rack in the center of the car. They had replaced the old wooden bench configuration that was no treat for travelers. Looking out the window to gauge our speed and then at my watch upon arrival at destination, I was persuaded that the time in travel has been cut substantially.

Speaking of transportation, I was pleased to see that the Financial Times yesterday put some nationwide figures to the changes in the automobile market that I have been reporting based on what I see on the streets in Petersburg and as a rider in the taxi fleets here.

To be precise, the share of the new car sales in Russia held by European, Korean and Japanese manufactures fell from 69 percent in February 2022 to just 8.5 percent in October 2024, while the share held by Chinese manufacturers in this period rose from 9 percent to 57 percent.

I can attest to the comfort and innovation of the Chinese brands. It seems that crossovers predominate and it is so much easier to get in and out of them than with the European, Korean and Japanese sedans that they replace. The Chinese models all are loaded with electronic gadgets for driver satisfaction.


******

Finally, I close out these Travel Notes by some observations drawn from my experience of high culture in Petersburg this past week.

On Monday, we had tickets to the performance of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman at the Mariinsky II theater. Christian Knapp, an American born and trained conductor who has been working at the theater since 2011 and has a vast repertoire under his belt led the orchestra this evening, taking us all far out to stormy seas in the overture and setting the mood for an unforgettable evening. The singers were all Russian, led by the veteran soloist Nikitin as the Captain of the phantom vessel. For those watching their wallet, our tickets in fifth row center cost 4,000 rubles each. As I have mentioned earlier, seats farther back in parterre or in the balconies would cost half or less. All seats have direct vision of the stage and enjoy good acoustics.

On Thursday, we went to the Russian Museum to see the month-long exhibition of paintings by Karl Bryullov to celebrate the 225th anniversary of his death. It is drawing large crowds and we had a wait at the ticket desk even at 3 pm on a workday. The show is interesting for the very important paintings of historical events such as the 1581 siege of Pskov or the Last Day of Pompei that won artistic prizes for the artist in Paris and elsewhere. These measure 5 x 6 meters or more and are rarely put on display. Then there were the still more astonishing and less known ‘cartoons’ by Bryullov, i.e. 1:1 drafts for transfer in paint onto the interior walls of the St Isaacs Cathedral in central Petersburg during the 1840s. Seeing these masterpieces leaves no doubt why Bryullov earned universal respect not only in Russia, where he was awarded a gold ring by Emperor Nicholas I for one of his paintings but also in the West, where he spent a good part of his life, starting from his 3 years in Rome on a stipend from the Russian Academy of Art when he graduated to his final years leading to his death. Bryullov is in fact buried in the Cemetery for non-Catholics in Rome.

I understand that anniversaries have their own schedule independent of current global events. But I do read significance into the presentation right now when relations with the West are so fraught. After all, Bryullov was so integrated into European high society as he was at home in Russia. His mistress, a lady in the highest circles of Russian nobility, kept a residence just near the Spanish Steps in Rome and that is where he passed his time. A couple of his magnificent portraits of her are shown in this exhibition.

In this vein it is also noteworthy that the exhibition’s general sponsor is VTB Bank, the former Foreign Trade Bank of the USSR which has recently greatly expanded its retail branch network and is giving Sberbank a run for its money. Mr. Gref, head of the latter bank, should watch out!

The Chairman and CEO of VTB just happens to be Andrei Kostin, who is close to Vladimir Putin. A year ago, Putin entrusted to VTB and his management the country’s most important ship-building complexes. Kostin also just happens to keep his personal yacht tied up in the Seychelles, where he may on occasion meet with the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, who built a palatial complex overlooking the harbor of Victoria on a site formerly occupied by a US radar and intelligence gathering base.

When you follow the dots, life becomes quite interesting. Is the VTB’s sponsorship of the Bryullov exhibition just a coincidence or is it a straw in the wind with regard to Russia’s eventual reintegration into civilized relations with Europe?

My last entry in the culture category relates to the presentation at TASS headquarters in Petersburg of the forthcoming Schnittke Festival. The Festival will celebrate the 90th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Schnittke died in 1998 at age 63 in Hamburg, a city to which he had long time bonds. In the spirit of Moscow’s collecting its sons, he is buried in Moscow and his memory is given all honors as the Festival will demonstrate through concerts, lectures and master classes in composition.

The forty-five minute presentation was delivered by the organizer from the Petersburg Union of Composers, by the conductor of the first concert performing Schnittke’s music on traditional Russian folk instruments, by a music professor and composer who will deliver a lecture and master class. But the most important contribution was by Iosif Raiskin, musicologist and music critic, aged 89, who was a close friend of Schnittke for decades and introduced personal touches.

The subtitle of this Festival is Schnittke’s ‘Eclectica’. Though the term is used in various arts with a pejorative tonality, in the case of Schnittke it is used to highlight his presence in different ends of the music world, in different genres. In the 1960s and 1970s, Schnittke’s avant garde symphonic compositions, which included ventures into electronic music, were scorned by the official composer’s union and by Party bosses. And so in parallel with his composing large tableau works, some of which were performed abroad, he made a living writing musical scores for the Russian film industry. The Festival will focus on how he reconciled these two very different sides of his creative work. I have no doubt that the Festival, which is called ‘international’ will attract some professionals from abroad, and the planned concerts should be of interest to anyone passing through Petersburg in late November.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/11/16/ ... ood-money/

******

YULIA SKRIPAL REVEALS THE BIGGEST SECRET OF ALL AT NOVICHOK SHOW TRIAL – THE ATTACK WAS A BRITISH OPERATION, NOT A RUSSIAN ONE

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by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

Yulia Skripal communicated from her bedside at Salisbury District Hospital on March 8, 2018, four days after she and her father Sergei Skripal collapsed from a poison attack, that the attacker used a spray; and that the attack took place when she and her father were eating at a restaurant just minutes before their collapse on a bench outside.

The implication of the Skripal evidence, revealed for the first time on Thursday, is that the attack on the Skripals was not perpetrated by Russian military agents who were photographed elsewhere in Salisbury town at the time; that the attacker or attackers were British agents; and that if their weapon was a nerve agent called Novichok, it came, not from Moscow, but from the UK Ministry of Defence chemical warfare laboratory at Porton Down.

Porton Down’s subsequent evidence of Novichok contamination in blood samples, clothing, car, and home of the Skripals may therefore be interpreted as British in source, not Russian.

This evidence was revealed by a police witness testifying at the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry in London on November 14. The police officer, retired Detective Inspector Keith Asman was in 2018, and he remains today the chief of forensics for the Counter Terrorism Policing (CTPSE) group which combines the Metropolitan and regional police forces with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Security Service (MI5).

According to Asman’s new disclosure, Yulia Skripal had woken from a coma and confirmed to the doctor at her bedside that she remembered the circumstances of the attack on March 4. What she remembered, she signalled, was not (repeat not) the official British Government narrative that Russian agents had tried to kill them by poisoning the front door-handle of the family home.

The new evidence was immediately dismissed by the Sturgess Inquiry lawyer assisting Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley), the judge directing the Inquiry. “We see there,” the lawyer put to Asman as a leading question, “the suggestion, which we now know not to be right, of course”. — page 72.

Hughes then interrupted to tell the witness to disregard what Skripal had communicated. “If the record that you were given there is right, someone suggested to her ‘Had you been sprayed’. She didn’t come up with it herself.” — page 73. Hughes continued to direct the forensics chief to disregard the hearsay of Skripal. “Anyway the suggestion that she had been sprayed in the restaurant didn’t fit with your investigations? A. [Asman] No, sir. LORD HUGHES: Thank you.”

So far in in the Inquiry which began public sessions on October 14, this is the first direct sign of suppression of evidence by Hughes.

Hearsay, he indicates, should be disregarded if it comes from the target of attack, Yulia Skripal. However, hearsay from British Government officials, policemen, and chemical warfare agents at Porton Down must be accepted instead. Hughes has also banned Yulia and Sergei Skripal from testifying at the Inquiry.

The lawyer appointed and paid by the Government to represent the Skripals in the inquiry hearings said nothing to acknowledge the new disclosure nor to challenge Hughes’s efforts to suppress it.

Asman described his career and credentials in his witness statement to the Inquiry, dated October 23, 2024. His rank when he retired from the regular police forces in 2009 was detective inspector. He was then promoted to higher ranking posts at the operations coordinating group known as Counter Terrorism Policing for the Southeast Region (CTPSE). By 2018 Asman says he was “head of the National Counter Terrorism Forensics Working Group since 2012, and was the UK Counter Terrorism Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) forensic lead.” In June 2015 Asman was awarded the Order of the British Empire (MBE) “for services to Policing.”

At page 19 of his recent witness statement, this is what Asman has recorded for the evening of March 8, 2018:

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Source: https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazon ... ession.pdf -- page 19.

Asman’s went on to claim in this statement: “At this point Yulia Skripal was described as being emotional and fell unconscious. I made notes of my conversation with DI [Detective Inspector] VN104 in one of my notebooks, and in addition this information was confirmed to me in writing the next morning. The information she provided about being sprayed at the restaurant [Zizzi] was seemingly inconsistent with the presence of novichok at the Mill public house and 47 Christie Miller Road. On hearing this, I personally wondered whether Yulia Skripal knew more about it than she had alluded to and therefore whilst being fully cognisant of the SIO’s [Senior Investigative Officer] hypothesis and the need to be open-minded continued to prioritise her property.”

THE SCENE OF THE NOVICHOK CRIME
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The Skripals reportedly spent 45 minutes at lunch in Zizzi’s restaurant. Witnesses described Sergei Skripal as upset when he left with Yulia to walk to the bench. Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/

THE EVIDENCE THE CRIME WAS BRITISH

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Left: Yulia Skripal in May 2018, the scar of forced intubation still visible; read more here. Centre; Dr Stephen Cockroft who recorded the exchange with Skripal at her bedside on March 8, 2018; that was followed, Cockroft has also testified, by forced sedation and tracheostomy – read more. Right: read the only book on the case evidence.

Open-minded was not what the judge and his lawyers wanted from Asman when he appeared in public for the first time on Thursday, November 14. Referring precisely to the excerpt of Skripal’s hospital evidence, Francesca Whitelaw KC for the Inquiry asked Asman: “ We can take that [witness statement excerpt] down, but this information as well, was it consistent or inconsistent with what you had found out in terms of forensic about the presence of Novichok at The Mill and 47 Christie Miller Road? A. [Asman] It, I would say, was inconsistent on the basis that she said she was sprayed in the restaurant.” — page 73.

Asman was then asked by Whitelaw to comment on Yulia Skripal’s exchange with Cockroft. “My question for you is: how, if at all, this impacted on your investigations? A. It only very slightly impacted on it…It was information to have but not necessarily going to change my approach on anything.” — page 73.

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Left, Francesca Whitelaw KC, counsel assisting Hughes, asked Asman about Yulia Skripal’s hospital evidence – click to watch from Minute 2:01:27. Right: Hughes interrupting the witness to dismiss Skripal’s evidence from Min 2:03:23. On Hughes’s order, Asman’s face was not transmitted during his testimony, and the audio record was delayed by ten minutes before broadcast.

In the Inquiry record of hearings and exhibits since the commencement of the open sessions on October 14, there have been eleven separate exhibits of documents purporting to record what Yulia and Sergei Skripal have said; they include interviews with police and witness statements for the Inquiry; they are dated from April 2018 through October 2024. Most of them have been heavily redacted. None of them is signed by either Skripal.

Neither Yulia nor Sergei Skripal has been asked by the police, by the Inquiry lawyers, or by Hughes to confirm or deny whether Yulia’s recollection of March 8, 2018, of the spray attack in Zizzi’s Restaurant is still their evidence of what happened to them.

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 18, 2024 4:04 pm

GARDENING AGAINST EVIL DAYS

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by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

In politics — the Kremlin is no exception — politicians don’t mean what they say. In gardening, the plants always mean what they say. Gardeners, obliged to record what that is, are more likely than politicians to tell the truth.

In the records of Russian politicians since the Bolshevik Revolution, only one leading figure stands out as having the eye, ear, and nose for what plants have to tell. Not the present nor the founding one. The only gardener among them was, and remains, Joseph Stalin.

Nothing has been found that he wrote himself on his gardening except perhaps for marginal comments in books he read. There is no mention of books on gardens or gardening in the classification system Stalin’s personal library adopted from 1925. He kept no garden diary. Without a diary recording the cycle of time and seasons, the planting map, colour scheme, productivity of bloom and fruit, infestation, life and death, he must have committed his observations – “he possessed unbelievably acute powers of observation” (US Ambassador George Kennan) – to memory, as peasants do.

Unlike the tsars who employed English, Scots, and French architects and plantsmen to create gardens in St. Petersburg and Moscow in the royal fashions of Europe, defying the Russian winter to display their power and affluence without shovelling for themselves, Stalin dug his gardens himself in the warm weather of his dacha at Gagra, on the Black Sea. There he was photographed with his spade tending parallel, raised beds of lemon trees (lead image, top). There is no sign of him wielding trowel and fork in the garden at Kuntsevo, his dacha near Moscow, where the photographs show him strolling in a semi-wild young forest or seated on a terrace in front of a hedge of viburnum. No record of Stalin digging at Kuntsevo has been found.

There is just one reminiscence of Stalin speaking to a visitor about his gardening. “Stalin is very fond of fruit trees. We came to a lemon bush. Joseph Vissarionovich carefully adjusted the bamboo stick to make it easier for the branches to hold large yellow fruits. ‘But many people thought that lemons would not grow here!’ [He said] Stalin planted the first bushes himself, took care of them himself. And now he has convinced many gardeners by his example. He talks about it in an enthusiastic voice and often makes fun of would-be gardeners. We came to a large tree. I don’t know it at all. ‘What is the name of this tree?’ I asked Stalin. ‘Oh, this is a wonderful plant! It’s called eucalyptus,’ Joseph Vissarionovich said, plucking leaves from the tree. He rubs the leaves on his hand and gives everyone a sniff. ‘Do you feel how strong the smell is? This is the smell that the malaria mosquito does not tolerate.’ Joseph Vissarionovich tells how, with the help of eucalyptus, the Americans got rid of the mosquito during the construction of the Panama Canal, how the same eucalyptus helped with the work in swampy Australia. I felt very embarrassed that I did not know this wonderful tree.”

Stalin read a great deal of philosophy, Roman and Russian history, art, and agronomy, and so he is bound to have reflected on the way in which the ideas of the classics he read took physical form in the gardens of the time. Especially so on the ancient idea of the paradise garden. It is this transference between thinking and digging, between the idea of paradise and the cultivation of it, which a new book, just published in London, explores in a radical way.

Olivia Laing, author of The Garden Against Time, In Search of a Common Paradise, knows nothing whatever about Russia or its gardens or its politics – except for propaganda on the Ukraine war she has absorbed unquestioningly and briefly repeats from the London newspapers. That’s a personal fault; it’s not a dissuasion from the book of reflections she has written out from her garden diary to an end which Russians understand to aim at, not less than the English.

In this wartime it’s necessary to keep reflecting on this end, on the aesthetic and philosophical purpose of the paradise garden. Laing begins her book and her garden with John Milton’s lament for gardening in wartime – in his case, the English Civil War of 1642-46 and the counter-revolution of 1660. “More safe I Sing with mortal voice, unchang’d”, Milton observed at the beginning of Book 7 of his Paradise Lost, “to hoarce or mute, though fall’n on evil dayes/ On evil dayes though fall’n, and evil tongues;/in darkness and with dangers compast round,/And solitude.”

At the same time, Laing records for herself and Stalin certainly knew, “what I loved, aside from the work of making [the paradise garden], was the self-forgetfulness of the labour, the immersion in a kind of trance of attention that was as unlike daily thinking as dream logic is to waking.”

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Source: https://www.rulit.me/

Through the near eighty years of my life, I’ve made gardens in each of the houses I’ve lived in, four of them are in Russia. The first was on the bank of the Osetr (“sturgeon”) River, in the only brick cottage of the dying village of Ivanchikovo (“Little John”).

In a semi-circle around the front of the old house and its timbered verandah (Russian has also adopted the Hindi word, веранда), I excavated a trench in which I planned a tall hedge of roses, with underplanting of blue and white scilla siberica for the early spring, iris siberica for late spring, and mauve colchicums for late summer and autumn.

They were the evil days of Boris Yeltsin, however. Ivanchikovo’s collective farm had collapsed, and there was almost nothing, certainly no seed, no bulbs, not even flowers in the local shop or nearby market. What I should plant, I decided, was what I could fossick from the wild of the untended sovkhoz fields, the verge of the river stretching up to Kukovo (“Baker”) and down to Tregubovo (“Three Lips”), and the forest nearby. I started with wild roses.

I also asked for the advice of the other villagers, my neighbours. They were unused to speaking with foreigners: the last of them they told me were German soldiers in retreat fifty years before. The only gardener in the village was a Soviet Army officer who had been made redundant at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and pensioned off with a pittance. In his cottage garden he had planted an orchard of apple trees. By patient experiment and skilful grafting, he explained, it was his ambition to revive as many of the old varieties of Russian apples as he could find. His paradise garden was filled with apples. Ground flowers he had excluded, he told me.

In the rear garden of my cottage the hedgerows were composed of raspberry and blueberry bushes. A tree of Bolshevik vintage cast ample shade on to the narrow sward. Shade meant more specialized plantings for which there was no obvious source but the forest. For the time being, my priority was the front garden.

After a week of hiking, searching and excavating I had enough wild rose bushes to fill the trench and promise a luxuriant screen of flowers, blooming twice in the summer, I hoped. To cheer the poverty-stricken husband and wife on the left who had taken my fence palings for their oven fire, and to deter the wealthy transplant from Moscow who was erecting a double-storey house to the right, I engaged the local priest to conduct a ceremony of exorcising the evil spirits inside and around the house and to bless the garden for fertility and beauty.

But money and force defeated the plan. Without a preliminary word, the neighbours from Moscow — formerly high-ranking officials of the now defunct Communist Party — arranged for construction trucks to make their deliveries of bricks, cement, timber, and workers by driving across my garden. Dozens of tyre tracks destroyed the roses.

This was a violation of my private property rights, as the Yeltsin regime had announced them. But like everything else he did, this was false, and for me there was no recourse. My little paradise garden, blessed by the Church, hadn’t been nipped in the bud. It had been annihilated before it had a chance to bud.

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My second Russian garden was planned and planted at the same time in Moscow. It was in the square in front of my apartment house at Kolobovsky pereulog (“Bun Lane”), in the Tverskaya district of the old city. The building dated from the time of reconstruction after Napoleon had left. The square had been intended for the residents, my new neighbours. Its four corners had been planted with shade trees which had survived the Revolution and the Germans. But the space underneath had long ago been covered by refuse, then cars in various states of disrepair, poisoned by patches of oil, suffocated by weeds.

As the only non-Russian to own an apartment in the building, I was the only one to think of spending personal cash on the public space in front, for the benefit of our collective, so to speak. My neighbours gave their consent to my tossing my money on to the garden.

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To remove the cars first of all, I installed a waist-high fence around the square in the wrought-iron style of the century before. The next task was to clear the surface rubbish; dig up the impoverished sandy soil, adding black top soil and worms; prune the dead boughs of the trees and fertilize the roots; lay down out diagonal paths from corner to corner; and plan plantings of spring and autumn bulbs in the quadrants formed by the paths, as well as an annual display in a raised circle in the centre.

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Restored public benches on Strastnoy Boulevard.

Four old wrought-iron park benches, salvaged from elsewhere in the city, were placed in the quadrants, bolted to concrete foundations sunk into the soil, repainted. The babushki of the house were invited to take their morning and afternoon sittings there. They would become the guardians of the budding paradise. They shouted off drivers attempting to repair and oil their engines. They stopped dog defecation. They prevented anyone cutting the spring display of snowdrops and daffodils. In thus defending the Kolobovsky Pereulog garden, these women were, unlike my neighbour at Ivanchikovo, true communists.

Both gardens were ruined by theft. To steal is a venal sin but in Russia not a mortal one. It was common in Russia, not only during Yeltsin’s time in the Kremlin, but after. It continues for me. Venal sins can be repented, reversed, compensated. But to ruin a garden is a mortal sin. No punishment fits that crime.

This is because the paradise garden is a morality play on the soil — as Laing has discovered, without her forgetting the deadly simple mechanics of how the land is owned, the labour paid for, the neighbours fenced off. The English garden is not such a thing, Laing concludes in a revolutionary fashion. Rather, it’s a “confidence trick. To reshape the land in your own image, to reorder it so that you inhabit the centre and own the view. To fake nature so insidiously that even now those landscapes and the power relations they embody are mistaken for being just the way things are, natural, eternal, blandly reassuring…”

In trying to understand the idea of the paradise garden and to make it for herself, Laing writes of the English precursors of communism – the Levellers and the Diggers of the Civil War period. About them, she notes, they are remembered for “declaring the earth to be a ‘common treasury’, given by God equally to all men and never intended to be bought or sold.” Laing has studied Karl Marx and the English socialists, some of whom gardened seriously – William Cobbett, William Morris, George Orwell, E.P. Thompson. With their point of view, Laing goes on the attack against the English style in gardens – the fashion which was aped by Catherine the Great and her tsarist successors in those palatial gardens which remain on show in St. Petersburg.

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One of the “English views” in Catherine the Great’s garden at Tsarskoye Selo, nationalized in 1917.
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This month it is the 93rd anniversary of Stalin’s idea, implemented by the Central Committee on November 3, 1931, to design, build, and pay for public parks and gardens as national policy. The pleasure garden of the rich and powerful for the preceding three thousand years had been revolutionized and democratized for the first time. “The parks of culture and rest,” the Central Committee declared, “represent a new kind of institution that has numerous political and didactic obligations to fulfil, all of which are for the wellbeing of millions of workers”. The creation of Moscow’s Gorky Park had been an idea of Stalin’s inside the new layout he conceived for Moscow from Red Square to Sparrow Hills (called Lenin Hills between 1935 and 1999).

For Laing, the privatisation of peasant farmland, the enclosures by Act of Parliament, the replacement of the village common with the aristocratic lawn and the ha-ha to view it, the creations of Capability Brown and Humphry Repton – all are to be understood now to be “status symbols and adornments, a way for money to announce its presence in a more comely or displaced form.”

“But where does the money come from?” Laing asks. Her answer is unique in the modern English gardening literature. In probing for the origins of the great English gardens, Laing goes from the corrupt Elizabethan trade and privateering concessions of the 16th century to the sugar and tobacco plantations of the US and Caribbean worked by slavery and the East India Company slaughter of India during the 18th and 19th centuries. “There are gardens that have come at far too high a price, and I am glad that Crowfield is now obliterated, and that the historians at Middleton Place have tried to recover and foreground the stories of the enslaved people who build and paid for its garden, with its rare camellias and azaleas.”

Laing is confident enough of her own values to record her debts for gardening imagination and skill to the English garden writers Monty Don, Beth Chatto, Rosemary Verey, Christopher Lloyd, and to several garden custodians at the university colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. She leaves out the best known of them, Robin Lane Fox, the classics don at New College where he has been the Garden Master. Lane Fox is also the longest continuing garden columnist for the Financial Times, platform for the display of what very large sums of money can buy. Laing calls that money laundering – “us[ing] gardens to cleanse and frame their reputation …to rise above the degraded and exploitative sources of their wealth.”

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Source: https://johnhelmer.net/

For the land, the peasants are bound to fight the aristos, the communists against the oligarchs, the garden writers against each other – for the idea of the land and the idea of the paradise garden are collectively and personally a moral geography that’s worth fighting for.


Laing correctly identifies this idea with John Clare, the 19th century farm labourer poet who ended up locked in an asylum. “His knowledge,” Laing writes, “was another way of saying his familiar ground , the place he knew… that knowledge is itself a function of place, in which one’s capacity to make sense of things, to generate understanding , is a product of being in some way rooted and at home, and that, even more strikingly, this sense of home is reciprocal: that one doesn’t just know, but is known.”

In the story of this book, Laing succeeds in keeping the garden she makes. Milton wasn’t so fortunate. He went blind and was pursued by the counter-revolutionaries empowered by King Charles II. They are the “evil tongues”, the “dangers compast round”, and the “evil dayes” against which Milton wrote his Paradise Lost, “propelled” — Laing retells the story — “by an almost intolerable need to understand what it means to have failed and what one ought to do once failure has occurred, both by imagining a process of future reparations and by re-envisaging the nature of an intact , untarnished world.”

Laing’s has got the question right, but not quite the answer. “A garden dies with its owner”, her book concludes.

I believe the opposite, and Laing is honest enough to allow it — the owner may die, the garden may remain in place. I am obliged to conclude so because my third garden in Moscow is being stolen from me as I write, but not quite yet.

The fourth, in the village of Kurlek, by the Tom River in the Tomsk region of Siberia, is the garden of Tatiana Vasilievna Turitsyna, my dead wife.
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By the acts of oligarch Oleg Deripaska and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, this garden too is being stolen from me, but not quite yet.

Yet is a long time, mind you.

For how long, Old Blind John claimed optimism at the very end of his Paradise Lost, “Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon;/The World was all before them, where to choose/Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide.” In the Russian politics I know, as Stalin knew, there is no place of rest and no Providence.

https://johnhelmer.net/gardening-agains ... more-90635
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 20, 2024 4:49 pm

Stalingrad - the Motherland of Victory!
November 19, 21:55

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Today, Stalingrad is hosting festive events dedicated to the anniversary of the beginning of the Red Army's Counteroffensive near Stalingrad, which led to a radical change in the course of the Great Patriotic War. Volgograd, as usual, has been renamed Stalingrad for the holidays. The question of a permanent renaming is still up in the air.

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(Videos at link.)

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9506036.html

Terrorist from Germany
November 20, 10:14

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German citizen Nikolai Gaiduk, who entered Russia (Kaliningrad region) from Poland to organize sabotage at energy facilities, has been detained
. Liquid explosives were seized from his car during a search. According to the special service, Gaiduk was also involved in the explosion at a gas distribution station in Kaliningrad that took place in March. (c) FSB

(Video at link.)

The character also met with Scholz.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9506475.html

A blow with the ruble
November 20, 16:01

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Foreign agents will no longer be able to enrich themselves at the expense of the country and its citizens

The bill on crediting foreign agents' income from creative activities to a special account was adopted in the first reading.
It was supported unanimously. Its authors were 429 deputies.

The bill proposes to introduce a special procedure for remuneration and other payments due to foreign agents from the use of intellectual property and brands.
According to experts, the amount of such one-time payments could reach tens of millions of rubles.

The funds will be credited to a special ruble account, the opening of which will be mandatory for the foreign agent or those who transfer royalties to him. They will be possible to use them only after the cancellation of the foreign agent status. Also, the funds can be credited to the budget by a court decision.

To date, 493 people have been recognized as foreign agents.
Among them are those who left our country and continue to enrich themselves at the expense of its citizens. Often without hiding their hostile attitude towards Russia and participation in the financing of the bloody Kiev regime.
After the law is passed, the funds accumulated in such special accounts will not be used against our country.

Earlier, a legislative ban was introduced for Russian entrepreneurs and companies to place advertisements on the resources of foreign agents.
As a result, according to experts, in the first half of this year, the income of the ten largest bloggers-foreign agents decreased by 75%. The measures taken are aimed at stopping the enrichment of traitors to our country at the expense of its citizens.


(c) Volodin

We are waiting for a new wave of requests to Russian courts with a request to remove the status of a foreign agent. This crowd really does not like it when they are hit with a ruble and immediately start broadcasting "What's wrong?!"

And the issue of confiscation of assets, property and real estate in Russia has not yet been considered.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9507115.html

Google Translator

******

Russia’s Updated Nuke Doctrine Aims To Deter Unacceptable Provocations From NATO

Andrew Korybko
Nov 20, 2024

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The main point that’s being conveyed through these updated terms is that Russia will not allow Ukraine to be used as NATO’s proxy for inflicting the bloc’s hoped-for strategic defeat upon it.

The entering into force of Russia’s updated nuke doctrine, the purpose of which was analyzed here in late September, made headlines across the world because it coincided with a major escalation of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine. The US allowed Ukraine to use its ATACMS inside of Russia’s pre-2014 territory despite Moscow warning how dangerous that would be. This moment of truth was analyzed here for those who’d like to learn more about how it’ll influence the contours of this conflict.

The circumstances in which Russia might resort to using nukes can be better understood after Sputnik published an unofficial translation of this doctrine here. The document stipulates that their purpose is to deter a wide range of threats and that they’ll only be used as a last resort. Such threats include everything from nearby large-scale military drills by Russia’s foes to the blocking of critical transport links in a likely nod to Kaliningrad among well-known ones like overwhelming conventional attacks, et al.

Moreover, Russia will regard such threats by countries with the backing of others as joint acts of aggression, thus placing these proxies’ patrons in its crosshairs if they cross its most sensitive red lines. The main point that’s being conveyed through these updated terms is that Russia will not allow Ukraine to be used as NATO’s proxy for inflicting the bloc’s hoped-for strategic defeat upon it. The timing of its publication suggests that the spree of provocations since February 2022 reshaped Russia’s thinking.

Targets such as the Kremlin, early warning systems, strategic airfields, nuclear power plants, and critical transport links like the Crimean Bridge were previously thought to be off limits in any proxy conflict. Instead, every single one of those was bombed by Ukraine with NATO’s backing, yet Russia time and again declined to dramatically respond out of concern that tensions could then spiral into World War III. Each example, however, could theoretically qualify for a nuclear retaliatory strike under the new terms.

To be sure, Putin is unlikely to abandon his prior caution by suddenly nuking Ukraine in response to another NATO-backed drone strike against one of Russia’s nuclear power plants for example when he won’t even authorize the destruction of a single major bridge over the Dnieper, but he might have even greater provocations in mind. It could be that he concluded that his prior restraint was interpreted as weakness instead of appreciated and that something much more dangerous is now being planned.

If that’s the case, then it would make sense why he’d want to convey the wide range of threats that his country’s nuclear doctrine is supposed to deter, thus legitimizing Russia’s reciprocal escalation in the lead-up to them materializing and counteracting perceptions that it might just be (another) “bluff”. In pursuit of this potential goal, it would make sense to publish the document instead of keeping it classified so that the public can be aware of the stakes involved, ergo Sputnik’s unofficial translation.

With this in mind, Russia’s updated nuke doctrine is meant to influence Western policymakers and the public alike, the first in terms of hopefully deterring them from whatever greater provocations they could be planning while the second might pressure them from below to complement this effort. The takeaway is that Russia is very concerned about future escalations and wants the world to know that it will indeed resort to nukes as a last resort in self-defense if its most sensitive red lines are crossed.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/russias- ... trine-aims
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 22, 2024 3:53 pm

Lavrov Elaborated On Russia’s Afro-Eurasian Grand Strategy

Andrew Korybko
Nov 21, 2024

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These ambitious plans will obviously take time to unfold, and there might be some road bumps along the way, but the importance rests in the fact that this is what Russia is officially aiming to do.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov elaborated on his country’s Afro-Eurasian grand strategy in a recent interview with Marina Kim for her New World project that can be read in full here. He envisages the creation of a Greater Eurasian Partnership that brings together the Eurasian Economic Union, the SCO, and ASEAN to establish the economic and transport backbone for a new Eurasian security architecture. The latter is expected to be inclusive and eventually involve Western Eurasia with time.

The SCO and the CSTO will form the core of this security architecture, while ASEAN also has a military dimension that could contribute to this, he added. BRICS, which doesn’t include a security component, would facilitate the economic and financial aspects of these plans while strengthening the UN Charter’s central political and legal roles in the emerging world order. Its members and partners are also represented in regional integration organizations that can thus participate in these processes as well.

The group’s expansion to Africa will lead to these interconnected Eurasian-centric platforms, which revolve around the Russia-India-China (RIC) partnership, spreading their influence through that continent. The objective is to localize production facilities through more investment, which will enable those countries to reduce their reliance on the West. Eurasia will thus empower Africa and fuel the next phase of its liberation by helping it break free from neo-colonialism.

These ambitious plans will obviously take time to unfold, and there might be some road bumps along the way, but the importance rests in the fact that this is what Russia is officially aiming to do. It’ll require the Sino-Indo rapprochement to remain on track, Russia achieving as many of its maximum goals in Ukraine as possible, and progress being made on rolling out alternative financial platforms like BRICS Pay. Afro-Eurasia will also have to adroitly manage the unpredictability that Trump 2.0 is expected to bring.

These are all herculean challenges in their own right, let alone all together, so what’ll more than likely happen is that only partial success will be achieved in the medium term. This could take the form of Sino-Indo ties stabilizing but still remaining characterized by enough distrust to prevent a resolution of their border dispute, Russia compromising on some of its goals in Ukraine, and BRICS launching just some of its projects, and even then, only imperfectly. Afro-Eurasia might also be destabilized by Trump.

The odds would be more in Russia’s favor if China and India resolve their border dispute, Russia goes on a large-scale offensive in Ukraine soon, and BRICS becomes more willing to defy Western sanctions. These could be brought about by the new circumstances stemming from more Sino-US tensions, speculative North Korean military assistance (troops and/or equipment), and greater political will. As for mitigating instability in Afro-Eurasia, there’s no perfect solution, so some instability is thus inevitable.

With all that in mind and considering the unlikelihood that the stars will align in the way they’d have to for everything to work out, Russia’s grand strategy in Afro-Eurasia as recently elaborated upon by Lavrov will therefore probably remain mostly conceptual in the medium term. This assessment would change if RIC strengthens, however, but the prerogative is on China and India for that to happen. Accordingly, expectations should be tempered, but observers also shouldn’t despair since a breakthrough is possible.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/lavrov-e ... ssias-afro

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Main buyers of Chinese cars
November 21, 18:57

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Actually, everything is simple here. China has simply replaced the share of the Russian market left by Western companies and is making a great profit from this. The population is increasingly choosing the Chinese auto industry, while Western companies, realizing that they have simply given away a large market, are already sending signals that they are ready to return - Volkswagen, Renault. But even if they do return, their market share will already be largely absorbed by the Chinese.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9509393.html

"Hazel"
November 21, 21:00

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"Hazel"

Putin reported two episodes of the use of Western long-range weapons on Russian territory. The use would have been impossible without the help of Western countries.
The ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles were used.
The strikes did not achieve their goals.
These strikes will not prevent the achievement of the goals of the Strategic Defense Forces.
Nevertheless, the conflict is becoming global.
In response, Russia demonstrated the use of a ballistic missile in a non-nuclear hypersonic warhead. The object was successfully destroyed.
The new missile system is called "Oreshnik".

Russia considers itself entitled to use weapons against objects of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against Russian objects.

Russia will respond decisively and in kind to the escalation.
There are currently no means of countering Russian "Oreshnik" missiles.
The Russian Federation will decide on the further deployment of medium- and shorter-range missiles depending on the enemy's actions.
Russia prefers peaceful means, but is also ready for any development of events, "there will always be a response
The newest Russian missiles attack targets at a speed of 2-3 km per second, the enemy's existing missile defense systems do not intercept them.
The Russian Federation will offer Ukrainian civilians in advance to leave the danger zone when missiles are used. (c) Putin

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9510117.html

Google Translator

******

BRITISH OPERATION KISS – “KILL INSTANTLY SKRIPALS” – HAS FAILED TO KILL BUT SUCCEEDED AT COVERING UP, ALMOST

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by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

This is the comic book version of what really happened, as revealed by the clumsiest judge in England – Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley, lead image, right).

Even if all the evidence presented to Hughes and already endorsed by him is true – on the record of six and half years of British Government investigations and twenty-one days of hearings with concealed witness faces, censored documents, missing CCTV — there remains no direct evidence that the Russians attacked the Skripals by poisoning their front-door handle when they were inside their home, four hours before their collapse.

Instead, Hughes and his lawyers have directed the police and other witnesses to stretch their circumstantial evidence and dictated their inferences of Russian guilt. In New York, the legal textbook difference between direct and circumstantial evidence is this.

To stretch the circumstantial evidence and inferences beyond the criminal standard of reasonable doubt, Hughes has prevented direct evidence from being presented, stopping the Skripals from testifying themselves. Their Home Office lawyer purportedly representing the Skripals in the hearings has said nothing at all; Hughes’s lawyers have manipulated witnesses with leading questions; alternative explanations for the circumstantial evidence have been blocked by Hughes from the hospital doctors and independent experts. The way in which this has been done is comic book jurisprudence. The judges of the former British empire aren’t laughing; this is how they say the means and opportunity of a capital crime must be prosecuted, then judged.

The CCTV and other evidence presented at the Hughes hearings shows the Russians knew they had been marked by MI6 from the minute they booked their flights and landed at Gatwick Airport; and they then encouraged the video recording which took place, often mugging in front of the CCTV cameras for that purpose. There is no evidence of their coming close enough to the Skripal house, or to Sergei and Yulia Skripal (lead image, left) in person, in order to attack them.

Ergo, the evidence of the murder act is missing; the evidence of the murder weapon is missing; the evidence of the murder attempt at the bench is missing. Means, opportunity, motive are all missing from the British prosecution of the Russians for the crime.

Yulia Skripal has testified that the poison attack took place when she and her father were sprayed as they were eating lunch inside Zizzi’s Restaurant. They then walked outside, felt ill, sat down on a city bench, and collapsed.

Yulia Skripal’s evidence indicates the attackers were British.

The refusal of the British chemical warfare laboratory to name the weapon by its organophosphate name, and reveal its molecular composition and mass conceals the origin of the weapon. In police, forensic or courtroom practice, this is the equivalent of concealing ballistic evidence determining whether a fatal bullet was fired from the gun in the alleged shooter’s hand.

The evidence, collected by the police and Porton Down agents, then analysed by Porton Down, then announced publicly by then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson days before he told Prime Minister May’s meeting of Cabinet, is as likely to be of a British-made organophosphate nerve agent subsequently called Novichok as of a Russian-made nerve agent.

What motive: why would the British attack the Skripals?

Their reason was that they believed Sergei Skripal was planning to return home to Russia, and that the GRU was planning an exfiltration operation on March 4, 2018. The Russians knew that MI6 would be suspicious, so they prepared decoys. These are the two men, Alexander Petrov (Alexander Mishkin) and Ruslan Boshirov (Anatoly Chepiga), now accused of the Novichok attack.

The British planned to kill the Skripals but camouflage the operation, as they have done. Motive was pressing for the British if Sergei Skripal had returned to Russia, revealing himself in Moscow to be one of the first successful triple agents in modern espionage history.

The Russian exfiltration failed; the British failed to execute the Skripals on the spot; for a few minutes from her hospital bed on March 8, Yulia Skripal revealed what had happened before she was put into an artificial coma, then silenced with a tracheostomy on March 21, and kept incommunicado ever since.

The British camouflage for their operation – Operation KISS, “Kill Instantly the Skripals” — relied on the door-handle as “ground zero” – the original source of the Novichok – and on Porton Down to replace the inconclusive or negative tests conducted by doctors treating the Skripals at Salisbury District Hospital.

A corpse had to be found, dead enough not to be able to testify otherwise as Yulia Skripal had done.

That turned out to be Dawn Sturgess, who died at her home on June 30, 2018, of cardiac arrest and brain hypoxia after consuming a combination of sleeping and anti-anxiety medications, cocaine, and fentanyl. The Novichok weapon, fabricated in a perfume atomiser by MI6 and Porton Down, was then placed on Sturgess’s kitchen table for the police to discover eleven days after her drug binge and collapse; and after medics and police had failed to find it through multiple and repeated searches.

For the evidence and the law, and to understand who laughs last in this comic book of British public inquiry, follow frame by frame, tweet by tweet, here. https://x.com/bears_with

(Much more at link...)

https://johnhelmer.net/british-operatio ... more-90649
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 23, 2024 3:40 pm

Russian ambassador: October shaped the political, economic and social landscape

‘Turning to the lessons of a century ago is extremely important now that international relations are going through truly tectonic shifts.’
Russia Embassy

Friday 22 November 2024

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As the US-led imperialist camp wages a ruthless all-out war against the Russian Federation via its Ukrainian proxies, anti-imperialist Russia is resuscitating many bonds of anti-colonial assistance and fraternal cooperation with oppressed and socialist countries that were built during the socialist period of the USSR. This has put today’s Russia, along with the People’s Republic of China, at the heart of the worldwide struggle to finally bring an end to the era of imperialist plunder and domination.

The following message was sent by the Russian embassy in London to our party’s October Revolution celebration, which took place on 9 November 2024 in Saklatvala Hall, west London.

*****

7 November 2024

Dear friends

Please accept my greetings on the occasion of the 107th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution.

The momentous events of 1917 make up a pivotal chapter in the history of humanity. The Revolution has had a huge impact on the evolution of both Russia and the entire world. To a large extent, it shaped the global political, economic and social landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Being itself a manifestation of profound and multifaceted processes in our country, it created formidable deep-rooted political, intellectual and cultural foundations for a massive ideological shift, which included, amongst its manifold features, the promotion of social and economic equality and the interests of the working class, as well as the fight against colonialism and its consequences.

Today, when engaging in an in-depth and comprehensive reflection on the events of 1917, historians tend to express completely opposing judgments on the legacy of the Revolution.

However, I am convinced that turning to the lessons of a century ago is extremely important now that international relations are going through truly tectonic shifts, confidently leaning towards a more just multipolar system based on the principles of indivisible security and equal opportunities for all nations and peoples.

As you know, these are the principles that our country firmly upholds.

Let me express my respect for your Party and many of your common-sense thoughtful views on current political events.

I wish you all the best.

Sincerely
Andrei Klein
Ambassador of the Russian Federation

https://thecommunists.org/2024/11/22/ne ... landscape/

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Russia Says US Missile Defense Base in Poland Is a Potential Target

The Aegis Ashore system has long been a security concern of Russia since the launchers can fit Tomahawk missiles
by Dave DeCamp November 21, 2024 at 4:03 pm ET

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that a controversial US missile defense base in Poland is a potential target of the Russian military, comments that come amid soaring tensions as the US just authorized Ukraine to strike Russian territory with long-range NATO missiles.

“Given the level of threats posed by such Western military facilities, the missile defense base in Poland has long been included among the priority targets for potential neutralization. If necessary, this can be achieved using a wide range of advanced weaponry,” Zakharova said.

The Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile system in Poland has long been a security concern for Russia as its Mark-41 launchers are capable of fitting nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 miles. A land-based version of the Tomahawks was previously banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019.

The US just recently opened the Aegis Ashore base in Poland, and NATO formally took control of it on Thursday. “The integration of the Aegis Ashore system into NATO’s defensive network underscores our collective commitment to ensuring the security of all Allies,” US Air Force Gen. James Hecker, the head of NATO’s Allied Air Command, said at a ceremony formalizing NATO control of the base.

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The Aegis Ashore Ballistic Missile Defence System facility at Redzikowo, Poland

Zakharova said the establishment of the base follows “a series of deeply destabilizing actions by the Americans and their North Atlantic allies in the strategic sphere” and said the move “aligns with the longstanding and destructive practice of advancing NATO’s military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders.”

Her warning that Russia could potentially target the base comes after Russia updated its nuclear doctrine in response to the US supporting long-range Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory. Under the new doctrine, Russia now considers an attack by a non-nuclear armed state that’s supported by a nuclear-armed power as a joint attack.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also said on Thursday that Russia has the right to strike the military facilities of countries that are supplying Ukraine with the missiles. “We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,” he said.

https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/21/rus ... al-target/

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Minister Diosdado Cabello: Russia’s Role in Overcoming Facism Once More

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Minister Cabello reaffirmed that Venezuela is a “territory of peace” and extended his arms to all those who fight against fascism, assuring: “They can count on Venezuela to defeat fascism.” Nov 22, 2024 Photo: @Desiree1613049


November 22, 2024 Hour: 8:54 pm

Cabello highlighted the importance of youth in this context, stating: “We are here to face one of the biggest problems facing the world… because we feel them as brothers.” The minister also stressed the need to confront and defeat fascism, pointing out: “They (fascists) have no morals and no words.

Venezuela’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Justice, and Peace, Diosdado Cabello Rondon, expressed his support for Russia in its fight against fascism during the opening of the World Congress of Anti-Fascist Youth and Students, held in Caracas.

In his speech, Cabello stated: “I also want to express our solidarity with the Russian people, with the great Russia that today is fighting fascism, which has decided once again to fight against fascism.

We have no doubt that it will defeat fascism again, regardless of the colors it may be dressed in or the support it may receive.” The event, which brings together hundreds of young people from over 70 countries, aims to analyze and position themselves against fascist aggressions in the world.


Cabello highlighted the importance of youth in this context, stating: “We are here to face one of the biggest problems facing the world… because we feel them as brothers.” The minister also stressed the need to confront and defeat fascism, pointing out: “They (fascists) have no morals and no words.

They have not been able to defeat us, and I am sure that they will not.” He also referred to a violent act in Venezuela on July 28, where individuals were attacked because of their alleged Chavista affiliation.

To conclude, Cabello reaffirmed that Venezuela is a “territory of peace” and extended his arms to all those who fight against fascism, assuring: “They can count on Venezuela to defeat fascism.”

https://www.telesurenglish.net/minister ... once-more/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sun Nov 24, 2024 11:16 pm

November 24, 2024 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
A defining moment in the Ukraine war

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Russian President Vladimir Putin took a meeting of the Defence Ministry leadership, representatives of military-industrial complex and missile system developers, Kremlin, Moscow, Nov. 21, 2024

The Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a statement on Thursday regarding the two attacks by Western long-range weapons on Russian territory on November 19 and 21 and Moscow’s reactive strike on a facility within Ukraine’s defence industrial complex in the city of Dnepropetrovsk with a hitherto unknown non-nuclear hypersonic ballistic missile named Oreshnik.

On Friday, at a meeting in the Kremlin with the military top brass, Putin revisited the topic where he clarified that Oreshnik not really at an “experimental” stage, as Pentagon had determined, but its serial production has actually commenced.

And he added, “Given the particular strength of this weapon, its power, it will be put into service with the Strategic Missile Forces.” He then went on to reveal, “It is also important that along with the Oreshnik system, several similar systems are currently being tested in Russia. Based on the test results, these weapons will also go into production. In other words, we have a whole line of medium- and shorter-range systems.”

Putin reflected on the geopolitical backdrop: “The current military and political situation in the world is largely determined by the results of competition in the creation of new technologies, new weapons systems and economic development.”

Succinctly put, the escalatory move authorised by the US president Joe Biden has boomeranged. Did Biden bite more than he could chew? This is the first thing.

The US apparently decided that Putin’s “red lines” and Russia’s nuclear deterrence were the stuff of rhetoric. Washington was clueless about the existence of a wonder weapon like the Oreshnik in the Russian armoury that is as demonic frightening as a nuclear missile in its sheer destructive apocalyptic potential but will spare human lives. Putin added calmly that Russia intends to give advance notice to civilians to get out of the way before Oreshnik heads for its designated target to annihilate it. The shock and awe in the western capitals speaks for itself. Biden avoided commenting on the issue when asked by reporters.

The Oreshnik is not an upgrade of old Soviet-era systems but “relies entirely on contemporary cutting-edge innovations,” Putin stressed. Izvestia reported that Oreshnik is a new generation of Russian intermediate-range missiles with a range of 2,500-3,000km and potentially extending to 5,000km, but not intercontinental, equipped with multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRV) — ie., having separating warheads with individual guidance units. It has a speed between Mach 10 and Mach 11 (exceeding 12,000 kms per hour).

The Russian daily Readovka reported that with an estimated 1,500 kgs of combat payload, lifting to a maximum height of 12 km and moving at a speed of Mach 10, the Oreshnik launched from the Russian base at Kaliningrad would strike Warsaw in 1 minute 21 seconds; Berlin, 2 min 35 sec; Paris, 6 min 52 sec; and London, 6 min 56 sec.

In his statement on Thursday, Putin said, “there are no means of countering such weapons today. Missiles attack targets at a speed of Mach 10, which is 2.5 to 3 kilometres per second. Air defence systems currently available in the world and missile defence systems being created by the Americans in Europe cannot intercept such missiles. It is impossible.”

Indeed, a terribly beauty is born. For, Oreshnik is not just an effective hypersonic weapon and is neither a strategic weapon nor an intercontinental ballistic missile. But its striking power is such that when used en masse and in combination with other long-range precision systems, its effect and power is on par with strategic weapons. Yet, it is not a weapon of mass destruction — rather, it’s a high-precision weapon.

Serial production implies that dozens of Oreshnik are in the process of being deployed, which means that no US / NATO staff group and no Anglo-American target intelligence unit in bunkers in Kiev or Lvov is safe any longer.

Oreshnik is also a signal to the incoming US president Donald Trump who is ad nauseam calling for an immediate end-of-war settlement. Oreshnik, ironically, has been developed only as Moscow’s reaction to the hawkish decision by then US president Trump in 2019 to unilaterally withdraw from the 1987 Soviet-American treaty on intermediate range nuclear forces (INF). Hence this also signals that Moscow’s trust in Trump is near zero.

To drive home this point, on the very same day Oreshnik emerged out of its silo, Tass carried an unusual interview with a top Russian think tanker affiliated to the foreign ministry and Kremlin — Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the Valdai Discussion Club, dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s MGIMO International Relations Department, and member of the Scientific Council under the Russian Security Council.

The following excerpts of the interview, plain-speaking and startling, should scatter the hypothesis that there is something special going on between Trump and Putin:

“Trump is considering ending the Ukrainian crisis, not out of any sympathy for Russia, but because he acknowledges that Ukraine has no realistic chance of winning. His goal is to preserve Ukraine as a tool for US interests, focusing on freezing the conflict rather than resolving it. Consequently, under Trump, the long-term strategy of countering Russia will persist. The US continues to benefit from the Ukrainian crisis, regardless of which administration is in power.”
“The United States has regained its position as the European Union’s top trading partner for the first time in years. It is the Europeans who are bearing the financial burden of prolonging the Ukrainian crisis, while the US has no interest in resolving it. Instead, it is more beneficial for them to freeze the conflict, keeping Ukraine as a tool to weaken Russia and as a persistent hotspot in Europe to maintain their confrontational approach.”
“Trump has made numerous statements that differ from the policies of Joe Biden’s administration. However, the US state system is an inertial structure that resists decisions it deems contrary to American interests, so not all of Trump’s ideas will come to fruition.”
“Trump will have a two-year window before the midterm congressional elections, during which he will have a certain freedom to push his policies through the Senate and the House of Representatives. After that, his decisions could face resistance both domestically and from US allies.”
Make no mistake, Russia is under no illusions. Putin will not waver from the conditions he outlined in June for resolving the conflict: the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Donbass and Novorossiya; Kiev’s commitment to abstain from joining NATO; the lifting of all Western sanctions against Russia; and the establishment of a non-aligned, nuclear-free Ukraine.

Clearly, this war will continue on its course till it reaches its only logical conclusion, which is Russian victory. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev is spot on when he said in an interview with Al Arabiya yesterday that the use of Oreshnik missile “changes the course” of the Ukrainian conflict.

The Western capitals will have to reconcile with the reality that the scope for escalation of the war is ending. Make no mistake, if another ATAMCS strike inside Russia is attempted, it will have devastating consequences for the West.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic put it nicely: “If you [NATO] think you can attack everything on Russian territory with Western logistics and weapons without getting a response, and that Putin won’t use whatever weapons he deems necessary, then you either don’t know him or you’re abnormal.”

https://www.indianpunchline.com/a-defin ... raine-war/

******

Vladimir Putin’s decree on the new RF nuclear arms doctrine, 19 November 2024

The first and most important thing that one can say about Russia’s new doctrine on nuclear deterrence and the circumstances under which Russia foresees use of its nuclear arsenal against adversaries is the following: it has been tailor-made to fit the situation in which Russia finds itself today with respect to the United States and its NATO allies.

The doctrine is couched in abstract language without naming names, but behind every clause you can identify a specific threat to Russia that the United States and its allies have been implementing these past few years. The logic flowing from this is that if and when the strategy and/or tactics of the adversary changes, then there will be appropriate modifications to the doctrine.

The doctrine itself has two parts to it.

‘The field of nuclear deterrence’ is what we read as the title of the Decree and ‘the essence of nuclear deterrence’ is the most lengthy and detailed part of the document, laid out in paragraphs 9 to 17,

The second part, entitled ‘conditions for the Russian Federation to shift to use of nuclear weapons’ is set out in paragraphs 18 to 21. This is much more concise.

Let us look at each of these parts in turn.

*****

Deterrence

The single biggest change in Russia’s nuclear doctrine is found in the very first article (9) which describes the ‘potential adversary’ to be deterred as

‘states and military coalitions (blocs, alliances) that are viewed by the Russian Federation as a potential adversary and which possess nuclear and/or other forms of weapons of mass destruction or significant fighting potential in conventional forces.’

Nuclear deterrence will also be applied with respect to

‘states which make available their territory, air and/or marine space and resources to prepare for and execute aggression against the Russian Federation.’

This is directly complemented by article 10 which explains that

‘Aggression of any state within a military coalition (bloc, alliance) against the Russian Federation and/or its allies is viewed as aggression of this coalition as a whole.’

The foregoing is absolutely new and binds the United States and NATO countries more closely together in a common fate than the famous Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Article 5 of that treaty provides for the common defense of the signatory countries. Articles 9 and 10 of the Russian doctrine provide, as we see in part two of the doctrine, for Russian attack on any of them it chooses should one or more of them attack the Russian Federation and/or its allies directly or indirectly.

Article 11 sets out what Vladimir Putin had said to a reporter first on 12 September and then repeated when he addressed Russia’s Security Council on 25 September:

‘Aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies coming from any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state is viewed as their combined attack.’

This is explicitly directed against the policy of the United States to wage proxy wars so as to inflict damage and possibly defeat a perceived adversary while expecting to avoid being identified as a co- belligerent. It is, of course, drawn from Russia’s experience in the current war in and about Ukraine.

Note the mention of Russia’s allies as also being covered with its nuclear umbrella. Until recently this sounded like an empty piece of rhetoric. ‘What allies?’ one might ask. But the conclusion of a mutual defense treaty with North Korea leaves no doubt that Russia’s nuclear umbrella is part of their deal. Separate statements coming from both Minsk and Moscow tell us that the nuclear umbrella now covers Belarus. De facto we may suppose that the same goes for Iran, though properly speaking no mutual defense treaty has yet been signed with Teheran.

Article 12 says the purpose of nuclear deterrence is to ensure that potential adversaries ‘understand the unavoidability of retaliation in case they commit aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies.’

The next article worthy of our attention is 15, which sets out in subclauses a list of military dangers which, depending on changing military-political and strategic circumstances, can grow into military threats to / aggression against the Russian Federation. These are all explicitly cases where ‘neutralization’ requires nuclear deterrence to be applied.

Note as you review the list below that there is something akin here to the formulation of the Wolfowitz doctrine in the USA wherein the potential of an adversary is equated with malicious intent that must be stymied.

The potential adversary’s having nuclear and/or other forms of weapons of mass destruction which could be applied against the Russian Federation and/or its allies, as well as the means to deliver these kinds of arms
The potential adversary’s having and deploying air defenses including ABMs, medium and lesser range cruise and ballistic missiles, high precision conventional and hypersonic weapons, offensive drones variously based, directed energy weapons that could be used against the Russian Federation.
The buildup by a potential adversary along territory bordering the Russian Federation and its allies or in nearby waters of groups of general-purpose military forces which possess the means to deliver a nuclear strike and/or the military infrastructure enabling such an attack.
The creation by a potential adversary of anti-missile defense equipment, attack weapons and satellite-killer equipment and his positioning this in outer space
Positioning of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery on the territory of non-nuclear states
The creation of new or expansion of existing military coalitions (blocs, alliances) resulting in their military infrastructure drawing closer to the borders of the Russian Federation
Actions by a potential adversary directed at isolating part of the territory of the Russian Federation, including blocking access to vitally important transport communications
Actions by a potential adversary directed at defeating (destroying) environmentally dangerous infrastructure of the Russian Federation which might lead to manmade, ecological or social catastrophes.
The potential adversary’s planning and carrying out large-scale military training exercises near the borders of the Russian Federation.
The uncontrolled spread of weapons of mass destruction, means of their delivery, technologies and equipment for their preparation.
The potential adversary’s having and deploying air defense including ABMs, medium and lesser range cruise and ballistic missiles, high precision conventional and hypersonic weapons, offensive drones variously based, directed energy weapons that could be used against the Russian Federation.
It is worth remarking that many of the items in the list reflect directly what the United States and its NATO allies have done already or are talking about. Among them are a blockade of Kaliningrad, the positioning of NATO infrastructures close to the Russian border, holding war games close to Russia’s borders. The remarks in point h above surely refers to attacks on nuclear power stations, which Ukraine has done using drones and Soviet era missiles. Other items, particularly those that one might call a restoration of Reagan’s Star Wars plans are among the stated intentions of Donald Trump once he takes office and their inclusion in the list may be interpreted as a clear message to Trump to rethink this strategy if he wants to make peace with Russia.

*****

Conditions under which the Russian Federation moves from deterrence to nuclear strikes

Here some of the conditions were taken over from previous iterations of the nuclear doctrine, in particular what we read in article 18: a retaliatory attack for use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against Russia and its allies, Here we also read that conventional weapons attack on Russia and/or Belarus can trigger a nuclear response if there is a ‘critical threat to their sovereignty and/or territorial integrity.’ The mention of ‘territorial integrity’ is a new condition.

Article 19 lists other conditions that could allow for Russia to use its nuclear arsenal:

Reliable information about the launch of ballistic rockets attacking the territory of the Russian Federation and/or its allies
The use by an adversary of nuclear or other forms of weapons of mass destruction on the territory of the Russian Federation and/or its allies against troop formations and/or infrastructure located outside its territory.
[note: this is new]

Action by an adversary against critically important state or military infrastructure of the Russian Federation which, if knocked out, will disrupt retaliatory moves of the nuclear forces
Aggression against the Russian Federation and/or the Republic of Belarus using conventional weapons that create a critical threat to their sovereignty and/or territorial integrity
[here, too, ‘territorial integrity’ is a concept introduced in this iteration of the doctrine]

Receipt of reliable information about a massive launch (take-off) in an air and space attack (strategic and tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft and their crossing the borders of the Russian Federation
*****

All of the above is my read-out of the Decree. To that I add here what authoritative Russian analysts had to say on the news and commentary program The Great Game, edition of 19 November, i.e., shortly after the decree was published.

See https://rutube.ru/video/5943ec8d4e55b43 ... 90809a81a/

The host opened the discussion by saying that the most important new provisions of Russia’s nuclear doctrine are in articles 10, 11 and 19. With respect to 19, it now shows 5 circumstances under which Russia is free to use nuclear weapons whereas the 2020 redaction of the nuclear doctrine only showed 3 such circumstances.

He notes that point b of 19 means knock-out of early warning systems, of command and control centers; it also includes cyber attacks. Point c of 19 speaks of a threat to the sovereignty and/or territorial integrity whereas the point from 2020 that it replaces spoke of a threat to Russia’s existence as a state. This amounts to a significant lowering of the threshold for using nuclear weapons, per the host. Point d of 19: this expands the concept of an attack justifying use of nuclear weapons from strictly ballistic missiles to include any other aircraft.

Comments by panelist Andrei Klintsevich, RF state counsellor: this decree is a timely adaptation of the doctrine to present-day realities, especially as regards dealing with blocs as a whole not as separate states for purposes of retaliation. The intention is for the non-nuclear states among NATO to go to Macron and tell him to just shut up since his words and actions can be used by the Russians against them. Klintsevich also points to the new principle of a Russian nuclear umbrella for its allies. Finally, there is the new concept of extraterritoriality, meaning that Russia will respond with nuclear arms to attacks on its bases outside the RF. He explains ‘nuclear deterrence’ as meaning not a nuclear strike but heightened readiness for such a strike, including decentralization of command to avoid decapitation, putting the nuclear triad on alert such as sending to sea submarines with nuclear strike capability. This document is intended to be kept on the desk of diplomats everywhere who must understand that there will be no divergence between the words in the decree and Russia’s future actions.

The host concludes that the new doctrine is Russia’s direct answer to those madmen in the West who are calling for missile strikes deep into the Russian heartland.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/11/24/ ... mber-2024/

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Putin’s Nuclear Doctrine: New Deterrence – Ultimatum to Europe
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 23, 2024
Lorenzo Maria Pacini

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How much longer will Europe follow the Western idiocracy? Has the time not come to choose to be on the right side of history?

A new nuclear deterrence doctrine. This is the Russian Federation’s response to NATO’s further provocation, which has authorised and initiated the use of long-range missile systems on Russian territory, attacking the country.

In the simplest and most elementary logic, this is called ‘yet another declaration of war’. In military doctrine, it is a provocation aimed at verifying certain positions of the enemy regarding certain necessary elements in the strategic equation. Everything is bordering on the absurd, because in such a delicate phase as the transition between the Biden and Trump governments, the American establishment seems to have nothing better to do than to throw the whole of Europe into the precipice of destruction. But they are smarter in Moscow.

From doctrine to doctrine

Let us first take a look at the previous military doctrine on nuclear weapons and deterrence, issued in June 2020 by executive decree of President Vladimir Putin.

The decree defines the basic principles of state policy on nuclear deterrence, a cornerstone of the country’s defence strategy, outlining Russia’s official view on the use of nuclear weapons, identifying the risks, threats and specific conditions that could lead to their use, as well as establishing guidelines for the management of deterrence.

Nuclear deterrence is defined as a set of political, military, economic and diplomatic measures coordinated to deter a potential adversary from taking hostile action against Russia and its allies. The policy, avowedly defensive in nature, aims to preserve national sovereignty, territorial integrity and state security by maintaining a sufficient level of nuclear capability to prevent aggression and armed conflict. In the event of a military conflict, this policy aims to prevent escalation and bring hostilities to a conclusion acceptable to the Russian Federation.

Russia regards nuclear weapons as an instrument of extreme necessity, the use of which is reserved for critical situations. The decision to use them rests solely with the President, who may, if necessary, inform other nations or international organisations of his willingness or decision to do so. Conditions for use include responding to a nuclear or WMD attack against Russia or its allies, a conventional aggression that threatens the existence of the state, or an attack on critical infrastructure that compromises nuclear response capabilities.

The decree then identifies several threats that require nuclear deterrence, including the development and deployment of advanced weapons systems by states considered adversaries, the expansion of hostile military alliances, and the uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons. Other concerns include the deployment of offensive weapons near Russian borders and the potential use of space for military purposes.

The guiding principles of Russian nuclear deterrence include adherence to international arms control commitments, continuity of defensive activities, adaptability of strategy to emerging threats, centralisation of state control, and maintenance of a minimal but sufficient nuclear arsenal to ensure national security. Deterrence is based on a combination of land, sea and air nuclear forces, maintained in a constant state of readiness.

Responsibility for implementing this policy is distributed among various state bodies. The President guides the overall strategy, while the Government deals with economic, diplomatic and technological aspects to sustain the nuclear potential. The Security Council coordinates the activities of the institutions involved, and the Ministry of Defence oversees the planning and execution of military measures.

There is a declared commitment of the Russian Federation to reduce international tensions and to prevent and defuse conflicts, while reserving the right to defend itself by all necessary means, including nuclear force, against any existential threat.

The new announcement

Putin announced the new nuclear deterrence doctrine, not yet made public on government channels but available in unofficial translation on Sputnik channels.

The most important differences, or rather the specifications added in the new executive decree, concern the following points:

The nature of the enemy, which can be single or an alliance or bloc, extending its definition, in perfect consistency with the repeated announcements by Russian government officials about attacks by NATO and its member countries;
The types of threats identified, which are extended to a wide range of strategic systems, also integrating space technologies;
The mapping of domains, redefining the proximity to the Russian Federation and its military systems.
The streamlining and updating of nuclear deterrence doctrine poses an important warning to the entire West: Russia is ready for nuclear war.

The President made reference to previously undisclosed Russian hypersonic missile systems, Oreshnik, which came as no small surprise to the West, which had instead focused on information the Kremlin had leaked to distract from its preparedness for direct conflict. A system, the Oreshnik, capable of reaching Mach 10, exceeding the Western defence systems known to us.

The announcement was reiterated by Putin’s words on 21 November, when he spoke to the world giving a real ultimatum:

‘I repeat: we are testing the Oreshnik missile system under combat conditions in response to the aggressive actions of NATO countries against Russia. The question of further deployment of intermediate-range and short-range missiles will be decided by us depending on the actions of the U.S. and its satellites. The targets to be hit during further tests of our latest missile systems will be determined by us according to the security threats to the Russian Federation. We consider ourselves authorised to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow Ukraine to use their weapons against our facilities, and in the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond in an equally decisive and speculative manner. I recommend to the ruling elites of those countries that plan to use their military contingents against Russia to think seriously about it’.

To the folly of the American hegemon, Putin responds by appealing to the European countries, who are well aware that they are the ones who will be sacrificed in an unprecedented fratricidal war. How much longer will Europe follow the Western idiocracy? Has the time not come to choose to be on the right side of history?

Russia, therefore, responds with a counter-attack and a promise: we continue to use ‘conventional’ weapons, because we reserve the nuclear dessert for a better time. The choice of the menu is up to the West.

Russia’s new nuclear doctrine means NATO missiles fired against our country could be deemed an attack by the bloc on Russia. Russia could retaliate with WMD against Kiev and key NATO facilities, wherever they’re located. That means World War III.

— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) November 19, 2024


https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/11/ ... to-europe/

*******

Russia’s Foreign Spy Chief Briefly Explained How He Sees The World

Andrew Korybko
Nov 24, 2024

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Whereas the US wants to divide-and-rule Eurasia in order to decelerate the decline of its unipolar hegemony, Russia wants to bring everyone together in order to accelerate multipolar processes.

Chief of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin gave a brief interview to the National Defense magazine in which he explained how he sees the world. In his eyes, the West has been weakened even though the dollar remains the universal currency. He also said that the Global South is wary of receiving technology and investment from the West because they don’t want to pay for it with their sovereignty. They’re also skeptical of the West’s outreaches and promises of global reform.

The historic rise of the Eurasian macro-region parallels the West’s decline. Multipolar processes are more active there than anywhere else, hence why it’s targeted by the West’s divide-and-rule schemes. These will only serve to facilitate the creation of a Eurasian security architecture that can ensure stability on the supercontinent. The greatest threat right now is NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine, but Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine makes it impossible to strategically defeat Russia.

The professional degradation of the Western bureaucratic class is responsible for why the West thought that it could strategically defeat Russia through Ukraine in the first place. These people are obsessed with retaining their sides’ declining hegemony at the expense of their people’s living standards. “Only ignoramuses or scoundrels are capable of participating in such a cynical political spectacle”, Naryshkin added, scoffing at how they’ve misled people into believing that supporting Ukraine is in their interests.

The joint article that his American and British counterparts published in the Financial Times in September “is also evidence of something amiss in modern Western civilization” since they wouldn’t seek to justify their organizations’ activities in the public sphere if everything was supposedly going according to plan. The rest of his remarks touched on aspects of his institution’s history, work, and advice for future applicants. Everything that was shared above will now be analyzed in the larger context.

What can be seen is that SVR is convinced that certain global trends are irreversible, namely the West’s decline and the rise of the Eurasian macro-region, but neither has yet to culminate so there could still be some surprises along the way. Therein lies the importance of its work in obtaining privileged information about these trends, incorporating this into their analyses, and informing policymakers about the most effective way to advance Russia’s national interests in these circumstances.

His words about the creation of a Eurasian security architecture are admittedly ambitious, but their significance is that this is the long-term goal that Russia is officially aiming for, which will require plenty of work before any tangible progress is achieved. For instance, there’s still a lot of distrust between China and India in spite of their nascent rapprochement, and that’s not even to mention the distrust between India and Pakistan or even nowadays India and Bangladesh after the latter’s US-backed regime change.

There’s also the unresolved Chinese-Vietnamese maritime dispute in the South China Sea as well as lingering suspicions that Iran and Saudi Arabia have of one another in spite of spring 2023’s rapprochement. These and other issues are herculean challenges on their own, let alone when grouped altogether, but Russia has excellent relations with both countries in each pair of disputes so it’s well-positioned to either mediate or share suggestions (whether solicited or unsolicited) for resolving them.

Whereas the US wants to divide-and-rule Eurasia in order to decelerate the decline of its unipolar hegemony, Russia wants to bring everyone together in order to accelerate multipolar processes. To this end, passing along intelligence about America’s aforesaid plans to those countries that are the targets of such plots can go a long way towards foiling them and then bolstering the trust required for Russia to help politically resolve their regional disputes. This is the invaluable benefit of partnering with Russia.

Looking forward, Russia is expected continue playing an integral role in Eurasia’s gradual consolidation as a macro-regional actor in the emerging multipolar world order through its military means of defeating NATO in Ukraine and its clandestine ones as described above. No other country is playing anything similar to this role, though that’s not to say that they’re unimportant, it’s just that economic means can only do so much to accelerate these processes.

The closer that Russia coordinates its military-clandestine roles with the economic ones that China, India, and other top Global South states play, the faster that everything will unfold. The Russia-India-China (RIC) framework will therefore remain the most pivotal during this period, followed by BRICS and the SCO in equal measure, within which RIC is their core axis. If the Sino-Indo rapprochement succeeds, which Russia will encourage but won’t meddle in, then the world will radically change for the better.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/russias- ... ef-briefly
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 25, 2024 4:19 pm

THE NOVICHOK SHOW TRIAL – ALL OVER BAR THE SHOUTING (THAT THE RUSSIANS DID IT)

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by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

Almost over now is the British Government’s six-year operation to prove to the world that in 2018 Russian military officers killed Dawn Sturgess with a Novichok weapon, which they had discarded after using it first on Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

Almost finished, too, is the Government’s campaign to prove that Sturgess’s lover and her family are not entitled to a multi-million pound compensation for the negligence of officials in stopping the Russians and their Novichok before they attacked the Skripals, and then before Sturgess died.

The Sturgess Inquiry’s public witness testimony, which commenced on October 14, will conclude this week with an appearance by Jonathan Allen, Director General for defence and intelligence at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). Listed to testify on “current HMG [His Majesty’s Government] assessment of Russian State Responsibility” Allen, who defended the Novichok allegations at the United Nations in 2018, will speak on Thursday, November 28; he will be the final witness to appear before lawyers make their summing-up statements. According to the Foreign Office, Allen’s job is “the delivery of UK policy for the FCDO response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and for Eastern Europe and Central Asia policy.”

It is now too late for Allen to neutralize the expert witnesses – doctors at Salisbury District Hospital, scientists at the Defence Ministry’s chemical warfare establishment (Porton Down), eyewitnesses, police investigators. Their evidence exposes the alternative narrative that the Skripals were attacked by British government agents who manufactured the Novichok at Porton Down; fabricated traces of it along the trail of two Russian decoys; and then planted a Novichok-poisoned perfume bottle on Dawn Sturgess’s kitchen table – eleven days after police searches had failed to find it.

The hearing record also reveals repeated prompts and interruptions by Anthony Hughes, the retired judge directing the Sturgess Inquiry (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley), to prevent questioning of witnesses from turning into cross-examination of the Government’s allegations.

Last Thursday, an anonymous Health Department doctor code-named V13A testified that the Cabinet Office in London, coordinating the Defence Ministry, health emergency agencies, the police and the security services, had carried out as swiftly as possible the “risk assessment” and “risk mitigation actions” required to protect the public in the Salisbury area.

In March 2018, when the Skripals were attacked, V13A said she was a senior official at Public Health England (PHE), and during the course of the risk investigations, she describes following instructions from Nick Gent; he was then a chemical warfare official at Porton Down who was relaying orders from senior intelligence and security officials in London.

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Dr Nicolas Gent -- source: https://johnhelmer.net/

The public had been properly safeguarded, the witness concluded her written statement, because the poisoning had been targeted on the Skripals, and there was no evidence of wider-area contamination. She repeated the findings she and Gent had agreed to relay to and from national officials in London: “potential contacts had no symptoms of poisoning”; “the risk to public health from the incident was low, based on the evidence available’”; “the risk to the public was low on the understanding that all known sites had been secured…there was no need to provide further public health advice at that time, with what was known at that moment.”

In her oral testimony, V13A told the Inquiry, “it is helpful from a public health risk assessment to have public health specialists, the relevant scientists at the very least, with the available evidence and that evidence will identify what the risk and then you can identify or consider risk mitigations that are proportionate to both the risk and to the available evidence.” .

Hughes interrupted to correct the witness. “No, come on, that won’t do. It’s not whether it’s identified as a possible issue.” Hughes insisted the witness confirm that government officials had acknowledged the “possibility that there was discarded substance”. – page 102. The judge was referring to the Novichok-filled perfume bottle (right) discovered on Sturgess’s kitchen table eleven days after her collapse and death, and after thorough police searches for illegal drugs had been conducted.

Despite the prompting, the Health Ministry witness insisted there was no evidence from any intelligence, police, Defence Ministry or other official source that the Novichok poison bottle existed on March 4, 2018 – the day of the Skripal attack.

If a Novichok weapon had been discovered, V13A testified, this had been kept secret from her by the intelligence services and the police. “The search for residual hazards, including remaining poison, was carried out by the police investigation and was not the responsibility of PHE. PHE was advised by the police that they had an intelligence-led [MI6] search strategy and there was liaison at a local and national level between the police and PHE.” — Para 29. V13A said this “liaison” was Gent at Porton Down, and he was keeping secret what he knew.

In her hearing testimony, V13A repeatedly told the judge and lawyers there was a difference in forensic evidence between possibility and probability, insisting there had been no “proportionate” justification for triggering public panic for a possibility without evidence.

“[Official public health warning] advice needs to be ideally evidence-based and proportionate, and also what is the most important advice for people to follow at that time. There was a lot of advice and a lot of community engagement with Salisbury. What any discarded Novichok could be, what container it might be in, whether it had been exposed to the atmosphere, it was not known, it was not known, so it would have been very difficult to issue public health advice on a supposition.” — page 131.

The witness was exposing the possibility of an alternative sequence of events contradicting the official narrative. The implication was that if it had been improbable the alleged Russian murder weapon had been discarded near the scene of the crime, it was possible the Novichok poison bottle had been created by Defence Ministry scientists at Porton Down weeks after the attack on the Skripals.

This timing was also long after the police searches had been completed without finding any evidence, as Gent had told V13A. “PHE”, she wrote in her witness statement, “knew that steps were being carried out to mitigate the risk of residual materials because the police were carrying out searches, including identifying sites for discarded, unused substance…PHE also knew that all known sites had been secured…PHE was not responsible for searches.” — Para 36.

Hughes and his lawyer, Emilie Pottle, stopped a Sturgess family lawyer, Jesse Nicholls, from opening up for cross-examination V13A’s belief from Gent that immediately after the Skripal attack “it was known [by senior government and police officials] that the concern was they were looking for a small vial or bottle of liquid.” — page 160.

“A [V13A] That was the balance of probabilities of what something like that might have been contained in.

Q. And that was known at the time, wasn’t it?

A. It wasn’t known.

Q. It was known that that was the balance of probabilities at the time?

A. It was possible.”…

MS POTTLE: Sir, I hesitate to interrupt, but the stenographer has been going now for nearly an hour and a half.

MR NICHOLLS [for Sturgess family]: I’m so sorry.

MS POTTLE: We are over the time allocated to the family for questions.”

— page 161.

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Left to right: Jesse Nicholls, junior lawyer for the Sturgess family; Emilie Pottle, junior lawyer for the Inquiry; Anthony Hughes. Source: https://www.youtube.com/ – watch from Minute 1:30 onwards. Transcript can be read at https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west -- page 161.

Catherine Roper, the head of police in Wiltshire where the attacks took place, and the county’s Chief Constable, followed with a statement to the press: “There’s absolutely nothing to indicate that this is a circumstance we’ll be experiencing again. We have strengthened our relationship with all of our partners and many of them have been giving evidence during the inquiry so we are aligned, working closely together and there is nothing to indicate any concern.”

The chief lawyer for the Sturgess family, Michael Mansfield KC, has been focusing on the negligence compensation campaign for several years. In last week’s hearings he raised no objection to the judge for the restricted time rule. He has presented no evidence of his own to substantiate negligence, either on the part of the secret intelligence and security services, MI6 and MI5; or the Defence Ministry’s chemical warfare establishment; PHE; or the Wiltshire and Metropolitan police.

Mansfield’s silence indicates that either his compensation claim has been abandoned, or that a secret deal has been reached with the Home Office for a confidential payout to follow if Mansfield stays silent.

https://johnhelmer.net/the-novichok-sho ... more-90691

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Yeltsin Center and technical reasons
November 25, 14:56

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"Yeltsin Center" cancelled the presentation of Nina Khrushcheva's book about her great-grandfather. The cancellation is due to technical reasons.
Earlier, Khrushchev's granddaughter called for the dismemberment of Russia. In the conditions of war, where there is a threat to the territorial integrity of the country, all this was openly subversive activity at the expense of the state. Now they are trying to hide behind "technical reasons".

The Yeltsin Center should be closed.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9516730.html

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 26, 2024 4:33 pm

Russia has stopped gas supplies to Austria
November 26, 9:09

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Russia has stopped gas supplies to Austria

Gazprom has stopped gas supplies to Austria after Austrian corporation OMV took Russian gas to cover an international arbitration ruling that awarded it 230 million euros in compensation, Reuters reported, citing several sources.

The company remained one of Gazprom's few clients in Europe, but the two countries' more than half-century-long gas relations (the Soviet Union began supplies to Austria in 1968) ended in confiscation. The agency's source noted that this case was the first time a European buyer failed to pay for the gas it received.

Almost two weeks ago, on November 13, OMV announced a court ruling to stop gas supplies in the fall of 2022, even before the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosion. Immediately after that, October gas supplies were blocked, and three days later Gazprom stopped pumping.

A source close to OMV explained that the company had taken advantage of its last opportunity to demand money from Gazprom before gas transit via Ukraine ceases on January 1, 2025. The current contract runs until 2040, but since the supplier has stopped fulfilling it, OMV can be released from its obligations.

Any subsequent negotiations with Austria on resuming gas supplies, whenever they begin, will have to be accompanied by a demand for the return of the stolen money, with interest for the period from the theft to the negotiations.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9517657.html

Google Translator

*****

Why all the fuss about Russia’s newly demonstrated Oreshnik hypersonic missile?

Russian state television yesterday was explaining to its domestic audience how awed Western leaders were by the first use of Russia’s still ‘experimental’ hypersonic intermediate range missile, the Oreshnik (hazelnut tree). They showed on screen the utter confusion of Zelensky over how to respond other than to publicly beg Washington for further shipments of anti-aircraft systems to better protect his homeland. Of course, all of US and Western defenses are useless against the invincible Russian missile.

On The Great Game, the presenter and panelists were uncertain whether the significance of the Russian attack on a military installation in the Dnepropetrovsk region last week using Oreshnik was fully understood by Collective Biden, even if the Pentagon was sure to have been awed.

For their part, my peers in the alternative Western media have had their say about Oreshnik and seem to concur that it represents a new entry into the Russian missile arsenal that has no equivalent in the West. But I have not heard exactly why it is such a novel development and, as some have said, ‘a game changer.’ Let us address these issues here and now.

******

President Putin devoted a large part of his State of the Nation address on 1 March 2018 to rolling out before the Russian public and the world the various state of the art weapons systems that Russia had been developing ever since President Bush Jr withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002 and the USA appeared to have made a first strike capability on Russia its national security objective.

Putin’s talk about hypersonic missiles, about missiles circling the globe and striking North America from the South Pole, thereby rendering useless the US radar arrays looking north, – these and other Wunderwaffen were dismissed by many Western observers at the time as just a bluff. How could technically backward Russia steal the march on the United States in strategic weapons operating as it did on a military budget 10 times less than America’s? Moreover, since Putin’s speech was made in the final weeks before a presidential election, his words were taken by many Western experts to be no more than pre-electoral hyperbole by an incumbent seeking reelection.

What happened a week ago was the first demonstration before the global audience that the Russian hypersonic missiles are a reality and that their destructive force based solely on the physics of mass times velocity is comparable to that of some tactical nuclear warheads.

We were told by many talking heads in the West that the Oreshnik is the first of its kind.

Wrong! The Oreshnik is an intermediate range variant based on operational principles that were already incorporated into ICBMs that Russia produced and put on active duty back in 2018. I have in mind the Sarmat, which has in its nosecone perhaps a dozen Avangard hypersonic missiles each of which is individually targetable. Those Avangard on board follow a glide path and reach a velocity of 20 times the speed of sound (Mach) before hitting their targets with either conventional or more typically nuclear warheads.

Note: everyone speaks of the Oreshnik as ‘intermediate range’ which it just barely is. Its range is said to be 5500 km, which is the outer limit of Intermediate and the lower limit of ICBMs.

But range is not the distinguishing feature of the Oreshnik just as hypersonic speed ( in this case 10 Mach) is not its distinguishing feature. Its fuel and launchers are the distinguishing feature.

The Sarmat is a liquid fuel missile that is launched from silos on land. These silos are hardened so as to protect against even a direct hit by a nuclear weapon, but their location is surely known to the adversary. The Oreshnik, by contrast, is a solid fuel rocket that is launched from mobile launchers that can be moved around and hidden under camouflage as required. Therefore, its possible destruction in a preemptive first strike by some adversary is far more problematic.

In the present-day context of the war in Ukraine, even without explosives on board, the Oreshnik has the force at impact to destroy everything below it to a depth of 200 meters. This means that the bunkers used in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine by US and NATO officers coordinating the military operations, and also the bunkers now protecting Mr. Zelensky and his war criminal confederates are entirely vulnerable to Russian attack at the time of Moscow’s choosing.

As regards Western Europe, the generally quoted warning time from launch of the Oreshnik in mainland Russia to impact in Berlin is 11 minutes. However, if launched from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, the flight time is reduced to about 4 minutes. This has surely unnerved Mr. Scholz and his little band of would-be warriors in Germany. Sooner or later the same arithmetic will be understood by Cold Warriors in Paris and Brussels. None of them will know what hit them if the Russians go on the offensive and attack Europe with the Oreshnik in response to the various provocations surely being hatched in NATO meetings this week.

Finally, let us look at the calendar.

The Biden Administration used arm-twisting to get Scholz & Company to agree to the positioning of nuclear armed American Tomahawk intermediate range cruise missiles on German soil for possible use against Russia in what could be a decapitating attack. Delivery is scheduled for 2026, two years from now.

But we are living in 2024 and the Russian answer to the future Tomahawks is here and now, ready to be fired against NATO countries if they proceed with their insane plans to attack Russia or to ship nuclear arms to Kiev, which is also said to be under discussion.

And that, ‘in a nutshell’ is what the advent of the Oreshkov (hazelnut tree) is all about.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/11/26/ ... c-missile/

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SKRIPAL GRAVE GIVES UP THE TRUTH – THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT DECIDED TO KILL SERGEI SKRIPAL BUT THE METROPOLITAN POLICE HAVE EXPOSED THE PLOT

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by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

On March 1, 2018, Alexander Skripal would have turned 44 years old. But he couldn’t celebrate his birthday with father Sergei Skripal and sister Yulia because Alexander was dead. He died on July 18, 2017; his body cremated in St Petersburg; his ashes buried at the London Road Cemetery at Salisbury (lead image), beside his mother, Lyudmila Skripal.

To honour Alexander’s birthday, his father and sister drove to the cemetery on Sunday morning, March 4, 2018. The distance from their home in Salisbury to the cemetery is less than five kilometres; depending on the route and the traffic, the drive can take less than ten minutes. Early on that cold wintry day, the journey would have taken less time.

The Skripals’ journey, their evidence of what happened, and the police testimony, which has followed in the hearings of the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, reveal a tangle of inconsistencies, contradictions, fabrications, stonewalling, and lies. This tangle is proof enough that the British Government narrative of the Russian Novichok attack has collapsed. The truth can be found in the rubble.

A Sunday morning witness named John Hiles, “a retired minister”, told the police “he was following the victim’s vehicle southbound on A30 London Road.”

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Source: https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazon ... 5_14-7.pdf

The southbound direction in the police report indicates the Skripals were driving from the cemetery back towards their home – unless the witness and the policeman confused their north and south directions.

The BBC reported on September 27, 2018, that there had been not one but several witness sightings of the Skripal car driving on the route between their home and the cemetery on Sunday morning.

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Source: https://archive.is/rTG0F

What exactly happened at the cemetery that morning was witnessed by no one except the Skripals. In six years of police interview records released publicly to the Sturgess Inquiry, there is no trace the police asked either of them to explain how they had spent their morning before the attack on the Sunday afternoon. If the police asked the question, the record of the answers Sergei and Yulia Skripal gave has been kept secret.

However, the police made a “forensic management record” reporting evidence from a source the police report doesn’t identify: “Sergey and Yulia Skripal attended the graves of family members on the morning of the incident.”

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Source: https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazon ... 512-13.pdf

The only source for this police report was either Sergei or Yulia Skripal, or both of them.

Contradicting this is a police report, titled “Selective Timeline of Sergei and Yulia Skripal”, claiming “Yulia states that neither she nor Sergei left the house on the morning of 4th March.” In the version of this 11-page report presented to the Sturgess Inquiry, computer activity is recorded on devices of both Sergei and Yulia from 08:27 until 13:10. However, the pages of the report recording the early morning hours of Sunday are missing; only five of the eleven pages have been revealed publicly.

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Source: https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazon ... 5_14-7.pdf

The police report claiming the Skripals did not go to Alexander Skripal’s grave that Sunday morning is dated April 1, 2018. The date of the police record saying the Skripals did go to the cemetery is May 23, 2018. Almost two months of police operations elapsed before the evidence was switched.

Compare Tim Norman’s detailed timeline of the Skripal movements and his analysis of mainstream media reporting of what the police, intelligence services, and government officials were leaking, published in November 2022. Norman warns that neither he nor his publisher “is assessing the sources quoted as trustworthy.”

The police also claim the Skripals’ mobile telephones were switched off throughout the fateful Sunday morning until past 13:00; they leaked this information to the media. During the Skripals’ telephone silence that morning, this police report reveals they were sent three SMS messages which were in code. Between 10:16 and 10:22 two messages came in from CIK; one from SNOWQUEEN.

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Source: https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazon ... 5_14-7.pdf

The police also record that Sergei Skripal’s next-door neighbour telephoned his home landline number at 10:32 to arrange a plumbing repair. Sergei reportedly replied he “wouldn’t be in between 4:00hrs and 1700 hrs”.

Chief Metropolitan Police investigator Commander Dominic Murphy claims the absence of police evidence of the Skripals’ movements on Sunday morning is evidence that they didn’t move out of their house. “No further activity on the devices attributed to the Skripals until they were found in the Maltings. This indicated that the Skripals were at their home from the time that Ross and Maureen Cassidy dropped them off [Saturday March 3] until they left to go into the centre of town on 4 March 2018.”

The MI6 version of the Sunday morning, reported by Mark Urban, says that “inasmuch as Sergei had a regular ‘pattern of life’, a Sunday morning visit to the London Road cemetery was often part of it”. — page 262. Urban published this in September 2019. He and his MI6 sources didn’t realize the police were switching their stories.

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Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/

For Urban’s role at the BBC as undercover MI6 informant, which Sergei Skripal recognized, read this.

Subsequent testing of the cemetery and the gravesite by the police and specialists of the Porton Down chemical warfare laboratory confirms that not a trace of Novichok was found. MET commander Murphy wrote in his witness statement for the Sturgess Inqury on October 2: “During 11 March, the samples obtained from the graves of Liudmila and Alexander Skripal were reported to be negative, as were the small toys which had been found placed on the graves. This confirmed our perspective that Sergei Skripal had not visited the graves and could not have been contaminated there.”

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Investigators’ tent over Alexander Skripal’s grave.

Murphy’s non-sequitur has escaped the notice of the judge and lawyers running the Sturgess Inquiry, as well as of the British media. The absence of contamination at the cemetery proves only that the Skripals hadn’t been poisoned so early in the morning. That they visited the cemetery is confirmed by the police because Yulia and Sergei Skripal told them. That they didn’t visit the cemetery is also reported by the police.

What is certain for that morning’s cemetery trip is that the Skripals could not have made contact there with the two Russian GRU agents, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who are charged with attempted murder with a Novichok poison weapon. That accusation is the foundation of the British Government’s claim that Russia is responsible for the Novichok attack.

Petrov and Boshirov were not recorded on CCTV as arriving at the Salisbury railway station until 11:48 on Sunday morning.

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In this police mapping of Petrov’s and Boshirov’s movements after arriving at Salisbury late on Sunday morning, the blue dots and black boxes indicate the locations where there was no CCTV sighting of the two men, or “no CCTV camera footage recorded”.

To substantiate the official narrative that they committed the Novichok crime by spraying the Skripals’ front door-handle, their timing has been calculated by the police at around 12 noon, when the Skripals were at home and when the only CCTV record of where Peskov and Boshirov were placed them about a mile from the Skripal’s house. From 12:30 until 13:03, the police have told the Inquiry, the CCTV evidence of Petrov’s and Boshirov’s whereabouts is “unavailable”.

What is certain is that the police have changed their story. Murphy has now testified in the open Inquiry hearings that “clearly we had a witness who had reported seeing that vehicle at the time. We subsequently found out that was an erroneous report and the vehicle hadn’t left at all, but when you take the fact that there were recent items left on the grave and the potential sighting of Sergei and Yulia’s vehicle, these were factors that led us to focus some effort on the grave site as well… It took some time and we were quite disruptive unfortunately to the graveyard more broadly in this process, but yes, it turned out there was no contamination at the grave site at all… It’s an equivocal there was a negative, there was no contamination at the grave site” — page 56-57.

The reason for the switch of police evidence is Yulia Skripal’s recovery in hospital on March 8 to tell her doctor, Stephen Cockroft, that she and her father had been attacked by a spray as they were eating lunch in Zizzi’s Restaurant. She also told Cockroft that she did not believe the spray attack had occurred at her home.

This is evidence that the Russians had not attacked the Skripals at all; and that the British Secret Intelligence Service had done so.

To conceal this, and reverse the evidence of the movements around Salisbury of the two Skripals and the two Russian military officers, the scene of the crime had to be removed from the restaurant, minutes before the Skripals collapsed, to the house front-door handle, hours before the collapse. Placing the Skripals inside the house throughout the morning is required for the coverup because they cannot have touched the lethal door-handle on their way into their house, on their return from the cemetery, and then collapsed inside.

Between their return trip from Alexander’s graveside and their departure downtown, the elapse of time was “brief”, according to the MI6 version reported by Urban. How long that was, how much time the Skripals spent at home on the Sunday morning depends on the police report of their computer activities during the morning. That police report is not direct physical evidence. Instead, the evidence of the Inquiry is that the police reports are contradictory. The presiding judge of the Inquiry, Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley) has excluded all direct evidence from the open hearings and stopped cross-examination of witnesses on the discrepancies and contradictions. By classifying CCTV, telephone and other electronic records, it is impossible to know what Hughes has excluded in secret.

The only direct physical evidence of what happened on the morning and afternoon of March 4 is Yulia Skripal’s and her father’s. If they are alive, they have been forbidden to testify in public. Their purported witness statements are unsigned, unnotarized for proof that they originated them. Tape and video images of Sergei Skripal in a 36-minure interview with police on May 15, 2018, have been kept secret.

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Source: https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazon ... 746_19.pdf

The lawyer who has told the Inquiry he represents the Skripals, Andrew Deacon, has asked no questions of any witness during the Inquiry and presented no evidence. The only statement he has made in evidence for the Skripals was on October 14, at the opening of the Inquiry hearings: “On 4 March 2018, Sergei and Yulia Skripal were attacked at Mr Skripal’s home in Salisbury with a Novichok nerve agent,” Deacon said. — page 156.

The lawyer was lying. Yulia Skripal has not said that.

https://johnhelmer.net/skripal-grave-gi ... more-90701

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Russia Could Deploy Missiles in Asia if U.S. Missiles Appear There

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Russian Oreshnik hypersonic missile breaking the sound barrier, Nov. 2024. X/ @aapayes


November 26, 2024 Hour: 6:36 am

‘The appearance of U.S. systems in any region of the world will determine our next steps,’ Ryabkov said.

On Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that his country is considering possibly deploying medium-range and short-range missiles in Asia if U.S. missiles appear in the same region.

“The appearance of such U.S. systems in any region of the world will determine our next steps, including in the field of organizing a military and military-technical response,” Ryabkov told reporters when asked whether Russia is considering the possibility of deploying medium-range and short-range missiles in Asia.

The diplomat also said that U.S. bases in Europe, including those where tactical nuclear weapons are deployed, are not excluded as potential targets for Russia in the event of a hypothetical military conflict.

On Monday, General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces announced that the Ukrainian forces launched a series of overnight attacks on “important facilities” in three regions of western Russia. An oil depot in the Kaluga region was struck during the attack, the General Staff said, adding that outcomes of strikes on other targets in the Bryansk and the Kursk regions are still being assessed.


So far, Western missile strikes on Russian territory and Moscow’s use of a new ballistic missile have failed to upset the balance of power on the battlefield, where Russia continues to gain ground and Ukraine is trying to hold on to the territory it controls in Russia’s Kursk region.

“For now, it is simply a political decision with no consequences for the situation at the front,” said military analyst and colonel in the reserve of the Ukrainian army Sergey Grabsky, referring to Kiev’s permission to attack military targets inside Russia with ATACMS and Storm Shadow ballistic missiles.

Grabsky warns that the qualitative leap in Western support for Ukraine that this step represents will only have a significant impact on the course of the war if ATACMS and Storm Shadow attacks on Russian rear targets take place in sufficient numbers.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/russia-c ... ear-there/

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The West’s Next Anti-Russian Provocation Might Be To Destabilize & Invade Belarus

Andrew Korybko
Nov 26, 2024

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Russia cannot afford to have its adversaries capture and hold Belarusian territory because of the national security threat that this presents and also because it would greatly undermine its negotiating position.

Belarusian media reported last week about the West’s alleged plot to destabilize and then invade their country. Existing information warfare campaigns are meant to facilitate the recruitment of more sleeper cell agents, who’ll later stage a terrorist insurgency using Ukrainian-procured arms. Mercenaries will then invade from the south, carry out drone strikes against strategic targets, and attempt to seize the capital. If they succeed, then the coup authorities will request a conventional NATO military intervention.

Here are over a dozen background briefings about this scenario over the past year and a half:

* 25 May 2023: “NATO Might Consider Belarus To Be ‘Low-Hanging Fruit’ During Kiev’s Upcoming Counteroffensive”

* 1 June 2023: “The Union State Expects That The NATO-Russian Proxy War Will Expand”

* 14 June 2023: “Lukashenko Strongly Hinted That He Expects Belgorod-Like Proxy Incursions Against Belarus”

* 14 December 2023: “Belarus Is Bracing For Belgorod-Like Terrorist Incursions From Poland”

* 19 February 2024: “The Western-Backed Foreign-Based Belarusian Opposition Is Plotting Territorial Revisions”

* 21 February 2024: “Is The West Plotting A False Flag Provocation In Poland To Blame On Russia & Belarus?”

* 26 April 2024: “Analyzing Belarus’ Claim Of Recently Thwarting Drone Attacks From Lithuania”

* 30 June 2024: “Keep An Eye On Ukraine’s Military Buildup Along The Belarusian Border”

* 12 August 2024: “What’s Behind Belarus’ Military Buildup Along The Ukrainian Border?”

* 13 August 2024: “Security Threats To Belarus”

* 19 August 2024: “Ukraine Reportedly Has A Whopping 120,000 Troops Deployed Along Its Border With Belarus”

* 26 August 2024: “Ukraine Might Be Gearing Up To Attack Or Cut Off Belarus’ Southeastern City Of Gomel”

* 28 September 2024: “Belarus’ Warning About Using Nukes Probably Isn’t A Bluff (But There Might Be A Catch)”

This summer’s Ukrainian invasion of Russia’s Kursk Region might also have emboldened the plotters.

No nuclear retaliation from Russia followed despite the threat that this NATO-backed attack posed to its territorial integrity. Likewise, they might calculate that neither Russia nor Belarus (which hosts the former’s tactical nukes) would resort to these means if they replicated that scenario in the latter, especially if the invasion also came from Ukraine instead of NATO countries like Poland. This could give the West more leverage in upcoming peace talks with Russia if it succeeds.

That might sound reasonable on paper, but in practice, it ignores the fact that Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine just entered into force and that Putin responded to Ukraine’s use of Western long-range missiles by employing the state-of-the-art hypersonic medium-range Oreshnik missile in combat. The first allows the use of nuclear weapons in response to the sort of threats that this scenario poses while the second was meant as a signal to the West that Putin is finally climbing the escalation ladder.

Taken together, the latest developments indicate that Russia’s response to an unconventional mercenary invasion of Belarus and/or a conventional Ukrainian one might be different than its response to Kursk, and this could serve as the tripwire for the Cuban-like brinksmanship crisis that’s been brewing. Russia cannot afford to have its adversaries capture and hold Belarusian territory because of the national security threat that this presents and also because it would greatly undermine its negotiating position.

It might very well be that the West is aware of this and thus hopes to provoke precisely such a response from Russia with the expectation that “escalating to de-escalate” can end the conflict on better terms for their side. That would be a huge gamble since the stakes are much higher for Russia than for the West, thus reducing the chances that the former would agree to the concessions that the latter might demand, such as freezing the conflict along the existing Line of Contact without anything else in exchange.

There’s also the possibility that the West’s attempt to destabilize and invade Belarus, whether through mercenaries and/or conventional Ukrainian troops (a conventional NATO military intervention isn’t likely at this stage), is thwarted and nothing else comes of this plot. Much less likely but still impossible to rule out is that Russia asks Belarus to let one of the aforementioned invasions make enough progress to justify using tactical nukes against Ukraine to “escalate to de-escalate” on better terms for Russia.

That would also be a huge gamble though since crossing the nuclear threshold might tremendously raise the stakes for the West as its leaders sincerely see it even if the primary intent is only to punish Ukraine. Nevertheless, seeing as how Putin is now finally climbing the escalation ladder and throwing some of his previous caution to the wind after feeling like his prior patience was mistaken by the West as weakness, he might be influenced by hawkish advisors into seeing that as an opportunity to flex Russia’s muscles.

In any case, regardless of whatever might happen, the fact is that it’s the West’s prerogative whether or not Belarus is destabilized and possibly also invaded. Ukraine could also “go rogue” out of desperation if it feels that the West might “sell it out” under Trump and thus wants to make a last-ditch attempt to improve its negotiating position or “escalate to de-escalate” on better terms for itself, but this could greatly backfire if it fails. They both therefore bear full responsibility for what could follow.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-west ... rovocation

(Pretty damn 'iffy' I think.)

The Triggers For & Consequences Of Russia’s Possible Missile Deployment To The Asia-Pacific[/i]

Andrew Korybko
Nov 26, 2024

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The Kremlin wants to fulfill its allied commitments to North Korea and highlight its relevance in that part of Eurasia, both goals of which are driven by security, diplomatic, and soft power motives.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in response to a question about his country’s possible missile deployment to the Asia-Pacific that this “will depend on the deployment of corresponding US systems in any region of the world.” This came less than a week after Putin authorized the use of Russia’s previously secret hypersonic medium-range Oreshnik missile in Ukraine, the strategic significance of which was analyzed here, and parallels newly deteriorating Russian-South Korean ties.

Seoul is considering arming Ukraine in response to unsubstantiated reports about Russia’s use of North Korean troops against that former Soviet Republic, which prompted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko to warn that “we will respond in every way that we find necessary. It is unlikely that this will strengthen the security of the Republic of Korea itself.” The two triggers for Russia’s possible missile deployment to the Asia-Pacific are therefore the US doing so first or Seoul arming Kiev.

It's important to point out that while China is Russia’s close military partner and Moscow believes that Washington is engaged in what Russian officials describe as a “dual containment” strategy against both, Beijing isn’t its military ally, unlike Pyongyang with which Moscow just recently signed a military pact. That document was analyzed here and amounts to updating a Soviet-era one. Its strategic significance is that each pledged to help the other if they come under aggression and such assistance is requested.

Accordingly, Russia’s possible missile deployment to the Asia-Pacific would be in defense of its own and North Korea’s security, with the first immediate consequence being that it could inadvertently worsen China’s by serving to justify and accelerate the US’ regional containment plans against it. To explain, Trump plans to “Pivot (back) to Asia” upon the end of the Ukrainian Conflict, whenever that might be and regardless of the terms agreed to, which is already troubling enough from China’s perspective.

To make it even worse, Trump is inheriting the Biden Administration’s achievement of having brokered the improvement of South Korean-Japanese ties to such an extent that the US’ long-hoped-for regional trilateral is finally on the brink of becoming a strategic reality. The deployment of short- and intermediate-range Russian missiles to the Asia-Pacific, especially the state-of-the-art Oreshnik, would naturally justify the aforesaid and accelerate all three’s convergence into a tighter triangle.

On the diplomatic front, these missiles could always be withdrawn pending a grand deal between Russia, the US, North Korea, and possibly also China, though the latter’s involvement shouldn’t be taken for granted. After all, an agreement could be reached between the first three in exchange for de-escalating tensions in Northeast Asia, which could then free up the US and Japan to concentrate on more muscularly containing China in Southeast Asia via Taiwan and the Philippines, which both are close with.

It's premature to predict that this is exactly what will unfold, but the point is that Russia’s role in the emerging Asian front of the New Cold War could be leveraged for de-escalation purposes if its and North Korea’s security interests are met, which only requires negotiating with the US and not with China. Given these military-strategic dynamics, it’s possible that Trump might try to fulfill his campaign pledge to “un-unite” Russia and China by playing them off against each other, though that’s very unlikely to succeed.

All told, Russia’s possible missile deployment to the Asia-Pacific would be triggered by the US or South Korea, with the consequences being that it’ll solidify Russia’s role in that emerging front of the New Cold War while inadvertently worsening China’s security by justifying and accelerating the US’ “Pivot (back) to Asia”. The Kremlin wants to fulfill its allied commitments to North Korea and highlight its relevance in that part of Eurasia, both goals of which are driven by security, diplomatic, and soft power motives.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-trig ... nsequences
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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