Re: Russia today
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2024 1:57 pm
MI6 strikes again: Navalny’s aide Volkov beaten up in Lithuania
We are two days from the opening of polls in Russia for the 2024 presidential election and the Brits could not pass up an opportunity to spoil the mood by cooking up a follow-on atrocity to remind us of the murder of Alexei Navalny that they brought to the door of Putin in mid-February. This morning’s BBC News had extensive coverage of an attack on Navalny’s confederate and continuator of his mission, Leonid Volkov, who resides in Lithuania in self-imposed exile. The propaganda message was clear: opposition personalities must fear for their lives even if they live outside Russia. In the event, Volkov survived the attack of his assailant with hammer and tear gas (?) and gave an interview to reassert his determination to resist the Putin regime. He is said to have suffered bone fractures in his leg.
The Volkov story made a nice bookend to last night’s broadcast of Hard Talk with Stephen Sakur. The show was retrospective, putting on screen Sakur’s interviews with a succession of Putin opponents, most of whom are dead or in prison. We heard from Boris Nemtsov (dead), Alexei Navalny (dead) and Vladimir Kara-Murza (in a remote prison colony). Then there was the one survivor of Putin’s terror: Ksenia Sobchak, who filled in for Navalny in the 2018 elections after he was barred from running and has represented Russia’s chattering classes in the various movements to overthrow the regime ever since. Ksenia is still free as a bird and doing very well financially from her society gossip blog, all thanks to Putin’s loyalty to the memory of her father, Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St Petersburg whom Putin served for several years as deputy responsible for attracting foreign investments.
I will not explain here in detail why I say the Brits were behind the attack on Volkov. Suffice it to say that the Brits are the engineers of all anti-Russian false flag events these days, as they were the vanguard of anti-Assad phony chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian civil war. The British have officers on the ground in Ukraine to direct drone and cruise missile attacks on Russian positions. This was plainly stated by the conspiring Luftwaffe generals in their group telephone discussion that was so nicely tapped and leaked to the press by RT a week ago. So long as Russia does not respond in kind and target British assets and home territory of the island nation, the United Kingdom will continue to be ever more brazen.
On the other side of the ledger, Russian television last night carried the latest edition of Bessogon, a program of news and documentary videos scripted and presented by the well known Russian cinema director Nikita Mikhalkov. As usual, the one hour plus show covered many topics but was focused on the conveniently timed death of Alexei Navalny, ahead of the Russian elections and during the Munich Security Conference where the great and the good of the Western world were congregated.
With his director’s fine eye for detail, Mikhalkov put up on the screen videos of Navalny’s widow Yulia during and immediately following her delivery of a speech at the Munich Security Conference denouncing Putin as personally behind the murder of her husband and the wrecking of Russian society. Facial expression tells it all: as the subtitle of last night’s show put it “The Merry Widow.” Only the stubbornly blind will not see in the gleeful eyes and smirky smiles of Yulya Navalnaya the clear statement that she is overjoyed finally to be on stage herself, not on the sidelines watching her heroic husband.
One of the more piquant issues that Mikhalkov raised in this show is what exactly was the cause of Navalny’s death. He does not question the coroner’s report that it was due to a detached blood clot (thrombosis). He reminds us that this very finding was supported to reporters by the head of Ukrainian intelligence Budanov, who had no interest in exculpating the Kremlin for Navalny’s death. And why the loosened blood clot? For this, Mikhalkov turns to official British findings on mortality from blood clots of those who received the anti-Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna during the height of the pandemic. The statistics speak clearly of a vastly increased risk of death for those who were vaccinated. And, per Mikhalkov, Navalny was vaccinated with the Pfizer shots not once, not twice but as many as five times during his stay of several months in Germany when he was recuperating from a (phony) Novichok poisoning. Mikhalkov concludes that Navalny was killed by Pfizer.
****
I am just a layman as regards military hardware, but I will stick my neck out a bit to mention one aspect of the controversy in Germany over sending Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine that barely is mentioned in our media. We hear time and again that the issue is the range of these missiles, 500 km, which would give the Ukrainians the possibility of destroying the iconic Kerch (Crimea) bridge and attacking other targets way behind Russian lines with devastating effect. That, presumably, would lead to a further escalation from the Russian side, exposing German military production centers to attack.
However, at least in Russian media there is another issue: the Taurus are said to be nuclear enabled, meaning they could carry tactical nuclear weapons. If that is true, then incoming Taurus missiles could well prompt the Russians to ‘launch on warning’ a strategic nuclear attack on Germany, or on the USA as they may choose.
There are rumors in Germany that Scholz’s decision against sending the Taurus to Ukraine was advised by none other than Joe Biden. If so, then the possible nuclear boomerang described above could have been the argument which prevailed.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/03/13/ ... lithuania/
******
Analyzing Russia’s Polite Rejection Of China’s No-First-Use Nuclear Weapons Treaty Proposal
ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 13, 2024
Russia and China aren’t always on the same page about sensitive issues even though they respect one another’s positions and don’t question their intentions.
The Russian Foreign Ministry politely rejected China’s no-first-use nuclear weapons treaty proposal from late last month in a statement that they recently shared with the RBK business daily. It’s in Russian but can easily be read in one’s native language with Google Translate. The present piece will analyze this reaction, which contradicts popular perceptions of these two being on the same page about most issues, and clarify why Russia didn’t enthusiastically embrace this proposal.
Here's the relevant excerpt from RBK’s report per Google Translate:
“The Russian Foreign Ministry, answering questions from RBK about how Moscow evaluates this idea and whether it is being discussed in the format of the ‘nuclear five’ (Great Britain, China, Russia, the USA and France), assured that ‘Moscow and Beijing treat each other’s initiatives not only with special attention, but also with constant respect’ and are aimed ‘at the further progressive development of bilateral relations, which are in the nature of a comprehensive and strategic partnership.’
‘As for the substance of the issue, the proposal put forward by the Chinese partners belongs to the category of ideas that need to be considered in the general context of military-political realities and in connection with other significant factors affecting international security and strategic stability,’ – the department said. — The validity of such an integrated approach is obvious against the backdrop of the continuing deterioration of the situation in the world, including the sharp deterioration of relations between the nuclear powers participating in the ‘nuclear five’ you mentioned.
The Russian Foreign Ministry also emphasized that they give ‘absolute priority’ to measures whose goal is to actually weaken the confrontation between nuclear-armed countries by eliminating ‘fundamental contradictions in the field of security.’”
It’ll now be interpreted in order to better understand Russia’s stance.
The first paragraph can be regarded as a disclaimer intended to cushion the blow from Russia’s rejection in the subsequent one. The Foreign Ministry reaffirmed the respect that it pays to all proposals from the Chinese side, which are always shared with the best of intentions, in order to avoid offending its strategic partner. It wanted to nip in the bud any potential Western speculation that China has ulterior motives that go against Russia’s objective national interests.
About those, the Foreign Ministry strongly implied that it’s unrealistic for their country to formally promote this proposal despite agreeing with their counterparts in principle due to the current context of the Ukrainian Conflict. It deserves mentioning that Foreign Ministter Lavrov confirmed in late January that arms control talks with the US won’t resume until their proxy war, which German Chancellor Scholz inadvertently admitted is actually an undeclared hot but thus far limited one, is over.
RBK also reminded everyone at the end of their article about what President Putin said during his address to the Federal Assembly last month. The Russian leader told his people that “Our position is clear: if you (the US) want to discuss security and stability issues that are critical for the entire planet, this must be done as a package including, of course, all aspects that have to do with our national interests and have a direct bearing on the security of our country, the security of Russia.”
China’s proposal was tabled just days before his speech so it wasn’t contradicting the package aspect of Russian policy on this subject, though it still could be interpreted as a way of gently nudging Moscow to reconsider what Lavrov said about how such talks can’t resume till the Ukrainian Conflict ends. The People’s Republic probably expects that it’s unrealistic for its partners to change their position in this regard but likely still shared their proposal anyhow for broader soft power purposes.
The US has recently begun fearmongering about China’s nuclear intentions in order to precondition the public for expecting their country to eventually pivot from containing Russia in Europe (which Germany could take the lead in doing or carry out together with France and the UK) to containing China in Asia. The most effective way to counteract this false narrative is to make public statements about the need for all nuclear powers to agree to a no-first-use nuclear weapons treaty despite it being unrealistic.
The purpose is to show the global public, especially those members thereof in the West, that China is proactively sharing pragmatic proposals for reducing the risk of World War III by miscalculation. Russia agrees with this in principle like its Foreign Ministry confirmed but importantly believes that it isn’t feasible in the current conditions as explained. It therefore wasn’t offended by what China did, the same as China is unlikely to be offended by Russia’s polite rejection of this proposal.
Nevertheless, what this shows is that Russia and China aren’t always on the same page about sensitive issues, which astute observers would have already known. They disagree on Kashmir, the South China Sea (specifically the Philippines and Vietnam), China’s latest map, and now strategic arms control talks, but they responsibly manage these differences in pursuit of jointly accelerating multipolar trends. This sets a positive example for other Great Powers, even if only non-Western ones might follow their lead.
https://korybko.substack.com/p/analyzin ... -rejection
We are two days from the opening of polls in Russia for the 2024 presidential election and the Brits could not pass up an opportunity to spoil the mood by cooking up a follow-on atrocity to remind us of the murder of Alexei Navalny that they brought to the door of Putin in mid-February. This morning’s BBC News had extensive coverage of an attack on Navalny’s confederate and continuator of his mission, Leonid Volkov, who resides in Lithuania in self-imposed exile. The propaganda message was clear: opposition personalities must fear for their lives even if they live outside Russia. In the event, Volkov survived the attack of his assailant with hammer and tear gas (?) and gave an interview to reassert his determination to resist the Putin regime. He is said to have suffered bone fractures in his leg.
The Volkov story made a nice bookend to last night’s broadcast of Hard Talk with Stephen Sakur. The show was retrospective, putting on screen Sakur’s interviews with a succession of Putin opponents, most of whom are dead or in prison. We heard from Boris Nemtsov (dead), Alexei Navalny (dead) and Vladimir Kara-Murza (in a remote prison colony). Then there was the one survivor of Putin’s terror: Ksenia Sobchak, who filled in for Navalny in the 2018 elections after he was barred from running and has represented Russia’s chattering classes in the various movements to overthrow the regime ever since. Ksenia is still free as a bird and doing very well financially from her society gossip blog, all thanks to Putin’s loyalty to the memory of her father, Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St Petersburg whom Putin served for several years as deputy responsible for attracting foreign investments.
I will not explain here in detail why I say the Brits were behind the attack on Volkov. Suffice it to say that the Brits are the engineers of all anti-Russian false flag events these days, as they were the vanguard of anti-Assad phony chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian civil war. The British have officers on the ground in Ukraine to direct drone and cruise missile attacks on Russian positions. This was plainly stated by the conspiring Luftwaffe generals in their group telephone discussion that was so nicely tapped and leaked to the press by RT a week ago. So long as Russia does not respond in kind and target British assets and home territory of the island nation, the United Kingdom will continue to be ever more brazen.
On the other side of the ledger, Russian television last night carried the latest edition of Bessogon, a program of news and documentary videos scripted and presented by the well known Russian cinema director Nikita Mikhalkov. As usual, the one hour plus show covered many topics but was focused on the conveniently timed death of Alexei Navalny, ahead of the Russian elections and during the Munich Security Conference where the great and the good of the Western world were congregated.
With his director’s fine eye for detail, Mikhalkov put up on the screen videos of Navalny’s widow Yulia during and immediately following her delivery of a speech at the Munich Security Conference denouncing Putin as personally behind the murder of her husband and the wrecking of Russian society. Facial expression tells it all: as the subtitle of last night’s show put it “The Merry Widow.” Only the stubbornly blind will not see in the gleeful eyes and smirky smiles of Yulya Navalnaya the clear statement that she is overjoyed finally to be on stage herself, not on the sidelines watching her heroic husband.
One of the more piquant issues that Mikhalkov raised in this show is what exactly was the cause of Navalny’s death. He does not question the coroner’s report that it was due to a detached blood clot (thrombosis). He reminds us that this very finding was supported to reporters by the head of Ukrainian intelligence Budanov, who had no interest in exculpating the Kremlin for Navalny’s death. And why the loosened blood clot? For this, Mikhalkov turns to official British findings on mortality from blood clots of those who received the anti-Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna during the height of the pandemic. The statistics speak clearly of a vastly increased risk of death for those who were vaccinated. And, per Mikhalkov, Navalny was vaccinated with the Pfizer shots not once, not twice but as many as five times during his stay of several months in Germany when he was recuperating from a (phony) Novichok poisoning. Mikhalkov concludes that Navalny was killed by Pfizer.
****
I am just a layman as regards military hardware, but I will stick my neck out a bit to mention one aspect of the controversy in Germany over sending Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine that barely is mentioned in our media. We hear time and again that the issue is the range of these missiles, 500 km, which would give the Ukrainians the possibility of destroying the iconic Kerch (Crimea) bridge and attacking other targets way behind Russian lines with devastating effect. That, presumably, would lead to a further escalation from the Russian side, exposing German military production centers to attack.
However, at least in Russian media there is another issue: the Taurus are said to be nuclear enabled, meaning they could carry tactical nuclear weapons. If that is true, then incoming Taurus missiles could well prompt the Russians to ‘launch on warning’ a strategic nuclear attack on Germany, or on the USA as they may choose.
There are rumors in Germany that Scholz’s decision against sending the Taurus to Ukraine was advised by none other than Joe Biden. If so, then the possible nuclear boomerang described above could have been the argument which prevailed.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/03/13/ ... lithuania/
******
Analyzing Russia’s Polite Rejection Of China’s No-First-Use Nuclear Weapons Treaty Proposal
ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 13, 2024
Russia and China aren’t always on the same page about sensitive issues even though they respect one another’s positions and don’t question their intentions.
The Russian Foreign Ministry politely rejected China’s no-first-use nuclear weapons treaty proposal from late last month in a statement that they recently shared with the RBK business daily. It’s in Russian but can easily be read in one’s native language with Google Translate. The present piece will analyze this reaction, which contradicts popular perceptions of these two being on the same page about most issues, and clarify why Russia didn’t enthusiastically embrace this proposal.
Here's the relevant excerpt from RBK’s report per Google Translate:
“The Russian Foreign Ministry, answering questions from RBK about how Moscow evaluates this idea and whether it is being discussed in the format of the ‘nuclear five’ (Great Britain, China, Russia, the USA and France), assured that ‘Moscow and Beijing treat each other’s initiatives not only with special attention, but also with constant respect’ and are aimed ‘at the further progressive development of bilateral relations, which are in the nature of a comprehensive and strategic partnership.’
‘As for the substance of the issue, the proposal put forward by the Chinese partners belongs to the category of ideas that need to be considered in the general context of military-political realities and in connection with other significant factors affecting international security and strategic stability,’ – the department said. — The validity of such an integrated approach is obvious against the backdrop of the continuing deterioration of the situation in the world, including the sharp deterioration of relations between the nuclear powers participating in the ‘nuclear five’ you mentioned.
The Russian Foreign Ministry also emphasized that they give ‘absolute priority’ to measures whose goal is to actually weaken the confrontation between nuclear-armed countries by eliminating ‘fundamental contradictions in the field of security.’”
It’ll now be interpreted in order to better understand Russia’s stance.
The first paragraph can be regarded as a disclaimer intended to cushion the blow from Russia’s rejection in the subsequent one. The Foreign Ministry reaffirmed the respect that it pays to all proposals from the Chinese side, which are always shared with the best of intentions, in order to avoid offending its strategic partner. It wanted to nip in the bud any potential Western speculation that China has ulterior motives that go against Russia’s objective national interests.
About those, the Foreign Ministry strongly implied that it’s unrealistic for their country to formally promote this proposal despite agreeing with their counterparts in principle due to the current context of the Ukrainian Conflict. It deserves mentioning that Foreign Ministter Lavrov confirmed in late January that arms control talks with the US won’t resume until their proxy war, which German Chancellor Scholz inadvertently admitted is actually an undeclared hot but thus far limited one, is over.
RBK also reminded everyone at the end of their article about what President Putin said during his address to the Federal Assembly last month. The Russian leader told his people that “Our position is clear: if you (the US) want to discuss security and stability issues that are critical for the entire planet, this must be done as a package including, of course, all aspects that have to do with our national interests and have a direct bearing on the security of our country, the security of Russia.”
China’s proposal was tabled just days before his speech so it wasn’t contradicting the package aspect of Russian policy on this subject, though it still could be interpreted as a way of gently nudging Moscow to reconsider what Lavrov said about how such talks can’t resume till the Ukrainian Conflict ends. The People’s Republic probably expects that it’s unrealistic for its partners to change their position in this regard but likely still shared their proposal anyhow for broader soft power purposes.
The US has recently begun fearmongering about China’s nuclear intentions in order to precondition the public for expecting their country to eventually pivot from containing Russia in Europe (which Germany could take the lead in doing or carry out together with France and the UK) to containing China in Asia. The most effective way to counteract this false narrative is to make public statements about the need for all nuclear powers to agree to a no-first-use nuclear weapons treaty despite it being unrealistic.
The purpose is to show the global public, especially those members thereof in the West, that China is proactively sharing pragmatic proposals for reducing the risk of World War III by miscalculation. Russia agrees with this in principle like its Foreign Ministry confirmed but importantly believes that it isn’t feasible in the current conditions as explained. It therefore wasn’t offended by what China did, the same as China is unlikely to be offended by Russia’s polite rejection of this proposal.
Nevertheless, what this shows is that Russia and China aren’t always on the same page about sensitive issues, which astute observers would have already known. They disagree on Kashmir, the South China Sea (specifically the Philippines and Vietnam), China’s latest map, and now strategic arms control talks, but they responsibly manage these differences in pursuit of jointly accelerating multipolar trends. This sets a positive example for other Great Powers, even if only non-Western ones might follow their lead.
https://korybko.substack.com/p/analyzin ... -rejection