Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 11, 2024 12:55 pm

News for the President
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 11/11/2024

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With the participation of Elon Musk, the eccentric billionaire owner of Twitter and currently one of the men closest to Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky held a relatively long conversation with the president-elect just a few hours after the US elections. The presence of the Silicon Valley magnate on the call was intended to highlight his importance, and by extension that of Trump, in Ukraine's ability to continue fighting from 2022. Musk's Starlink systems have been the basis of communications for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a satellite technology that cannot blind. However, even despite this, Musk has not been immune to criticism from Kiev both for his vision of the war, excessively attached to the Russian version, and for considering his help as limited. The clearest example was Musk's refusal to allow the use of Starlink technology in Crimea, which made it difficult for Ukrainian missile attacks against the territory he most wants to conquer. The importance of Starlink and the need not to alienate its owner meant that the complaints quickly disappeared from the headlines, although the grievance lingered.

Elon Musk's rationale for refusing to allow the use of Starlink satellites to attack Crimea was, as the billionaire explained at the time, based on the need to avoid an escalation that would lead to an even more intense war. With his usual use of hyperbole, Musk claimed to be trying to avoid the third world war. Despite the profound ignorance he has shown about the conflict and its nature, the owner of Starlink had clearly understood that Crimea was Ukraine's fundamental priority and facilitating its attack implied actively collaborating in a dangerous drift.

Since then, Ukraine has sought to advance on the peninsula through its failed counteroffensive in 2023 and has subsequently focused on trying to undermine Russian capabilities in Crimea through drone strikes, purely propaganda raids and, most recently, missile attacks. And although kyiv is now requesting long-range missiles to attack mainland Russian territory, Ukraine has always made it clear that Crimea is its top priority. Moreover, the fact that Crimea was not mentioned in the agreements has been presented by Ukrainian officials as one of the factors why what was signed in Minsk in February 2015 was considered unworkable, i.e. unacceptable to Ukraine.

Every reference to Crimea is, in fact, a reaffirmation of kyiv's aspirations to its territorial integrity according to its 1991 borders. However, no one in the Ukrainian government hides the fact that the importance of the peninsula is much greater than that of, for example, the destroyed region of Donbass, whose dilapidated industry is not of special interest to a Ukraine that is aware that entry into the European Union implies relocation and deindustrialisation and that has considered its contribution to the political bloc as an "agricultural power". Any aspiration to recover Crimea necessarily entails a war until Russia's final defeat, the only way through which Moscow could sign a treaty that returns that region to kyiv. It is not necessary to listen to Dmitry Medvedev, who in his grotesque radicalisation threatened with "the final judgement", to understand that Crimea is the main red line for the Russian Federation and that the risk of losing control of the peninsula would mean the activation of its nuclear doctrine. In 2014, Western countries and their leaders, including Obama and Biden, understood that it was unfeasible to act against Russia in Crimea, aware of the popular support for annexation and without considering a direct confrontation with a nuclear power over a place so sensitive to its security.

In 2021, Zelensky’s “Crimea Declaration,” which stated that Ukraine would use all means at its disposal to regain the territory lost in 2014, was seen in Russia as the closest thing to a declaration of war. At the time, the means at Ukraine’s disposal were political, diplomatic and economic – primarily sanctions, which were not capable of forcing Moscow to submit to Ukrainian dictates. The Russian invasion, Western support and the supply of heavy weapons put the military means in the hands of Zelensky’s government with which to try to reconquer the territory.

In his usual psychological warfare work, Kirilo Budanov even predicted that his troops would enter Crimea before the summer of 2023, making clear what the objective of that summer’s ground offensive was. Ukraine was barely able to knock down a few bricks of the wall erected by Russian troops in the form of what became known as the Surovikin Line , a series of fortifications and minefields that prevented the advance towards Melitopol, considered the “key to Crimea”. That large-scale ground operation and its failure showed that Ukraine has the capacity to harm Russian troops on the peninsula – through attacks with Western missiles or its own drones, which have practically put the fleet out of action, tipping the balance in Kiev’s favor in the fight for control of the Black Sea – but that, by itself, it does not have the capacity to threaten control of the peninsula, which is necessary to achieve the objective of recovering territorial integrity according to internationally recognized borders.

“If pressed, most would probably define victory in a similar way to how Kiev defines it, even in its most recent ‘victory plan’: expelling Russian troops from all of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, and reestablishing control over its 1991 borders,” writes Richard Haas, a leading figure in the US foreign policy establishment , in the influential Foreign Policy magazine . “However, while this definition is desirable, it is ultimately unworkable. In principle, Ukraine could liberate its lost territory if the US and its European partners intervened with their own forces. But this would require abandoning the indirect strategy they chose in 2022. It would come at great human, military, and economic cost. And it would introduce a much greater risk, since it would mean a war between NATO and a nuclear-armed Russia. For this reason, such a policy will not be adopted,” he adds, summarizing in a few lines why the Ukrainian tactic of demanding that its allies continue to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian is not viable. This opinion, which until a few months ago was practically marginal, is not only becoming more established, but is now being supported by the president-elect of the United States, the country that is decisive in providing Ukraine with the enormous quantities of material and financing that it would need for an operation that would endanger Crimea.

On Sunday, Donald Trump said that Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, the UN ambassador and Secretary of State during his first administration, would not be invited to rejoin the government, which may indicate that the neo-conservative wing of the Republican circle will not be the most decisive in foreign policy. Very favorable to US assistance to Ukraine, Pompeo had proposed in an article published by The Wall Street Journal a lend-lease program , worth 500 billion dollars for Kiev, a contribution much higher than the total sum of what Western countries have spent on military assistance since the Russian invasion. Apparently eliminated the man who led that proposal, which did not gain support from other factions in Trump's entourage, the statements of those who seem to aspire to important positions in Republican foreign policy continue to point towards negotiating positions that do not differ greatly from those proposed by Haas.

“Bryan Lanza, a Republican Party strategist, told the BBC that the Trump administration would ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his version of a ‘realistic vision for peace,’” the British public outlet explained on Saturday. The stance indicates that Trump slightly qualifies his claim that he would force Russia and Ukraine to negotiate and reach a quick agreement and shows that, despite his dubious words about his support for Kiev, the goal is not to abandon the Ukrainian cause. However, the BBC adds, quoting Lanza that “if President Zelensky comes to the table and says, well, we can only have peace if we have Crimea, it shows us that he is not serious.” The article insists that there is no mention of the eastern Ukrainian territories, i.e. Donbass, in Lanza’s speech, which, like the Ukrainian speech, focuses on Crimea. “When Zelensky says that we will only stop this fighting, that there will be peace, only when Crimea is returned, we have news for President Zelensky: Crimea is gone.” Although spoken in a personal capacity, these words show the framework within which Donald Trump’s circle seems to move: support for Ukraine, but with clear limitations.

As alarming as it is for Ukraine's supporters to hear such statements from people who are shaping the position of the future US president on an issue they consider to be existential, the approach simply goes back to 2014, when Obama also considered that Ukraine should focus on the rest of its territory and accept, although not officially, that Crimea had been lost. Curiously, the proposal of another of Trump's strongmen in foreign policy, the former ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, is not too different from another position of those years, in this case of the European countries. Grenell, who defends the idea of ​​stopping the war and negotiating, always using the supply of arms as an incentive to Ukraine and a threat to Russia, proposed last July an idea according to which Ukraine would keep the territory, but would allow the existence of "autonomous zones." This approach, which is remarkably reminiscent of the one signed in February 2015 in the Belarusian capital - and which, given that agreement, is, under current conditions, absolutely unviable - is not too different from the idea recently suggested by Olaf Scholz, who said he was working on a peace project similar to the Minsk agreements. Perhaps, despite the big headlines in the media, some positions on both sides of the Atlantic are not so different and share the naivety of believing that these approaches will be accepted by Russia or Ukraine.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/11/11/notic ... residente/

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of November 11, 2024) Main:

The losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the zone of the Center group of forces in one day amounted to 505 soldiers, a tank and 2 American armored vehicles;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 145 soldiers in one day in the zone of the East group of forces;

- Russian air defense systems shot down 4 Hammer aerial bombs and 39 Ukrainian drones in one day;

- The North group of forces hit up to 95 Ukrainian soldiers in one day;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 530 people and two warehouses in one day in the area of ​​responsibility of the Western group of forces;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 540 soldiers in the area of ​​responsibility of the South group of forces;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 65 soldiers from the actions of the Dnepr group of forces.

▫️The units of the "East" group of forces have occupied more advantageous lines and positions, and have defeated the formations of the 33rd mechanized, 58th motorized infantry, 128th mountain assault brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 37th marine brigade, the 117th, 127th, 128th territorial defense brigades, the 21st and 23rd national guard brigades in the areas of the settlements of Suhie Yaly, Velyka Novosilka, Zelenoye Pole, Rivnepil of the Donetsk People's Republic and Temirovka of the Zaporizhia region.

The enemy's losses amounted to 145 servicemen , an armored combat vehicle and three cars.

▫️Units of the Dnepr group of forces inflicted losses on the manpower and equipment of the 65th, 110th mechanized, 141st infantry brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the 103rd and 126th territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Novodanilovka in the Zaporizhia region, Olhivka, Lvovo, Nikolskoye and Kamyshany in the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 65 servicemen and four vehicles.

▫️Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces groups damaged the infrastructure of military airfields, the component production workshop and the testing site of the Sapsan operational-tactical missiles , production workshops, storage sites and preparation sites for the use of strike unmanned aerial vehicles, arsenals, fuel depots, the logistics center of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 133 districts.

▫️ Air defense systems shot down four French-made Hammer guided aerial bombs and 39 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

▫️ In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 648 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 35,551 unmanned aerial vehicles, 585 anti-aircraft missile systems, 19,167 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,487 multiple launch rocket systems, 17,673 field artillery pieces and mortars, and 28,157 units of special military vehicles.

***

Colonelcassad
There are reports (without photos/videos yet) that the enemy has blown up the Kurakhovo Reservoir dam in order to flood the area in order to slow down the Russian Armed Forces' advance north of Kurakhovo. Given that the advance on Kurakhovo is coming from several directions, it is unlikely that this will help the enemy hold Kurakhovo.

***

Colonelcassad
In response to the American media's claims that Trump had called Putin, the Kremlin said that Trump had not called Putin and that this was a fabrication of the American media.

The Kremlin also reported that Putin had been informed about the successful prevention of the hijacking of a Russian helicopter to Ukraine.

The Kremlin also reported that despite Scholz's chatter about wanting to call Putin, no concrete signals had been received from Berlin.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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10 Obstacles To Trump’s Reported Plan For Western/NATO Peacekeepers In Ukraine

Andrew Korybko
Nov 10, 2024

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Given the enormity of the task at hand, Trump might be unable to execute his reported plan for organizing a Western/NATO peacekeeping mission in Ukraine unless he announces the US’ direct involvement in this scheme, which he’s not predicted to do.

It was recently assessed that “The Clock Is Ticking For Russia To Achieve Its Maximum Goals In The Ukrainian Conflict” after the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump plans to organize a Western/NATO peacekeeping mission in Ukraine without the US’ participation in order to freeze the conflict. This is obviously a lot easier said than done. Here’s what can offset this scenario by either delaying it long enough for Russia to end the conflict on its own terms or capsizing Trump’s plan completely:

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1. The Europeans Fear A Direct Kinetic Escalation With Russia

France’s tough talk earlier this year about conventionally intervening in the conflict and Poland subsequently refusing to rule out its participation as well mask the Europeans’ fear of a direct kinetic escalation with Russia. Trump will have to masterfully leverage the US’ influence over them and NATO as a whole in order to coerce his country’s European partners into putting their security on the line by going through with this risky plan. It could always backfire, after all, and inadvertently spark World War III.

2. Public Opinion In The Polish Lynchpin Is Strongly Against This

It’s difficult to imagine a Western/NATO peacekeeping mission in Ukraine without Poland’s leading participation, but public opinion is strongly against this after a reputable survey over the summer showed that 69% of Poles are opposed to dispatching troops to that neighboring country in any capacity. As mutual Polish-Ukrainian mistrust worsens as explained here, here, and here, it’ll become a very tough sell, plus Poles fear that they’ll once again be exploited by the West while getting nothing at all in return.

3. Trump’s Prior Rhetoric About Article 5 Doesn’t Inspire Confidence

Another hurdle that’ll have to be overcome is regaining confidence in Trump due to his prior rhetoric about Article 5 after he declared in February that the US won’t protect those NATO members who haven’t spent at least 2% of their GDP on defense. He even threatened that “I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.” Even though most now meet that target, they might still fear that he’ll attach more strings to Article 5, which they’ll rely on for defense if they participate in this mission.

4. It’s Unclear Exactly What Trump Would Do If Russia Hit NATO Troops

Trump will also have to convince NATO members that his response to Russia hitting their troops will balance the line between fulfilling Article 5’s perceived commitments while avoiding an escalation that could spiral into World War III. They also need to be sure that he’ll go through with it and not back down. Moreover, this would have to be clearly communicated to Russia too, who he’ll have to deter. There’s a lot that can go wrong anywhere along this sequence of events so its success can’t be taken for granted.

5. NATO Is Unprepared For A Prolonged Non-Nuclear Hot War With Russia

Even in the extremely unlikely scenario that neither Russia nor the US resorts to nukes in the event of direct kinetic exchanges between them, then NATO would be unprepared for waging a prolonged non-nuclear hot war with Russia. It’s losing the “race of logistics” by far, no progress was made during the last NATO Summit on the “military Schengen” for facilitating such movements eastward, and the bloc only has 5% of the air defenses needed to protect itself. NATO might therefore ultimately lose to Russia.

6. External Mediation Could Lead To A Scaled-Back Peacekeeping Mission

Hungary and India have excellent ties with Russia and the US so it’s possible that they could independently or jointly work to broker a scaled-back peacekeeping mission instead. This could result in Western troops deploying west of the Dnieper, Ukraine demilitarizing everything that it still controls in the east of heavy weapons, and Russia agreeing to freeze the Line of Contact. Such a scenario was broadly discussed here in mid-March. It’s unlikely, admittedly imperfect, but nonetheless still possible.

7. Cautious Europeans Might Wager That It’s Better To Just Cut Their Losses

All the same, the preceding six points might lead to the cautious Europeans waging that it’s better to just cut their losses and let everything play out however it will without risking the consequences that their participation in any Ukrainian peacekeeping mission could entail. It would be an unprecedented defeat for the West if it possibly lets Russia achieve a maximum victory, but growing fatigue as well as the fear of inadvertently sparking and losing World War III could result in this world-changing outcome.

8. A Cuban-Like Brinksmanship Crisis Could Break Out Before Trump’s Reinauguration

Another possibility is that anti-Russian hawks in the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) and/or Zelensky provoke a major escalation with Russia before Trump’s reinauguration out of desperation to prevent him from “selling out Ukraine” as they might see it. If that happens, then Trump would be powerless to influence the course of events. He’d have no choice but to inherit whatever the outcome would be, whether it’s World War III or a possibly lopsided peace deal.

9. There’s A Chance That Russia Achieves Maximum Victory Before Then Too

This scenario is unlikely due to the high probability that the aforesaid point would materialize, specifically in the form of a conventional NATO intervention to at least race Russia to the Dnieper, in the event that the front lines collapse before mid-January and Russia is about to achieve maximum victory. Even so, there’s always the chance that it’s averted for whatever reason, in which case there’d be no need for the NATO peacekeeping mission that Trump reportedly envisages.

10. The West Asian Wars Worsen & Become Trump’s Immediate Priority

And finally, nobody knows whether or not the West Asian wars might worsen and thus become Trump’s immediate priority upon resuming office, with there being compelling arguments to predict that both Israel and Iran might be plotting precisely this scenario in advance of their respective interests. Briefly, Israel might want to bait the US into helping it destroy Iran once and for all, while Iran might want to inflict a devastating blow to US regional interests as revenge for Trump’s assassination of Soleimani.

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Given the enormity of the task at hand, Trump might be unable to execute his reported plan for organizing a Western/NATO peacekeeping mission in Ukraine unless he announces the US’ direct involvement in this scheme, which he’s not predicted to do. If he doesn’t get what he wants, then he might resort to threatening Russia and NATO alike, but such psychological warfare might have no effect. In that case, he might just give up and move on, blaming Biden for the West’s unprecedented defeat.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/10-obsta ... orted-plan

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On British support for Ukraine
November 10, 2024
Rybar

Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election has intensified discussions about reducing support for the so-called Ukraine in its armed conflict with Russia. The politician has repeatedly stated that military aid is a misuse of taxpayers' money.

In turn, Great Britain, which occupies the position of the main supporter of the Kiev regime, is not interested in ending support and, accordingly, in ending the “ war to the last Ukrainian .”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer assured the Ukrainian leader at the European Political Community summit in Budapest on November 7 that Britain's support for the Kiev regime remains " iron ," and called on allies to step up efforts in this direction.

To cement the effect, the Chief of the Defence Staff of Great Britain, Admiral Tony Radakin , gave an interview and stated that Volodymyr Zelensky should not pay attention to words about the need to make territorial concessions in order to end the armed conflict:

Western allies will stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes. That is a message that President Putin should get and that should reassure President Zelensky.

Against this backdrop, The Guardian published an article , according to which Ukrainian officials allegedly claim that bilateral relations between Ukraine and the UK have worsened since the Labour Party came to power. The Kiev regime was disappointed by its failure to deliver more Storm Shadow missiles. Although, in our opinion , the Ukrainian Armed Forces have them (and we must not forget about France).

Of course, the British will not stop providing assistance to the so-called Ukraine regardless of Donald Trump's position on the issue of further development of the armed conflict. At the same time, all actions of the UK authorities are aimed at maximizing their own benefit.

It is quite possible that the British are currently happy with everything, or that they are simply pushing the Kiev regime to make yet another unpopular decision.

https://rybar.ru/o-britanskoj-podderzhke-ukrainy/

On the Ukrainian UAV raid on Russian regions
November 10, 2024
Rybar

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Today, Ukrainian forces once again launched drones at Russian regions: currently, 93 enemy drones are known to have been intercepted by air defense systems in eight regions of the country.

This time, the Moscow region was subjected to the most massive attack : Russian anti-aircraft gunners worked in the city districts of Ramenskoye , Kolomna and Domodedovo , where at least 34 UAVs were shot down. In the wake of the raid, all Moscow airports were temporarily suspended - at the moment, the restrictions have been lifted.

There were consequences, too: one of the devices crashed onto a car in the village of Sofyino , and in the village of Stanovoye, two houses caught fire after the drone fell. One local resident was injured, she was hospitalized with burns to her face, neck and hands.

Against the backdrop of the raid, a significant amount of video footage has once again appeared on the Internet, including footage showing the positions of air defense crews in the Moscow region. And as has been noted many times, current measures to combat this kind of "espionage" in the interests of the enemy are insufficient.

Another 31 drones were shot down over the territory of the Bryansk region . As a result of the fall of one of them, a fire broke out in non-residential buildings.

In the Rostov region, Ukrainian drones attempted to strike Kamensk - Shakhtinsky . Three drones were neutralized by electronic warfare in the vicinity of the settlement.

In the Kaluga region, UAVs fell on the territory of a garage cooperative in the city of Sosensky : a small fire broke out at the scene of the incident, which was quickly extinguished.

Air defense systems also worked in the Belgorod , Kursk , Tula and Oryol regions : according to the latest information, there were no consequences.

Judging by the drones' flight route, Ukrainian formations launched them from the territories of Chernihiv and Sumy regions . There are two airfields in Chernihiv region that could have been used for this.

As in most previous attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces towards Moscow , there is no strategic sense in this raid. It is primarily aimed at solving problems in the PR plan - both to distract the attention of its own population from the worsening problems on the fronts, and to demonstrate the remaining capabilities for such attacks.

https://rybar.ru/o-nalete-ukrainskih-bl ... e-regiony/

Google Translator

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(Consider the source...)

Trump, Putin speak as Biden plans to lobby Trump to stick with Ukraine
By Gram Slattery and Humeyra Pamuk
November 10, 20245:53 PM ESTUpdated an hour ago

Summary

Trump spoke with Russia's Putin in recent days
Biden, Trump to discuss top U.S. policy priorities on Wednesday
Biden to urge Trump, Congress to keep supporting Ukraine

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida/WASHINGTON, Nov 10 (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and advised him not to escalate the Ukraine war, a source familiar with the conversation told Reuters on Sunday, as President Joe Biden plans to urge Trump not to abandon Kyiv.
Trump and Putin spoke in recent days, said the source. Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday. Trump has criticised the scale of U.S. military and financial support for Kyiv, vowing to end the war quickly, without saying how.

Ukraine's foreign ministry said it was not informed in advance of the call between Trump and Putin and subsequently could neither endorse or object to it.
"We do not comment on private calls between President Trump and other world leaders," said Steven Cheung, Trump's communications director, when asked about the phone call, which was first reported by The Washington Post.
The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republican Trump will take office on Jan. 20 after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 presidential election. Biden has invited Trump to come to the Oval Office on Wednesday, the White House said.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday that Biden's top message will be his commitment to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, and he will also talk to Trump about what's happening in Europe, in Asia and the Middle East.
"President Biden will have the opportunity over the next 70 days to make the case to the Congress and to the incoming administration that the United States should not walk away from Ukraine, that walking away from Ukraine means more instability in Europe," Sullivan told CBS News' "Face the Nation" show.
Sullivan's comments came as Ukraine attacked Moscow on Sunday with at least 34 drones, the biggest drone strike on the Russian capital since the beginning of the war.

When asked if Biden would ask Congress to pass legislation to authorize more funding for Ukraine, Sullivan deferred.
"I'm not here to put forward a specific legislative proposal. President Biden will make the case that we do need ongoing resources for Ukraine beyond the end of his term," Sullivan said.

UKRAINE FUNDING

Washington has provided tens of billions of dollars worth of U.S. military and economic aid to Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February of 2022, funding that Trump has repeatedly criticized and rallied against with other Republican lawmakers.
Trump insisted last year that Putin never would have invaded Ukraine if he had been in the White House at the time. He told Reuters Ukraine may have to cede territory to reach a peace agreement, something the Ukrainians reject and Biden has never suggested.
Zelenskiy said on Thursday he was not aware of any details of Trump's plan to end the Ukraine war quickly and that he was convinced a rapid end would entail major concessions for Kyiv.
According to the Government Accountability Office, Congress appropriated over $174 billion to Ukraine under Biden. The pace of the aid is almost sure to drop under Trump with Republicans set to take control of the U.S. Senate with a 52-seat majority.
Control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the next Congress is not yet clear with some votes still being counted. Republicans have won 213 seats, according to Edison Research, just shy of the 218 needed for a majority. If Republicans win both chambers, it will mean the majority of Trump's agenda will have a significantly easier time passing through Congress.
Republican U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty, a Trump ally who is considered a top contender for secretary of state, criticized U.S. funding for Ukraine in a CBS interview.
"The American people want sovereignty protected here in America before we spend our funds and resources protecting the sovereignty of another nation," Hagerty said.
The 2-1/2-year-old war in Ukraine is entering what some officials say could be its final act after Moscow's forces advanced at the fastest pace since the early days of the war.
Any fresh attempt to end the war is likely to involve peace talks of some kind, which have not been held since the early months of the war.
Moscow's forces occupy around a fifth of Ukraine. Russia says the war cannot end until its claimed annexations are recognized. Kyiv demands all of its territory back, a position that has largely been supported by Western allies.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden- ... 024-11-10/

Already debunked...

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FSB prevents attempt to hijack helicopter to Ukraine
November 11, 9:35

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FSB prevents attempt to hijack helicopter to Ukraine

The FSB reported that it had prevented an operation by the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine to hijack a Russian Mi-8MTPR-1 electronic warfare helicopter.

(Video at link.)

The special service reported that Ukrainian intelligence officers tried to recruit a Russian pilot to hijack a helicopter to the territory controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. During the "operational game," Russian counterintelligence officers revealed the positions of Ukrainian air defense and the locations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which they then attacked, the FSB noted.

According to the plan of the Ukrainian special services, the Russian pilot was supposed to poison his comrades in order to hijack the helicopter.

Ukrainian military intelligence tried to recruit the Russian pilot via Telegram. Information about the drugs and dosage was sent to him via messenger by a certain Sergey, who gave all the instructions to our military man. Before the flight, the pilot's family had to move abroad.

P.S. It is worth recalling that the character who once hijacked a helicopter to Ukraine for money was later eliminated in Spain. He received several bullets, and then a car ran him over.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9489846.html

DPR passports expire on December 1, 2024
November 11, 12:13

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Reminder for DPR residents.
DPR passports expire on December 1, 2024.

To obtain a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation, residents of the Donetsk People's Republic should contact the Migration Service departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Donetsk People's Republic from 8:00 to 17:00 (lunch break from 12:00 to 13:00) on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Ministry of Internal Affairs of the DPR

Once, at the very beginning, many said that DPR passports were an empty piece of paper that did not affect anything.
But despite this, this document defined DPR residents as citizens of an unrecognized state for 8 years.
And after the start of the SVO, the value of the DPR passport increased many times over, since it simplified the acquisition of Russian citizenship. I remember very well how in 2022 the topic of "How to obtain a DPR passport" became more active, primarily from former residents of Ukraine.

Ultimately, the outgoing DPR passport played an important role in the formation of the DPR as an unrecognized state, which was preparing to join Russia and eventually returned to its native harbor. So the whole story with the DPR and LPR passports was not in vain. Now it is coming to an end.

P.S. I remember there were people who had 4 passports at once - USSR, Ukraine, DPR and Russia.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9490003.html

Google Translator

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The Government-Media-Academia Misinformation Machine and “Ukraine’s Victory”
Gordonhahn
by
Gordonhahn
November 9, 2024
Leave a Commenton The Government-Media-Academia Misinformation Machine and “Ukraine’s Victory”
The U.S. government’s infiltration into mass media and academia may finally become exposed and its enormous misinformation and divisive effect on the American body politic perhaps diminished as a result of its massive overeach in a matter of war and peace – specifically the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War.

Those who comprise the government-media-academia complex have teams of researchers, access to government data, vast funding and other resources. They know or can learn the facts but choose to relay to the public fake realities. In short, what I describe below are not mistakes but intentional and well-worked out lies designed to manipulate the public contrary to its interests. If the reality were offered to the public, it would see how it runs counter to its interests and would seek policy changes.

This is what we heard from the flagship propaganda organ of said complex – the New York Times – in July as Russia’s offensive gained steam: „Russia is unlikely to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the coming months as its poorly trained forces struggle to break through Ukrainian defenses that are now reinforced with Western munitions, U.S. officials say“ (www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/us/politics/ ... -nato.html). At the same time, the axis in the persons of such ‚observers‘ as former U.S. General David Patraeus and former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul was feeding the American public quite the same line: that Ukraine was winning and would win (even as it said that Russia threatened all of Europe with military conquest).

There are alternative, if ostracized and little known sources for gathering real facts. Not to toot my own horn, but I noted in January 2024 on Glenn Diessen’s and Alexander Mercouris’s podcast that Russia would be very gradually increasing its territorial gains in hunting and ultimately defeating the Ukrainian armed forces: „There will be a very, very gradual acceleration, intensification of the offensive, the Russian…‚aggressive attrition‘ will gradually become more successful in that more and more territory will be taken each month, a few square kilometers more each month in the winter and spring, and then the big question becomes: Will Russia decide to turn that gradual succes into a major offensive…“ (https://youtu.be/P_MJi5H6HKU?si=rxRiaE0EglSgbclw, at the 1:00:45 mark). In February 2024, I wrote: „This winter, with the demonstrated failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive obvious by autumn, we have begun to witness Russian forces’ transition to attrit and advance across the entire front, except on the Krynki foothold on the southern Dniepr in Kherson. In November, Russian forces occupied an addition some 13 kilometers and tripled that result in December. We can expect in January a multiple of December’s 40+ kilometers, evidencing the second ‘advance’ aspect of ‘attrit and advance’.

„Or at some point, with Ukrainian army perhaps exceedingly attritted across the front ranging from Kherson on through western Donetsk and Luhansk to the northwest in Kharkiv in the northeast, Russian forces may begin ‘big arrow’ operations in order to drive to the Dniepr River along its length from Kherson to Kiev. Whether we see such a transition large-scale offensive operations or Moscow holds to a gradually intensifying attrit and advance strategy to the gates of Kiev remains to be seen. One factor will be the extent to which Ukraine’s new defense line and supposed switch to a defensive strategy impedes Russian movement forward“ (https://gordonhahn.com/2024/02/02/russi ... d-advance/).

I have no research team, no financial or any other kind of support whatsoever. I consult various open sources and draw conclusions best I can. This was not a exercise in ‚rocket science‘ but rather a fairly easy analytical case to solve, putting aside the disruptive factor of continuing but changing levels of NATo assistance.

Now, as Ukraine’s defense lines are dissolving and its forces are retreating to the Dnieper River, the propaganda complex’s deceptive narrative has come in grave danger of being utterly exposed. This and nothing else, except perhaps a command from Pennsylvania Ave. or Langley, the complex flagship New York Times is coming clean in order to cover its ass, albeit. And it demonstrates what I — a lone, unknown, fully ostracized researcher — was writing early this year.

The intellectual universe in the US is so spoiled that the NYT had to turn to a foreign institute to provide data for its belated, truth-telling, coming clean article. It cites Finnish mapper and analyst Pasi Paroinen. Citing Paroinen, the NYT admits now Russian forces have been making large gains for three months: „Half of Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine so far this year were made in the past three months alone, according to Pasi Paroinen, a military expert with the Finland-based Black Bird Group.“ „In August, Ukraine’s defensive lines buckled, and Russia rapidly advanced 10 miles“ In October, Russia made its largest territorial gains since the summer of 2022, as Ukrainian lines buckled under sustained pressure. October’s gains amounted to “more than 160 square miles of land in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region”(www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/31/ ... -maps.html). But the However, NYT nor any other US mainstream media source or expert mentioned Russia’s August gains.

Moreover, the NYT came clean on something even more important: the im pending, if not imminent collapse of the Ukrainian frontline defense and army: NYT reported in a different piece that „Ukraine has enough soldiers to fight for six to 12 more months, one official said. After that, he said, it will face a steep shortage” (https://archive.is/QgomM). Collapse can occur well before the ‚steep shortage.‘

The NYT article only cites Poinenen regarding Russian gains in Donetsk, but Russian gains are being made all along the front line from the north in Kharkiv to the south in Zaporozhe. Paroinen’s measurement of overall Russian gains so far in 2024 confirms my own expectation of gradually increasing Russian territorial gains:

Image
SOURCE: https://x.com/Inkvisiit/status/18426068 ... 59/photo/1

Thus, so far in 2024 Russian advances amount to over 1,800 square kilometers ( about 1,000 sq. mi.) and are occurring now at an increasingly accelerated pace.

Naturally, the NYT tries to cover up the fact that all during this period of mounting Russian gains until the last day in October, it as the rest of the U.S. and Western mass media told readers that there was a stalemate in Ukraine. Russia’s previously ignored “relentless attacks are now starting to pay off.” Ignoring the fact that Russia has been making gains since Ukraine’s failed summer 2023 offensive – something else that went unreported — NYT continues: “(T)he stalemate that defined 2023 laid the groundwork for Russia’s recent progress. However marginal the gains, Russia’s attacks gradually weakened the Ukrainian army to the point where its troops are so stretched that they can no longer hold some of their positions, Ukrainian soldiers and military analysts say” (www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/31/ ... -maps.html).

The NYT and other organs of the government-media-academia do one thing somewhat effectively: glossing over its presentation of fables over fact, covering its ass, its tracks and the dripping Ukrainian blood (not to mention that of Russians and others). Will Americans see state apparat and its media-academic complex now?

https://gordonhahn.com/2024/11/09/the-g ... s-victory/

Such would not be possible without the extensive collusion of the capitalists ownership.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 12, 2024 12:46 pm

Kursk and Donbass: Ukraine and Russia's priorities
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 12/11/2024

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“Authorities in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk have warned of possible flooding in the area and also in the neighbouring province of Dnipro after an alleged attack by the Russian Armed Forces against the Kurajovo dam, located in the town of the same name and on the waters of the Vovcha River,” wrote Europa Press yesterday , taking the Ukrainian version for granted and without bothering to present the Russian one, which hours before the Ukrainian media admitted the news, had accused Ukraine of blowing up the dam to slow its progress in the area. Russia is advancing towards the important town of Kurajovo (where the dam is not located, located several kilometres away) from several directions - the south from the surroundings of Ugledar, the northeast from Gorniak and the north - while Ukrainian defences are faltering in open fields and small towns where Russian troops would have been bogged down only a few months ago. As in Pokrovsk and Selidovo, the Russian approach is to avoid a direct assault and slowly encircle the city to undermine its defences. Despite the persistent idea that Moscow values ​​the hordes it sends to die, the approach allows for preserving lives and minimising damage in urban areas, something that has been seen in the smaller amount of damage suffered, for example, in Selidovo, compared to cities that Russia had captured in previous times.

The tactic of a step-by-step war of attrition has not changed, as has the centre of gravity of Russian operations, the western part of the Donetsk region, which is Moscow's absolute priority despite those, such as El País , who blindly trust their Ukrainian sources, predict a Russian offensive towards Orejov or Guliaipole in the Zaporozhye region. As demonstrated by the Ukrainian attempt to carry out a large ground operation precisely in that area - although in the opposite direction - the difficulty of advancing in open country in the era of reconnaissance drones is maximum and requires the use of large quantities of armoured equipment, which does not always overcome minefields, and personnel reserves that Russia probably does not have. And the statement, perhaps simple Ukrainian misinformation, of possible Russian offensive actions on a front that is currently practically stopped and for which thousands of troops would be needed is compatible with the idea that attrition is causing a lack of personnel in the Russian ranks. Moreover, Zelensky, who is under pressure from his allies to lower the age of conscription again, insists again that Russia is on the verge of a new mobilization, an argument he has been using practically since the first one was decreed in September 2022.

Frontline movements and press reports — even from media outlets that want to see future offensives, which now seem uncertain — suggest that the fighting will continue to be concentrated in three main areas: the Kupyansk area, which the media is paying little attention to despite Russian advances there as well, and Donetsk and Kursk. This is where the American media see the next Russian push. “The Russian military has assembled a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, as it prepares to launch an assault to retake territory seized by Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region, according to American and Ukrainian officials,” The New York Times reports .

Russia has not rushed to prepare the operation so as not to risk excessive casualties and without sacrificing other directions of the front, and has prioritized the continuation of its efforts and its tactics in trying to quickly expel the Ukrainian troops, who have long been entrenched in Kursk but are under increasingly intense fire. “Russia has recovered a third of the ground it lost in its province, but this is modest progress compared to the current advance in Donetsk. The gray zone in Kursk, which neither side dominates, is especially wide and the Ukrainian side continues to have the offensive initiative. The Institute for the Study of War, an American center for analysis of the conflict, reported on Friday that Ukrainian troops had advanced in recent hours in the village of Novoivanovka. This is also demonstrated by multiple videos released by its military units in which tanks and infantry vehicles attack Russian positions on the front line. "These actions are unthinkable on the war fronts inside Ukraine," writes Cristian Segura in El País , who does not mention that the ruptures are also occurring in the opposite direction and who, of course, does not ask what the human and material cost of this operation is for Ukraine. Segura also does not dwell on the meaning of the grey zone , which Kiev currently presents on its maps as its own and which, without a doubt, manipulates the level of control that its troops have on Russian territory.

“Russia is using its entire army exclusively on the territory of Ukraine, against Ukraine. Russia is not protected by anything. Its weak troops have remained on Russian territory; they are unprepared, non-combat units and are not capable of defending their state. Our first operation in the Kursk region has demonstrated this,” Zelensky said, making clear the objective of the operation: to show his partners that they should support him even more, since it is feasible to defeat Russia on its territory. In his triumphalist speech, sometimes completely removed from reality, the Ukrainian president has even stated that Ukraine never wanted, for example, to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant, even though it could have done so. In this way, kyiv tries to convince us that it chose not to achieve a strategic result and was content with capturing a territory of no great tactical importance, but which, in turn, is representative of the military value of the operation. In reality, the Ukrainian narrative shows what the real value of the operation is, more political than military.

“The invasion of Kursk province is a personal gamble by President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the success of the operation not only depends on his political destiny but also that of the country. Demonstrating to Russia that it is vulnerable and that its territory is also threatened is one of the five points of the plan for victory, a document that Zelensky has presented to his international allies to improve Ukraine’s situation in the war and to reach future peace negotiations with greater strength,” adds Segura, who does not particularly emphasize that, with his actions, Zelensky, like Netanyahu in Israel, has irrevocably linked his political destiny with the continuation of the war.

Despite criticism from commanders on the ground, especially those who cannot relieve their soldiers on the hottest front, and even from the current Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Valery Zaluzhny, who continues to see no military value in maintaining a presence in the grey zone of Kursk, kyiv makes it clear that its Russian adventure is the priority of the moment, possibly because it considers that, in the event of negotiations, it would be an important card to obtain a good amount of its territory back in exchange for abandoning the Kursk zone captured since August. To do so, resources are needed and the Ukrainian government is willing to use what it denies to its units on the toughest, most fortified and priority front, that of Donbass.

“A Western official said Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Kursk in August had reduced its forces on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, leaving them vulnerable to Russian advances. But that officer, like other American officials, explained that Ukraine still had a strong defense in Kursk and might be able to hold on, at least for a while,” The New York Times states . “No one in Kursk complains about a lack of personnel: rotations in the State Border Guard platoon that Vadim commands occur every 10 days. At first it was three days, says this military veteran who prefers not to reveal his last name. But in places in Donbas besieged by Russia such as Kurakhov, the average time that infantry must be on the front line is 25 days, according to four brigades consulted by this newspaper this October,” adds El País , which contrasts the situation in the region for which Ukraine has been fighting for ten years and where right now it is losing its defense line in an important territory.

Ukraine has deployed “its best units” to Kursk, insists Cristian Segura, who mentions the 80th and 95th brigades, as well as other “mechanized and armored regiments like the 1st Brigade have their best tanks—the German Leopards—opening fire just a few hundred meters from the enemy. Also the 47th Mechanized Brigade, composed entirely of NATO weapons and training, has shared videos of its American Abrams tanks and Bradley infantry armored vehicles directly attacking Russian positions.” “Maybe our leaders have some brilliant secret plan, otherwise I don’t understand why our best brigades are in Kursk, while our defenses in Ukraine are collapsing,” General Marchenko said months ago, also quoted by the Spanish journalist. The answer to the general's question is clear: Ukraine prefers to sacrifice part of the territory of Donbass in order to achieve a result that is only strategic in its imagination, but which it hopes will put it in a better position in the event of a negotiation, something that was more likely now than before Donald Trump's electoral victory.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/11/12/kursk ... a-y-rusia/

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From Cassad's telegram account:

⚡️ Summary of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the progress of repelling the attempted invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the territory of the Russian Federation in the Kursk region (as of November 11, 2024) The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue operations to defeat the enemy group that has penetrated into the territory of the Kursk region.



▫️Units of the North group of forces continued offensive operations, during which they defeated formations of the 21st , 22nd , 41st , 47th , 61st and 115th mechanized , 17th tank , 80th , 82nd and 95th airborne assault brigades , the 36th marine brigade , the 103rd , 112th and 129th territorial defense brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the areas of the settlements of Darino, Leonidove, Malaya Loknya, Nikolayevo-Daryino and Novoivanovka.

Units of the group repelled six enemy counterattacks in the direction of the settlements of Darino, Nikolayevo-Daryino and Novoivanovka.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 70 people killed and wounded, a tank , two armored personnel carriers, four combat armored vehicles and a car were destroyed . Five Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen surrendered.

▫️ Army aviation strikes and artillery fire damaged concentrations of manpower and equipment of the 21st , 22nd , 47th and 61st Mechanized , 17th Tank , 80th , 82nd and 95th Airborne Assault Brigades , the 36th Marine Brigade , as well as the 103rd , 112th , 118th , 129th Territorial Defense Brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the 17th Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine in the areas of the populated areas of Agronom, Alexandria, Bondarevka, Goncharovka, Guevo, Dar'ino, Kazachya Loknya, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Leonidove, Loknya, Malaya Loknya, Martynovka, Makhnovka, Mirny, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Nikolsky, Novaya Sorochina, Novoivanovka, Plekhovo, Sverdlikovo and Cherkasskoye Porechnoye.

▫️ Operational-tactical aviation and missile forces struck the areas of concentration in Sumy Oblast and reserves of the 22nd , 41st , 44th and 115th mechanized , 17th tank , 95th airborne assault brigades , as well as the 103rd territorial defense brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the 1st brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, in the areas of the settlements of Basovka, Belovody, Veselovka, Zhuravka and Sumy. Over the past 24 hours, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost more than 300 servicemen, a tank , an infantry fighting vehicle, two armored personnel carriers, eight armored combat vehicles, as well as three artillery pieces, a mortar and seven cars were destroyed. Five servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine surrendered.

▫️ In total, during the military operations in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more than 31,390 servicemen, 195 tanks, 127 infantry fighting vehicles, 109 armored personnel carriers, 1,110 armored combat vehicles, 850 cars, 265 artillery pieces, 40 multiple launch rocket system launchers, including 11 HIMARS and six MLRS made in the USA, 11 anti-aircraft missile system launchers, seven transport and loading vehicles, 62 electronic warfare stations, 12 counter-battery radars, four air defense radars, 26 units of engineering and other equipment, including 13 engineering obstacle clearing vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing unit , as well as five armored repair and recovery vehicles and a command and staff vehicle.

The operation to destroy the Ukrainian Armed Forces formations continues.

***

Attack on a detention facility for Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel in Kharkiv: significant casualties among VSP and counterintelligence officers

On the evening of November 11, 2024, at about 22:00 , Russian forces struck the territory of a military unit of the 302nd anti-aircraft missile regiment in Kharkiv . At this facility, Ukrainian forces organized a special detention facility for personnel who failed to follow orders and evaded combat missions , including those who tried to leave their positions without permission.

Coordinates: 49.9623548, 36.1929074

The main strike hit the administrative building used by the Military Law Enforcement Service (MLS) and military counterintelligence to detain and “re-educate” military personnel who refuse to participate in combat operations. As a result of the strike, 26 personnel who were in custody, 8 VSP officers , and 1 military counterintelligence officer were killed. 12 people received injuries of varying severity . Following the strike, a fire broke out

in the building , engulfing most of the premises. The cordoning off of the facility and restrictions on access hampered the work of rescue services , leaving the detained servicemen and VSP personnel with virtually no possibility of evacuation. This facility is one of many that serve as a kind of “disciplinary base” for forcing Ukrainian servicemen to return to the front lines. Those who openly refused to participate in combat, experiencing acute stress and deep psychological disorders, were sent here. For many of those held there, the choice was stark: either go back to the front or serve their sentences in special forces or penal units. Constant psychological pressure and the threat of disciplinary measures forced even the most mentally unstable fighters to go back into battle. This strike weakened one of the key elements of internal discipline and control in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Losses among the VSP and counterintelligence officers who managed this facility cast doubt on the possibility of maintaining discipline among a number of units. In the absence of those responsible for strict control measures, the morale of personnel, deprived of forced support and the possibility of reverse direction, will further undermine combat effectiveness on the contact lines . @don_partizan

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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Russian Armed Forces strike on ammunition depot in Cherevkovka
November 11, 2024
Rybar

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Yesterday morning, November 10, Russian troops launched a missile strike on the Cherevkovka district in the southeastern part of Slavyansk. The target was an ammunition depot at an old airfield located on the very outskirts of the city.

As a result of several landings, explosions thundered on the territory of the facility, secondary detonations were observed. According to local residents, after the impact, spontaneous scattering of stored missiles was visible.

At the same time, in Slavyansk, as well as Kramatorsk and other cities of the agglomeration, there are several large enterprises that are also used for the placement of ammunition and parking of equipment. From time to time, they become targets of attacks by the RF Armed Forces.

https://rybar.ru/udar-vs-rf-po-skladu-b ... erevkovke/

Kurakhovo direction: attack on Kurakhovo from three flanks
November 11, 2024
Rybar

Image

In the Kurakhovo direction, Russian troops continue their offensive from several directions, systematically approaching the liberation of Kurakhovo .

On the northern flank, according to the most optimistic estimates, Russian troops have taken Voznesenka , Novoselidovka and Ilyinka , and have also reached Berestki . However, there is no objective control footage yet that could confirm the breakthrough.

At the same time, the Russian Armed Forces have made significant progress in the fields near Novoalekseyevka and have broken into Sontsevka , the birthplace of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev . Fighting is underway in the village near the museum, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces are shelling with tanks.

On the eastern flank, Russian troops are advancing on Kurakhovo from Maksimovka , and the fighting has shifted to the outskirts of the city. At the same time, the Russian Armed Forces launched an attack in the Dolgaya gully area in the direction of Dalniy, bypassing the main defensive fortifications of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Footage of a Ukrainian tank crew working in a forest belt less than a kilometer from a populated area was published online. Thus, over the course of a week, it was possible to advance more than five kilometers in this area, creating a threat of encircling Kurakhovo .

In the south, Russian units advanced north and east of Bogoyavlenka , dislodging the enemy from the forest belts, and continued their advance on Vesyoly Gai . At the current moment, information about the liberation of Trudovoye by the Russian Armed Forces with the subsequent storming of Uspenovka is premature and does not correspond to reality.

In the Maksimovka area , Russian troops, according to preliminary data, destroyed a special forces group of the 10th Special Operations Regiment of the GUR from the "Medoed" company, and also destroyed two "Kazak" armored vehicles and an infantry fighting vehicle. According to other information, the "Medoed" group of the 169th training center "Desna" came under fire.

In addition, there are reports of advance groups moving deeper into Yelizavetovka , but they have not yet been confirmed by either objective control footage or sources from the field. There remains a small presence of enemy forces on the western outskirts of Antonovka .

At the same time, messages about the alleged blowing up of the Kurakhovsky reservoir dam began to spread on the Internet . However, so far they have not been confirmed by either information from the field or objective control footage - today they even tried to pass off a photo of the Kozarovichi dam in the Kiev region , destroyed in 2022 by Ukrainian forces, as the latter.

https://rybar.ru/kurahovskoe-napravleni ... h-flangov/

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I See No Point...

... at this stage to discuss anything, if... I underscore it IF this call took place at all. Knowing who human waste at WaPo are it wouldn't be beyond them just to make this shit up.


US President-elect Donald Trump has called Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the Ukrainian conflict and its potential settlement, The Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing several people familiar with the matter. The phone call took place on Thursday, shortly after Trump secured his election victory. The US president-elect reportedly urged Putin not to “escalate” the conflict, reminding him of the significant US military presence in Europe, one of the sources told the daily. Apart from that, Trump and Putin spoke about “the goal of peace on the European continent,” with the US president-elect expressing interest in follow-up conversations to talk about “the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon,” several other unnamed individuals told the WaPo. The report gave no insights into what reaction, if any, Trump’s remarks invoked. Thus far, Moscow has made no official comments on the reported phone call between Trump and Putin. On Thursday, the US president-elect told NBC News he had already spoken with “probably” 70 world leaders since his election victory, but Putin was not among them. “I think we’ll speak,” Trump said at the time.
Somebody has to explain to Trump what required force is and that currently the totality of the US Armed Forces doesn't have enough force to fight Russia in the East, let alone this allegedly stressed by Trump "significant presence". Peace is, of course, good but it is not coming on NATO's, US that is, conditions. If he thinks that Russians are impressed with "significant presence", he should talk to Doug Macgregor or Daniel Davis, they may enlighten him on what is going on. In related news.


French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced the provision of Mistral anti-aircraft missiles and SCALP cruise missiles to Ukraine. Both types are needed by Ukraine. Here, we present the capabilities of the donated equipment. In an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu mentioned that he recently signed the transfer of approximately ten SCALP cruise missiles to Ukraine and announced another shipment of Mistral anti-aircraft missiles.

At this stage, I think, it is about time to allow Mr. Kinzhal or Mr. Zircon to visit some French military installations or maybe reduce Marine Nationale's list of frigates or corvettes just to demonstrate to these cowards that their place is that of poodle who ate master's shoes and needs to be punished.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/11 ... point.html

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About 51,000 Ukrainians Have Deserted Armed Forces This Year
November 11, 2024By Kyle Anzalone, Libertarian Institute, 10/21/24

The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office has opened 51,000 cases of desertion through the first nine months of 2024. The number of soldiers abandoning their posts is likely to double last year’s total.

The Times of London reported data from the Ukrainian government showing that “51,000 criminal cases were initiated for desertion and abandonment of a military unit between January and September of this year.” El Pais previously noted that 45,000 Ukrainians were being prosecuted for desertion from the start of the year through August. Al-Jazeera says the number is at least 30,000 desertions.

At the start of the year, Kiev was estimated to have between 500,000 and 800,000 active-duty soldiers and an additional 300,000 reservists. The Ukrainians have also sustained casualties fighting to defend from Russian advances and amid Kiev’s Kursk invasion.

Kiev has struggled to fill its ranks with fresh soldiers, leading Ukraine to drop its conscription age from 27 to 25. As Kiev is still facing manpower shortages, American politicians are pushing Ukraine to drop draft age to 18. Ukraine has also resorted to allowing prisoners to leave jail if they join the military

One Ukrainian who deserted told the Times that prison was a better option than the military because “at least in prison, you know when you will be able to leave.”

The number of Ukrainians that Kiev is prosecuting for desertion has significantly increased throughout the war. In 2022, the number was 9,000, and it had more than doubled to 24,000 last year.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2024/11/abo ... this-year/

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Offensive of the Russian Armed Forces on the Vremvsky salient. 11/12/2024
November 12, 12:26

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The Russian Armed Forces continue to powerfully roll on the Vremevsky salient.
The day before yesterday, we managed to enter Makarovka, and the Russian flag was raised in the village.
Today, our troops entered Rivnepil and started fighting to liberate the village.
Our troops also advanced to the outskirts of Novodarovka. Fighting is taking place on the outskirts of the village.
All three settlements were occupied by the enemy in the summer of 2023 during the summer offensive on the Vremevsky salient.
Now it's time to return home. The offensive is unfolding synchronously with the offensive to the south of Kurakhovo.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9490702.html

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 13, 2024 1:32 pm

Diplomacy of force
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 11/13/2024

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“Ukrainian politicians, policymakers and commentators see Trump’s re-election as a risky gamble, but one they are willing to take,” writes Foreign Policy this week . “Why Volodymyr Zelensky may appreciate Donald Trump’s victory,” headlined The Economist a few days earlier . In both cases, the logic is similar: Biden’s departure will mark a rupture, the end of a stage in which Ukraine has not achieved what it wanted. The new phase involves risks, but also possibilities. These new perspectives do not seek to satisfy the will of, according to the BBC , more and more people in eastern Ukraine, who a few days before the election saw Donald Trump’s presidency as an opening to the possibility of achieving a ceasefire or even peace. As the government has wanted to show from the first statement announcing the Ukrainian president’s conversation with his counterpart in Washington in January, Kiev wants to build the future relationship with the incoming White House on the basis of the idea of ​​peace through strength.

While it is too early to take the trend for granted, especially given the ease with which Donald Trump fires his subordinates the moment they stray from the path, the appointments that are being announced these days reaffirm the tactics of the Office of the President of Ukraine. “The United States is ready to return to President Trump’s MAXIMUM PRESSURE campaign against Iran. For too long, our enemies have been emboldened by the weakness of the Biden-Harris administration. With President Trump in charge, peace through strength is back,” wrote Elise Stefanik, the future US ambassador to the United Nations, on her official social media profile. As in Trump’s first term, hawks who advocate a hardline policy against Iran, even raising the possibility of war, will find themselves at the center of the circle that will determine foreign policy. This is the case of Marco Rubio, a neocon who is even further to the right than those with whom Kamala Harris had surrounded herself (such as Liz Cheney, daughter of George W. Bush’s vice president during the years of the Iraq war). Rubio, from a family of Cuban origin, is not only an obsessive anti-communist – with a peculiar definition of socialism and communism that can be applied, for example, to any opponent of the United States in Latin America – but also another exponent of the most ironclad policy in the Middle East. In an appearance on CNN , Rubio responded to a question from Jake Tapper, an openly pro-Israeli journalist, about civilian casualties in Gaza by stating that “I don’t think Israel should be expected to coexist or seek a diplomatic solution with these savages. They have to be eradicated.” Rubio’s willingness to put political and economic pressure on opponents of the United States also extends to China, a country that has banned its entry in the past.

Unlike Marco Rubio, the apparent future Secretary of State, Mike Waltz, who is set to be appointed National Security Adviser, has criticized NATO in the past and is in favor of seeking an end to the Russo-Ukrainian war. Donald Trump “is very focused on ending the war rather than perpetuating it and… you know, working out a strategy to bring both sides to the table. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for this to come to some kind of diplomatic resolution,” he explained in an appearance on NPR the day before last Tuesday’s election. However, compared to JD Vance, who, out of ignorance of the conflict, has referred to freezing the front and forcing Ukraine to withdraw from NATO as a starting point for a negotiation, Waltz’s diplomatic solution involves intensifying the policies that the Biden administration has implemented so far. Like other members of Trump’s foreign policy circle – such as former ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, a veteran of the fight against Nord Stream in the years before the Russian invasion and its destruction – Trump’s future National Security Adviser proposes sanctions against Russian liquefied gas, still an important source of energy in Europe. The commercial argument is obvious given that it is competition for American liquefied gas, in addition to the military objective. “Russia is essentially a gas station with nuclear weapons,” he said, echoing John McCain’s idea, adding that “Putin is selling more oil and gas now than he did before the war through China and India. And if you add to that the liberation of our energy, the lifting of our LNG ban, their economy and their war machine will dry up very quickly.” There is no difference between this position and that of Joe Biden or Josep Borrell.

“Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio are both serious and credible people when it comes to foreign policy. America’s allies around the world feel more comfortable with these two announcements,” wrote Ian Bremmer, a liberal think-tanker , yesterday, an example of the change of position of those who had been warning for months of the disaster that would come with the change of policy that Donald Trump was going to impose. As for Zelensky, it is possible that statements such as those of Waltz, who after insisting on the need to further expand sanctions against Russia, trusted that “this will bring Putin to the table. We have tools of pressure, such as removing the handcuffs [from Ukraine] with the long-range weapons that we provide,” a more severe position than that shown so far by Joe Biden, who has repeatedly refused to allow Kiev to use Western long-range missiles on the territory of the Russian Federation. In the same interview, Waltz insists that the United States also has numerous ways to pressure Ukraine into agreeing to negotiate, so he does not deviate from the objective set by Donald Trump, to get the parties in conflict to talk in search of peace, but he does add what the Republican candidate had not done, explaining how he intends to achieve this. The position is not as explicit as that shown by the CDU candidate for the German chancellery, Friedrich Merz, who has insisted that he would give Russia a 24-hour ultimatum to stop attacks on civilian targets and then allow the use of Taurus missiles, although it can be considered similar.

The idea of ​​peace through strength is the basis of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Victory Plan , which seeks exactly what Michael Waltz proposes: to put maximum economic and military pressure on Russia so that it is forced to negotiate in a position of weakness. However, this approach is not the only one in the Ukrainian president’s proposal that seems specifically designed for Donald Trump and his team. “One idea would be to replace some US troops stationed in Europe with Ukrainian forces after the war. The other – first devised by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, according to people involved in the design of Zelensky’s “victory plan” – suggests sharing Ukraine’s critical natural resources with Western partners,” wrote the Financial Times yesterday, which claims that Trump was interested in these points. “Separately, Ukrainian business leaders are also talking to the government about offering Trump “investment screening” powers that would allow him to choose who can do business in the country,” the article adds, detailing a plan it calls “ ABC – anybody but China” and offering the United States “investment screening powers” ​​– meaning the ability to approve or veto potential investors.

“Ukrainian industries dependent on Chinese technology and materials, such as telecommunications, could, according to the person involved, be switched to American suppliers and attract more Western investment. The idea is in its early stages, but some business leaders close to the president’s office believe it could play well with Trump,” explains the Financial Times . The colonial relationship implied by the fourth point of Zelensky’s Victory Plan is made even clearer by this formulation, which is likely to have a strong chance of attracting Trump’s attention and creating a working relationship that will satisfy the future US president. The idea of ​​peace through strength, which usually implies more war, the obsession with Iran, the defence of Israel and the willingness to leave the country’s wealth in American hands are common ground that Zelensky seems to be exploring already.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/11/13/diplomacia-de-fuerza/

Google Translator

Appealing to his greed is a sure way to get Trump's attention, maybe even better than massaging his grotesque ego.

******

From Cassad's telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the progress of repelling the attempted invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the territory of the Russian Federation in the Kursk region (as of November 13, 2024) The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue operations to defeat the enemy group that has penetrated into the territory of the Kursk region. - Units of the North group of forces continued offensive operations, during which they defeated the formations of the 21st, 22nd, 41st, 47th, 61st and 115th mechanized , 17th tank , 80th , 82nd and 95th airborne assault brigades , the 36th marine brigade , the 103rd , 112th and 129th territorial defense brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the areas of the settlements of Darino, Leonidove, Malaya Loknya, Nikolayevo-Daryino and Novoivanovka. - Units of the group repelled six enemy counterattacks in the direction of the settlements of Alexandria, Nizhny Klin, Novaya Sorochina and Novoivanovka. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 80 people killed and wounded, a tank , two Bradley infantry fighting vehicles , two M113 armored personnel carriers, three US-made Humvee combat armored vehicles , and one car were destroyed. One Ukrainian serviceman surrendered. - Army aviation strikes and artillery fire damaged concentrations of manpower and equipment of the 21st, 22nd, 47th and 61st mechanized , 17th tank , 80th , 82nd and 95th airborne assault brigades , the 36th marine brigade , as well as the 103rd , 112th, 118th and 129th territorial defense brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the 17th brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine in the areas of the populated areas of Oleksandria, Bogdanovka, Viktorovka, Guevo, Darino, Zamostye, Zeleny Shlyakh, Kruglenkoye, Lebedivka, Leonidove, Loknya, Malaya Loknya, Martynovka, Makhnovka, Mirny, Nizhny Klin, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Nikolsky, Novaya Sorochina, Novoivanovka, Plekhovo, Sverdlikovo, Staraya Sorochina, Sudzha, Cherkasskoye Porechnoye and Yuzhny. - Operational-tactical aviation and missile forces carried out strikes on concentration areas in the Sumy region and reserves

The 41st and 115th Mechanized , 17th Tank , 95th Airborne Assault Brigades , as well as the 103rd Territorial Defense Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the 1st Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine in the areas of the settlements of Basovka, Belovody, Zhuravka, Ivolzhanskoye, Pisarevka, Khoten, Yunakovka and Yablonovka. - Over the past 24 hours, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have lost more than 450 servicemen, two tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles, including two Bradley IFVs , two US-made M113 armored personnel carriers, 33 armored combat vehicles, as well as five artillery pieces, including one Polish-made Krab self-propelled gun , four mortars, a French-made Crotale anti-aircraft missile system and 49 vehicles were destroyed. - In total, during the military operations in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more than 32,150 servicemen, 202 tanks, 134 infantry fighting vehicles, 112 armored personnel carriers, 1,146 armored combat vehicles, 907 cars, 274 artillery pieces, 40 multiple launch rocket system launchers, including 11 HIMARS and six MLRS made in the USA, 12 anti-aircraft missile system launchers, seven transport and loading vehicles, 62 electronic warfare stations, 13 counter-battery radars, four air defense radars, 27 units of engineering and other equipment, including 13 engineering obstacle clearing vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing unit , as well as six armored repair and recovery vehicles and a command and staff vehicle. The operation to destroy the Ukrainian Armed Forces formations continues.

***

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of November 13, 2024 ) Main points:

- The Russian Armed Forces hit the infrastructure of military airfields and energy facilities of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 500 people and 5 warehouses per day in the area of ​​responsibility of the Western group;

- Russian air defense systems shot down 3 Hammer aerial bombs, 1 HIMARS projectile and 85 Ukrainian drones per day;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 720 servicemen and two tanks per day as a result of the actions of the Southern group;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 150 servicemen per day as a result of the actions of the Eastern group;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 480 servicemen, a tank and 3 combat armored vehicles per day in the area of ​​​​the "Center" group of forces;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 65 fighters and an "Anklav-N" electronic warfare station due to the actions of the "Dnepr" group.

Units of the "East" group of forces liberated the settlement of Rivnepil of the Donetsk People's Republic . Formations of the 33rd mechanized , 128th mountain assault brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 113th and 129th territorial defense

brigades were defeated in the areas of the settlements of Velyka Novosilka, Temirovka, Novodonetske and Zelenoye Pole of the Donetsk People's Republic. Two counterattacks of assault groups of the 101st and 123rd territorial defense brigades were repelled . The enemy's losses amounted to 150 servicemen, an armored personnel carrier , seven vehicles and a 155-mm self-propelled artillery unit "Caesar" made in France.

▫️Units of the Dnepr group of forces inflicted losses on the manpower and equipment of the 31st mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the 124th, 126th and 129th territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Pyatikhatki, Stepnogorsk in the Zaporizhia region, Mykhailivka, Antonovka and Shlyakhovoe in the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 65 servicemen, three vehicles, a 122-mm howitzer D-30 and an electronic warfare station "Anklav-N" .

▫️Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces groups have damaged the infrastructure of military airfields, energy facilities used for the operation of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 139 districts.

▫️ Air defense systems shot down three French-made Hammer guided aerial bombs , a US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system , and 85 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

▫️ In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 648 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 35,707 unmanned aerial vehicles, 585 anti-aircraft missile systems, 19,188 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,487 multiple launch rocket systems, 17,805 field artillery pieces and mortars, and 28,216 units of special military vehicles.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

*******

SITREP 11/11/24: Ukraine Scrambles for Diplomacy as Clock Winds Down on New Russian Offensive

Simplicius
Nov 11, 2024

<snip>

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https://www.wsj.com/world/inside-ukrain ... s-07ac2b6b
Summary:

Kurakhovskaya TPP dismantled for spare parts to repair other power plants damaged by strikes, - Wall Street Journal

▪️The decision was made in the spring, when a strike was carried out and the bridge through which the thermal power plant was supplied with coal was destroyed. Without it, the station could not function, and the restoration of infrastructure in the immediate vicinity of the front line was impossible.

➖"Of course, it was very difficult. We had no choice," said the head of the facility, Anatoly Borichevsky.

▪️By the end of the summer, dismantling was almost complete, which allowed for the prompt repair of many other objects. Only boilers and other elements too bulky to transport remained.

▪️Let us recall that Kurakhovo is under threat of Russian encirclement.


The article describes how Ukraine was forced to completely dismantle and cannibalize the power plant at Kurakhove to use its parts in other plants struck earlier farther west.

One interesting thing mentioned was that if the winter happens to be a ‘mild one’ then Ukraine could manage without too many devastating blackouts. And as I hear it from meteorologists, Russia has been slated to have a very ‘mild’ winter, which we can only assume will reflect somewhat in Ukraine as well. Thus, Ukraine could pull off surviving this winter unless Russia truly puts its foot down and finishes off the grid with another round of withering strikes.

For now, Russian Tu-95s have been absent for quite a while now, and the last fired Kh-101 was something like over a month ago. It can mean one of only two things: either Russia is saving up Kh-101s for a devastating series of barrages; or the feared rumors of pussyfooting were true and Putin has decided to let the Ukrainian civil society off the hook this winter, not wanting to completely plunge civilian populations into a dark age. We should find out which of those options it is in the semi-near future.


This brings us to the next point: Most people do not quite understand what’s happening in Kursk, and why Russia has yet to fully liberate it despite it now having been just over three months since the invasion. Zelensky has gone all in because he now views Kursk as literally his final trump card to save any type of negotiations hand he may have.

Spanish paper El Pais explains:

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Spanish El Pais writes that Kiev has concentrated more combat-ready units in the Kursk region than in the entire Donbas. The information comes with a link to Ukrainian soldiers who are happy with the size of the group in the Kursk region and rotations every 10 days.

The sergeant of the 225th OSB of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports that the command has been given the task of holding the bridgehead in the Kursk region at all costs and "continuing the offensive." Kiev still counts on a "land exchange", and for this reason Zelensky will hold a piece of the Kursk region until the last soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.


This is also why the North Korean army psyop is being amplified to such extremes, because Zelensky needs a face-saving out in case Kursk is lost, so he has a true excuse for why he wasted the last remnants of his army on such a pointless escapade.

Thus, Zelensky is pumping Kursk with all Ukraine’s currently fieldable reserves, its most elite units and equipment, etc., to the great detriment of every other front. He’s absolutely desperate to keep Kursk at all costs because he thinks it’s the only thing that will allow him to argue for an exchange with at least some of his territory back in order to save face, in the ‘upcoming negotiations’ he’s so certain will take place.

Hear it from a Ukrainian officer himself: (Video at link.)

So, now taking advantage of Zelensky’s fixation, Russia will be expanding the front in order to really put pressure on all the areas Zelensky robbed of defenses for his ploy.

As such, concerns around the coming Zaporozhye offensive have reached fever pitch:

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦The Russian army plans to launch an offensive on Zaporizhia in the coming days, — the Armed Forces of Ukraine

▪️In the Zaporizhia direction, Russian troops outnumber Ukrainian forces, said the spokesman for the Southern Defense Forces, Vladislav Voloshin.


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🇷🇺🇺🇦Russians may begin assaults in the Zaporizhia region within a few days.

This was stated by the spokesman for the Ukrainian Southern Defense Forces, Vladislav Voloshin, Sky News reports.

According to Voloshin, the attacks could create a new point of pressure for Ukrainian troops, who are already retreating in the east, although it is not yet clear whether this will be one large-scale Russian offensive or separate assaults.

"The assaults could begin in the near future, we are not even talking about weeks, we expect this to happen any day," the speaker said.

He added that Russian troops in the area significantly outnumber Ukrainian military personnel.


Kiev Independent:

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https://kyivindependent.com/russian-att ... tary-says/
Another Ukrainian channel:

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And in fact, it seems the offensive may have even already started, because as of today, Russia launched a couple sizable attacks that immediately earned results.

Firstly, Ukrainian Aidar commander reports Russian forces launching an assault in Gulyaipole:

According to Ukrainian military commander Stanislav Bunyatov, from the 24th Separate Assault Battalion "Aidar", Russian Forces have become active in the direction of Hulyaipole, Zaporizhzia region.

"They launched a mechanized assault on our Positions, involving about 5 units of heavy Equipment and Motorcycles, one infantry fighting vehicle was drowned in the lake. No more details yet."

I can tell you the details: Our Troops have taken the positions that was stormed.


Image

Just to the east of there, Russian forces attacked Makarovka and captured either half or all of the settlement, as there were reports of them raising a flag over the central building.

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⚔️Russian Army Storms Makarovka and Breaks Through to Rivne

▪️In the South Donetsk direction, fighters from the 60th motorized rifle brigade broke through to Makarovka yesterday and installed the Russian flag in the village.

▪️Today the enemy publishes a map with a lag, but reports something alarming:

➖ A difficult day for the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Makarovka and Rivnepol (Vremyevsk salient, at the junction of Zaporizhia and the DPR).

➖The Russians are carrying out assault operations with forces of up to 50-60 soldiers at a time, as well as with the support of armored fighting vehicles and motorcycle units.

▪️ The goal of the Russian army is to enter and consolidate in Rivne and Makarovka. If the situation in the latter is more or less clear, then the situation in Rivne is unknown.

▪️Let us recall that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to take Makarovka during the enemy’s summer counteroffensive in 2023.

RVvoenkor


A wider view to remind you that Makarovka is part of the old Velyka Novosilka line that was one of the AFU’s main advance points during the big 2023 summer offensive:

Image

Everything west and north of those yellow lines was just captured in the past couple weeks, showing the walls closing in on the old stronghold of Velyka Novosilka.

But even on the far western Zapo line Russian forces continue to inch up out of Nesteryanka toward Orekhov (“Nuts” on the map below):

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There were many other advances, particularly in the north near Terny and Kupyansk:

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In Sontsovka southwest of Selidovo as well as Novooleksiivka just nearby as well.

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The biggest advances of course came in what is currently the main frontline of Kurakhove. Here’s DeepState channel’s time lapse of the past 10 days there: (Video at link)

South Front’s maps of the advances there for the past few days:

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A clearer and more zoomed in map shows Russian forces made progress through the east of the Kurakhove city itself:

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Having lodged themselves in Sontsovka, capturing half or most of the town, Russian forces are a mere 5km from Kurakhove’s main—and last remaining—supply route:

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Syrsky issued a statement on his official account wherein he confirmed the situation was deteriorating:

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(Much more at link.)

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sit ... ambles-for

******

The Kursk riddle: if peace, then war

Pompeo, Waltz, Rubio. 'Catastrophe' at Kurakhove. Why Zelensky is clinging onto Kursk.

Events in Ukraine
Nov 12, 2024

Trump won the elections - what next? If you’ve been following my substack, you’ll know that I’m not particularly optimistic about the ‘Great Peacemaker’ and his wheeling dealing. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t entertaining to watch, of course.

To begin with, events in the USA - some clarity seems to be emerging on Trump’s foreign policy cabinet. The show is certainly gripping. At first, well-known anti-imperialist Donald Trump Jr promised not to allow any ‘neocons and war hawks’ into his father’s new cabinet. Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley - both known for their ultra-hawkishness, the former for his personal business dealings in Ukraine- weren’t given posts.

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Another one of Trump’s noted peace activists came out guns blazing in favor against war on x.com:

Image

But not to be - today the NYT reported that Trump had chosen Marco Rubio as his secretary of state. Rubio is an ultra-hawk on every ‘US enemy’ out there, though he seems most excited to go to war in Latin America, east asia, and the middle east (he’s known for his intimate friendship with AIPAC).

Regarding Ukraine, he has recently said that he supports a ‘ceasefire’ - though I’ll get to what that could actually mean later on in this article. And anyway, was quite clear that he considered the possibility of a ceasefire to be ‘unfortunate’. No doubt he would be eager to avoid such unpleasant prospects.

But another appointment is even less ambiguous. A Trump insider confirmed to AP on Monday that Mike Waltz had been asked by the big man himself to be his national security advisor. Waltz wants to go harder against China and regrets US withdrawal from Afghanistan. And he certainly has some strong opinions on Ukraine, such as the following, proudly posted by the infamous Atlantic Council:



I highly recommend checking out NPR’s interview with Waltz from earlier this month, titled - ‘What would foreign policy look like under trump?’ Here’s his answer:

Image

Ah yes, a ‘diplomatic resolution’ - whose main tools are harsher economic sanctions against Russia and unlimited military aid to Ukraine. As we all know, these two options have never been tried before, and if they have, they worked very well.

Anyway, on a more serious note, should any of this be remotely surprising coming from a party and president who has built his whole brand on ‘defending US interests’, ‘peace through strength’, more US manufacturing jobs (read: the military industrial complex), and more European purchases of US energy resources?

All that this goes to show is that, contrary to the belief of some ‘alternative media’ outlets, US imperialism is entirely beneficial for US citizens. US elections aren’t about choosing between the ‘imperialist and anti-imperialist candidate’, but between the best imperial manager. The empire hasn’t been doing so well lately (which isn’t to say it hasn’t score plenty of goals either). Now they’re trying a new approach - but one that so far looks like it’ll involve upping the ante using old tactics.

The Kursk riddle
My recent military newsletters have focused mainly on events on the Donbass front, particularly its southern region, around Kurakhove/Pokrovsk, where the frontline has been moving most rapidly, with significant strategic implications. The current update is that Kurakhove is closer than ever to falling, which I’ll cover in more detail later this week. For now, here’s the latest update (November 11) from Ukraine’s biggest military analysis group, DeepState:

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The N15 highway is the big yellow line leading to Kurakhove. It connects Zaporizhzhia, to the west, to Donetsk in the east.

⚔️ The situation around Kurakhove continues to worsen.

🇷🇺 The enemy is continuing to implement its large-scale plan to encircle the city, approaching from the flanks. As we mentioned earlier, the Russians, having intensified pressure from new directions, are trying to reach the Defense Forces’ logistical routes, and this process is only gaining momentum. As of today, Russian forces are assaulting the positions of Ukrainian troops from the north, south, and east:

🏹 The northern and southern parts aim to bypass the city from the flanks, where the enemy seeks at least to place the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk highway (N15) under fire control, enabling them to disrupt any movement. From the south, they are advancing along the Yasna Polyana-Maksymivka-Trudove direction, making progress despite constant pressure and losses. About 10 km remain from the frontline to the highway, and the infrastructure in this area leaves much to be desired (we’ll show them sometime later). In the north, the Russians have focused their efforts on the village of Sontsivka, attempting successful advances into the village itself, though the Defense Forces have managed to eliminate infantry. Persistent pressure by small groups, which, if they survive, try to hide to regroup, will sooner or later allow them to establish a foothold. Today, the Russians began the day with active artillery shelling. Simultaneously, they are making active attempts to advance into Berestky and Stari Terny.

⚔️ The eastern assault is also progressing successfully for the Russians, as they reach the eastern outskirts of the city and try to consolidate their positions. Here, their efforts to add pressure and create a diversion work effectively for them, as it demands additional resources on our side. They can endlessly report “full control of the city within its borders,” but it does not change the situation.

📋 Simultaneously, an unfavorable situation is developing in the “pocket” around the settlements of Antonivka-Katerynivka-Yelyzavetivka, where Russian forces have become even more active and are persistently advancing on Ukrainian positions. If Russian forces reach the N15 highway, this area will become the most dangerous.

❗️ We must once again remind everyone that “lies will ruin us all,” and even with additional resources arriving in the Kurakhove area, questions about deployment adequacy remain. With such actions, the loss of control over Kurakhove becomes only a matter of time. And if the issue with the flanks is not brought under control, it will very soon turn into yet another catastrophe.


The question arises - given this ‘catastrophe’ in Ukrainian territory, and the major strategic risks for Ukraine’s biggest cities (Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia) once Kurakhove falls - why are Ukraine’s best troops still fighting hard to cling onto irrelevant steppe in Russia’s Kursk region?

(Paywall with free trial option)

******

Urgent! Popcorn Needed In Large Volumes.

Otherwise, how can one take this cretin seriously.


The former prime minister also pointed to the prospect of the US cutting aid to Kiev as a potential risk, claiming some people with “wrong” views on the issue were in president-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle. “Donald Trump has lots of different voices in his ears and there’s a front of the Republican Party, quite a lot of them actually, who take the wrong line on Ukraine,” he said. If aid to Ukraine is reduced and Kiev starts losing, London could be forced to deploy troops to the region, Johnson claimed. “We will then have to pay to send British troops to help defend Ukraine,” the politician stated.

I know, he is not the brightest of already dim lot, but if any professionals are left in the UK Ministry of Defense, they have to tell him to stop parading UK in the front of the whole world as a joke. It has been humiliated enough already, especially its, quoting Douglas Macgregor (not to be accused of anti-British bias) lilliputian armed forces which will fail to defend Wembley Stadium, not to speak of whatever this moron wants to defend in 404. It shows, degree in Classicism (yep, that's BoJo's background) and belonging to all kinds of self-proclaimed "elite' clubs in London one statesman makes not.

Meanwhile Russian Armed Forces methodically eradicate whatever is left of Kiev's air defense ...

Image

And continue to break through VSU lines ... everywhere. Russians are near the center of Kurakhovo, which in itself is being surrounded (nice cauldron is forming), Zaporozhie Front is on the move, and Russians are already inside Kupyansk. BoJo needs to think really fast how many ... dozens of brave British warriors he wants to send to 404. I am sure he can assess required force really easy, after all--he knows how ancient classic civilizations fought, right?

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/11 ... lumes.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 14, 2024 12:39 pm

The reappearance of politics
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 11/14/2024

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“Almost every day in Kiev there is a moment when war makes a loud entrance into the city,” writes The Economist solemnly , not referring to Russian missile or drone attacks, which are becoming more frequent in the Ukrainian capital and elsewhere in the country as ammunition runs out for air defences, undermined by superior Russian capabilities. “It is then,” continues the British newspaper, “that the funeral processions appear, moving along the main arteries towards Khreshchatyk, the central thoroughfare of the capital. Traffic stops. A siren with patriotic music broadcasts the stories of fallen soldiers. Then the columns head for Independence Square, the scene of many Ukrainian revolutions in the past. Comrades light flares and say goodbye. They plant Ukrainian flags in the flowerbeds, long since converted into fields of blue and yellow cloth.” And with the subtlety of someone who does not want to cause alarm, he adds that “in recent days, as the Russian offensive in Donbass intensifies, the ceremonies have become more frequent.”

Moments of Russian advance, even if they occur fairly quickly and, as is the case now, without major battles taking place, almost automatically provoke media statements highlighting the extremely high Russian casualties and questioning how much longer Russia can continue to fight. Without needing any further proof than official statements from the Ukrainian Armed Forces or its military intelligence, the media have turned into dogma the idea of ​​the low value of the lives of its soldiers for the Russian command, whose current tactics differ markedly from those used at times when casualties were notoriously high. However, even the verification of the increase in funeral ceremonies in honour of fallen soldiers on the front, where Ukraine is suffering difficulties in Donbass, Kharkiv and Kursk, does not provoke a public questioning of what the level of Ukrainian casualties really is, Ukraine's best kept secret.

Concealing the approximate number of confirmed casualties and missing soldiers – including people who have died and whose bodies could not be retrieved, deserters who have fled the country or to the other side of the front, or people who have been captured – is not just a military issue. Of course, releasing a figure high enough to create social alarm can undermine troop effort and morale, discourage recruitment, or even provoke a new wave of attempts to flee the country. But, perhaps more importantly, it can undermine the careful narrative that the President’s Office has created to keep the population willing to continue fighting as long as necessary . Until now, Zelensky has stayed out of partisan and political struggles, protected initially by the nationalist backlash caused by the Russian invasion and later by the absence of a political figure who could overshadow the president who, according to the Ukrainian and Western press machines, has managed to unite the nation. Foreign support, which implies the continuation of the flow of funding that today sustains both the armed forces and the state itself, guarantees that the president is seen by a part of the population as the guarantor of the status quo . Thus, with a few exceptions such as Mariana Bezuhla, who uses social media to make opposition, generally to demand an even harsher way of waging war, or Vitaly Klitschko, to whom the international press tends to give more political weight than he actually has, politics stopped in February 2022.

In recent weeks, especially since the announcement of populist measures such as the 1,000 hryvnias per person that Ukraine intends to grant to alleviate the situation of families, the shadow of the electoral issue has reappeared in the media. Describing the normality of Kiev beyond the proliferation of funerals of soldiers killed at the front, the report by The Economist highlights that “politicians are gossiping.” The situation has changed and everything has become more complicated for Ukraine: the Donbass front is faltering, there is speculation about an increase in Russian activity in areas of Zaporozhye and it is expected that Moscow will try to recover as much territory as possible in Kursk before January. To all this must be added the uncertainty caused by the arrival of Donald Trump, whose words about achieving peace clash with the ways in which his future National Security Advisor intends to get Russia to agree to negotiate, imposing draconian sanctions and allowing Ukraine to attack targets in the territory of the Russian Federation. The Republican transition team has not yet announced who the chosen person is, but Fox News has been informed that the name of Trump's envoy for peace in Ukraine will be announced shortly. That is when we will be able to deduce what the intentions of the new White House administration are.

“Now it’s all about Donald Trump and the waiting period,” The Economist explains . “Will his new administration side with Ukraine or Russia? Will it be able to enforce a ceasefire? Will there be elections? At the moment, there are two dates on the lips of politicians in Kiev: 20 January 2025, the date of Trump’s inauguration, the earliest possible moment for a ceasefire and the lifting of military law, and 25 May, the earliest possible date for an election,” it adds, even daring to give a possible date for future elections, speculating whether Zelensky would be the favourite or whether he should keep his promise to run for a single term. Even for the media that have been most active in defending Ukraine and the current president, it is clear that Zelensky is no longer in favour with the population of the territory under kyiv control that provoked the Russian invasion and that carefully shaped its communication team to identify itself with that of the entire Ukrainian people (always ignoring the existence of a population that, since 2014, has been fighting against the Armed Forces of Ukraine).

This political reality and the erosion of Zelensky’s image, who is no longer able to achieve what he demands with his presence alone, as he was in the first months, is evident and is influenced by the international situation and also by the uncertainty of the internal situation, marked by the strengthening of Russian troops in the face of Ukrainian difficulties. According to the Financial Times , the military think-tank CDS predicts that the front could move up to 30-35 kilometres, a significant distance considering the stability that the separation line has maintained in the last two years. In this situation and with a purged Parliament already in its service, which would undoubtedly approve any measure to modify the law to accommodate an electoral process, the idea of ​​holding elections reappears. According to The Economist , “the preliminary work seems to have begun. Regional electoral headquarters are being mobilised and work is beginning on the lists of candidates. Representatives of one of Volodymyr Zelensky's potential presidential rivals say Ukraine needs elections, but are wary of making a public statement to that effect, fearing a harsh reaction from the presidential office.

The source of the article is, evidently, one of the political families that have been harmed by the international success of Zelensky, who has not shown any interest in holding elections while the war is going on. The arrival of Donald Trump, who does not seem to see democratic values ​​as the most important thing in a political leader, makes it even more unlikely that the current Ukrainian president wants to rush into a process that is practically unviable in the context of war and in which he would put at risk a position that, despite the growing discontent of the population about the situation, is not yet being questioned. However, the fact that some group opposed to Zelensky is beginning to leak political intentions is sufficiently representative of the uncertainty of the moment. An electoral process would only be possible in the case of a military victory, which would practically guarantee the reelection of Zelensky - or whoever was presented as his successor - or after a ceasefire, in which case the opposition would have room to maneuver to demonize the president either for having agreed to a truce or for having done so too late. “Volodymyr Zelensky faces a power struggle in 2025,” the article headlines, although there is no sign of a return to politics for now. With power increasingly concentrated in the president and his entourage, any warnings of power struggles or speculation about future elections or changes in the presidency show the opposition’s intentions to take advantage of the circumstances when they allow. However, for the moment, ousting Zelensky, who has the support of Western capitals, seems more wishful thinking than possibility. Even though Poroshenko, whose entourage is likely to be The Economist ’s source , is already working to win over the most important audience in Ukrainian politics at the moment, the president-elect of the United States. The uncertainty of the current moment opens the door to a return even for those who had lost all their political capital.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/11/14/la-re ... -politica/

Google Translator

******

From Cassad's telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Ukraine reports that the mobilization of rear personnel, doctors, airfield guards, extras, clerks, military psychologists and others to the front is increasing. Goncharenko states that the lower limit is 25% of personnel from the rear units to the front. This is essentially an indicator that the forced mobilization of citizens on the streets helps only partially and the front is devouring people in ever-increasing numbers. Therefore, the process of raking out the rear is underway, but it will only give a short respite before the inevitable reduction of the age threshold for mobilization to 20 years, and then to 18 years. Well, the mobilization of women is also not far off.

***

Colonelcassad
⚡️ Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of 14 November 2024)

— Units of the North group of forces in the Kharkov direction defeated the formations of the 71st Jaeger Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 113th and 120th territorial defence brigades in the areas of the settlements of Volchansk and Liptsy in the Kharkov region.

— Units of the West group of forces improved the tactical position and defeated the manpower and equipment of the 14th, 60th, 116th mechanized, 25th airborne brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 119th, 241st territorial defence brigades and the 1st National Guard Brigade in the areas of the settlements of Terny of the Donetsk People's Republic, Zagryzovo, Lozovaya, Boguslavka, Kovsharovka and Petrovpavlovka in the Kharkov region, as well as the Serebryansky forestry.

The enemy lost up to 570 servicemen, an infantry fighting vehicle, a US-made M113 armored personnel carrier, seven vehicles, two 122-mm D-30 howitzers, four Anklav-N and Kvertus electronic warfare stations, and a Plastun electronic reconnaissance station. Three field ammunition depots were destroyed.

— Units of the "Southern" group of forces improved the position along the forward edge, inflicted defeat on the formations of the 30th, 33rd, 56th, 81st mechanized, 56th motorized infantry, 46th airmobile, 79th airborne assault brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the 116th territorial defense brigade in the areas of the settlements of Zaliznyanskoye, Druzhkovka, Dyleevka, Orekhovo-Vasilevka, Reznikovka, Kurakhovo, Annovka and Seversk of the Donetsk People's Republic.

The enemy's losses amounted to 655 servicemen, three tanks, an infantry fighting vehicle, an armored personnel carrier, 13 vehicles, a 155-mm self-propelled artillery mount "Braveheart" made in the UK, a 155-mm self-propelled artillery mount "Krab" made in Poland, a 155-mm howitzer M777 and a 105-mm gun M119 made in the USA, two 122-mm howitzers D-30, a 122-mm launcher of the multiple launch rocket system RAK-SA-12 made in Croatia.

Two electronic warfare stations "Anklav-N", a radio-electronic reconnaissance station "Plastun" and two ammunition depots were destroyed.

- Units of the "Center" group of forces continued to advance into the depths of the enemy's defenses and liberated the settlement of Voznesenka of the Donetsk People's Republic.

The manpower and equipment of the 33rd, 53rd, 100th and 109th Mechanized, 95th Airborne Assault, 5th Mountain Assault, 142nd Infantry Brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the 101st Territorial Defense Brigade were damaged in the areas of the settlements of Zelenoye Pole, Leonidovka, Druzhba, Dzerzhinsk, Sukhaya Balka and Dimitrov of the Donetsk People's Republic.

The enemy lost over 485 servicemen, a Marder infantry fighting vehicle made in Germany, five Cossack armored fighting vehicles, a Kirpi armored fighting vehicle made in Turkey, five cars, a 155 mm M777 howitzer made in the USA, a 152 mm D-20 gun, two 152 mm Msta-B howitzers, a 122 mm Gvozdika self-propelled artillery unit, and two 122 mm D-30 howitzers.

— Units of the Vostok group of forces improved their position along the forward edge and defeated formations of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the 127th and 128th Territorial Defense Brigades in the areas of the settlements of Velyka Novosilka, Oktyabr of the Donetsk People's Republic and Temirovka of the Zaporizhia region.

— Units of the Dnepr group of forces inflicted damage on the manpower and equipment of the 141st Infantry Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 107th, 124th and 126th Territorial Defense Brigades in the areas of the settlements of Orekhov, Shcherbaky in the Zaporizhia region, Sadovoe and Ponyatovka in the Kherson region.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine lost up to 90 servicemen, seven vehicles and a 152-mm D-20 gun.

— Operational-tactical aviation, strike unmanned aerial vehicles, missile troops and artillery of the groups of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation inflicted damage on the infrastructure of military airfields, energy facilities that ensure the operation of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 142 districts.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

*****

Ukraine's impending military defeat
11 Nov 2024 , 4:20 pm

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It is an inescapable reality that Ukraine is losing territory in the east and its forces inside Russia have been repelled (Photo: Reuters)

In early November, the New York Times published an article entitled "As Russia Advances, the United States Fears Ukraine Has Entered a Dark Phase," a report that, although it attempts to qualify the seriousness of its current military and territorial situation, admits that the Zelensky government faces a complex reality regarding the prospects for resolving the conflict.

Larry C. Johnson, a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department, argues that the US media used a mixture of truth and lies to show that there is little hope that kyiv will be able to recover from the continuous defeats on the various battle fronts, with their consequent casualties.

"American military and intelligence officials have concluded that the war in Ukraine is no longer a stalemate as Russia makes steady gains and the mood of gloom in kyiv and Washington is deepening," the Times said, adding that there is growing discouragement and doubt about whether American support will continue now that there is a change of administration.

It is an inescapable reality that Ukraine is losing territory in the east and its forces within the Kursk Oblast have been pushed back. Added to this is the fact that its army is having increasing difficulties in recruiting soldiers and equipping new units.

Ukrainian casualties a determining factor in the outcome of the war
Since the beginning of this year, Zelensky's government has resorted to desperate measures to remedy the shortage of personnel, either due to casualties or because the war caused a mass exodus of men of military age, who were trying to avoid being drafted. For this reason, the recruitment age was lowered from 27 to 25 and some medical exemptions were eliminated.

In order to return them to fulfill their patriotic duty of "defending their country", the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had also ordered to restrict consular services abroad to Ukrainians of military age from April.

At the time, the then Minister Dmitry Kuleba argued that Ukrainians living in other countries could not benefit from state services while their compatriots "fight far away on the front lines and risk their lives."

The forced mobilization has met with resistance from the population because families are aware that the casualties are numerous and Russia is winning the war. Since the beginning of the Special Military Operation (OME), many images have circulated of military commissars dragging future soldiers by their feet and arms in the street, breaking into public transport or their own homes.

Polls in April showed that 63% of Ukrainians of military age did not want to join the army and 17% were undecided. At the same time, 60% of respondents refer to military recruitment offices as a "dictatorship." It is therefore not surprising that if defeat is imminent, no patriotic feeling can overcome the instinct to survive.

Recent reports indicate that there are increasing numbers of Ukrainian defectors, so a Trump-brokered peace deal, according to The Economist , could save Kiev from total strategic defeat. According to the magazine, citing a source in the Kiev General Staff, up to one in five soldiers has deserted their positions due to collapsing morale in the worst sections of the front.

The situation is dangerous for Ukrainian forces as Russia has many more volunteers and weapons on the battlefield while the Ukrainian army is struggling to replace losses through conscription, but has barely reached two-thirds of its target.

The Economist reports that more than a million Ukrainians have been conscripted since 2022, and another 160,000 are expected to join the fronts in the next three months. However, it is discouraging that in just one week, according to Ukrainian lawmaker Anna Skorokhod, the number of army deserters had surpassed 100,000.

"Despite the incursions and endless waves of mass mobilization in towns and cities across Ukraine, the current regime is finding it increasingly difficult to send reinforcements to the front," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in July.

The New York Times is telling the truth when it says that discouragement is growing in Kiev and Washington over the numerous defeats inflicted by Russia at this stage of the war, but it is lying when it says that the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed in combat is 57,000. And to make the situation seem less serious, it states that Russia is also experiencing a shortage of soldiers and supplies.

The impending defeat
Johnson refutes this figure, saying that Ukraine has suffered 30,000 deaths in Kursk since August and claims that the real death toll in Ukraine is "closer to one million."

The lie is compounded when the US media claims that Moscow has suffered 80,000 deaths since February 2022 – it is foolhardy to claim, as the US “intelligence community” does, that Russia has lost more soldiers than Ukraine during the OME – but it is also recruiting 30,000 new soldiers every month and now has some 800,000 troops spread along the nearly 1,500-kilometre line of contact.

The situation is so critical for Kiev that the US intelligence community has admitted it was wrong about Russia's prospects beyond July 2024. In July, it concluded this summer that "Russia was unlikely to make significant gains in Ukraine in the coming months as its poorly trained forces struggled to break through Ukrainian defences."

"Russia's problems represent a significant shift in the dynamics of the war, which had favoured Moscow in recent months. Russian forces continue to inflict casualties, but their gradual advances have been slowed by the hardening of Ukrainian lines," they said at the time.

The military "experts" based their conclusions on the alleged results of NATO support for Kiev. However, today Russian troops continue to advance in the Donbas region and have recaptured more than a third of the territory that Ukrainian forces had seized in a surprise offensive in the Kursk region in the south-west of the Russian Federation earlier this year.

Johnson in August listed some determining elements for the course of the war:

Ukraine is suffering devastating military casualties and has no trained reserve force to send to the battlefield.
It lacks a viable fixed-wing combat air capability.
It also has no reserves of tanks, vehicles, artillery and artillery shells.
It lacks secure bases or training facilities on its own territory and must rely on other NATO countries for training – meaning training is limited and not standardised.
Ukraine's counter-offensive, which was supposed to break through the Surovikin defence lines, has failed and Ukraine lacks the combat power to intensify its attacks.
Russia, on the other hand, has abundant reserves of trained troops, artillery ammunition, artillery (mobile and fixed), cruise missiles, drones, more than a thousand fixed-wing fighter aircraft, attack helicopters and huge air defense systems.
Russia is self-sufficient in critical natural resources needed to supply its defense industry.
Russia is no longer dependent on the West for trade and its economy is growing despite Western economic sanctions.

Given the current situation in Ukraine, one could project that either an unconditional surrender or a negotiated settlement is imminent. A stalemate is unlikely because Russia's superiority on the battlefield is evident and it continues to make progress in its military objectives.

In September, the Ukrainian president travelled to the United States to present his secret plan for "winning the war". The proposal was addressed to the two candidates in the framework of the elections and was based on the following points:

Strengthening Ukraine's defence against the Russian military, including obtaining permission from allies to use their long-range weapons on the territory of the neighbouring country and continuing Ukrainian military operations on Russian territory to prevent the creation of "buffer zones" in Ukraine.
Containment of Russia through the deployment of a non-nuclear strategic deterrent package on Ukrainian soil.
Joint protection by the United States and the European Union of Ukraine's vital natural resources and joint use of its economic potential.
For the post-war phase only: replacement of some American troops stationed in Europe with Ukrainian troops.

At the moment, nothing is going in kyiv's favour. Even if they were to recruit thousands of soldiers to replace those who died this year, there would be no time or space to train them, as military forts and training areas are under constant siege by Russian drones and bombings.

If the possibility of ending the conflict arises, this would mean a political defeat for the United States and its allies, who for years have encouraged the conflict with a view to weakening the Federation.

The current situation suggests that the efforts of Washington and Brussels have had no favourable political-military effect for Ukraine and have meant an overwhelming loss of resources and soldiers.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... de-ucrania

Google Translator

******

Red Guerrillas of Colombia
November 13, 19:09

Image

Red Guerrillas of Colombia

(Video at link.)

It is worth noting that Colombians are currently fighting on both sides of the front in Ukraine.
On the Ukrainian side, there are mainly people associated with cartels and paramilitaries. Among our Colombians, there are people from FARC and ELN.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9494189.html

On the differentiation of payments in case of injury
November 13, 17:15

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Here comes the government's breakdown on the differentiation of payments for injuries.

The government has approved a resolution on the amount of a one-time payment for combat injuries and mutilations.
The amount of the one-time payment is differentiated depending on the severity of the injury in all categories of combat injuries and mutilations received by military personnel while performing tasks during a special military operation. A resolution on this has been signed.
The differentiation of payments will provide significant support to military personnel who have received serious injuries and mutilations. According to the resolution, in this case a one-time payment of 3 million rubles is due.
Military personnel with minor injuries are entitled to a payment of 1 million rubles.
In the case of other injuries, the payment will be 100 thousand rubles.


Total.
For severe injuries, it was kept as it was at 3,000,000 rubles.
For mild injuries, it was reduced from 3,000,000 to 1,000,000 rubles.
For injuries, the amount was reduced from 3,000,000 to 100,000 rubles.




*******

Anatol Lieven: Putin won’t get any guarantees from a Trump White House
November 13, 2024
By Anatol Lieven, UnHerd, 11/10/24

The Russian establishment profoundly distrusts Donald Trump. Though usually forgotten in the West, it was his administration — not Barack Obama’s or Joe Biden’s – which began the supply of weapons to Ukraine in 2017. Trump also allowed US intelligence to build up the presence in Ukraine that played an important role in preventing Russian victory in the first months of 2022. In fact, apart from some complimentary remarks about Vladimir Putin, the US President-elect has done little to improve relations with Russia.

Following Trump’s election win this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared that it had “no illusions” about him, adding that America’s “ruling political elite adheres to anti-Russia principles and the policy of ‘containing Moscow’” no matter which party is in charge. While Putin himself is more sympathetic, on Thursday hailing Trump’s “desire to restore relations with Russia, to help end the Ukrainian crisis”, these comments can be attributed to a recognition that the Russian President needs to maintain good relations with his American counterpart.

When it comes to negotiations with the Trump administration to end the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin still has one big fear. This, according to members of the Russian establishment with whom I spoke this summer, is a repeat of Trump’s notorious initiative to negotiate a deal with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. In that instance, Trump launched into an exercise in personal diplomacy without preparation or any understanding of the other side — or seemingly of his own aims. When the talks failed, Trump responded with furious bluster and left US relations with Pyongyang in even worse shape than before.

Moscow worries that Trump may make Putin a peace offer which he genuinely thinks is a generous and viable one, but which fails to meet minimal Russian conditions, and that if Putin rejects it Trump will turn violently against Russia. There is also fear in the Kremlin that opponents of a deal in the State Department may deliberately set Trump up to fail in this way, and that the President-elect’s immediate team will not see it coming. That’s before factoring in a Ukrainian establishment which is likely to bitterly resist a compromise peace.

Trump’s own advisors are reported to be deeply divided on the subject of Ukraine. And, according to one former aide, “anyone — no matter how senior in Trump’s circle — who claims to have a different view or more detailed window into his plans on Ukraine simply doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.” More than that, in the words of the same aide, they don’t “understand that he makes his own calls on national-security issues, many times in the moment, particularly on an issue as central as this”.

To have a chance of success, formal negotiations will therefore have to be preceded by preparatory talks, preferably in secret. Each side can then explore which of the other’s conditions are basic and non-negotiable, and which are open to compromise. We do not yet know Trump’s choices for secretary of state and national security advisor, or what their attitudes to Russia and Ukraine will be. Yet sheer military reality has seemingly persuaded most of his team that Ukrainian recovery of all its lost territory is now impossible.

As one advisor on the 2024 campaign, Bryan Lanza, told the BBC this week: “if President Zelensky comes to the table and says, ‘well, we can only have peace if we have Crimea’, he shows to us that he’s not serious […] Crimea is gone.” Lanza added that the US plan is “not a vision for winning, but it’s a vision for peace”.

However, the Moscow establishment — and, according to opinion polls, most of the Russian public — cannot countenance withdrawal not just from Crimea but from any of the territory that Russia holds in the five Ukrainian provinces it claims to have annexed. Putin has demanded that Ukraine withdraw from the territory it still holds in these provinces, but this is just as impossible as Kyiv’s demand that Russia withdraw from all the territory it occupies in Ukraine.

These must therefore be understood not as absolute conditions but as initial bargaining positions. It seems probable that a ceasefire along the actually existing battle-line — but without formal recognition of Russia’s annexations — will be a central part of any Trump proposal.

Putin’s insistence that Ukraine sign a treaty of neutrality, and that Nato membership be categorically excluded, is supposedly non-negotiable but could yet be subject to compromise. Russia might accept a lengthy moratorium on Ukraine’s application for Nato membership — for example, 20 years, as reportedly proposed by some members of Trump’s team — but this is a question that can only be clarified in talks.

The question remains as to what will happen in the 73 days until Trump actually takes office. President Joe Biden is already rushing through a major tranche of aid, a smart move geared towards strengthening the US at the negotiating table. The Pentagon is also for the first time officially allowing US military contractors to repair and maintain American weaponry inside Ukraine. Some fear — hopefully without reason — that the Biden administration will go much further and initiate a drastic escalation in an effort to preemptively wreck any talks.

A new crisis may also be initiated from the Russian side. If the Russians know the only territory they will get in Ukraine is that which they actually occupy, then they obviously have a huge incentive to take as much ground as possible before Trump enters office. At the very least, they will want to push Ukrainian troops out of the remaining territory they hold in the Russian province of Kursk. The next few weeks may therefore bring a major Russian offensive, whose outcome could have a significant effect on ensuing peace talks.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2024/11/ana ... ite-house/

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Will Trump stop Ukraine from joining NATO?

Sonja van den Ende

November 14, 2024

The Trump administration’s policies have often seemed at odds with the president’s rhetoric.

President-elect Trump bragged during his election campaign that he could solve the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours once he is installed in the White House. Trump’s bombast is, of course, unrealistic. No war can be solved within 24 hours. There must be peace talks and, above all, a treaty to secure territory and people.

And what about the thorny issue of Ukraine joining NATO? For Russia to make a durable peace, that issue must be erased. Will Trump stop Ukraine from joining NATO?

For Ukraine to join NATO, the U.S. Senate must approve its membership, as must the other 31 NATO member states. Russia is adamant that Ukraine will not be permitted to join the U.S.-led military bloc. But let’s just consider how the U.S. and its NATO allies might procedurally attempt Ukraine’s membership.

Trump’s “America First” policy will have consequences for NATO. At this point, it is unclear whether a new Republican-dominated Congress will even vote on Ukraine’s admission to NATO.

With the recent U.S. elections, the American people have chosen to change course, but will a change of course be allowed by the powers that be? Does it matter which party, Democrats or Republicans, are in Congress and governing America? Will the war hawks win again, perhaps?

Trump is not in the White House yet. That won’t be until January 20, and there could be surprises from the outgoing Biden administration during the next two months.

President Biden could push the process of admitting Ukraine to NATO, and the current Congress or a future Congress could vote on it even after he is no longer in office. The U.S. Senate could also vote on a treaty to approve Ukraine’s membership in NATO as early as the next few weeks, although it could take years for the country to become a full member. Both Democrats and some Republicans hope that this solution would still allow Ukraine to join NATO. Many people forget in the “heat of the election show” that we’ve seen in recent weeks and the election hype around Donald Trump that both Democrats and Republicans support the proxy war against Russia and would like to see Ukraine join NATO.

It was recently revealed that primarily Republicans in the House of Representatives — who chair the national security committees — have formally filed a request pressuring President Biden to lift remaining restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) long-range missiles.

Although Trump’s son, Donald Jr, recently said that there is no place for “war hawks” in the new government, there will probably be pro-Ukraine figures in cabinet positions. This includes Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent member of the GOP and a big Trump supporter, who might be given a ministerial post.

Graham candidly told CNN and CNBC that the Donbass is full of mineral resources that America wants its hands on and that access to such natural wealth was central to the conflict.

The hawkish senator has also said, and make no mistake, he is a close political friend of Trump and will have a lot of influence in the next administration, that “Trump will give Ukraine a lot of leverage to end the war.”

So, are Americans being fooled again? Thinking now that Trump is elected, the proxy war against Russia will be over quickly, only for the American warmongers to start another war, say, against Iran.

Still, ending the conflict in Ukraine will not happen easily or quickly. Trump can certainly destroy agreements, as he did during his first presidency with the Iran nuclear treaty, but how about making deals? In particular, constructing a security treaty involving nuclear-powered Russia, an unwieldy NATO alliance, and a corrupt fascist Kiev regime.

There are intractable problems. First, there was the Bucharest Summit in 2008 where all NATO members agreed that Ukraine would join the bloc. They also agreed that Ukraine’s next step on the path to membership would be the Membership Action Plan (MAP), NATO’s program of political, economic, defense, resources, security, and legal reforms for aspiring countries.

Secondly, in the recent “Washington Summit” in 2024, building on the decisions taken at the Madrid Summit in 2022 and the Vilnius Summit in 2023, the NATO allies reaffirmed that Ukraine’s future lies in NATO and that they will continue to support the country on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.

Can Trump just stop this heavily invested process? In theory, yes, but then the other 31 states will protest vigorously, especially the Russophobic Eastern European states, and a declaration of nullity of these agreements must have unanimous consent.

In reality, it’s unlikely that Trump will simply leave NATO, according to interviews with former Trump national security officials and defense experts who are likely to serve in a second Trump term.

But even if he does formally leave the organization, NATO members have been building up troops in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania for months, if not years. Recently, many ships carrying American military equipment have arrived in the NATO transit country of the Netherlands.

Then we have another scenario: the new Secretary-General of NATO, the Dutch ex-Prime Minister Mark Rutte, is a diehard war hawk who, as I often emphasize, was radicalized by the MH17 disaster, which Russia was baselessly blamed for. Rutte says that with or without Trump, NATO is well prepared for the threat allegedly posed by Russia. Also, Rutte wants to discuss with President-elect Donald Trump a joint response to the alleged mounting threat from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

Rutte is seeking to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump by praising his attempts to force NATO countries to spend more on defense beyond the current 2 percent of GDP target.

For Trump, it seems, the priority enemies are Iran and China. Mark Rutte, with his easy talk and persuasive skills, could convince Trump that Russia and North Korea are the worst threats, and North Korea has long-range nuclear missiles that can also hit America. Rutte claims Russia is supplying the technology to help North Korea target the U.S.

Are we seeing a rebirth of European sovereignty here? Perhaps the Trump administration is the trigger for Europe to continue as an independent bloc. With the danger of radicalization in the former Warsaw Pact countries such as the Baltic States, Czech Republic, and Poland, all seem hellbent on hostility toward Russia.

It has long been assumed that NATO cannot exist without America, but is that true? The budget for military spending has increased dramatically in recent years, partly from stolen Russian assets for weapons in Ukraine. The new way of waging war is focused on drones and Artificial Intelligence (AI), so the personnel that NATO countries lack is not a constraining factor.

Another issue is the lifting of sanctions on Russia. The sanctions were imposed under Trump’s first administration (2016-2020), which saw the most sanctions on Russia in America’s postwar history. The Trump administration’s policies have often seemed at odds with the president’s rhetoric. The arms shipments to Ukraine also began under his first administration: in 2017, the U.S. shipped lethal anti-tank weapons to Ukraine to help it fight separatists backed by Russia.

Trump did not roll back the Magnitsky Act either. Europe faithfully followed everything the U.S. did and also imposed sanctions and supplied “weapons for peace” to Ukraine.

Will Trump roll back all this? I do not think so. Trump was elected foremost to implement “America First,” and that costs money, a lot of money. The goal of the new Trump administration is to freeze the war and create a buffer zone with American and British soldiers in the style of North and South Korea. Something the Russian government will not accept, I think.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already said that he would not agree to this. In my opinion, Trump will not pull out of NATO, and hostilities might continue.

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

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 15, 2024 12:55 pm

The menu of negotiations
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 15/11/2024

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Days before his successor, the even more belligerent Kaja Kallas, is confirmed by the European Parliament as the new head of the European Union's diplomacy and security policy, Josep Borrell visited Ukraine last weekend on the last trip of his mandate. The objective of the trip, in which no measures were to be announced or negotiated, was simply to insist on the EU's unconditional support for kyiv and Brussels' willingness to continue supporting the Ukrainian state in its fight against Russia. "Our action has been very important, even more important than that of the United States," boasted Borrell, who on a guided tour of a drone factory praised "Ukraine's capacity for innovation and entrepreneurial spirit." The still High Representative for Diplomacy and Security Policy wanted to insist on the role that the bloc has played, not only in maintaining the state with funding to support the payment of pensions and salaries, but also in the military field, in which Washington's primacy is generally emphasized. “The EU has already made available €400 million from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine’s defence industry. More is on the way,” he said.

In his desire to please Ukraine in every possible way, Borrell took up the last point of Zelensky’s Victory Plan to highlight the importance that Kiev can play in the future security of Europe. “If tomorrow Ukraine does not have to supply its military needs, it will be a very competitive supplier for our armies. I do not think there is much capacity to produce in this quantity and at these prices and with this technology,” Borrell said, as quoted by the EFE Agency . And together with Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga, he insisted that “the EU will continue to support Ukraine in all areas, while gathering global support for the Ukrainian Peace Formula, based on the United Nations Charter.” During his short visit, Borrell reaffirmed support for rearmament and the continuation of the war, but also for Ukraine’s plans for peace and victory .

Days before his trip to kyiv, the EU's top diplomat, who has made the Ukrainian issue the absolute centre of his mandate, made another important statement in his support for Ukraine and, above all, Brussels' support for the Ukrainian discourse. "If you are not an actor, others act for you," he said, insisting that "if you are not at the table of the geopolitical game, you will be on the menu. Ukraine has to be at the table, not on the menu." Borrell's words undoubtedly referred to the uncertainty that has arisen in Europe after Donald Trump's electoral victory and to the doubts about how the US president-elect intends to implement his plan to quickly end the war in Ukraine. In reality, Trump has always referred to negotiation, to forcing Zelensky and Putin to sit at the table, not to a resolution from above in which Washington and Moscow set the terms without Ukraine's participation. Yet, partly because Trump's ideas are so vague, and have always tended to be improvisational and fluid, European representatives have repeatedly used this idea.

Borrell's words about the need to prevent Ukraine from being the food for the United States or Russia to devour are especially relevant in conjunction with Zelensky's statement last week in Budapest. "We need to understand what happens after a ceasefire, because we have already experienced this. We know what comes next, there is a ceasefire, an exchange of prisoners, but the real war does not stop," said the Ukrainian president. Both statements are curious given the precedents of this war.

First, while no one has questioned over the past two and a half years that Ukraine must participate in any negotiating table seeking to resolve the conflict, Kiev has sought formats in which the other side of the war has been explicitly excluded. The most recent example is the Swiss peace summit , to which Ukraine invited its allies and those countries of the Global South, especially Russia's allies, which it wants to attract to its position and from which Moscow was specifically excluded from the meeting. Representatives of Kiev such as Ermak, Podolyak or Kuleba, as well as Zelensky, had repeatedly insisted and have done so again after the summit that these negotiations must produce a peace document that would then be handed over to Russia for acceptance. In other words, Kiev aspires to negotiate with itself, sit at the table with its allies, define a menu that includes the population of Crimea and Donbass and then wait for Russia to foot the bill.

In 2022, Ukraine and European countries found unacceptable the Russian attempt to negotiate directly with the United States to stop NATO expansion to the east, especially with the inclusion of Ukraine. However, they did not object to Donald Trump's envoy Kurt Volker - former US ambassador to NATO, a fellow at the John McCain Institute, who never gave any indication that he would reach an agreement - meeting with Russian envoy Vladislav Surkov and negotiating, or delaying negotiations to gain time, directly with Russia. The same had happened in the previous term with Victoria Nuland. The knowledge that the goal of these talks was not to reach an agreement but to simulate diplomatic activity caused less rejection. At that time, Ukraine also enjoyed the possibility of excluding the other party to the war, Donetsk and Luhansk, from its preferred negotiating format. The Minsk agreements had created the Trilateral Contact Group, a formula that Ukraine always rejected and openly sabotaged, in part by refusing to negotiate political issues with the opposing side in the war. Despite calling the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics “territories occupied by the Russian Federation,” kyiv always preferred to negotiate with Vladimir Putin than with the Ukrainian citizens who led the DPR and LPR, a menu on the table that the Ukrainian government intended to preside over.

At the last of the meetings where Ukraine could negotiate directly with Russia, avoiding the unpleasant experience of having to listen to the conditions of Donetsk and Lugansk, exactly what Zelensky is now criticising happened. In December 2019 in Paris, after months of negotiations in which the Ukrainian president had to confront even the Azov regiment, Ukraine managed to get Vladimir Putin to agree to a meeting of the Normandy Format, in which Ukraine had the support of its European partners, Germany and France, and did not have to deal with the presence of Pushilin or Pasechnik. In addition to the Russian gas transit agreement that Ukraine had been trying to secure for months, the outcome of the summit, which included Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, was the reaffirmation of the Minsk agreements as the only way to resolve the conflict. As the Ukrainian president explained on Friday, there was a ceasefire, an exchange of prisoners that was naively presented as a step towards ending the war, and the war continued.

Zelensky’s comment seeks to insist on the idea that there can be no ceasefire or negotiation unless it occurs with Ukraine in a position of strength and setting the conditions. However, his words are a reflection of what happened in 2019 when, as the president himself admitted years later, he explained to his allies that the agreements were not viable and were not going to be implemented. The war continued because it was in the interest of Ukraine – and, by extension, of its partners, who never really pressured kyiv to implement the agreements it had signed – and ultimately led to the Russian recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk, the Russian invasion in February 2022 and the failed negotiations that spring. It was then that Ukraine and its allies once again opted for war as the only acceptable way out of the conflict, a position that both kyiv and a large part of European capitals maintain to this day, which continue to see diplomacy as the only red line in this war.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/11/15/30946/

Google Translator

******

From Cassad's telegram account:

Regarding Odessa. An order was given to work on air targets only within the city limits and over residential areas. The assertion that the Ukrainian air defense is "clumsy" is not entirely true; today's attack by the Russian Armed Forces was recorded by the enemy long before the approach to the targets, however, nothing was done until the Gerans crossed the border of residential areas.

As a result, several of the drones we launched were shot down over residential areas. However, there is a nuance here: it is significant that the enemy's information space only covers those cases that resulted in civilian casualties; other damage caused by air defense is not only not covered, but no assistance is provided to the population in these locations.

As for the targets hit, the work of our reconnaissance drones, freely crossing the Moldovan and Romanian borders, was crowned with a logical success: a batch of 155-mm shells was destroyed in the Odessa port, a German Gepard anti-aircraft mount was seriously damaged, one of the hits was in the fuel tank of a “non-working” terminal, and boats, the delivery of which was announced on November 12, were also partially damaged.
The hits were accompanied by intense detonation, and fire extinguishing in the port is still ongoing.

***


Colonelcassad
No longer a "Kremlin agent" : The Center for Countering Disinformation of Ukraine under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine has deleted posts accusing current nominee for the post of U.S. intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard of working for Moscow. On

April 6, 2022, the CCD claimed that Gabbard "works for the Kremlin's money" and that she "has been repeatedly accused of ties to Putin."

On November 9, 2023, the center wrote that Gabbard was manipulating by claiming that Zelensky "has taken control of the media, banned opposition parties and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church."

On February 16, 2023, the CCD said that Gabbard "used to express pro-Russian rhetoric."

On June 25, 2024, the center wrote that Gabbard was trying to discredit Zelensky with statements about his "so-called illegitimacy."

This morning, all four posts were deleted by
@denazi_ua

Weaklings and wimps. You should have stood your ground!😀

***

Colonelcassad
0:30
Summary of the results of the destruction of enemy targets along the line of combat contact — from @don_partizan

Kursk direction
In Darino, tactical aviation struck a platoon strongpoint of the 21st Mechanized Brigade , destroying fortified firing positions. In Malaya Loknya, crews of American M777 howitzers providing support to enemy units were destroyed.

Kharkov direction
In Kozachya Lopan, army aviation struck a temporary deployment point of the 58th Motorized Infantry Brigade , eliminating up to 20 servicemen. In Liptsy, aviation struck fortified strongpoints of the 13th Operational Purpose Brigade , which led to the destruction of engineering structures. In Odnorobovka , a temporary deployment point of the enemy was destroyed, where ammunition depots were also located.

Kupyansk direction
In Boguslavka, aviation destroyed positions equipped with self-propelled howitzers of the 77th Airmobile Brigade . In Zagryzovo, a series of airstrikes were carried out on the firing positions of the 116th Separate Mechanized Brigade , three Piranha V armored vehicles were destroyed . In Kovsharovka, the deployment point of the 1st Operational Purpose Brigade was destroyed , as well as a fuel and lubricants warehouse. In Moskovka, the temporary deployment point of the 143rd Separate Infantry Brigade was hit , vehicles and radar equipment were destroyed. In Novaya Kruglyakovka, a series of airstrikes destroyed the fortifications and equipment of the 44th Mechanized Brigade .

Krasnolimanskoye direction
In Terny, aviation struck the firing positions of the 60th Separate Mechanized Brigade , destroying communications equipment. In Yampolevka, Ka-52 helicopters hit artillery positions equipped with American M109 Paladin systems . In Golubovka, a supply warehouse containing ammunition and components for drones was destroyed. In Kolodyazy, an armored vehicle of the 60th separate mechanized brigade was hit .

Seversk direction
In Seversk, aviation carried out massive strikes on temporary deployment points of the 54th mechanized brigade and the 81st airmobile brigade, ammunition depots were destroyed. In Zvanovka , airstrikes destroyed enemy fortifications and eliminated engineering vehicles.

Konstantinovskoye direction
In Toretsk, aviation struck positions of UAV operators of the 100th Mechanized Brigade , destroying controlled unmanned aerial vehicles. In Chasov Yar, artillery positions of the 24th Mechanized Brigade equipped with French TRF1 systems were hit . In Dachnoye, a Ka-52 helicopter destroyed firing positions, including French CAESAR systems . In Katerinovka, aviation struck positions of an enemy EL/M-2138 radar station .

Pokrovskoye direction
In Pushkino, aviation struck UAV operators of the 15th Operational Purpose Brigade , destroying Switchblade 600 drones . In Mirnograd, an enemy radar installation providing artillery adjustment was hit. In Velyka Novosyolka, a Su-34 fighter-bomber and a Ka-52 attack helicopter struck ammunition depots and an armored vehicle parking lot.

Kurakhovo direction
In Kurakhovo, an observation post of the 33rd Mechanized Brigade was destroyed , and communication facilities were also hit. In Dalne, a Leopard 2A6 tank was destroyed by a loitering munition .

Zaporizhia direction
In Novodanilovka, aviation struck temporary deployment points of the 65th Mechanized Brigade , destroying three HMMWV vehicles . In Mala Tokmachka, a depot with artillery ammunition, including shells for M777 howitzers, was hit .

Kherson direction
In Kindiyka, FPV drone operators destroyed an enemy reconnaissance group. In Olhivka, a temporary deployment point of the 126th Territorial Defense Brigade was hit , and ammunition depots were destroyed.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

*******

ELECTRIC WAR MOVES BEYOND PUTIN PAUSE BUTTON TO POWER OFF BUTTON

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by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

This week’s announcements of emergency electricity rationing and scheduled power supply cuts in the farwestern Ukrainian regions of Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk and Transcarpathia indicate that pinpoint drone targeting by the Russian General Staff is a new stage in the electric war since President Vladimir Putin put on pause long-range missile attacks on western Ukrainian power generation plants since August 26.

On Tuesday, the regional Ukrainian media reported “restrictions will apply to businesses in the Ivano-Frankivsk and Volyn oblasts starting on 13 November, in five phases, and will be scheduled from 07:00 to 20:00. The restrictions are being implemented due to damage to critical infrastructure by Russian forces and decreasing temperatures.” The national utility Ukrenergo announced that from November 13 “GOPs [power limit schedules] are being introduced due to a shortage in the energy system in the Carpathian region”.

The deficit in the current demand-supply balance for electricity has also been compounded by the decline reported in the Ukrainian press of imports of power from cross-border sources in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova. The reported cutback this week defies the European Union (EU) agreement at the end of October for “an increase of the export capacity limit to Ukraine and Moldova to 2,100 megawatts (MW) during this winter. It represents an increase of 400 MW from the previous value [1,700 MW]…The 2,100 MW export capacity limit will apply from 1 December 2024.”

“This is a temporary situation,” Ukraine’s energy minister Herman Halushchenko announced on Wednesday. “ ‘Unfortunately, restored generation facilities can occasionally fail. This has happened, but all these issues will be resolved, and the situation will stabilize,’ he stated. The minister also pointed to a significant reduction in electricity imports to Ukraine, which are currently down to about 100 MW.”

A military source comments: “The damage from the August attacks has not been repaired – just patched up. There have been strikes on transformer stations since. They’ve been smaller in scale but indicative of the [Russian] General Staff’s knowledge of the [Ukrainian] distribution grid vulnerabilities. The General Staff’s moves have complicated Ukrainian efforts to keep the power on. The Ukrainians are hiding how bad the situation is, including in terms of getting spares. The temperature is dipping below freezing at night, the daylight hours are shorter, the electrical lighting and heating loads are going up. The jury-rigged grid is unable to handle it without curtailments.”

THE WINTER FREEZE BEGINS IN THE UKRAINE
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https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/ukraine/kyiv/ext

Follow the stages of the electric war campaign here. The evidence of the Putin Pause was analysed on October 22. Russian military strategy for including the western region nuclear power plants (NPP) of Rivne and Khmelnitsky was discussed on November 2.

Ukrainian media have reported Russian drone movements close to (but not targeted on) Khmelnitsky NPP on September 22 and Rivne NPP on September 24-25. Then on November 7 fresh drone attacks “disrupted energy supplies in the Zhytomyr and Rivne oblasts on Thursday. It made Ukraine’s power grid operator Ukrenergo cut power to thousands of people in the affected areas.”

In the northeastern region of Sumy on November 12, a drone attack targeted the Shostkinska gas- fuelled power station. According to Boris Rozhin’s Colonel Cassad Telegram platform, the plant “plays a key role not only in providing the city with heat, but also in the functioning of a number of military facilities, including repair shops and supply warehouses of the Ukainian Armed Forces. A temporary stop of the [power plant] creates difficulties for the functioning of these facilities, especially in the cold season. Destabilization of infrastructure reduces the enemy’s capabilities to organize logistics and repair work.”

There has been no report by the Russian military bloggers of a missile attack on energy infrastructure west of the Dnieper River since August. The daily bulletins from the Defense Ministry in Moscow regularly use a paragraph identifying the restriction of targeting on western electricity targets. For example, from the November 13 bulletin, “operational and tactical aviation, unmanned aerial strike vehicles, missile troops and artillery of groups of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation defeated the infrastructure of military airfields, energy facilities used for the operation of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, as well as accumulations of manpower and military equipment of the enemy in 139 districts.”

Asked if the General Staff can be expected to expand winter-freeze operations to include drone raids west of Kiev to trigger electricity overload and grid collapse, the source said: “Yes, but it won’t be high profile. A switch here, a transformer there, ‘incidental’ damage to power lines and substation yards near military targets.”

https://johnhelmer.net/electric-war-mov ... more-90604

******

Fourth Estate Begins Conditioning Ground for Removal of Defiant Zelensky

Simplicius
Nov 13, 2024
Just a day after we wrote about the ‘rumored’ new plan for the US to hold Ukrainian elections next year to give intransigent Zelensky the boot, The Economist made it semi-official by acknowledging that, ‘suddenly’, Zelensky is facing a ‘power struggle’ at home:

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https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/1 ... le-in-2025

It’s in line with how Biden’s advanced dementia was just “abruptly” discovered by figures and organs of the establishment, only after becoming convenient and politically expedient enough for them to make it public. Similarly here, as soon as the memo-from-above’s arrival, The Economist sprang into pre-conditioning the ground to sell the narrative that Zelensky’s regime is now on uncertain footing; they would have never been allowed to even suggest that Zelensky faced danger at home until it became necessary to do so.

The article opens up with the admission that funeral ceremonies for soldiers in Kiev have “become more frequent” after the recent ramp-up of Russia’s offensives, a testament to the AFU’s own mounting death toll at a time when they’re desperately trying to sell the opposing claim about ‘astronomical Russian casualties’.

For now, there are two dates on Kyiv politicos’ lips: January 20th 2025, the date of Mr Trump’s inauguration, the first moment for any possible ceasefire and lifting of military law, and May 25th, the earliest mooted date for an election.

An election during pinnacle of wartime seems unthinkable, they write, but:

Still, some groundwork appears to have begun. Regional election headquarters are mobilising, and work on candidate lists is beginning. The representatives of one likely presidential rival to Volodymyr Zelensky say that Ukraine needs elections; but they worry about making a public statement to this effect, fearing a fierce backlash from the presidential office.

Then, of course, comes the obligatory backstab:

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Not only did Economist now roll out some “internal polling” that seemingly didn’t exist before, but the big kicker is the predictable insertion of Zaluzhny as new heir to the throne. That’s not to mention the suggestive lay out of their preferred outcome:

But a former colleague of the president says his best move might be to step aside regardless, and keep to his original promise only to serve one term. “Zelensky has only one way out to get out with an intact reputation,” this source says. “That is to run elections [without him] and go down in history as the man who united the nation in war.” The alternative is to risk being associated with a military collapse or an incomplete peace.

Ah, so a ‘dignified bow out’ just like the same establishment forces asked of Zelensky’s fateful partner-in-crime Joe Biden. Remember, it’s either the “easy way” or the “hard way”, as Pelosi said; the same stands for Zelensky. Take your free trip to Tel Aviv or we can begin raising the level of ‘encouragement’. After all, recall Zaluzhny was directed to step down from his role as general for a long time, and it was only after his direct subordinates began to be assassinated did he heed the warning and do as he was told.

The other excerpt from the article which went viral today was the following:

The army is censoring the most negative news to avoid fanning flames back home, he says. A senior military official agrees. Even Mr Zelensky is being shielded from the truth. “It’s not even that he’s being kept in a warm bath,” the source says, using a local idiom to suggest the president was being cocooned by his top officials. “He’s being kept in a sauna.”

Well, now, would you look at that? So maybe when Zelensky spouts off those ridiculous numbers about Russian losses, he’s not exactly the most trustworthy source? As preposterous as it may sound, given the above, it may even be the case that Zelensky actually believes the figures that only 30,000 or so AFU troops have died. He could very well think he’s winning the war based on his info-cocoon; scary thought.

The article ends with an interesting affirmation that Russia intends to capture the capital of Zaporozhye province, i.e. Zaporozhye city itself:

In Kurakhove, Russian forces are outnumbering Ukrainian forces by at least six to one, and a Ukrainian retreat seems inevitable soon. Ukraine is on the back foot in the Kursk region it in turn occupies, where Russia is trying to push its soldiers out with the assistance of thousands of North Korean troops. Fighting is also beginning in Zaporizhia province for what Ukrainian intelligence believes will be an assault on the provincial capital, an important industrial hub.

If that is indeed one of the main targets of the new coming offensive, it would seem to sketch a potential Putin plan for ending the war: one can theorize that Putin could “make it easy” on Zelensky, or whoever’s in power at the time, by taking the decision to give up Zaporozhye out of their hands. If Russian forces can capture Zaporozhye city and most of the province itself, then that would already be a major point of Russia’s negotiations demands accomplished. Given that Zaporozhye is much bigger and more consequential than Kherson, it represents a much bigger roadblock to Ukraine acceding to Russia’s terms.

However, there is one major problem with this theory. Russian Colonel Vladimir Trukhan outlines it here at around the 1:09:40 mark: (Video at link.)

In WWII it took three entire combined arms armies (CAAs) of 200,000 men to storm Zaporozhye, which was a fraction of its current size at the time. For perspective: Bakhmut had a population of 70k, Zaporozhye is over 700k—Bakhmut is one tenth the size. It’s very unrealistic to imagine a city like that being taken by force, and Trukhan agrees. Aside: I recommend watching the full interview above. It’s a little hard to get into due to the slow-paced translation, but Trukhan lays out what I consider the definitive historicity of the entire SMO thus far which, as one reader mentioned to me, is very closely in line to my own repeated explanations dating back to the beginning of the blog.

Getting back: That being said, the Zapo region does have quite a few Russian CAAs, and depending to what level AFU collapses, anything is possible.

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And Rezident UA channel reports:

#analysis
All our sources in the General Staff and the Office of the President confirm the information that Russia is preparing an offensive operation for the spring of 2025, the purpose of which is to reach the Dnieper. The Kremlin managed to play the Kursk Gambit and force the Armed Forces to spend reserves / equipment on Russian territory, where it is ground for the third month, and the Syrsky, suspended by the Office of the President, is not able to convey the opinion of the General Staff about the meaninglessness of the operation, which allows the enemy to seize our positions at a record pace. After the fall of Pokrovsk, the Russian army will enter the operational space and will be able to calmly move in the direction of the Dnieper, covering Zaporozhye from the north, while destroying the bridges, the city will not really be restrained due to lack of supply. These are all obvious things for the General Staff, but politicians pursue their goals and hope to get an opportunity for a bargain,why they hold on to the Kursk operation despite the huge losses of the Armed Forces.


There’s a point there: perhaps Russian forces can surround Zaporozhye, destroy the bridges and turn it into another Mariupol, where Azov’s back was against the water, but with a city of that size, it would still be a bleak prospect.

As for Zelensky’s trial, another ‘rumor’ from Ukrainian channels:

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⚡️🇺🇦⚡️ Pre-war situation.

The Verkhovna Rada says that the OP is preparing a new law on such a martial law so that elections can be held and Zelensky legitimized☝🏻

The third wake-up call in a day that Zelensky is not going to follow Trump's plan for peace‼️‼️


As corollary to the Economist piece comes a new FT piece underscoring the mad scramble to hold as much territory as possible to jockey for ‘negotiating positions’ on the eve of Trump’s return to power.

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https://archive.ph/NuEsR

The article claims both sides are rushing men to the front to gain as favorable a position as possible, with Putin again allegedly setting an ultimatum to recapture Kursk by Trump’s swearing in ceremony in January.

Lavrov on the other hand stated this is all bunk, and Russia does not intend to fall into another pointless Minsk agreement—from a separate source:

Trump's arrival will not change the fundamental attitude of the United States to the situation in Ukraine, Washington wants to keep everything under its control, Lavrov said.

He also added that proposals to freeze the conflict in Ukraine along the contact line are the same "Minsk agreements in a new package", even worse.

The Kremlin is again saying that Russia is only interested in those negotiations that will ensure the fulfillment of all tasks in the context of Ukraine and Ryabkov's 2021 ultimatum about NATO's withdrawal to the border of Germany. Everything else is of no concern, as is the change of faces in the White House. There will be no deal.


The FT article however claims Ukraine can “prove” its mettle to allies by holding strong until messiah Trump comes to the rescue:

But if Ukraine was able to stop Russia’s offensive and seize the initiative by the time Trump takes office on January 20, senior Ukrainian officials believe they could prove they are “fighters” and “winners” and help convince the president-elect to stand by them.

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The article states Ukraine needs 160,000 men by February just to staff units up to 85% of what’s needed, but Ukrainian officials say that only 100k of that number will realistically be achieved.

Crucially the article confirms reports that Ukraine is press-ganging airforce pilots, surgeons, and the like to buttress the failing frontline:

To make up for the shortages, some infantry units have been allegedly bolstered with air force pilots, engineers, medics and surgeons, according to Mariana Bezuhla, an MP on the foreign policy committee, who was echoing concerns first made public by frontline soldiers.

Colonel Yuriy Ignat, a senior air force official, earlier this month said that some air force personnel had been transferred to frontline units, citing the challenging circumstances.


Ultimately, it seems the perennial tactic of the press is to continually mock-up some false arbitrary dates as some kind of next salutary ‘waypoint’ in order to drum up morale. This keeps people’s attentions forever pinned on some distant, perpetually approaching ‘event’ that will lead to Ukraine’s salvation. In this case, it’s now the Trump inauguration which is meant to initiate negotiations favorable to Ukraine. But as usual they ignore the fact that Russia has never signaled it would accept anything less than its full stated demands.

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This analyst on TG said it best:

The Western press has been throwing out nightly rumors about the "peace plan of Ukraine". EU publications are less optimistic, American ones are more so. Each newspaper, like NYT, WSJ or Bild and Economics, has its own speculations.

The main thing is missing - the plans of the Russian Federation. Everyone is making the same mistake again - they don't notice the elephant. And in vain.



The front continues to crumble for Ukraine.

The biggest surprise breakthrough came today in Kupyansk, where a Russian column of what appears to be the 35th Motor Rifle Brigade suddenly swooped down out of Sinkovka, from the area of Liman Pershyi, and made a shock breakthrough all the way down into the industrial quarter of eastern Kupyansk, for the first time entering the city proper since its loss in late 2022: (Video at link.)

This is another in a long line of signs of the AFU’s worsening staffing shortages which is creating major gaps in critical areas of defense:

Today afternoon, unexpectedly for the Ukrainian side, units of the Russian Armed Forces entered Kupyansk in the Kharkov region.

The advance of Russian armored vehicles and infantry was carried out along the railway from the direction of Liman Pervyi. The Ukrainian channel DeepState reports that this may have happened because the line of contact became a mystery to all units (Ukrainian Armed Forces) .

At the moment, local resources are reporting ongoing gun battles on the right bank, where the breakthrough occurred, and there are also reports that communication has been lost in the city itself.

If the Russian army can consolidate and expand the bridgehead, it will be a very serious success.

Informant


An AFU officer channel complains about the successful assault:

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Granted, it’s not confirmed yet just how much—if any—of a foothold Russian forces were able to get against the defenders of the 116th Mechanized Brigade. Hopefully it will be cleared up in the coming day or two, but at least a small amount of units were able to lodge themselves into those advance positions. And in fact for the past week, there were reports of Russian advance scouts already entering the very fringes of outer-Kupyansk from the forest belts in the north.

This is how far some maps have them getting:

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There were again many other small advances, but the most notable occurred on the Kurakhove and new Zaporozhye front.

Russian forces captured more of the eastern portion of Kurakhove itself (smaller circle on bottom), while capturing Illinka and advancing toward Berestky, where clashes were already reported:

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Ukraine blew the Kurakhove dam at the west end of the reservoir, which has reportedly flooded and slowing Russian troops for now. At first Russia was blamed as usual, until even the worst pro-UA propagandists wisened up:

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Note how blowing up a dam is a tactically ‘sensible’ act when Ukraine does it, but an egregious “terrorist action” when Russia is putatively responsible.

On Zaporozhye, you may recall just a couple weeks ago or less that Russian forces sprang out and captured Levadne on the western side of Velyka Novosilka. Now they have captured some or most of Novodorovka and all of Rivnopol:

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Note that Makarovka, circled on the right, was just mostly captured in the last report.

For a wider view, it’s clear what we’re seeing is the slow enveloping of Velyka Novosilka from both sides, given that the entire bridge on the right (Shaktarkse, etc.) was only semi-recently captured as well:

Image

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/fou ... nditioning

(More at link.)

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The US Is Unlikely To Coerce Zelensky Into Holding Elections Without A Ceasefire First

Andrew Korybko
Nov 14, 2024

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It’s unrealistic that the US would withhold military aid to that end while hostilities are ongoing and thus create an opportunity for Russia to achieve its maximum goals.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) published a statement on Monday alleging that “Washington is considering holding presidential and parliamentary elections next year in the context of continued hostilities with Russia.” The purpose is to act “As one of the ‘legitimate’ ways to eliminate the ‘overly presumptuous’ V. Zelensky”, “if necessary.” To that end, the US is already supposedly leveraging its agents of influence in Ukraine to “create[e] a new party designed to occupy a pro-American niche”.

This analysis here from August “Assessing The Veracity Of SVR’s Latest Report About Impending Political Changes In Kiev” hyperlinks to three associated analyses from December 2023, January 2024, and May 2024 in an attempt to account for why prior predictions of political changes there have yet to happen. As regards the latest prediction, which is importantly caveated with the vague claim that it’ll only be done “if necessary”, there are reasons to expect it to be more difficult to pull off than SVR’s statement implies.

The only realistic way that the US can coerce Zelensky into holding elections without a ceasefire first, remembering that he said that he supposedly can’t hold them till the conflict ends due to his government’s interpretation of the martial law decree, is by withholding military aid. If Trump goes through with that, then he risks facilitating a Russian military breakthrough that could raise the chances of Russia achieving its maximum goals in the conflict, which the US naturally wants to avoid happening.

Despite Trump promising to end the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine that Biden was responsible for provoking, he’s still a businessman at heart and therefore likely isn’t comfortable with his country receiving no return on their hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of investments. For that reason, it’s improbable that he’ll create the conditions for Russia to achieve its maximum goals in the conflict by withholding military aid from Zelensky until the latter holds new elections as a means for replacing him.

What’s more likely is that Trump coerces Zelensky into agreeing to a ceasefire and then demands that he hold elections shortly after that, perhaps on the pretext of ensuring a democratic mandate for proceeding further with peace talks, after which he and his party could then be replaced. This “phased leadership transition” would only occur “if necessary” since Trump might also let Zelensky continue putting off elections while using the SBU to consolidate his one-party rule if he does his bidding.

It's premature to predict whether or not Trump would demand that elections be held after a ceasefire, but it can be assessed with a high degree of confidence that he wouldn’t demand that they be held before then since that could facilitate Russia inflicting a strategic defeat on the US. Whenever elections finally arrive, it’s a certainty that the US will do everything possible to perpetuate its influence over Kiev, even if this requires “democratically” replacing Zelensky and his party with more popular proxies.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-us-i ... e-zelensky

******

Drones, drugs, and memes

Thiel, Lucky, Prince, Musk, Trump. Drone political economy of the Trump regime. Oligarch deep politics - Kolomoisky and global drug trafficking? The limits of mobilization. Kurakhove

Events in Ukraine
Nov 13, 2024

A more wide-ranging telegram roundup than usual. Among the topics covered by our knowledgeable Ukrainian analysts today:

The political economy of Trumpian militarism. How the Thiel-Musk ecosystem (sounds like the symptoms of a venereal disease) is spawning new forms of ultra-reddit military-industrial imperialism. Their plans to accelerate the drone war in Ukraine and Israel at a fraction of the cost. A telling sign of what the new Trump era will look like - all the old wars, and even more, but cheaper. Of course, what happens when it turns out that these nifty wunderwaffen don’t do so well as hoped…

The deep politics of Zelensky’s complex relationship with the Ukrainian oligarchy. From patronage, to conflict, to the current situation where Zelensky has even imprisoned his original benefactor, Kolomoisky. But could all this actually be Zelensky attempt to save his old master? And what does this have to do with international drug smuggling, Kosovo, and the Democrat Party?

Ukrainian politics and memes. The latest show-drama over draft-dodging nationalists. Why Mariana Bezuhla is like drinking beer in the morning. How the government is encouraging the desertion epidemic through legislature

Azov’s military analyst on why mobilizing 500,000 men won’t solve Ukraine’s frontline woes

And worry not warnerds, there is also coverage of the current situation at the hottest section of the front - Kurakhove. The strategic importance of the town, why Ukrainian forces aren’t likely to be encircled there - but why this lack of encirclement is actually worse than encirclement itself.

Drone political economy of Trumpist militarism
Dimitriev, a political commentator originally from Odessa, now living in Russia. Here’s another interview with Palmer Luckey, where he says clearly what I think is Trump’s general aim with regard to US imperial management - the same, or even more effective military aid to US allies like Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, but cheaper - so as to reduce domestic criticism. Anyway, here’s Dimitriev.

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November 9:

Yesterday, we found out that the third person on the call between Zelensky and Trump was entrepreneur Elon Musk. A strange situation indeed. Let’s imagine how this might have played out: Zelensky calls, "Donald, congratulations from the bottom of my heart!" – "Thanks, Volodya. You know, Elon is here. He has some serious matters to discuss with you." Then the conversation shifts to who called whom what on social media. It’s odd, wouldn’t you agree? Especially since Americans keep telling us that they have no real interest in Ukraine, yet it’s not only the future president and vice president involved in these issues but also the most popular and wealthy person in their sphere. What’s going on in Ukraine that it’s so important at a time when the victors should be toasting their success at a party?

Let’s speculate on what makes Ukraine so interesting to Musk and his fellow tech oligarchs. Musk’s companies, as we know, played a significant role in Ukraine’s defense capabilities, with his satellites providing communication, coordination for units, and reconnaissance for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. But support wasn’t consistent; sometimes, Musk manually disabled or restricted his equipment, even mocking the Ukrainian leadership in his blogs—especially Zelensky, whom he clearly dislikes.

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Beyond Musk, Peter Thiel’s structures also made an appearance in Ukraine. The well-known company Palantir announced within the first months of the war that it was developing a unified system for intelligence data collection and analysis to create a comprehensive digital map. This could have significantly enhanced the effectiveness of Ukrainian strikes and improved troop coordination. Palantir wasn’t planning to make a profit in Ukraine (source); rather, it aimed to use Ukraine as a demonstration platform. However, the plans of the American intelligence giant weren’t realized. Perhaps this came up against resistance from the Ukrainian military, who weren’t prepared to be turned into units in a Palantir game. Remember the dispute over who would control high-precision weapon targeting at the end of 2022 and beginning of 2023, when Americans demanded complete control over this area?

Another company associated with Peter Thiel, Anduril Industries, founded by Palmer Luckey (the inventor of the Oculus virtual reality headset), has also shown interest in Ukraine (source). Today, the company is known for its AI-powered drones. They reported successful tests of new drone types in Ukraine.


(Paywall with free trial option.)

https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/ ... ember-1-13

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Echelon of SPG M-1989
November 14, 23:08

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Photos have appeared online that allegedly show North Korean 170mm M-1989 self-propelled guns heading to the front.
The main advantage is the long firing range (up to 60 km is claimed).
The main question is the real accuracy of such guns and the possibility of their inclusion in a reconnaissance and strike complex.

It is worth noting that at the moment there is no photo or video evidence of the presence of North Koreans and North Korean equipment at the front.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9496555.html

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

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blindpig
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 16, 2024 1:35 pm

Security, territorial demands and diplomacy
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 11/16/2024

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“Ukrainian officials have been saying for months that they will not give up territory occupied by Russia in any peace deal. Now, as Ukraine considers an accelerated timetable for negotiations pushed by President-elect Donald J. Trump, it is placing at least as much importance on securing security guarantees as on where an eventual cease-fire line might lie,” wrote The New York Times on Wednesday , in the umpteenth omen of the start of some kind of diplomacy seeking an end to the war or, at least, an armistice that would allow reconstruction to begin and the population to return to civilian life. The political situation, national and international fatigue from the war, the difficulties in continuing to supply the amount of weapons required to maintain the current status quo and the growing certainty that Kiev will not be able to achieve its military objectives mean that the shadow of diplomacy is gaining more and more presence in the media. For the moment, calls for a ceasefire and negotiations remain minimal, and those who defend the possibility of starting talks do so based on a basic idea shared by Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump: peace through force , that is, intensifying the war to improve Ukraine's negotiating position.

Even in their moments of greatest political weakness, Western leaders return to dialogue with impossible demands. Yesterday, just four days after announcing his intention to contact his Russian counterpart, Olaf Scholz spoke for the first time in two years with Vladimir Putin. In recent weeks, the German chancellor had distanced himself from his European allies, especially France and the United Kingdom, with a position that did not advocate pressuring Joe Biden to lift the veto on the use of Western weapons against Russian territory, but rather trying to move towards diplomacy. The difficult position in which the parties that until now formed part of the government coalition have been left, which has led to its collapse, together with the economic consequences that the war has had for Germany, have encouraged Scholz's recent attempt to return to the path of dialogue. The German chancellor even suggested that he was working on a plan similar to the Minsk agreements that could achieve a ceasefire. The mention of the hated peace agreement signed in 2015, which Ukraine never intended to honour, and the complete lack of interest in diplomacy on the part of the other Western powers, meant that Scholz's proposal was completely ignored by European capitals, the current US administration and even Donald Trump's team, who, in their desire not to reveal how they intend to achieve an end to the war, have not expressed themselves either in favour of or against the only proposal for negotiation that has been made in Europe in more than two years.

“Chancellor Scholz told me that he planned to call Putin. His call, in my opinion, opens Pandora’s box. There can now be other conversations and phone calls,” said an angry Zelensky, adding that “this is exactly what Putin has long sought. It is essential for him to weaken his isolation, as well as Russia’s isolation, and to hold mere talks that will lead nowhere. He has been doing this for decades.” Any opening to diplomacy must be condemned.

Details are scarce, but it is known that Scholz and Putin held a telephone conversation yesterday lasting about an hour, in which the German chancellor condemned the Russian invasion and demanded that the Russian president withdraw his troops and be willing to negotiate “a fair and lasting peace.” At a time when new towns are being captured daily in Donbass and Ukraine is facing an increasingly serious situation in southern Donetsk, Kiev’s allies continue, at least publicly, to maintain the maximalist discourse that has prolonged the war to the present day. It does not seem a coincidence that Scholz used the expression “ fair peace ,” an idea repeated by Zelensky to define a complete victory for Ukraine in which only Kiev’s demands would be met, without territorial concessions and without mentioning the rights of the reconquered population. Curiously, those on the other side of the Atlantic who claim to advocate progress towards the end of the war also do so in terms common to those of the Ukrainian president, in this case with the expression “peace through strength”, a concept that Zelensky has adopted since demanding the lifting of the veto on the use of Western missiles against targets in the Russian Federation has become the focus of his discourse.

Speculation about the possibility of a diplomatic resolution continues to focus on the idea of ​​peace over territory and security guarantees that several media outlets have reported over the past year. “With Ukrainian forces steadily losing ground in the east, two senior officials said that defending Ukraine’s interests in any talks would depend not on territorial boundaries, which are likely to determine the fighting, but on guarantees that a cease-fire would hold,” The New York Times said , citing Roman Kostenko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s Intelligence and Defense Committee, adding that “talks have to be based on guarantees” because “nothing is more important.” The article understands this statement as a relaxation of Kiev’s territorial demands, which would prioritize obtaining security guarantees from its allies over recovering lost oblasts or restoring territorial integrity along its internationally recognized borders, until now Kiev’s main goal.

This view, like the position of Western leaders, who at no point acknowledge the mistake of not having favoured negotiation between the parties in the spring of 2022, when the agreement was possible, Russian territorial demands were minimal and much of the destruction had not yet occurred, ignores important issues. At that time, it was Western countries, specifically the United States and the United Kingdom, that leaked to the press their rejection of the security guarantees being negotiated between Russia and Ukraine.

“Ukraine sets its borders based on its 1991 declaration of independence. Russia has since taken control of about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, but Kiev would not formally renounce its claim to any territory under Russian occupation, according to Kostenko. That appears to be the approach Ukraine is taking to justify any potential deal in which Russia retains control of Ukrainian territory,” writes The New York Times, without ever explaining that these security guarantees are a way of saying accession to NATO, a condition that makes any negotiations unfeasible for Russia. In other words, the article in the American outlet is the umpteenth reformulation of the German way , that is, accession to NATO according to de facto borders pending the future recovery of lost territories. Although such an idea is impossible to impose on Russia in the current conditions of the front, when it is Ukraine that is on the defensive and trying to prevent the collapse of parts of the front, such proposals are currently presented as compromise solutions without the need to explain either that there is no consensus on inviting Ukraine to the Alliance.

Despite the insistence of the Western media, which clearly suggests that there is no confidence in Ukraine’s ability not to lose the war, every article presenting such ideas is inevitably accompanied by a denial from kyiv, which insists that its conditions have not changed. “Ukraine is fighting for the liberation of all territories seized by Russia in the last decade and any claim that the country is changing the emphasis in the war, giving priority to security instead of land, is false,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said yesterday. “By hysterically inviting a foreign (North Korean) contingent into its war, Russia has trivialized itself. Or the “Putin entity” has once again gladly humiliated itself. So, when you keep talking about the need to talk/agree/renegotiate with the Russian Federation (even on its barbaric terms), it is because… you are used to being afraid of it.” “It was not a vain fear, as it turned out,” added Mikhail Podolyak, an adviser to the President’s Office, in his usual histrionic style. The insistence on calling Russian President Putin an “entity” , the reference to hysteria despite Russia’s stoicism on the Kursk issue, and the usual tantrum every time a media outlet considered friendly publishes a suggestion of the need to limit the objectives show that it is the West that is trying to impose these conditions. It is not Ukraine that is willing to sacrifice part of its objectives in exchange for security guarantees, but Kiev’s allies who are trying to lower expectations that were never realistic. Not even when the West supported Ukraine in its desire to continue opting for war as the only possible resolution of the conflict.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/11/16/segur ... iplomacia/

Google Translator

*****

From Cassad's telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the progress of repelling the attempted invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the territory of the Russian Federation in the Kursk Region (as of November 16, 2024)

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue to defeat the formations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk Region.

- Units of the North group of forces defeated the formations of the 21st, 22nd, 41st, 47th, 61st and 115th mechanized, 17th tank, 80th, 82nd and 95th airborne assault brigades, the 36th marine brigade, the 103rd, 112th and 129th territorial defense brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the areas of the settlements of Alexandria, Darino, Martynovka, Maryevka, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Pogrebki and Sverdlikovo.

- Army aviation strikes and artillery fire hit enemy manpower and equipment in the areas of the settlements of Lebedevka, Novoivanovka, Sverdlikovo and Cherkasskoye Porechnoye.

Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost 255 servicemen , three armored personnel carriers, a combat armored vehicle , seven cars, an anti-aircraft missile system , a 152-mm D-20 gun and an electronic warfare station were destroyed.

- In total, during the military operations in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more than 32,930 servicemen, 213 tanks, 136 infantry fighting vehicles, 115 armored personnel carriers, 1,167 armored combat vehicles, 951 vehicles, 284 artillery pieces, 40 multiple launch rocket system launchers, including 11 HIMARS and six MLRS made in the USA, 13 anti-aircraft missile system launchers, seven transport and loading vehicles, 65 electronic warfare stations, 13 counter-battery radars, four air defense radars , 27 units of engineering and other equipment, including 13 engineering obstacle clearing vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing unit , as well as six armored repair and recovery vehicles and a command and staff vehicle .

The operation to destroy the Ukrainian Armed Forces formations continues.

***

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of November 16, 2024 ) Main points:

- The Russian Armed Forces destroyed Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities used to provide the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and the infrastructure of a military airfield;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 440 soldiers in the area of ​​responsibility of the Western group;

- Russian air defense shot down four HIMARS projectiles and 102 UAVs in one day;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 625 soldiers in the area of ​​responsibility of the Southern group;

- Daily losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the area of ​​responsibility of the Northern group amounted to 70 soldiers;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 140 soldiers in the area of ​​the "East" group;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 110 soldiers on the Dnieper.

▫️As a result of successful active operations, units of the Vostok group of forces liberated the settlement of Makarovka in the Donetsk People's Republic . The manpower and equipment of the 113th , 117th and 129th territorial defense

brigades were defeated in the areas of the settlements of Razliv, Velyka Novosyolka in the Donetsk People's Republic and Novodarovka in the Zaporizhia region. One counterattack of the assault group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was repelled . The enemy's losses amounted to 140 servicemen, two tanks, two combat armored vehicles, six cars, two 152-mm self-propelled artillery units "Akatsiya" .



▫️Units of the Dnepr group of forces inflicted losses on the manpower and equipment of the 118th Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine , the 124th , 129th Territorial Defense Brigades and the 3rd National Guard Brigade in the areas of the settlements of Orekhov, Novoandriivka in the Zaporizhia region, Mykhailivka and Kamyshany in the Kherson region.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine lost up to 110 servicemen, three vehicles and a 155-mm howitzer M777 made in the USA.

▫️ Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces groups inflicted damage on energy infrastructure facilities of Ukraine used to support the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the infrastructure of a military airfield, production workshops and storage sites for unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 165 districts.

▫️Air defense systems shot down four rockets from the US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system and 102 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

▫️ In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 648 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 35,960 unmanned aerial vehicles, 586 anti-aircraft missile systems, 19,343 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,489 multiple launch rocket systems, 17,972 field artillery pieces and mortars, and 28,437 units of special military vehicles.


https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

******

Fourth Time The Pentagon Is Faking The Books For Ukraine

For a fourth time the Pentagon is 'finding money' outside of the budget that can be spend on Ukraine.

I had previously noticed three occasions in which the Pentagon, on order of the Biden administration, used some or 'accounting error' gimmicks to 'find' more money for Ukraine.

Pentagon Again Applies Budget Lies To Deliver More Weapons To Ukraine - Jul 26 2024, MoA

The piece referred to three relevant news reports:

Exclusive: Pentagon accounting error overvalued Ukraine weapons aid by $3 billion - May 19 2023, Reuters

Pentagon accounting error provides extra $6.2 billion for Ukraine military aid - June 20 2023, AP

Pentagon finds another $2 billion of accounting errors for Ukraine aid - July 14 2024, Reuters


From the last link:

The Pentagon has found $2 billion worth of additional errors in its calculations for ammunition, missiles and other equipment sent to Ukraine, increasing the improperly valued material to a total of $8.2 billion, a U.S. government report revealed on Thursday.

Here is now another, the fourth, incident of creative budget accounting in favor of money for war in Ukraine:

All reports previously indicated that there was $4.3 billion left in the Presidential Drawdown Authority account, which reimburses the U.S. armed forces for munitions and equipment sent to Ukraine.
Turns out, the number is actually $7.1 billion, thanks to some revised accounting the Pentagon has done, DOD officials tell your anchor. That extra $2.8 billion isn’t just found money. The way things work is that the Pentagon calculates how much buying replacement goods for what it sends Ukraine will cost. The number crunchers at the Pentagon ran through the lists and discovered that replacement for some items cost less than anticipated.


The plan is for the administration to spend down that whole $7.1 billion by Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 ...

Luckily, not all of the money will reach Ukraine:

[Spending the money] is a pretty tall order given the cadence of aid packages being announced roughly every two weeks work between $200 million and $500 million. Those numbers are going to have to go way up, but even then deliveries of that equipment would continue well into the Trump administration, which could turn off the spigot at any time.

I bet that the lower 'replacements costs' the Pentagon has found to spend more on Ukraine, will themselves turn out to be 'accounting errors'. The replacements will - unfortunately they will say - later require much higher outlays than anticipated today.

Creative accounting like this, i.e. faking the books, is a no-no for commercial entity as it might well end with time spent in jail.

I'll repeat myself:

Any commercial company doing what the Pentagon is doing here would be asking for serious trouble.
One wonder if and when Congress will wake up to this.


Posted by b on November 15, 2024 at 6:56 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/11/f ... l#comments

******

Ah, Yes--New Tune...

... but the conditions for this change have been formed long ago before DJT victory. I repeat ad nauseam--reality, like gravity, is a bitch, and when it bites--it hurts like hell. NYT notes:


With Ukrainian forces steadily losing ground in the east, two senior officials said that defending Ukraine’s interests in potential talks would hinge not on territorial boundaries, which are likely to be determined by the fighting, but on what assurances are in place to make a cease-fire hold. “Talks should be based on guarantees,” said Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Defense and Intelligence Committee. “For Ukraine, nothing is more important.” A senior Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, was more direct. “The territorial question is extremely important, but it’s still the second question,” the official said, “The first question is security guarantees.”

Well, yeah, Russians are already in Kupyansk. Most of the VSU remnants on this Kupyansk-Kharkov axis are pinned down along the Oskol River and all crossings are fire-controlled by Russian artillery and VKS. Once Kupyansk falls (coming soon)--the road to Kharkov is open and there is no chance in hell NATO planners can set up any kind of a defensive line in the open fields. They are already on the run, they will run even faster trying to slow down in whatever hamlet or village they will be passing. And then ... but let's not rush--we may yet see a fascinating development with new Administration trying to "sell" to Russia an increasingly diminishing asset. There will be no Minsks anymore and Trump better understand this--that may save him some very unpleasant moments that even excuses, valid to a degree, that this whole clusterfuck in 404 was of Biden's doing may well be fast forgotten.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/11 ... -tune.html

******

Mikhail Khodarenok: Trump’s reported Ukraine peace plan is doomed to fail
November 14, 2024
By Mikhail Khodarenok, RT, 11/11/24

US President-elect Donald Trump and his advisers are apparently considering a new plan to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal last week.

The proposals allegedly include a freeze on military operations along the front line, the creation of a demilitarized zone, and a guarantee that Kiev won’t join NATO for at least 20 years. At the same time, the West would continue to supply Ukraine with weapons.

According to the newspaper, Trump’s promise to end the war by January’s Inauguration Day now puts him in the position of having to choose between competing proposals from advisers united by a common idea – a complete departure from current President Joe Biden’s plans to transfer arms and military equipment to Kiev for “as long as it takes.”

Throughout his election campaign, Trump sharply criticized Biden’s handling of Ukraine, warning that it brought closer the possibility of World War III, and that Kiev had cheated the US out of billions of dollars in free weapons.

Earlier this year, advisers Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz (who worked in Trump’s administration during his first term) presented a plan to reduce the supply of arms and military equipment to Ukraine until Kiev agreed to peace talks with Russia.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s sources, the new proposal to resolve the armed conflict includes several key points. In the most general terms, these boil down to the following:

They assume that hostilities will stop at the current milestones achieved by both sides of the conflict. This means freezing the front line and creating a demilitarized zone along it.

Russia will retain control over part of Ukraine’s claimed territory. For its part, Kiev must promise not to try to join NATO for the next two decades. In return, the US will continue to supply Ukraine with arms and military equipment. At the same time, according to the newspaper’s sources, Trump has not yet approved the final plan for resolving the conflict and intends to continue discussing it with his closest advisers.

What would the demilitarized zone look like?

The new settlement plan, details of which have been obtained by the WSJ, raises many questions. For a start, it is not even clear what the DMZ (demilitarized zone) would look like (at least its geometric dimensions should be specified) or whether it will extend, for example, to all the new regions of Russia (including the Crimean Peninsula).

According to the classic definition of a DMZ, military facilities on this territory must be removed, while the deployment of units and formations of armed forces, the fortification of the terrain, and the conduct of combat and operational training activities on it are prohibited. Most likely, Moscow and Kiev will stumble at the first point of the Trump plan and categorically reject the elimination of their military infrastructure.

Maintaining the security regime in the DMZ in this particular case will require, among other things, the presence of a contingent of peacekeepers (if only to separate the parties’ forces). Washington has already made it clear that the White House does not intend to send US military units to Ukraine for this purpose. Western European countries may then be involved instead. It is not yet possible to give clear answers to the many questions about the composition and size of any peacekeeping contingent, who would be in command and what the legal status of these forces might be.

Therefore, it is not difficult to use the term “demilitarized zone” but it seems to be problematic for the American side to describe how this will be implemented in practice and in detail.

What about legal status and NATO?

The next point in Trump’s plan is that “Russia will retain control over part of Ukrainian territory (sic).” It remains to be clarified which land, exactly, how its legal status could be described, and what is Kiev’s position on this issue (in other words, does Ukraine agree with this assumption in Trump’s plan?). Nothing is clear.

Next. According to the proposals, Ukraine will not try to join NATO for the next 20 years. At the very least, this thesis sounds pretty funny.

In other words, all responsibility in this matter is being shifted not onto Brussels and Washington, but onto Kiev. For example – we ask you not to apply to NATO. In short, “we’ll ask them not to lie, but they will lie.”

Again, why only 20 years? What is the justification for this particular timeframe? Where does it come from? Is it based on the title of Alexandre Dumas’ famous novel 1845 “Twenty Years After?”

And finally, in return, the US will continue to supply Ukraine with arms and military equipment. This is the most important point. Because if Washington stops supplying military equipment to Ukraine, the war will end tomorrow, without any demilitarized zones.

Is it possible to reach an agreement with Kiev?

The most important thing about Trump’s plan is that the authors don’t seem to have coordinated in any way with either Moscow or Kiev. And the Ukrainians will be the main problem, because the chief obstacle to the implementation of any peace initiatives is the absolutely insane and inadequate military-political leadership in Kiev (this can be judged with absolute certainty on the basis of all of their recent actions and steps, including the demands for Tomahawk missiles).

Just one example. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, after the US elections, outlined five ‘red lines’: no compromise on Ukraine’s independence, no return to “Russia’s zone of influence”; Kiev will never give up territories that have come under Russian control; Ukraine will not agree to ‘limit the capacity of its armed forces’ because they are ‘the most reliable and effective guarantor of the survival of the Ukrainian state’; until the ‘full liberation’ of its territory, Ukraine cannot ‘compromise or agree to lift sanctions.’

In fact, Poroshenko’s statements quite accurately reflect the mood of the Ukrainian political class and fully characterize Kiev’s policy as a set of statements that are absolutely not based on the real capabilities of the state, its forces and means.

That is why the first point of any peace plan by Trump should sound something like this: “First of all, we must bring to power in Kiev a leadership capable of fulfilling contracts. Most importantly, reasonable and appropriate people. Only then will negotiations and discussion of any positions be possible.”

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team:

https://www.gazeta.ru/army/2024/11/07/20041489.shtml

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2024/11/mik ... d-to-fail/

******

'Liquidation of the Russian Empire'

The 'Bandera Lobby' and a 'dangerously dumb delusion' (Pt 1-2)
Moss Robeson
Aug 11, 2024
This series of the “Bandera Lobby Blog” is the culmination of several posts from 2022-23, but hopefully this can also be a good place to start.

A New ABN? — Pt. 1, Pt. 2

The ‘Capitulation Resistance Movement’ — Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3 (TBC)

Banderite Memory Warriors — Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3 (TBC)

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“Bandera Readings” organizer Yuriy Syrotiuk: “Russia has seen its end”

‘Decolonizing Russia,’ Part One

Ten days before Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation,” Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader Yevhen Karas spoke excitedly about the possibility of full-scale war with Russia at the annual “Bandera Readings” in Kyiv. Ukraine, he said, would receive “so much weaponry, not because as some say, ‘the West is helping us,’ not because they want the best for us, but because … we have fun killing and we have fun fighting, and they’re like, ‘wow, let’s see what’s gonna happen’ … And now imagine Russia falls apart, turns into five different Russias or whatever.” In recent days, the “Nachtigall Battalion” of Karas’ 14th drone regiment, named after a Banderite unit in the Wehrmacht, has participated in Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, Russia, which is mainly known for being the site of one of the largest battles of World War II.

“Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the next imperialist structure to undergo a similar process will be the former RSFSR or what it known today as the Russian Federation.” This was the prediction made almost thirty years ago by Borys Potapenko of Warren, Michigan, who had already become a notable member of the OUN-B, or Banderite faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. In recent years, he was an international coordinator of the Banderite-led “Capitulation Resistance Movement” in Ukraine that threatened to overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky if he seriously negotiated with Putin (about NATO, Donbass, Crimea, etc).

Over a month before Russia invaded, the “Capitulation Resistance Movement” started to promote the revival of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), another far-right organization led by OUN-B members. The ABN (1946-96) was ostensibly a coordinating body of anti-communist movements, many of which collaborated with Nazi Germany, and regarded itself as the leadership of a revolutionary struggle against Russian imperialism. It considered World War III to be “inevitable” and represented the “subjugated nations” of the Soviet Union in the extremist World Anti-Communist League. Potapenko predicted Russia’s collapse in the ABN newsletter about a year before the ABN officially dissolved.

The Capitulation Resistance Movement mostly disappeared from the scene in 2022, after the existential threat of peace in Ukraine was extinguished. Some of its leaders refocused their attention on creating the new ABN, or “Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations,” with its goal being the “liquidation of the Russian empire.” Meanwhile, more prominent platforms started to promote the dismemberment of Russia.

In May 2022, the inaugural “Free Nations of Russia Forum” gathered several representatives of “non-Russian nations” in Warsaw. The most prominent speaker was Ilya Ponomarev, a shady Russian politician who went into exile in Ukraine — more about him next time. Paul Goble of the Jamestown Foundation commented that the meeting “recalls the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations during the Cold War era.” Rafis Kashapov, the so-called “Prime Minister of Independent Tatarstan,” sits on the Forum’s coordinating council. With two allies of OUN-B, he created “Free Idel-Ural,” an organization that co-founded the “Free Nations League” to represent the “non-Russian” peoples of Russia.

Later that month, a major U.S. magazine, The Atlantic, published “Decolonize Russia” by Casey Michel from the neoconservative Hudson Institute, which welcomed aboard Donald Trump’s former CIA director Mike Pompeo as a distinguished fellow in 2021. Michel reminded readers of Dick Cheney’s eternal wisdom. According to Robert Gates, after the USSR collapsed, Cheney “wanted to see the dismantlement … of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world.”

In June, Michel joined an online meeting of the Helsinki Commission, a U.S. government agency created by Congress, to discuss “Decolonizing Russia: A Moral and Strategic Imperative.” Hanna Hopko, a hardline Ukrainian politician, friend of the “Bandera Lobby,” and dreamer of “Idel-Ural” independence, also took part in this meeting led by commission co-chair Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN). “Russia certainly has issues where they have, in essence, colonized their own country,” said the Congressman from Tennessee, the name of which is Cherokee. “It’s not a strict nation in the sense we’ve known it in the past.”

The second Free Nations of Russia Forum met in Prague in July. Paul Goble and Janusz Bugajski, another analyst from the Jamestown Foundation, addressed the conference, if only online. Goble was “reminiscing on the annual Captive Nations Week,” and Bugajski presented his new book, Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture. Participants signed a “Declaration on the Decolonization of Russia,” according to which “the Russian Federation is already on the verge of chaos and civil war. Only a complete and controlled decolonization of Russia can prevent this.” During the Cold War, the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations insisted that World War III was “inevitable,” and only a “revolutionary” military struggle from within the Soviet Union, supported by NATO powers, could prevent a nuclear holocaust.

The next Forum in Gdansk changed its name to the “Free Nations of PostRussia.” Participants called on the West to “refuse support and any form of assistance to the imperial ‘opposition’ of ‘unified Russia’.” Instead, Russia should be divided into dozens of countries. “History has accelerated extremely today — therefore, we must also accelerate … a complete and irreversible Decolonization of the Russian Federation,” according to the “Gdansk Manifesto.”

As 2022 came to an end, the Hudson Institute published a policy memo by senior fellow Luke Coffey on “Preparing for the Final Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Dissolution of the Russian Federation.” Among his “planning assumptions,” Coffey wrote, “Policymakers should assume that further fragmentation of Russia will be more like Chechnya in 1994 (brutal conflict) than Estonia in 1991 (peaceful and straightforward).”

“Americans are not tired of forever wars. I think this has been a made up, inside the Beltway argument,” Coffey said at the latest conference in Washington organized by OUN-B affiliated officers of the Manhattan-based “ODFFU, Inc.” (The Organization for Defense of Four Freedoms of Ukraine, or ODFFU, is an important OUN-B front group.) At a 1985 ABN conference in London, dedicated in large part to the Reagan administration’s “Star Wars” program, an ODFFU leader of the “American Friends of the ABN” said that “Russia should withdraw to her ethnic boundaries, and in this way only, Russia will be preserved from, I would say, perhaps, from the holocaust.”

The Atlantic Council polled dozens of “experts” about their predictions for the next decade, and reported that “40 percent of respondents expect Russia to break up internally by 2033 because of revolution, civil war, political disintegration, or some other reason.” This alarmed think tanker Christopher McCallion, who wrote an article for The Hill (“Russian disintegration is a dangerously dumb delusion”) in which he pointed out some of the obvious problems with this scenario.

If careless statements promoting regime change are ill-advised, officially advocating for the breakup of Russia — let alone any material support for separatist movements within Russia — would be dangerous in the extreme. Perhaps even more threatening than a deliberate Russian response would be an actual crackup of the world’s largest nuclear power, in which command and control systems break down, while stockpiles and scientists seek out new masters. …

Even if Russia fractured without a nuclear catastrophe along the way, there’s little reason to think this would be to the geostrategic benefit of the United States, which faces a far more formidable challenge in a rising China. Were a series of new states to proliferate in Russia’s vast, resource rich but sparsely-populated east, they quite possibly would become satellites of China. …

Finally, the paternalistic impulse to break up someone else’s country could blow back on our own humble multiethnic empire. What if China or Russia tried to make us return the half of Mexico we annexed not so long ago — including California, now the world’s fourth largest economy? Or to give the rest of the country back to its original owners, who remain subject to the shockingly abject conditions of the reservation system? Would this solve our own country’s problem with repeated interventions abroad? Let’s remember the old adage involving stones and glass houses.


A more realistic threat posed by this “dangerously dumb delusion” is that it fans the fascistic flames of a stab-in-the-back myth, and empowers the Ukrainian far-right after Kyiv is forced to the negotiating table, or worse. Shortly before the above article was published, the European Parliament in Brussels hosted the fifth “PostRussia Forum.” In late 2022, a map of Russia partitioned appeared in the office of Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, with the new borders drawn by hand. A couple weeks later, Budanov turned 37, and carved a birthday cake of the same map. His spokesman is a former coordinator of the Capitulation Resistance Movement.

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Soon it was time for another “Bandera Readings.” The topic for 2023 was “The philosophy of Ukrainian victory. Visions of Greater Ukraine.” For the first time, the Information Agency of the Ministry of Defense sponsored this annual far-right event, which included speeches from the usual suspects and a communications officer from the Ukrainian General Staff. As always, the chief organizer was Yuriy Syrotiuk, one of the leaders of the Svoboda party, who is also an OUN-B member, and moderated the panel discussion with Yevhen Karas in February 2022.

‘Visions of Greater Ukraine,’ Part One

Last year Ukrainian nationalists celebrated the 150th birthday of their ideological great-grandfather Mykola Mikhnovsky, who dreamed of an ethnically pure Greater Ukraine “from the Carpathian Mountains to the Caucasus Mountains” in southern Russia. Because they still have influence in the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM), this government agency honored Mikhnovsky on social media, and invited followers to take an online quiz about him. Its Banderite deputy director joined a roundtable at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center (UCMC), which at least used to be funded by Western governments. The discussion was about “Apostles of Ukrainian Statehood” — Mykola Mikhnovsky and Dmytro Dontsov, the grandfather of genocidal Ukrainian fascism.

The Stepan Bandera National Revival Center, in other words, the OUN-B headquarters in Kyiv, was behind the UCMC roundtable in late March 2023. Up to four of the six speakers were OUN-B members:

Viktor Roh is obviously a leader of the OUN-B, as the longtime editor of its weekly newspaper, “The Way to Victory” (Shlach Peremohy), and the director of its Ukrainian Publishing House, which manages an online “Banderite Bookstore.” Although the OUN-B has become more moderate since World War II, one of its priorities is popularizing the far-right ideologues of the Nazi-era Ukrainian Nationalist movement. Earlier that month, the coordinator of the UCMC press center interviewed Roh. Wearing a hoodie of the OUN-B’s internationally active Ukrainian Youth Association, the Banderite editor reportedly said “our predecessors were right” that “it would be necessary to temporarily introduce a regime of dictatorship” after the victory of the “national revolution.”

Volodymyr Tylischak, deputy director of the UINM, is a periodic contributor to the OUN-B newspaper and part of the “Ukrainian Studies of Strategic Research” (USSD) that organizes the annual “Bandera Readings” under the leadership of his old friend, Yuriy Syrotiuk. The USSD team has other links to the far-right Svoboda party and the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, for example Bohdan Halayko, who heads the Central Interregional Department of the UINM. In 2019, Tylischak and Halayko celebrated the 65th anniversary of “The Way to Victory” at the OUN-B headquarters in Kyiv.

Leontiy Shipilov and Yuriy Yuzych were both “experts” for the Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition, the “largest and most visible reform network” in Ukraine since 2014, which was infiltrated by Banderites from the start. Shipilov is evidently an OUN-B member, but I’m not so sure about Yuzych. More about them in a future installment of this series.

Yuzych recorded a lecture for the UINM to commemorate the anniversary. Meanwhile, the far-right Kholodny Yar Historical Club, which works with the neo-Nazi publisher Marko Melnyk, organized a memorial concert at the relatively prestigious National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA). Viktor Roh and Yuriy Syrotiuk are members of the Kholodny Yar Historical Club, and Roh is on the editorial board of its newspaper. One event poster prominently featured the neo-Nazi symbol of the Azov movement.

Speakers included Serhiy Kvit, an important OUN-B member and president of NaUKMA who led the Ministry of Education (2014-16); Roman Koval, the head of the Kholodny Yar Historical Club; and Yuriy Yuzych, who worked with Koval to compile a huge collection of Mikhnovsky texts for the Marko Melnyk Publishing House. In 2021, a special edition of this 944-page book featured a Clockwork Orange-inspired cover from the neo-Nazi brand SvaStone, which made a similar shirt that says “READY FOR A BIT OF THE OLD UKRO VIOLENCE.”

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Roman Koval, friend of the Banderites, at the site of Mikhnovsky’s grave, July 2024. This summer, someone destroyed the QR-coded tombstone, sponsored by the Kholodny Yar Historical and Marko Melnyk Publishing House.

In mid-April 2023, Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov told ABC News that “the moment has come for this country [Russia] to collapse,” and the OUN-B announced the revival of the ABN as the “Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations.” Meanwhile, Foreign Policy published an article that warned, “talk of Russian disintegration in Western capitals could raise nationalistic fervor and make Russians rally behind Putin.”

Oleh Medunytsia, predicting that “our activities within the ABN will lead to the collapse of Russia,” embarked for the United States, to tour the Ukrainian American community as the new OUN-B leader, and participate in the next “PostRussia Forum,” which took place over four days in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York City. The Hudson Institute, the home of Trump’s former CIA director, hosted the DC portion of the event. In Manhattan, the OUN-B leader made the final speech of the conference (about reviving the ABN), and sat on a panel next to Austrian Twitter sensation Gunther Fehlinger, a clownish advocate for expanding NATO and dismembering Russia, China, and BRICS.

While Medunytsia completed his trip to the United States, the OUN-B organized a briefing at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center to kick off an “information-advocacy campaign” for the creation of a new holiday on May 23, the day that OUN founder Yevhen Konovalets was assassinated in 1938. The OUN-B founded the “Day of Heroes” in 1941, but it has never been enshrined at the state level.

Leontiy Shipilov wrote the official petition, which fell far short of the 25,000 digital signatures required to get a response from the presidential administration. Shipilov is apparently an OUN-B member, perhaps still a professor at NaUKMA, and formerly an official in the Security Service of Ukraine who more recently served on the Central Election Commission. Despite embodying the will of the nation, the Banderites collected less than 4,000 signatures.

Andriy Kovalov, a panelist at the “Day of Heroes” UCMC briefing, later became a spokesman for the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. Kovalov probably isn’t an OUN-B member, but belongs to the Kholodny Yar Historical Club.

The day before Medunytsia returned to Ukraine, on the symbolic date of May 9, the Banderites held a book launch event at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy for Janusz Bugajski of the Jamestown Foundation. “The Arc,” an online journal founded by OUN-B members (Ulana and Marko Suprun), published a Ukrainian translation of Bugajski’s Failed State. Deputy OUN-B leader Andriy Levus, the chief coordinator of the “Capitulation Resistance Movement,” appears to have attended the event with Ostap Kryvdyk, the former “International Secretary” of the “Resistance Movement.”

Levus and Kryvdyk, longtime assistants to far-right politician Andriy Parubiy, used to run an OUN-B front called the “Ukrainian Strategic Initiative” with Oleh Medunytsia and Borys Potapenko from Michigan. Among other things, they arranged annual trips to Ukraine for Republican think tankers that tend to speak at conferences in Washington organized by Banderite leaders of the aforementioned “ODFFU, Inc.” In September 2022, about a week after the “PostRussia Forum” got its new name, the Ukrainian Strategic Initiative officially joined Kyiv-Mohyla Academy under the leadership of Ostap Kryvdyk, who is not necessarily an OUN-B member. This NaUKMA think tank, which originated in an OUN-B front, even has a “PostRussia department,” led by another Banderite coordinator of the Capitulation Resistance Movement, who addressed the European Congress of Ukrainians this year.

OUN-B leader Oleh Medunytsia made it back just in time for another 150th anniversary Mikhnovsky memorial concert at the Lviv National Philharmonic Hall, which was organized by the Stepan Bandera National Revival Center. Medunytsia delivered the opening speech, followed by OUN-B newspaper editor Viktor Roh. Among the performers was Sofiya Fedyna, a nationalist member of parliament from the European Solidarity party. In 2019, Fedyna faced criminal charges after Zelensky made a tense visit to the frontline and she suggested that someone might kill the new president with a grenade.

To announce Ukraine’s much hyped 2023 counteroffensive, the commander-in-chief, Valerii Zaluzhny, released a high-quality propaganda video starring the Svoboda Battalion in an elite brigade of the National Guard. “The time has come to take back what belongs to us,” he captioned the video in late May. The OUN-B has at least two highly placed members in the far-right Svoboda party which created this unit. The head of political education is Yuriy Syrotiuk, and the chief ideologist is Oleksandr Sych, a former director of the Stepan Bandera National Revival Center.

As of this year, Syrotiuk is a vice president of the ABN. In 2015, he participated in clashes outside of the Ukrainian parliament building, and was arrested for “participating in mass disorder” after someone threw a grenade which killed several police officers and wounded “more than 140 people.” At that point, Svoboda was determined to stop parliament from granting autonomy to Donbass separatists as part of the Minsk peace process. Last year, Syrotiuk posed with the OUN-B newspaper as a grenade launcher operator in the 5th Assault Brigade. “The Irreversible Liquidation of the Russia Empire Has Begun,” or so he says, but what happens when Kyiv stops entertaining this fantasy?

https://banderalobby.substack.com/p/liq ... ian-empire
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Sun Nov 17, 2024 1:37 pm

The “Trump Threat”
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 11/17/2024

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“Trump threatens to be good for Ukraine,” reads the headline of Politico , a media outlet very close to the Democratic administration and which has supported the Western stance of staunch defense and military supplies to Ukraine since 2022. Although not all the names of those who will manage the implementation of the America First idea in its foreign policy version have yet been announced, the outlet cites a senior Ukrainian official who confirms that Kiev is “encouraged by the fact that there are hawks among them.” Among them are Marco Rubio, who did not distance himself from the idea of ​​increasing the volume of military assistance until he aspired to a position in Trump’s cabinet, or Michael Waltz, the foreseeable National Security Advisor, who hours before the election day called Russia a “gas station with nuclear weapons” and called for “unhandcuffing” Ukraine on the issue of the use of Western weapons on Russian territory.

The Politico article is representative of the current moment because of the changes that have occurred as a result of the international political situation and, above all, because of the obvious imbalance of forces on the front. Although support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had been as explicit as the campaign visit by Zelensky and Governor Shapiro (Democrat) of Pennsylvania to one of the factories that produce the ammunition that is later sent to Ukraine, an act that caused the anger of Donald Trump, Ukraine quickly changed the script to position itself as faithful followers of the idea of ​​peace through force that Zelensky had already strategically included in his speech. The logic that transcends the anonymous statements that Ukrainian officials are making in a coordinated and self-interested manner to the American media is that of breaking a status quo that was not satisfactory for Kiev, so the change may represent a turning point towards a more favorable situation. “At best, Harris would have maintained Joe Biden’s approach: that would have been her policy, and it would have been the slow death of Ukraine. And not so slow anymore: the pace of Russian advances is accelerating,” says Politico ’s source , adding an even more pessimistic scenario for Ukraine, that of the possibility that Harris would have won the presidency, but the Republican Party would control one of the legislative chambers, giving the opposition the ability to block and all kinds of incentives to sabotage government action. At least for the next two years, until the midterm elections are held, the Republican Party will enjoy relatively comfortable majorities in both chambers, meaning absolute executive and legislative control to approve or deny new funding or lift existing vetoes. In fact, that is the subtext of Ukraine’s current happiness, which has understood that it has more options to achieve what it asks for now than under another Democratic presidency.

“Trump has no intention of just throwing in the towel. He wants the war to end, but he’s not going to deprive Ukraine of weapons and supplies right now, because as a negotiator, he knows that a Ukrainian collapse would mean Putin would call the shots at the negotiating table,” Politico writes , reiterating that it quotes an insider in Trump’s circle as saying that the president-elect “prides himself on being a master dealmaker and doesn’t want to be seen making a lousy deal.” “President Trump is not going to let Vladimir Putin run roughshod over Ukraine,” Mike Pompeo, who will not serve in the next Republican administration, said on Monday, although his views are similar to those of several of the people Trump has proposed for senior positions. “Defunding the Ukrainians would do that, and his entire team will tell you as much. “It is not their modus operandi to allow that to happen,” insisted Pompeo, who, like Politico, does not dwell on the most important thing, the possibility of a repeat of what happened in his first term. At that time, it was Trump who approved the delivery of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, breaking with the Obama-Biden policy, which had refused to supply lethal weapons to Kiev, which had already signed the ceasefire required by the Minsk agreements. As then, the Ukrainian government seems confident in its possibilities of reaching an understanding that involves lifting the veto on the use of long-range Western weapons against targets on Russian territory in the name of peace through force.

In its attempt to consolidate Trump’s support, which Zelensky is beginning to claim he has – yesterday he insisted that Trump “is in favour of Ukraine” despite the fact that the president-elect explicitly refused to confirm this position after the meeting they held in September in New York – Ukraine is increasingly insisting on the need to “shorten the war”. “It is clear that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House. This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” said the Ukrainian president, who has been able to anticipate the political change that was foreseen in the United States.

“The Ukrainians need to make sure that Trump doesn’t see them as the obstacle to peace, and they shouldn’t be the first to say no, even when some silly ideas are thrown at them. They need the Russians to keep saying no to him, so that the Ukrainians look like the reasonable party. Then Trump will come to the conclusion that the only way to get the Russians to the table is to help the Ukrainians,” Politico writes, citing its source in Trump’s entourage. The attitude it describes is exactly the tactic that Ermak and Zelensky put in place with their bid for the peace summit and the victory plan , which modify the discourse by insisting on the need to achieve the end of the conflict without altering at all the terms they demand to achieve it. However, the superficial look at the Peace Formula can lead to the mistake of seeing a hint of realism, pragmatism and even a willingness to reach an agreement where there really is none.

This is demonstrated by the wave of indignation that has been produced in Kiev and among some of its main allies - from the Baltic countries to Boris Johnson - following the telephone conversation held on Friday between Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin. "The Ukrainian president says that Putin does not want to sit down to negotiate peace but to end his isolation," stated the EFE Agency yesterday when reporting on Zelensky's criticism of the hour-long conversation between the two presidents. In its article, the Spanish public agency does not explain the contradiction between the words of Ukraine, which both insists that Russia is completely isolated and demands sanctions because it is not. The difficulty of the situation, which in certain places - such as in Kurajovo and southern Donetsk in general - is already critical for Ukraine, and the neglect of its duties by the press, which prefers not to ask compromising questions, means that coherence in the discourse is not essential. Despite the apparent change of narrative, which simply adapts to political needs, the only red line in this war remains diplomacy.

However, despite the wishes and demands, when it comes to reaching a peace agreement, the reality on the ground is the most important factor - although not the only one, since the economic and political strength of the warring parties and the weight of the coalitions that support them are also factors to be taken into account. This was recalled yesterday by the French diplomat Gérard Araud. In response to the demand of the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs to give up negotiating with “a genocidal dictator” and to understand that “history continues to tell us that true peace can only be achieved by force”, Araud insisted that “history tells us that peace is always achieved through negotiations based on the balance of power on the battlefield”.

Araud’s dose of realism is no exception, and this week several media outlets have expressed similar views. The aforementioned Politico article is one more example, although in this case it is representative, since it represents a radical shift in the way the war has been described until now. Trump’s victory is not favorable to Ukraine because the new president can allow Kiev to use ATACMS, Storm Shadow or Scalp against targets in Russian territory, but because “Trump’s re-election has clearly exposed the folly of the West in promising to continue this war until Ukraine returns to its 1991 borders. Some leaders had also promised a quick entry into NATO, although that was never likely in the foreseeable future – if it is at all – with or without Trump in the White House.” Suddenly, “despite all the criticism about the US election and what it means for Ukraine, some European quarters – including Kiev – are secretly feeling relieved at the prospect of Trump ending the war,” a conflict that the article describes as “unwinnable” and that negotiation is the only way out.

Locked into a dead end, European leaders and even Zelensky can now take advantage of Trump’s arrival in the White House. “After all, if he succeeds, European leaders and American hawks will have an alibi, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will have cover from probably angry Ukrainian soldiers on the front line. Everyone will blame him for broken promises, the loss of Donbass and the continued annexation of Crimea, because that is what is needed to reach a deal. That, and an agreement that Ukraine will not enter NATO: neutrality will be a firm concession that Moscow will demand,” concludes Politico.

More than two years after the Russia-Ukraine negotiations broke down, the resolution that the article proposes as the most acceptable path is the renunciation of Crimea and Donbass and the acceptance of neutrality, exactly the same terms that Moscow offered Kiev in the Istanbul negotiations. As Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko showed in an article published by Foreign Policy last April and as Boris Johnson, David Arajamia, Gerhard Schröeder and Naftali Bennet have repeatedly admitted, the role of the West contributed to the fact that the dialogue had no chance of success. The Istanbul agreement, the basis on which Kiev and Moscow negotiated for months before the final break in June 2022, “outlined a multilateral framework that would require Western willingness to engage in diplomatic relations with Russia and to consider a genuine security guarantee for Ukraine. Neither of these things was a priority for the United States and its allies at the time.”

Two and a half years and thousands of deaths after that moment, when neither diplomacy nor peace were a priority, Trump's victory opens, according to some versions, the door to the possibility of negotiation on the same bases. If that moment comes - and there is no guarantee of it, since the Ukrainian demands have not changed and the peace through the force of Waltz, Rubio and Zelensky is more of a force than a peace - it will do so without the slightest self-criticism and without accepting that the conditions of an unwinnable war were already evident at that moment when diplomacy was abandoned in favor of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/11/17/la-amenaza-de-trump/

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of November 17, 2024) Main:

This morning, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a massive strike with long-range high-precision air and sea-based weapons and attack unmanned aerial vehicles on critical energy infrastructure facilities that supported the operation of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex and enterprises producing military products. All planned targets were hit.

The Russian Armed Forces damaged the infrastructure of military airfields and gas production facilities in Ukraine;

— A massive strike was launched against energy facilities that supported the Ukrainian military-industrial complex;

— The Russian air defence system shot down 4 Hammer aerial bombs and 108 Ukrainian UAVs in one day;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 520 servicemen and a tank in one day as a result of the actions of the "South" group;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 345 people in the area of ​​responsibility of the Central Group of Forces in one day.

— Units of the "East" group of forces continued to advance into the enemy's defensive gully, defeating the formations of the 120th, 123rd and 127th territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Novosyolka, Konstantinopol and Oktyabr of the Donetsk People's Republic. Two counterattacks of the assault groups of the 117th territorial defense brigade were repelled.

The enemy's losses amounted to 140 servicemen, a tank, two infantry fighting vehicles, a US-made HMMWV armored combat vehicle, eight cars and a 122 mm self-propelled artillery unit "Gvozdika".

▫️Units of the Center group of forces continued to advance deep into the enemy's defenses, inflicted losses on the manpower and equipment of the 100th , 117th mechanized , 68th infantry brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the 109th , 118th territorial defense brigades and the 14th National Guard brigade in the areas of the settlements of Shevchenko, Druzhba, Dzerzhinsk, Dachenskoye, Dimitrov, Mirolyubovka and Sukhoi Yar of the Donetsk People's Republic. Nine counterattacks by the 151st mechanized , 68th, 152nd ranger brigades , the 49th and 425th assault battalions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the 35th marine brigade , the 14th national guard brigade and the Lyut assault brigade of the national police of Ukraine were repelled. The enemy lost up to 345 servicemen, a tank, four US-made Kozak and MaxxPro armored combat vehicles, four cars and a 152 mm Msta-B howitzer.





▫️ Units of the "East" force group continued to advance into the enemy's defensive gully, defeating the 120th, 123rd and 127th territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Novosyolka, Konstantinopol and Oktyabr of the Donetsk People's Republic. Two counterattacks of the assault groups of the 117th territorial defense brigade were repelled.

The enemy's losses amounted to 140 servicemen, a tank, two infantry fighting vehicles, a US-made HMMWV armored combat vehicle, eight cars and a 122 mm self-propelled artillery unit "Gvozdika".

▫️Units of the Dnepr group of forces inflicted losses on the manpower and equipment of the 128th Mountain Assault , 41st Infantry , 110th Mechanized Brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the 103rd and 126th Territorial Defense Brigades in the areas of the settlements of Pyatikhatki, Nesteryanka in the Zaporizhia region, Yantarnoye, Olhovka and Kazatskoye in the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 80 servicemen, four vehicles and an electronic warfare station. A warehouse of unmanned boats was destroyed.

▫️ Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the groups of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation inflicted damage on the infrastructure of military airfields, gas production facilities, energy facilities used for the operation of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, a warehouse of unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 144 districts.

▫️ Air defense systems shot down four French-made Hammer guided aerial bombs , two US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system projectiles , and 108 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

▫️ Naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed four unmanned boats in the northwestern part of the Black Sea .

📊 In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 648 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 36,068 unmanned aerial vehicles, 586 anti-aircraft missile systems, 19,361 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,489 multiple launch rocket systems, 18,035 field artillery pieces and mortars, 28,465 units of special military vehicles.

***

Colonelcassad
This morning, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air and sea-based weapons and strike drones against critical energy infrastructure facilities that ensured the operation of Ukraine's military-industrial complex and enterprises producing military products. All planned targets were hit. (c) RF Ministry of Defense

The enemy states that serious damage has been caused to energy system facilities in a number of regions of Ukraine. There are interruptions in electricity and water supply. They also traditionally turned on the barrel organ that Russia still has enough missiles for several such strikes. Since 2022, nothing has changed in the presentation.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

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******

The US Presidential Election Through the Prism of the War in Ukraine
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 15, 2024
Dmitri Kovalevich

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Kurt Volker, former special representative of the US State Department for Ukraine during Trump’s presidency, recently made a number of statements anticipating that Trump will not talk about compromises; he will simply demand that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine. This will be no different from the stance of the Biden administration.

The November 5 presidential election in the United States overshadowed all other news reporting in Ukraine, including of the daily retreats by the Ukrainian armed forces along the front lines of the proxy war being waged by the NATO powers against Russia. Such extreme focus on a U.S. election is the consequence of Ukraine’s now-complete dependence on the U.S. hegemon.

Ukrainians were doubly interested in the US election because they themselves are now completely deprived of the right to elect their national legislature (the Verkhovna Rada) and their national president. Volodomyr Zelensky’s presidential mandate, stemming from the restricted election of April 2019, expired six months ago, while the electoral mandates also from 2019 of the deputies to the Rada expired five months ago.

Today, the policies of US ruling circles, irrespective of party affiliation, determine how many Ukrainians will live, how many of their cities will be damaged or destroyed, and whether an elderly man or woman will receive their pension or be able to heat their homes. Everything for ordinary Ukrainians now depends on the United States and the European powers aligned with it—the price of bread, how much forested lands will be clear-cut to benefit foreign firms, how much arable land (the country’s principle patrimony) will be privatized and sold to foreign buyers, and the list goes on.

In order to pay for the war against Russia, more and more loans from Western financial institutions are being undertaken by the government in Kiev. At the same time, it is raising taxes and cutting vital government services such as education, health care and social welfare. This present war has been a downward spiral encouraged by the Western powers ever since the coup in Kiev in February 2014.

Today’s crisis situation in Ukraine is the culmination of 33 years of failed ‘independence’. In 1991, the Soviet republic of Ukraine ended its status as a constituent of the Soviet Union. It voted to secede from the union of Soviet Socialist Republics and embark upon a path of capitalist restoration. The vote began a long slide towards total economic and political dependence on the United States and the capitalist countries of the European Union. There was opposition by the Ukraine population to this political and economic course, but it was weak and in disarray at the beginning. Later, it was largely taken by surprise by the violence of the far-right in Ukraine. First, there was the violence of the ‘Euromaidan’ coup in February 2014, then followed the far right’s fateful turn to civil war in the Donbass region in order to crush the anti-coup protest movement that arose there.

Crimea was the region of strongest opposition in Ukraine to the 2014 coup. This was due to the peninsula’s unique history as an autonomous Russian and Soviet territory, and due to the fact that it had retained institutions of autonomous political powers after it was ‘joined’ to Soviet Ukraine in 1954 (with little popular consultation and no referendum vote). Opposition to the 2014 coup was slower to develop in Donbass because there were no autonomous political institutions to which the population could turn for protection–the tragic consequences of which would soon become evident.

Shifting allegiances to the US party in power

In 2014 and after, most of the Ukrainian political and economic elites favored a Democratic Party being in power in Washington. Republican Party supporters in Ukraine were in a clear minority. That began to change on January 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump staged a riot in Washington DC to protest their loss in the presidential election two months earlier. Overnight, it seemed, most Ukrainian legislators became Trump supporters, believing that he would support and encourage a more aggressive stance against Russia. (As it turned out, the Democratic Party under Joseph Biden proved every bit as aggressive as his Trump predecessor.)

At the time, the varying factions of the Ukrainian elite were worried of the possibility of ongoing political turbulence and civil confrontation in the US. They feared this would cause the government in Washington to lose its attention on Ukraine and perhaps even begin reducing its financial support and weapons supplies.

Although US foreign policy never changes with a change of president, election moments can cause disruptions. Puppet leaders in overseas countries might step down in order to serve perceived public relations objectives in the U.S. or among its allies. Financial and military assistance may be shuffled in the interest of influencing electoral opinion domestically or abroad. The Ukrainian leadership is in a constant state of worry that this or that economic project or arms supply pipeline may be changed or canceled should an election in the United States upend an established political order.

Ukraine’s leadership hoped that Kamala Harris would win the November 5 election and continue the Biden administration’s policy of supplying Kiev with money and arms. As for Trump, Kiev was concerned about his election campaign rhetoric, including his claim he could quickly end the war with Russia should he win the election, and his insistence that elections take place in Ukraine. Trump has even mused about reducing new loans to Ukraine and demanding a harsh repayment schedule for previous loans already undertaken.

Back in June 2024, Zelensky proclaimed that Trump would be a ‘loser president‘ if he imposed a bad peace agreement on Kiev. Today, Zelensky is begrudgingly congratulating Trump on his stunning election victory. On November 6, Marian Zablotskyy, a legislator from Zelensky’s ‘Servant of the People’ election party/machine went further, servilely suggesting that a monument to Ronald Reagan be erected in Kiev and that a wall mural of Donald Trump be commissioned.

On November 7, Trump’s name was deleted from the notorious ‘Myrotvorets‘ website maintained by the neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine. The site is used to threaten and blacklist so-called ‘enemies’ of the country. It lists names and other personal information of targeted individuals in Ukraine and abroad, with nearly 200,000 names appearing on it, according to Wikipedia.

In April 2015, two Ukrainian journalists were assassinated after their names appeared on the list. The High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations has called for a formal judicial investigation into the Myrotvorets backlist/kill list, but the website still operates freely.

Ukraine’s online Strana news outlet wrote on November 7 that “pilgrims” from both the Ukrainian government and from other interested parties in the country are already traveling to Washington in order to establish contact with the Trump transition team and lobby for their particular interests.

So far, explains Kiev political scientist Pavlo Sebastianovych, money continues to flow to Kiev in huge streams, but ordinary Ukrainians or soldiers of the Ukrainian army receive little or none of it. “Ukraine is full of money,” he writes. “The West is pouring some 40 to 50 billion dollars a year into the country without demanding anything in return. It just gives us this money. Funds are already promised and allocated for 2025. Officials will continue to bathe in the luxury; almost nothing is allocated for armaments. Our troops are fighting without weapons, and unarmed and poorly trained people continue to be mobilized and sent to the front.”

Several months ago, Trump publicly criticized Zelensky for constantly asking for more funding for his war effort. Trump said back in September, “I think Zelensky is the greatest salesman in history. Every time he comes into our country, he walks away with $60 billion.”

On November 6, Politico columnist Jack Detch reported that the Biden administration is rushing to deliver to Ukraine the last $6 billion tranche of aid already promised.

How to rename a failure into a ‘success’

Volodymyr Zelensky told a press conference in late October that the Western powers will be reluctant to continue supplying Ukraine with weapons without seeing desired results on the battlegrounds. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have been steadily retreating for several months now. “It will be difficult for us to continue receiving large volumes of weapons and strong support from our partners. They want to see a really strong army fighting against the Russian occupier, then they will support us. This is a fact. Whether it is fair or not, timely or untimely, this is another question. The main thing they want to see is results.”

According to Zelensky, the setbacks being suffered by the Ukrainian army are due to shortages of troops. His call for “results”, then, is little more than a call for yet more of his administration’s forcible conscription of men over the age of 25. What’s more, members of his government are calling for the age of conscription to be lowered to 18, echoing such calls coming from officials in Washington.

Ukrainian journalist Vlasta Lazur at the Western government-financed Radio Liberty has written recently that Ukrainian servicemen have been banned from using the word “retreat” when talking to media. According to her, the servicemen have been ordered to use the words “victory” and “going forward” to describe Ukraine’s ongoing military operations. They are forbidden to pronounce the word “retreat” or anything resembling it. Lazur reports the comment of one Ukrainian military officer, who asked tongue-in-cheek, “So I should now say we are advancing on Dnieper city?” Dnieper (renamed ‘Dnipro’ under Ukraine’s policy of eradicating the Russian presence in Ukraine history) is the fourth largest city in Ukraine and lies well behind the lines of Ukraine’s military front lines across Donbas, south and east of the Dnieper River.

Ukraine legislator Alexander Dubinsky writes that Kiev has only enough military conscripts and recruits to last another six to twelve months of war. Citing the New York Times, he writes that Ukraine will thus continue to get its hands on some one billion US dollars of aid per month, and they will not easily give up the prospect of the total six to 12 billion that the West will provide. But for the aid to continue flowing, it is necessary to create the appearance of success, at least in media reports and official statements.

To this end, Zelensky issued instructions in late October to create an additional military plan for ‘victory’, calling it an “internal victory plan”, to be added to the ‘victory plan’ announced to the world one month ago.

The first point of the new plan is to counter ‘disinformation’, says presidential communications advisor Dmytro Lytvyn. “The first task is, of course, countering disinformation. The president has determined that controlling information is where everything starts. If the people of Ukraine do not understand what is happening, or if partners do not understand the position of Ukraine, then other points of a victory plan will be difficult to implement.”

Lytvyn says the plan’s second point is “to make the activities of the state understandable both for our people and for our partners.”

In other words, the new ‘victory plan’ is solely concerned with information manipulation, attempting to deceive Western partners and domestic audiences by claiming everywhere that Ukraine is meeting successes on the front. Left unsaid is that in the age of social media and the Internet, it is difficult for the Ukraine government to hide the true state of affairs in its war. Ukrainian servicemen regularly report on social media the creeping collapse of Ukraine’s war effort, one day on this front, the next day on that front. Hence the drive of Kiev’s special civilian and military police services to strengthen their control over information.

Artem Dmytruk, a fugitive legislator from Zelensky’s party, commented on the plan on Telegram on October 31, “They don’t even hide it anymore: they announce to the whole country that they will either kill dissenters or torture them in basements. As for journalists and opposition politicians, we will send them to prison for treason. Broadcast media that does not obey the rules will be closed.”

What Trump’s election victory means for Kiev

Trump’s pre-election statements on the conflict in Ukraine should be perceived primarily as rank populism. During his previous term as president, he encouraged the war against the people of Donbass that was initiated in 2014 by the coup regime in Kiev. This was five years before Zelensky came upon the scene, appearing to be critical of the war but continuing it once elected. Kiev was generously supplied with weapons by the Trump administration; indeed, it was Trump who in 2017 approved the first shipments of advanced missiles and artillery to Kiev.

Kurt Volker, former special representative of the US State Department for Ukraine during Trump’s presidency, recently made a number of statements anticipating what Trump will do in Ukraine should he be elected president. Volker said Trump will not talk about compromises; he will simply demand that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine. This will be no different from the stance of the Biden administration.

According to Strana, the Republican Party during the previous Trump presidency was a ‘war party’. Its nominees filled key positions in the State Department and were responsible for the war agenda for Ukraine. It was on their watch that the 2015 Minsk 2 peace agreement was ultimately betrayed and buried. Minsk 2 provided for a reintegration into Ukraine of the rebellious, anti-coup ‘oblasts’ (provinces) of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region, with a new, semi-autonomous status. Kurt Volker played a key role in the talks that produced Minsk 2.

The Trump-led Republicans have long criticized the Biden administration for allowing China and Russia to develop closer economic and political ties. Trump considers China to be the ‘main’ economic and military adversary of the US imperialists, so one of the features of any talks with Russia over Ukraine will be efforts to weaken Russia-China ties. A key goal would be to weaken the emerging BRICS bloc of countries (in which Russia and China happen to be playing leading roles).

Russia’s Foreign Ministry explains that it has no illusions about Trump. He is “well known in Russia”, says the Ministry. “The ruling US political elite, regardless of party affiliation, adheres to an anti-Russian stance and a policy of ‘containing Moscow’. This policy is not subject to fluctuations in the domestic political climate in the US, whether it’s the ‘America first’ agenda as interpreted by Trump and his supporters or the ‘rules-based world order’ on which the Democrats are fixated.”

To this should be added the fact that historically, it has been Republican Party operatives who have acted as the main lobbyists for the US military-industrial complex, which is today one of the main beneficiaries of the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian experts suggest that Trump will also seek to weaken the Russian Federation by lowering oil prices, using his good relations with the leaders of Saudi Arabia for this purpose.

“It is in Washington’s interest to weaken the strategic alliance between Moscow and Beijing, if not to break it up altogether,” commented the Ukrainian Telegram channel ‘Rubicon’ on Trump’s election. “This is axiomatic. In a world made up of three geopolitical monsters, two cannot be allowed to unite against the third. The Democrats under Biden allowed this to happen and now they have lost everything, including power in their own country.”

Nevertheless, it will be difficult to change anything drastically in this regard, as the processes that caused the war in Ukraine and led to Russia’s rapprochement with China cannot be ignored or dismissed. The authors of ‘Rubicon’ also admit that the Trump administration will try to shift much of the burden of financing Ukraine and the NATO proxy war onto the shoulders of the leading countries of the European Union. This will only weaken the EU itself.

Western aid for Ukraine will continue to be crafted in a way that will indebt not only Ukraine but also the countries of the EU. All of this is to the benefit of the leading Western financial institutions.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/11/ ... n-ukraine/

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The cycle of lies from Seversk: the finale (?)
November 16, 2024
Rybar

Unexpectedly, very unusual news came from the Seversky direction , although again connected with the fake capture of settlements. This time, positive .

Several commanders in this area were detained and removed from their positions due to deception of the higher command . We are talking about some commanders from the 3rd Army units : some were detained and arrested, some were removed or transferred to a lower position. The event affected several brigade and battalion commanders.

This, as we wrote, was expressed in “occupation” exclusively on the Internet through friendly bloggers and war correspondents of Serebryanka, Grigorovka , Belogorovka and Verkhnekamenskoye , and also, apparently, Vyemka (as well as feverish attempts to recapture it).

Unfortunately, there was no immediate reaction: the system is “inert”, and perceives attempts to expose the lies as “pressure” (the principle “if they criticize, it means I’m doing everything right”). As a result, the initial reports of, to put it mildly, “problems” (although this could be called outright outrage) ultimately resulted in nothing: commanders of various ranks synchronized their watches and continued to fool high headquarters. At least after that scandal there were no statements about the liberation of new settlements (and that’s a joy).

As a result, everything turned out to be much more prosaic: higher-ups arrived and wanted to visit the "liberated" Belogorovka , which was already supposedly deep in the rear, since Grigorovka and Serebryanka were supposedly taken. And only then did the scale of the deception become clear, which went not only to the media, but also to higher headquarters.

Moreover, the lies were not only not just in the reports, but also “covered up”. Correspondents were invited to the positions, who interviewed the fighters who boasted about the media capture of non-existent villages.

Of course, there is an opinion on the Internet that they allegedly managed to take some positions, then the enemy counterattacked, after which they had to abandon them. However, in reality, there was no talk of any capture - neither then nor now.

And now, regardless of whether the voice of those crying in the wilderness was heard, or the deception was actually discovered by accident, the activities of at least some of those responsible have already attracted the attention of the relevant services. And questions about both the senseless waste of personnel in unprepared assaults and the grinding down of armored groups month after month on the same stronghold, we very much hope, will be raised at the very top.

https://rybar.ru/krugovorot-vranya-iz-p ... ska-final/

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

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Sun Nov 17, 2024 2:18 pm

The “Trump Threat”
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 11/17/2024

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“Trump threatens to be good for Ukraine,” reads the headline of Politico , a media outlet very close to the Democratic administration and which has supported the Western stance of staunch defense and military supplies to Ukraine since 2022. Although not all the names of those who will manage the implementation of the America First idea in its foreign policy version have yet been announced, the outlet cites a senior Ukrainian official who confirms that Kiev is “encouraged by the fact that there are hawks among them.” Among them are Marco Rubio, who did not distance himself from the idea of ​​increasing the volume of military assistance until he aspired to a position in Trump’s cabinet, or Michael Waltz, the foreseeable National Security Advisor, who hours before the election day called Russia a “gas station with nuclear weapons” and called for “unhandcuffing” Ukraine on the issue of the use of Western weapons on Russian territory.

The Politico article is representative of the current moment because of the changes that have occurred as a result of the international political situation and, above all, because of the obvious imbalance of forces on the front. Although support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had been as explicit as the campaign visit by Zelensky and Governor Shapiro (Democrat) of Pennsylvania to one of the factories that produce the ammunition that is later sent to Ukraine, an act that caused the anger of Donald Trump, Ukraine quickly changed the script to position itself as faithful followers of the idea of ​​peace through force that Zelensky had already strategically included in his speech. The logic that transcends the anonymous statements that Ukrainian officials are making in a coordinated and self-interested manner to the American media is that of breaking a status quo that was not satisfactory for Kiev, so the change may represent a turning point towards a more favorable situation. “At best, Harris would have maintained Joe Biden’s approach: that would have been her policy, and it would have been the slow death of Ukraine. And not so slow anymore: the pace of Russian advances is accelerating,” says Politico ’s source , adding an even more pessimistic scenario for Ukraine, that of the possibility that Harris would have won the presidency, but the Republican Party would control one of the legislative chambers, giving the opposition the ability to block and all kinds of incentives to sabotage government action. At least for the next two years, until the midterm elections are held, the Republican Party will enjoy relatively comfortable majorities in both chambers, meaning absolute executive and legislative control to approve or deny new funding or lift existing vetoes. In fact, that is the subtext of Ukraine’s current happiness, which has understood that it has more options to achieve what it asks for now than under another Democratic presidency.

“Trump has no intention of just throwing in the towel. He wants the war to end, but he’s not going to deprive Ukraine of weapons and supplies right now, because as a negotiator, he knows that a Ukrainian collapse would mean Putin would call the shots at the negotiating table,” Politico writes , reiterating that it quotes an insider in Trump’s circle as saying that the president-elect “prides himself on being a master dealmaker and doesn’t want to be seen making a lousy deal.” “President Trump is not going to let Vladimir Putin run roughshod over Ukraine,” Mike Pompeo, who will not serve in the next Republican administration, said on Monday, although his views are similar to those of several of the people Trump has proposed for senior positions. “Defunding the Ukrainians would do that, and his entire team will tell you as much. “It is not their modus operandi to allow that to happen,” insisted Pompeo, who, like Politico, does not dwell on the most important thing, the possibility of a repeat of what happened in his first term. At that time, it was Trump who approved the delivery of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, breaking with the Obama-Biden policy, which had refused to supply lethal weapons to Kiev, which had already signed the ceasefire required by the Minsk agreements. As then, the Ukrainian government seems confident in its possibilities of reaching an understanding that involves lifting the veto on the use of long-range Western weapons against targets on Russian territory in the name of peace through force.

In its attempt to consolidate Trump’s support, which Zelensky is beginning to claim he has – yesterday he insisted that Trump “is in favour of Ukraine” despite the fact that the president-elect explicitly refused to confirm this position after the meeting they held in September in New York – Ukraine is increasingly insisting on the need to “shorten the war”. “It is clear that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House. This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” said the Ukrainian president, who has been able to anticipate the political change that was foreseen in the United States.

“The Ukrainians need to make sure that Trump doesn’t see them as the obstacle to peace, and they shouldn’t be the first to say no, even when some silly ideas are thrown at them. They need the Russians to keep saying no to him, so that the Ukrainians look like the reasonable party. Then Trump will come to the conclusion that the only way to get the Russians to the table is to help the Ukrainians,” Politico writes, citing its source in Trump’s entourage. The attitude it describes is exactly the tactic that Ermak and Zelensky put in place with their bid for the peace summit and the victory plan , which modify the discourse by insisting on the need to achieve the end of the conflict without altering at all the terms they demand to achieve it. However, the superficial look at the Peace Formula can lead to the mistake of seeing a hint of realism, pragmatism and even a willingness to reach an agreement where there really is none.

This is demonstrated by the wave of indignation that has been produced in Kiev and among some of its main allies - from the Baltic countries to Boris Johnson - following the telephone conversation held on Friday between Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin. "The Ukrainian president says that Putin does not want to sit down to negotiate peace but to end his isolation," stated the EFE Agency yesterday when reporting on Zelensky's criticism of the hour-long conversation between the two presidents. In its article, the Spanish public agency does not explain the contradiction between the words of Ukraine, which both insists that Russia is completely isolated and demands sanctions because it is not. The difficulty of the situation, which in certain places - such as in Kurajovo and southern Donetsk in general - is already critical for Ukraine, and the neglect of its duties by the press, which prefers not to ask compromising questions, means that coherence in the discourse is not essential. Despite the apparent change of narrative, which simply adapts to political needs, the only red line in this war remains diplomacy.

However, despite the wishes and demands, when it comes to reaching a peace agreement, the reality on the ground is the most important factor - although not the only one, since the economic and political strength of the warring parties and the weight of the coalitions that support them are also factors to be taken into account. This was recalled yesterday by the French diplomat Gérard Araud. In response to the demand of the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs to give up negotiating with “a genocidal dictator” and to understand that “history continues to tell us that true peace can only be achieved by force”, Araud insisted that “history tells us that peace is always achieved through negotiations based on the balance of power on the battlefield”.

Araud’s dose of realism is no exception, and this week several media outlets have expressed similar views. The aforementioned Politico article is one more example, although in this case it is representative, since it represents a radical shift in the way the war has been described until now. Trump’s victory is not favorable to Ukraine because the new president can allow Kiev to use ATACMS, Storm Shadow or Scalp against targets in Russian territory, but because “Trump’s re-election has clearly exposed the folly of the West in promising to continue this war until Ukraine returns to its 1991 borders. Some leaders had also promised a quick entry into NATO, although that was never likely in the foreseeable future – if it is at all – with or without Trump in the White House.” Suddenly, “despite all the criticism about the US election and what it means for Ukraine, some European quarters – including Kiev – are secretly feeling relieved at the prospect of Trump ending the war,” a conflict that the article describes as “unwinnable” and that negotiation is the only way out.

Locked into a dead end, European leaders and even Zelensky can now take advantage of Trump’s arrival in the White House. “After all, if he succeeds, European leaders and American hawks will have an alibi, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will have cover from probably angry Ukrainian soldiers on the front line. Everyone will blame him for broken promises, the loss of Donbass and the continued annexation of Crimea, because that is what is needed to reach a deal. That, and an agreement that Ukraine will not enter NATO: neutrality will be a firm concession that Moscow will demand,” concludes Politico.

More than two years after the Russia-Ukraine negotiations broke down, the resolution that the article proposes as the most acceptable path is the renunciation of Crimea and Donbass and the acceptance of neutrality, exactly the same terms that Moscow offered Kiev in the Istanbul negotiations. As Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko showed in an article published by Foreign Policy last April and as Boris Johnson, David Arajamia, Gerhard Schröeder and Naftali Bennet have repeatedly admitted, the role of the West contributed to the fact that the dialogue had no chance of success. The Istanbul agreement, the basis on which Kiev and Moscow negotiated for months before the final break in June 2022, “outlined a multilateral framework that would require Western willingness to engage in diplomatic relations with Russia and to consider a genuine security guarantee for Ukraine. Neither of these things was a priority for the United States and its allies at the time.”

Two and a half years and thousands of deaths after that moment, when neither diplomacy nor peace were a priority, Trump's victory opens, according to some versions, the door to the possibility of negotiation on the same bases. If that moment comes - and there is no guarantee of it, since the Ukrainian demands have not changed and the peace through the force of Waltz, Rubio and Zelensky is more of a force than a peace - it will do so without the slightest self-criticism and without accepting that the conditions of an unwinnable war were already evident at that moment when diplomacy was abandoned in favor of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/11/17/la-amenaza-de-trump/

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******

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of November 17, 2024) Main:

This morning, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a massive strike with long-range high-precision air and sea-based weapons and attack unmanned aerial vehicles on critical energy infrastructure facilities that supported the operation of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex and enterprises producing military products. All planned targets were hit.

The Russian Armed Forces damaged the infrastructure of military airfields and gas production facilities in Ukraine;

— A massive strike was launched against energy facilities that supported the Ukrainian military-industrial complex;

— The Russian air defence system shot down 4 Hammer aerial bombs and 108 Ukrainian UAVs in one day;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 520 servicemen and a tank in one day as a result of the actions of the "South" group;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 345 people in the area of ​​responsibility of the Central Group of Forces in one day.

— Units of the "East" group of forces continued to advance into the enemy's defensive gully, defeating the formations of the 120th, 123rd and 127th territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Novosyolka, Konstantinopol and Oktyabr of the Donetsk People's Republic. Two counterattacks of the assault groups of the 117th territorial defense brigade were repelled.

The enemy's losses amounted to 140 servicemen, a tank, two infantry fighting vehicles, a US-made HMMWV armored combat vehicle, eight cars and a 122 mm self-propelled artillery unit "Gvozdika".

▫️Units of the Center group of forces continued to advance deep into the enemy's defenses, inflicted losses on the manpower and equipment of the 100th , 117th mechanized , 68th infantry brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the 109th , 118th territorial defense brigades and the 14th National Guard brigade in the areas of the settlements of Shevchenko, Druzhba, Dzerzhinsk, Dachenskoye, Dimitrov, Mirolyubovka and Sukhoi Yar of the Donetsk People's Republic. Nine counterattacks by the 151st mechanized , 68th, 152nd ranger brigades , the 49th and 425th assault battalions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the 35th marine brigade , the 14th national guard brigade and the Lyut assault brigade of the national police of Ukraine were repelled. The enemy lost up to 345 servicemen, a tank, four US-made Kozak and MaxxPro armored combat vehicles, four cars and a 152 mm Msta-B howitzer.





▫️ Units of the "East" force group continued to advance into the enemy's defensive gully, defeating the 120th, 123rd and 127th territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Novosyolka, Konstantinopol and Oktyabr of the Donetsk People's Republic. Two counterattacks of the assault groups of the 117th territorial defense brigade were repelled.

The enemy's losses amounted to 140 servicemen, a tank, two infantry fighting vehicles, a US-made HMMWV armored combat vehicle, eight cars and a 122 mm self-propelled artillery unit "Gvozdika".

▫️Units of the Dnepr group of forces inflicted losses on the manpower and equipment of the 128th Mountain Assault , 41st Infantry , 110th Mechanized Brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the 103rd and 126th Territorial Defense Brigades in the areas of the settlements of Pyatikhatki, Nesteryanka in the Zaporizhia region, Yantarnoye, Olhovka and Kazatskoye in the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 80 servicemen, four vehicles and an electronic warfare station. A warehouse of unmanned boats was destroyed.

▫️ Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the groups of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation inflicted damage on the infrastructure of military airfields, gas production facilities, energy facilities used for the operation of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, a warehouse of unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 144 districts.

▫️ Air defense systems shot down four French-made Hammer guided aerial bombs , two US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system projectiles , and 108 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

▫️ Naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed four unmanned boats in the northwestern part of the Black Sea .

📊 In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 648 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 36,068 unmanned aerial vehicles, 586 anti-aircraft missile systems, 19,361 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,489 multiple launch rocket systems, 18,035 field artillery pieces and mortars, 28,465 units of special military vehicles.

***

Colonelcassad
This morning, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air and sea-based weapons and strike drones against critical energy infrastructure facilities that ensured the operation of Ukraine's military-industrial complex and enterprises producing military products. All planned targets were hit. (c) RF Ministry of Defense

The enemy states that serious damage has been caused to energy system facilities in a number of regions of Ukraine. There are interruptions in electricity and water supply. They also traditionally turned on the barrel organ that Russia still has enough missiles for several such strikes. Since 2022, nothing has changed in the presentation.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

******

The US Presidential Election Through the Prism of the War in Ukraine
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 15, 2024
Dmitri Kovalevich

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Kurt Volker, former special representative of the US State Department for Ukraine during Trump’s presidency, recently made a number of statements anticipating that Trump will not talk about compromises; he will simply demand that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine. This will be no different from the stance of the Biden administration.

The November 5 presidential election in the United States overshadowed all other news reporting in Ukraine, including of the daily retreats by the Ukrainian armed forces along the front lines of the proxy war being waged by the NATO powers against Russia. Such extreme focus on a U.S. election is the consequence of Ukraine’s now-complete dependence on the U.S. hegemon.

Ukrainians were doubly interested in the US election because they themselves are now completely deprived of the right to elect their national legislature (the Verkhovna Rada) and their national president. Volodomyr Zelensky’s presidential mandate, stemming from the restricted election of April 2019, expired six months ago, while the electoral mandates also from 2019 of the deputies to the Rada expired five months ago.

Today, the policies of US ruling circles, irrespective of party affiliation, determine how many Ukrainians will live, how many of their cities will be damaged or destroyed, and whether an elderly man or woman will receive their pension or be able to heat their homes. Everything for ordinary Ukrainians now depends on the United States and the European powers aligned with it—the price of bread, how much forested lands will be clear-cut to benefit foreign firms, how much arable land (the country’s principle patrimony) will be privatized and sold to foreign buyers, and the list goes on.

In order to pay for the war against Russia, more and more loans from Western financial institutions are being undertaken by the government in Kiev. At the same time, it is raising taxes and cutting vital government services such as education, health care and social welfare. This present war has been a downward spiral encouraged by the Western powers ever since the coup in Kiev in February 2014.

Today’s crisis situation in Ukraine is the culmination of 33 years of failed ‘independence’. In 1991, the Soviet republic of Ukraine ended its status as a constituent of the Soviet Union. It voted to secede from the union of Soviet Socialist Republics and embark upon a path of capitalist restoration. The vote began a long slide towards total economic and political dependence on the United States and the capitalist countries of the European Union. There was opposition by the Ukraine population to this political and economic course, but it was weak and in disarray at the beginning. Later, it was largely taken by surprise by the violence of the far-right in Ukraine. First, there was the violence of the ‘Euromaidan’ coup in February 2014, then followed the far right’s fateful turn to civil war in the Donbass region in order to crush the anti-coup protest movement that arose there.

Crimea was the region of strongest opposition in Ukraine to the 2014 coup. This was due to the peninsula’s unique history as an autonomous Russian and Soviet territory, and due to the fact that it had retained institutions of autonomous political powers after it was ‘joined’ to Soviet Ukraine in 1954 (with little popular consultation and no referendum vote). Opposition to the 2014 coup was slower to develop in Donbass because there were no autonomous political institutions to which the population could turn for protection–the tragic consequences of which would soon become evident.

Shifting allegiances to the US party in power

In 2014 and after, most of the Ukrainian political and economic elites favored a Democratic Party being in power in Washington. Republican Party supporters in Ukraine were in a clear minority. That began to change on January 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump staged a riot in Washington DC to protest their loss in the presidential election two months earlier. Overnight, it seemed, most Ukrainian legislators became Trump supporters, believing that he would support and encourage a more aggressive stance against Russia. (As it turned out, the Democratic Party under Joseph Biden proved every bit as aggressive as his Trump predecessor.)

At the time, the varying factions of the Ukrainian elite were worried of the possibility of ongoing political turbulence and civil confrontation in the US. They feared this would cause the government in Washington to lose its attention on Ukraine and perhaps even begin reducing its financial support and weapons supplies.

Although US foreign policy never changes with a change of president, election moments can cause disruptions. Puppet leaders in overseas countries might step down in order to serve perceived public relations objectives in the U.S. or among its allies. Financial and military assistance may be shuffled in the interest of influencing electoral opinion domestically or abroad. The Ukrainian leadership is in a constant state of worry that this or that economic project or arms supply pipeline may be changed or canceled should an election in the United States upend an established political order.

Ukraine’s leadership hoped that Kamala Harris would win the November 5 election and continue the Biden administration’s policy of supplying Kiev with money and arms. As for Trump, Kiev was concerned about his election campaign rhetoric, including his claim he could quickly end the war with Russia should he win the election, and his insistence that elections take place in Ukraine. Trump has even mused about reducing new loans to Ukraine and demanding a harsh repayment schedule for previous loans already undertaken.

Back in June 2024, Zelensky proclaimed that Trump would be a ‘loser president‘ if he imposed a bad peace agreement on Kiev. Today, Zelensky is begrudgingly congratulating Trump on his stunning election victory. On November 6, Marian Zablotskyy, a legislator from Zelensky’s ‘Servant of the People’ election party/machine went further, servilely suggesting that a monument to Ronald Reagan be erected in Kiev and that a wall mural of Donald Trump be commissioned.

On November 7, Trump’s name was deleted from the notorious ‘Myrotvorets‘ website maintained by the neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine. The site is used to threaten and blacklist so-called ‘enemies’ of the country. It lists names and other personal information of targeted individuals in Ukraine and abroad, with nearly 200,000 names appearing on it, according to Wikipedia.

In April 2015, two Ukrainian journalists were assassinated after their names appeared on the list. The High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations has called for a formal judicial investigation into the Myrotvorets backlist/kill list, but the website still operates freely.

Ukraine’s online Strana news outlet wrote on November 7 that “pilgrims” from both the Ukrainian government and from other interested parties in the country are already traveling to Washington in order to establish contact with the Trump transition team and lobby for their particular interests.

So far, explains Kiev political scientist Pavlo Sebastianovych, money continues to flow to Kiev in huge streams, but ordinary Ukrainians or soldiers of the Ukrainian army receive little or none of it. “Ukraine is full of money,” he writes. “The West is pouring some 40 to 50 billion dollars a year into the country without demanding anything in return. It just gives us this money. Funds are already promised and allocated for 2025. Officials will continue to bathe in the luxury; almost nothing is allocated for armaments. Our troops are fighting without weapons, and unarmed and poorly trained people continue to be mobilized and sent to the front.”

Several months ago, Trump publicly criticized Zelensky for constantly asking for more funding for his war effort. Trump said back in September, “I think Zelensky is the greatest salesman in history. Every time he comes into our country, he walks away with $60 billion.”

On November 6, Politico columnist Jack Detch reported that the Biden administration is rushing to deliver to Ukraine the last $6 billion tranche of aid already promised.

How to rename a failure into a ‘success’

Volodymyr Zelensky told a press conference in late October that the Western powers will be reluctant to continue supplying Ukraine with weapons without seeing desired results on the battlegrounds. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have been steadily retreating for several months now. “It will be difficult for us to continue receiving large volumes of weapons and strong support from our partners. They want to see a really strong army fighting against the Russian occupier, then they will support us. This is a fact. Whether it is fair or not, timely or untimely, this is another question. The main thing they want to see is results.”

According to Zelensky, the setbacks being suffered by the Ukrainian army are due to shortages of troops. His call for “results”, then, is little more than a call for yet more of his administration’s forcible conscription of men over the age of 25. What’s more, members of his government are calling for the age of conscription to be lowered to 18, echoing such calls coming from officials in Washington.

Ukrainian journalist Vlasta Lazur at the Western government-financed Radio Liberty has written recently that Ukrainian servicemen have been banned from using the word “retreat” when talking to media. According to her, the servicemen have been ordered to use the words “victory” and “going forward” to describe Ukraine’s ongoing military operations. They are forbidden to pronounce the word “retreat” or anything resembling it. Lazur reports the comment of one Ukrainian military officer, who asked tongue-in-cheek, “So I should now say we are advancing on Dnieper city?” Dnieper (renamed ‘Dnipro’ under Ukraine’s policy of eradicating the Russian presence in Ukraine history) is the fourth largest city in Ukraine and lies well behind the lines of Ukraine’s military front lines across Donbas, south and east of the Dnieper River.

Ukraine legislator Alexander Dubinsky writes that Kiev has only enough military conscripts and recruits to last another six to twelve months of war. Citing the New York Times, he writes that Ukraine will thus continue to get its hands on some one billion US dollars of aid per month, and they will not easily give up the prospect of the total six to 12 billion that the West will provide. But for the aid to continue flowing, it is necessary to create the appearance of success, at least in media reports and official statements.

To this end, Zelensky issued instructions in late October to create an additional military plan for ‘victory’, calling it an “internal victory plan”, to be added to the ‘victory plan’ announced to the world one month ago.

The first point of the new plan is to counter ‘disinformation’, says presidential communications advisor Dmytro Lytvyn. “The first task is, of course, countering disinformation. The president has determined that controlling information is where everything starts. If the people of Ukraine do not understand what is happening, or if partners do not understand the position of Ukraine, then other points of a victory plan will be difficult to implement.”

Lytvyn says the plan’s second point is “to make the activities of the state understandable both for our people and for our partners.”

In other words, the new ‘victory plan’ is solely concerned with information manipulation, attempting to deceive Western partners and domestic audiences by claiming everywhere that Ukraine is meeting successes on the front. Left unsaid is that in the age of social media and the Internet, it is difficult for the Ukraine government to hide the true state of affairs in its war. Ukrainian servicemen regularly report on social media the creeping collapse of Ukraine’s war effort, one day on this front, the next day on that front. Hence the drive of Kiev’s special civilian and military police services to strengthen their control over information.

Artem Dmytruk, a fugitive legislator from Zelensky’s party, commented on the plan on Telegram on October 31, “They don’t even hide it anymore: they announce to the whole country that they will either kill dissenters or torture them in basements. As for journalists and opposition politicians, we will send them to prison for treason. Broadcast media that does not obey the rules will be closed.”

What Trump’s election victory means for Kiev

Trump’s pre-election statements on the conflict in Ukraine should be perceived primarily as rank populism. During his previous term as president, he encouraged the war against the people of Donbass that was initiated in 2014 by the coup regime in Kiev. This was five years before Zelensky came upon the scene, appearing to be critical of the war but continuing it once elected. Kiev was generously supplied with weapons by the Trump administration; indeed, it was Trump who in 2017 approved the first shipments of advanced missiles and artillery to Kiev.

Kurt Volker, former special representative of the US State Department for Ukraine during Trump’s presidency, recently made a number of statements anticipating what Trump will do in Ukraine should he be elected president. Volker said Trump will not talk about compromises; he will simply demand that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine. This will be no different from the stance of the Biden administration.

According to Strana, the Republican Party during the previous Trump presidency was a ‘war party’. Its nominees filled key positions in the State Department and were responsible for the war agenda for Ukraine. It was on their watch that the 2015 Minsk 2 peace agreement was ultimately betrayed and buried. Minsk 2 provided for a reintegration into Ukraine of the rebellious, anti-coup ‘oblasts’ (provinces) of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region, with a new, semi-autonomous status. Kurt Volker played a key role in the talks that produced Minsk 2.

The Trump-led Republicans have long criticized the Biden administration for allowing China and Russia to develop closer economic and political ties. Trump considers China to be the ‘main’ economic and military adversary of the US imperialists, so one of the features of any talks with Russia over Ukraine will be efforts to weaken Russia-China ties. A key goal would be to weaken the emerging BRICS bloc of countries (in which Russia and China happen to be playing leading roles).

Russia’s Foreign Ministry explains that it has no illusions about Trump. He is “well known in Russia”, says the Ministry. “The ruling US political elite, regardless of party affiliation, adheres to an anti-Russian stance and a policy of ‘containing Moscow’. This policy is not subject to fluctuations in the domestic political climate in the US, whether it’s the ‘America first’ agenda as interpreted by Trump and his supporters or the ‘rules-based world order’ on which the Democrats are fixated.”

To this should be added the fact that historically, it has been Republican Party operatives who have acted as the main lobbyists for the US military-industrial complex, which is today one of the main beneficiaries of the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian experts suggest that Trump will also seek to weaken the Russian Federation by lowering oil prices, using his good relations with the leaders of Saudi Arabia for this purpose.

“It is in Washington’s interest to weaken the strategic alliance between Moscow and Beijing, if not to break it up altogether,” commented the Ukrainian Telegram channel ‘Rubicon’ on Trump’s election. “This is axiomatic. In a world made up of three geopolitical monsters, two cannot be allowed to unite against the third. The Democrats under Biden allowed this to happen and now they have lost everything, including power in their own country.”

Nevertheless, it will be difficult to change anything drastically in this regard, as the processes that caused the war in Ukraine and led to Russia’s rapprochement with China cannot be ignored or dismissed. The authors of ‘Rubicon’ also admit that the Trump administration will try to shift much of the burden of financing Ukraine and the NATO proxy war onto the shoulders of the leading countries of the European Union. This will only weaken the EU itself.

Western aid for Ukraine will continue to be crafted in a way that will indebt not only Ukraine but also the countries of the EU. All of this is to the benefit of the leading Western financial institutions.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/11/ ... n-ukraine/

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The cycle of lies from Seversk: the finale (?)
November 16, 2024
Rybar

Unexpectedly, very unusual news came from the Seversky direction , although again connected with the fake capture of settlements. This time, positive .

Several commanders in this area were detained and removed from their positions due to deception of the higher command . We are talking about some commanders from the 3rd Army units : some were detained and arrested, some were removed or transferred to a lower position. The event affected several brigade and battalion commanders.

This, as we wrote, was expressed in “occupation” exclusively on the Internet through friendly bloggers and war correspondents of Serebryanka, Grigorovka , Belogorovka and Verkhnekamenskoye , and also, apparently, Vyemka (as well as feverish attempts to recapture it).

Unfortunately, there was no immediate reaction: the system is “inert”, and perceives attempts to expose the lies as “pressure” (the principle “if they criticize, it means I’m doing everything right”). As a result, the initial reports of, to put it mildly, “problems” (although this could be called outright outrage) ultimately resulted in nothing: commanders of various ranks synchronized their watches and continued to fool high headquarters. At least after that scandal there were no statements about the liberation of new settlements (and that’s a joy).

As a result, everything turned out to be much more prosaic: higher-ups arrived and wanted to visit the "liberated" Belogorovka , which was already supposedly deep in the rear, since Grigorovka and Serebryanka were supposedly taken. And only then did the scale of the deception become clear, which went not only to the media, but also to higher headquarters.

Moreover, the lies were not only not just in the reports, but also “covered up”. Correspondents were invited to the positions, who interviewed the fighters who boasted about the media capture of non-existent villages.

Of course, there is an opinion on the Internet that they allegedly managed to take some positions, then the enemy counterattacked, after which they had to abandon them. However, in reality, there was no talk of any capture - neither then nor now.

And now, regardless of whether the voice of those crying in the wilderness was heard, or the deception was actually discovered by accident, the activities of at least some of those responsible have already attracted the attention of the relevant services. And questions about both the senseless waste of personnel in unprepared assaults and the grinding down of armored groups month after month on the same stronghold, we very much hope, will be raised at the very top.

https://rybar.ru/krugovorot-vranya-iz-p ... ska-final/

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 18, 2024 12:56 pm

Ukraine and the international legal order
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 11/18/2024

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Moments of difficulty, especially when they occur in a context of exaggerated danger and widespread pessimism about the options on the table, lead to a climate of hysteria, usually accompanied by arguments that reveal a certain level of desperation. The defeat of Kamala Harris, the difficulties that Ukraine is experiencing on the front and any timid attempt to open the door to dialogue are currently causing two clear media trends, both with a high degree of exaltation. Part of the Western press has begun to see in the arrival of Donald Trump the necessary change to achieve progress towards peace and a way out of a war that has proven to be unwinnable. Meanwhile, another sector calls for the mobilization of the resources of other countries to avoid the catastrophe that they believe the point of view of the president-elect of the United States foreshadows. Between these two theories there seems to be no middle ground, which sees that peace through force is more about force than peace, and that even if the warring parties agree to sit down at a negotiating table, there is no certainty that an agreement will be possible and sustainable over time. The precedents of this war indicate that even a signed agreement can lead to failure and an even wider war, and that Donald Trump's words about peace are not always translated into actions aimed at achieving it.

The situation is particularly delicate for the European Union, which, between greater subordination to the United States in matters of security, energy and foreign policy and the search for an articulation of continental autonomy, has chosen the former. The reaffirmation of this situation, which has resulted, for example, in the breaking of commercial relations with Russia, especially important in the energy and raw materials sector, has occurred at a time when Europe has ceased to be a priority for both Democrats and Republicans. This reality is even more noticeable in the case of Donald Trump, whose foreign policy team is made up of hawks against China and Iran, which shows that American geopolitical interests are located in two areas of the planet: Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. This is the context of the lack of interest of Donald Trump and his team in the war in Ukraine, which does not mean that the new administration is going to stop the supply of weapons or abandon Ukraine as some exponents of the most radical pro-Ukrainian factions seem to predict. Moreover, one of the formulas for forcing Russia and Ukraine to negotiate is the supply of arms: agreeing to negotiate would mean that Kiev would increase the flow of weapons it demands, a situation that would be repeated, in this case in retaliation, if Moscow refused to participate. However, any mention of peace is considered by certain sectors of the American establishment or by the European Union as the announcement of the abandonment of Ukraine, which is causing the appearance of a whole journalistic subgenre of catastrophism linked to the outcome of the war.

“Putin’s Russia is behaving with a 19th-century imperialist mentality, threatening its neighbours, especially in Europe. However, this is not just an existential threat to Europe’s security. Russia’s flagrant violation of the UN Charter also threatens world peace,” wrote Josep Borrell in his last article as High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union last week. The European Union, which allows itself to give orders to powers that surpass it in industrial and economic capacity such as China, is capable of seeing imperialism in the actions of others, but not of showing the slightest self-criticism regarding its management of the conflict, apparently the only one existing in a world that, before 22 February, was a haven of peace broken only by the actions of Moscow.

Borrell’s article is both a defence of the sanctions regime and a prayer to the countries of the Global South, which have preferred to act as mediators rather than join in coercive measures that will only create divisions and hatred between countries. “The 193 member states of the UN have the obligation to preserve the international order based on the United Nations Charter. In the face of clear breaches of international law, the EU is ready to assume its share of responsibility for a just and orderly world by imposing sanctions on those who try to undermine it,” says Borrell, who demands that countries that have refused to apply sanctions break off economic relations with Russia, which, despite the weak arguments of the European diplomat, are unilateral and therefore not mandatory. In reality, Borrell’s position is no different from that of members of Donald Trump’s foreign policy team, who have been in favour of stifling the Russian economy by imposing sanctions on liquefied natural gas and deepening secondary sanctions with which they hope to force countries such as China or India, which are benefiting from acting as third countries in trade, to accept the Western diktat . However, as the dozen or so sanctions packages imposed since the Russian invasion have shown, applying a blockade similar to that of Cuba to the largest country in the world and which shares a border with its main ally is more difficult in reality than on paper.

Sanctions are just one of the tools that the free world has used and, in the view of Western leaders, must continue to use. Military supplies, economic support for the Ukrainian state and the reconfiguration of alliances to further lock bloc politics into this kind of new military cold war against Russia and economic cold war against China are other important aspects and, according to the Western narrative, which rejects diplomacy as a way back into politics, all of these are necessary to overcome the existential danger that Moscow has become. The proxy war, in which Ukraine is sacrificed as an innocent victim – largely voluntarily, at least by its authorities, who present the country as a tool in a war against the common enemy – is the reflection of all this. This has provoked a whole literature of nationalist exaltation, in many cases produced from abroad and ignoring the large numbers of Ukrainian men who try to avoid fighting, in which Ukraine is the last barrier of protection of civilization.

“Thanks to the Ukrainians, the international legal order is maintained. It depends on the principle that borders are inviolable, which they uphold. Thanks to the Ukrainians, nuclear war is less likely. Because they resist nuclear threats from a nuclear power with an effective conventional response, other countries are not building nuclear weapons. If the Americans choose to weaken Ukraine, this will quickly change. And Ukraine is deterring China from offensive actions in the Pacific by demonstrating how difficult such operations are,” wrote Timothy Snyder, a historian who is an expert on Ukraine but whose opinions blind him both to the role of the far right (Snyder offered a university position to Olena Semenyaka, one of the main ideologues of the Azov movement) and to the infinite exaggeration of Ukraine’s importance in the world and to the ignorance, for example, of what the Israeli bombings of Gaza and Lebanon mean for the international legal order.

It is no coincidence that this kind of speech, which denotes concern about the situation, is taking place at this time, when Ukrainian troops are struggling to hold their positions in Kursk and are slowly losing ground in Kharkiv and Donbass. In recent hours, Russian advances have been noted within the city of Kupyansk (lost by Russia in the lightning attack in September 2022) and in the surroundings of Kurajovo, where Moscow claims to have cut the N15 route, which before the war linked Zaporozhye and Donetsk and which is key to supplying the garrisons fighting in the south and west of the Donetsk region.

In addition to the difficulties on the front line, Ukraine is also suffering from a shortage of air defences, which, together with improved Russian tactics in the use of aviation, makes possible massive attacks such as the one that took place yesterday in a large number of Ukrainian cities (kyiv, Odessa, Nikolaev, Krivoy Rog, Khmeltnitsky, Poltava). “Russia has launched one of the largest air strikes: drones and missiles against peaceful cities, sleeping civilians, critical infrastructure. This is the true answer of the war criminal Putin to all those who have called and visited him recently. We need peace through force, not containment,” wrote Andriy Sibiha, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, on social networks.

“Putin only understands the language of force. And force means weapons,” added Andriy Ermak, who of course did not mention the increasing Ukrainian drone attacks in Russia, including on oil refineries, while kyiv and Moscow were negotiating in Qatar a partial ceasefire that would exclude energy infrastructure from the targets of both sides. This agreement was supposed to have been reached last August, when the start of the talks (an indirect negotiation mediated by the Gulf countries) was interrupted by the Ukrainian adventure in Kursk.

Yesterday's attack, with more than a hundred missiles and a similar number of drones, was the largest in the past three months and one of the largest since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The bombing can be criticised for targeting the country's critical infrastructure, which, as was seen yesterday, leads to power outages and problems with the supply of electricity and heating for the civilian population during the cold season, but its targets and results belie Sibiga's claims that it was an attack on sleeping civilians. The time of the attack, at dawn on Sunday, indicates precisely the opposite, an attempt to avoid civilian casualties. Still, any attack on civilian infrastructure, which will continue to occur as long as there is no real prospect of a peace agreement, means increasing suffering for society, something that can only be avoided with the end of the conflict. In the morning, Ukraine reported two deaths (later the figure was raised to four, enough for Ermak to call it genocide), a low figure considering the number of missiles used (120) and which, although condemnable, cannot be compared with the at least 72 deaths caused, at the same time as the Russian attack in Ukraine, by an Israeli bombing in the besieged north of Gaza. However, it is the former and not the latter that puts world peace and the international legal order in jeopardy and it is against Russia that the sanctions regime must be directed. And while Ukraine receives permission from the United States, France and the United Kingdom to use Western missiles on Russian territory (for the moment, in the Kursk region) and to respond to the Russian attack, the Palestinian population remains besieged by Israel, which in turn continues to receive political and diplomatic support and supplies of weapons to continue attacking Gaza and Lebanon.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/11/18/ucran ... rnacional/

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
on the progress of the special military operation (as of 18 November 2024) Main points:

The Russian Armed Forces hit the infrastructure of military airfields and energy facilities that support the operation of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex;

— Over the past 24 hours, the Russian Air Defense Forces shot down four Hammer bombs, four HIMARS projectiles and 106 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles;

— Over the past 24 hours, the South group of forces repelled two counterattacks, the enemy lost up to 695 servicemen and two tanks;

— Over the past 24 hours, the West group repelled three enemy counterattacks, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 450 servicemen;

— Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost over 500 servicemen as a result of the actions of the Center group;

— Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 135 servicemen in the area of ​​responsibility of the East group;

— Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 70 fighters as a result of the actions of the Dnepr group;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 50 servicemen in the area of ​​responsibility of the North group in one day.

▫️The units of the "East" group of forces occupied more advantageous lines and positions, defeated the formations of the 33rd Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine , the 37th Marine Brigade , the 123rd and 129th Territorial Defense Brigades in the areas of the settlements of Zelenoye Pole, Ulakly, Konstantinopol and Velyka Novosyolka of the Donetsk People's Republic. The counterattack of the formations of the 32nd Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was repelled . The enemy's losses amounted to 135 servicemen, an armored combat vehicle, two cars, a 152-mm self-propelled artillery unit "Akatsiya", a 155-mm howitzer M-777 and a launcher of the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system made in the USA.



▫️Units of the Dnepr group of forces inflicted losses on the manpower and equipment of the 31st, 110th, 118th mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces , the 103rd and 126th territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Mala Tokmachka, Novodanilovka in the Zaporizhia region, Blakytne, Olhivka and Nikolskoye in the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 70 servicemen, four vehicles, six electronic warfare stations and a US-made AN/TPQ-50 counter-battery warfare station . A field ammunition depot was destroyed.

▫️ Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces groups have damaged the infrastructure of military airfields, energy facilities supporting the activities of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, training sites for unmanned aerial vehicle operators and storage facilities for unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 135 districts.

▫️ Air defense systems shot down four French-made Hammer guided aerial bombs , four US-made HIMARS multiple launch rockets , and 106 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

▫️ In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 648 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 36,174 unmanned aerial vehicles, 586 anti-aircraft missile systems, 19,369 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,490 multiple launch rocket systems, 18,125 field artillery pieces and mortars, 28,492 units of special military vehicles.

***

Forwarded from
RT in Russian
❗️RT analysis: which ATACMS missiles are the most dangerous and how many of them does the US have?

Among the modifications of these missiles, two types stand out.

▫️The first is the MGM-140B ATACMS Block 1A with a cluster warhead.

▫️The second is the MGM-168A ATACMS Block 1A (QRU) with a high-explosive fragmentation part.

Both versions have a launch range of up to 300 km and are dangerous for both military and industrial facilities.

Since the 1980s, the United States has produced about 3.5 thousand ATACMS missiles of all modifications. Of this number, about 600-700 units have already been used in combat, including 414 missiles during operations in Iraq in 2003.

As of 2024, the United States, according to various estimates, may have about 2 thousand missiles in stock, including both newly produced missiles and refurbished old ones.

However, some of this stock may be unavailable due to expiration or other factors.

It is known that the key feature of all ATACMS missile modifications is a high-speed dive from the upper stratosphere at a speed of about 1,100-850 m/s at angles greater than 75-80°. In some cases, such trajectories go beyond the vertical sectors of the S-400 and S-300V4 guidance radars. Therefore, an important part of the preparation for repelling an ATACMS strike will be the distribution of individual anti-aircraft missile divisions and regiments in the missile-hazardous direction for a sufficient level of echeloning. It is also worth noting that the S-350 Vityaz medium- and long-range air defense systems have high potential in the fight against ATACMS , the missiles of which will be able to shoot down ATACMS even in the event of anti-missile maneuvers due to the presence of a gas-dynamic rudder system. It is known that this system copes well with repelling HIMARS strikes in the Donetsk direction.

***

Colonelcassad
From Peskov's statements:

- The decision to ban the export of enriched uranium to the United States is a mirror response, but it may contain exceptions that meet the interests of the Russian Federation, Peskov said, answering a question from TASS;

- Moscow proceeds from the fact that the decision to strike deep into Russia with ATACMS missiles means a qualitatively new round of tension;

- The Kremlin sees the main danger in the situation with the decision to strike deep into Russia with long-range missiles in the fact that only Western countries, and not Ukraine, are capable of carrying out such strikes;

- Putin and Erdogan did not discuss the Turkish leader's initiative to "freeze" the conflict in Ukraine;

- A "freeze" of the conflict in Ukraine along the front line is unacceptable for the Russian Federation, Peskov said about Erdogan's proposals;

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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BREAKING: Biden Approves US Weapons for Strikes Inside Russia
November 17, 2024 natyliesb



“In a last ditch effort to cement his legacy as an absolute lunatic, outgoing President Joe Biden has approved the use of American ATACMS by Ukrainian proxy forces for attacks inside Russian territory.” – Active Measures

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2024/11/bre ... de-russia/

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Parting "Gift".

That's why they needed "North Korean troops" BS. Totally expected.

President Joe Biden has reportedly approved Ukraine’s first use of US-provided long-range missiles for strikes deep within Russia, the New York Times (NYT) has claimed, citing anonymous American officials. Authorization to use the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) was reportedly prompted by Russia’s alleged move to utilize North Korean troops in the conflict, the outlet said. "Russian and North Korean forces operating in Kursk Region" of western Russia are apparently the intended targets for the weapons, the officials told NYT. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Korean troops on its soil, saying merely that its cooperation with Pyongyang proceeds according to a defense partnership treaty.

Keep in mind, this is NYT--they lie for living, but if true--makes no difference militarily. Merely shows impotent rage of Washington and its "parting gift" to Trump, trying to elicit some kind of response from Russia. Well, that means only one thing--404 will lose much more territory, while petulant children from Washington better go back to kindergarten and learn to read properly before trying to play big military games. Cowards, hiding behind backs of proxies.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/11 ... -gift.html

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NEW ELECTRIC WAR MISSILE RAID ON SUNDAY – THE PUTIN PAUSE PASSED

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by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

On Sunday afternoon the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that a massive strike of air and sea-launched missiles and drones have struck and destroyed parts of the Ukrainian electricity grid in the western regions of the Ukraine, as well as in Odessa and Nikolaev in the southeast.

The Mukachevo interconnector station in southwestern Ukraine has also been hit, damaging the import of electricity from Slovakia and Moldova.

The electric war in the west by the Russian General Staff has been put on pause by President Vladimir Putin since the last major raid on August 26, while back-channel negotiators for the Kremlin exchanged armistice terms with the Biden Administration and with Donald Trump.

The resumption of Russian missile strikes on west Ukrainian electricity infrastructure follows the disclosure in Washington on Sunday that the US has agreed to allow American and Ukrainian crews to fire long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) on Russian territory.

Russian military sources comment that threats to escalate the war unless Putin agrees to extend the pause and to limit the westward offensive of Russian forces along the Donbass front have come from both Biden officials, and from Trump himself when he spoke with Putin by telephone last week.

“The electric war strikes are coordinated with the ground offensives,” a military source comments. “We’re seeing the General Staff calling the bluff of both Biden and Trump with the counter threat to wind up the war before the inauguration [January 20]. That the Ukrainians in the western regions are bracing for power blackouts tell us, again, that [Chief of the General Staff Valery] Gerasimov’s staff are monitoring the Ukrainian electrical repair and replacement efforts, the weather, and the political situation in Washington. The strikes have been timed accordingly.”

“This morning,” announced the Defense Ministry in Moscow in its daily bulletin for the Special Military Operation, “the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air and sea-based weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles, on critically important energy infrastructure facilities that provided the work of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine and enterprises producing military products. All planned targets have been hit. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation defeated the infrastructure of military airfields, gas production facilities of Ukraine. A massive blow was inflicted on energy facilities providing the Ukrainian military-industrial complex.”

Russian military blogs report the strikes involved “up to 20 Tu-95MS and Tu-160 strategic bombers of the Russian Aerospace Forces with X-101 and Zircon missiles; at least 4 MiG-31K fighters with hypersonic Dagger missiles; warships of the Black Sea Fleet with Kalibr cruise missiles; operations of the Iskander-M missile defense system and Bastion coastal missile systems.”

MAP OF NOVEMBER 17 STRIKES ACROSS THE UKRAINE

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Source: https://t.me/boris_rozhin/144650

Ukrainian media reports, including statements from Vladimir Zelensky’s office in Kiev, repeated by western media, claim that about 120 missiles and 90 drones were detected in the raid. The Guardian in London, a pro-Ukrainian propaganda outlet, editorialized that “the attack was the largest missile and drone assault on Ukraine since August and the first big Russian assault since the US election, showing the Kremlin in little mood to compromise after Donald Trump’s victory.”

Confirmation that the electricity substations and high-voltage lines connected to two nuclear power plants (NPP) in the west – Rivne and Khmelnitsky NPP – and to the South Ukraine NPP at Pivdennoukrainsk, Nikolaev oblast, have been hit was announced by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

“Although the NPPs – Khmelnytskyy, Rivne and South Ukraine – were not directly impacted and did not shut down, several electrical substations on which they depend suffered further damage during the strikes, Director General Grossi said, citing information from Ukraine’s national regulator. The main power lines from four of the substations were disconnected. At the moment, only two of the country’s nine operational reactors currently generate electricity at 100 percent capacity…At the Khmelnytskyy NPP, the IAEA team heard a loud explosion. At the Rivne NPP, two 330 kilovolt (kV) power lines were unavailable, the team there reported.”

“NPPs need reliable connections to the grid both to transmit the electricity they produce and to receive off-site power for reactor cooling. The increasing fragility of the grid has been one of the main challenges for nuclear safety and security throughout the armed conflict. Of the nine currently operational reactors at the three NPPs, six reduced output during the morning, ranging from just over 40 percent of maximum capacity to above 90 percent. At the moment, only two operate at 100 percent capacity, with one in shutdown for maintenance. All NPPs continued to receive off-site power.”

Russian military bloggers, collating reports from the Ukrainian target areas as well as from Russian military sources, list targets and the consequent blackouts in the Transcarpathian, Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk and Vynnitsia regions of the west; Odessa, Nikolaev, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions in the east.

Boris Rozhin’s Colonel Cassad is reporting a Russian strike on the Kremenchuk Hydroelectric Dam in the northeastern Poltava region.

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Source: https://t.me/boris_rozhin/144656

DTEK, the Ukrainian electric utility, is reporting “emergency shutdowns in Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Poltava and Chernigov regions. Critical infrastructure was also attacked in Zaporozhye, Vinnytsia region and Volyn region. In the Carpathian region, networks are operating normally. However, given the situation in neighbouring regions, there is a possibility of a shortage in the energy system of Ukraine. We are following the situation and instructions of Ukrenergo. Just in case, please charge your gadgets and power banks and be prepared for the possible introduction of shutdown schedules.”

https://johnhelmer.net/new-electric-war ... more-90628

"They wuz axin' for it..."

John called it, and not a bit of gloating like certain other commentators...

******

To secure peace in Ukraine, Trump must review misguided western sanctions

Ian Proud

November 17, 2024

If Trump is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, he must look at its origins.

Following Trump’s election, there has been much speculation about how the war in Ukraine might end. But to understand it might end, it’s vital to understand how it started.

The origins of the war in Ukraine can be traced back to the ouster of Ukrainian President Yanukovych in February 2014. Russia labelled it a coup, realists would say it was unconstitutional change in power, and U.S. & British officials would shrug their shoulders.

After Russia occupied Crimea and as insurgency broke out in the Donbas, the French and Germans launched a peace process involving the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine. From this so-called ‘Normandy format’ emerged two peace deals named the Minsk agreements. But the UK was sidelined from the peace process and the Americans suspicious of it.

Left out, Britian, supported by the U.S., pushed sanctions as the primary vehicle to contain Russia, running counter to what the French and Germans were trying to achieve. By the summer of 2015, the Minsk agreements had become sidelined, and sanctions were set in stone.

Since that time, Russia has become the most sanctioned country on the planet. Thirty-three western countries, led by the USA, imposed more than twenty thousand sanctions against Russian people and companies. That’s fifteen times more sanctions than Iran in a distant second place.

If we could completely cut Russia’s economic ties with the west, so the theory went, then that would be so damaging that Russia would have to withdraw from Ukraine. Western powers therefore sanctioned everything that they could, from money, ships, oil, gold, diamonds, weapons and all manner of hi-tech components. But from a very early stage, it was clear that sanctions weren’t altering Russian policy to Ukraine, quite the opposite.

When I left the Foreign Office in 2023, the UK government with its western partners, had gone through all the sanctions that they thought might weaken Russia. The west could probably find more people or entities to sanction. But policy makers never really gripped Russian gas, as some European countries still rely on it. And anyway, the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline solved that conundrum. Russian oligarchs that had political connections in the west were spared as were Russian companies that owned factories in the USA, to prevent American job losses. But we hit most things and neared the bottom of the barrel.

Yet, Russia’s economy always seemed to bounce back. That’s partly because, sanctions were never as big a deal as other events that moved the global economy, such as the oil price collapses in 2014 and 2016 and Covid. But it was also because Russia continually adapted its macroeconomic policy to absorb and, in the end, profit from sanctions. Following an immediate post-sanctions contraction of economic growth in 2022, Russia has grown more strongly than the western countries that imposed sanctions.

Western powers therefore needed something stronger, so sanctions evolved into a political tool to isolate Russia on the world stage. The USA, European Union and other countries including Japan and Australia sanctioned every possible type of economic, social and cultural activity involving Russia. Western academics no longer collaborate with Russian academics. Russian airliners can’t pass over western airspace and vice versa. Border posts have been closed or minimised. Russia can’t compete in international sporting events or even the Eurovision song contest.

Russian Ministers are subjected to indignant walkouts by western diplomats and ministers at international gatherings. Ordinary Russian people were denied a weekend ParkRun. Ukraine did its part, cancelling the Russian Orthodox church and going on a propaganda offensive with any western company that sold goods with the word ‘Russia’ in their branding.

And yet, outside of the west, Russia’s standing on the global stage doesn’t seem to be in decline. In a process accelerated by the Ukraine war, Russia, with China, has spearheaded a rapid shift by the developing world to create their own formats for dialogue and cooperation. There are over 200 countries on this planet, so the wealthy ‘west’ is in a minority. The BRICS group has grown rapidly, with a long queue of countries waiting to join, including NATO member Turkey.. Vladimir Putin has an International Criminal Court arrest warrant out on him, yet he still travels freely to ‘friendly’ countries, where he receives the red-carpet treatment. He recently hosted a successful BRICS summit in Kazan while war continued to rage in Ukraine.

War started in February 2022 a few days after the Ukrainian government finally signalled the death knell of the Minsk peace agreements. But the point is that the Minsk agreement was necessarily bad; it’s simply that the U.S. and UK invested significant efforts in ensuring its failure.

Sanctions never looked likely to prevent war, nor force its end, despite the death or injury to over one million people and a vast exodus of Ukraine’s population. War in Ukraine became reduced to the brutal, bloody town by town fighting in Europe after D-Day, while life in the west, and in Russia, carried on almost as normal. Fighting alone, Ukraine has never had sufficient resources to survive and never will.

There is a strong case that sanctions created the conditions for war to erupt, by undermining the very peace process – the Normandy Format – that was established to prevent it. And that the west’s continued blind faith in sanctions took us to the brink of a doomsday scenario, more horrific than the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Western leaders, not wanting war themselves, focussed blindly on supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. But the notion of ‘as long as it takes’ became tarnished with increasing numbers of western politicians started complaining that it is taking too long. Not least as the economics and demographics of war still show that Russia can continue fighting for as long as it takes, and that Vladimir Putin has the domestic political support to do that.

So, beyond the hype, if Trump is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, he must look at its origins. A ceasefire alone won’t cut it with Putin. There needs finally to be a peace proposal that includes targeted sanctions reduction. That, and a final reckoning with the NATO membership issue, the brightest red line of all.

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

The only things Trump is serious about is his wealth and his ego. No matter, looks like Russia will settle this.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:56 am

(Early appointments tomorrow, so an early posting.)

******

From Cassad's telegram account:

Colonelcassad
On the situation in the Kursk direction (data from the Russian Ministry of Defense):

Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost 420 servicemen , two US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles , a German-made Marder infantry fighting vehicle , four armored combat vehicles, four automobiles, a German-made 155 mm self-propelled artillery unit PzH-2000 , a German-made 152 mm self-propelled artillery unit Akatsiya , a 152 mm D-20 gun , and three 122 mm D-30 howitzers . Twenty-four Ukrainian servicemen surrendered. In total, during the fighting in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more than 33,670 servicemen, 213 tanks, 140 infantry fighting vehicles, 115 armored personnel carriers, 1,175 armored combat vehicles, 958 cars, 291 artillery pieces, 40 multiple launch rocket system launchers, including 11 HIMARS and six MLRS made in the USA , 13 anti-aircraft missile system launchers, seven transport and loading vehicles, 66 electronic warfare stations, 13 counter-battery radars, four air defense radars, 27 units of engineering and other equipment, including 13 engineering obstacle clearing vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing unit , as well as six armored repair and recovery vehicles and a command and staff vehicle.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

******

Leaks Expose Secret British Military Cell Plotting to ‘Keep Ukraine Fighting’
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 17, 2024
Kit Klarenberg

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Leaked files show top UK military figures conspired to carry out the Kerch bridge bombing, covertly train “Gladio”-style stay-behind forces in Ukraine, and groom the British public for a drop in living standards caused by the proxy war against Russia.

Emails and internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal details of a cabal of British military and intelligence veterans which plotted to escalate and prolong the Ukraine proxy war “at all costs.” Convened under the direction of the British Ministry of Defense in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the cell referred to itself as Project Alchemy. As British leadership sabotaged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow, the cell put forward an array of plans “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”

The leaks obtained by The Grayzone expose a hidden hand behind Britain’s policy in Ukraine, showing in unusually granular detail how it aimed to engineer a long, grinding war through covert operations that stretched the bounds of legality.

Project Alchemy’s proposed schemes spanned every conceivable field of warfare, from cyber attacks to “discreet operations” to outright terrorism. The secret cell even put forward a plan to “aggressively pursue” and “dismantle” independent media outlets – including The Grayzone – through an aggressive campaign of legal harassment and online censorship, so they “would be forced to close.” The incendiary blueprints were fed to the highest levels of the British state and national security structure, where they were apparently well-received.

Founded by a senior British Ministry of Defence official, Project Alchemy is composed of veteran military and intelligence operatives united by a desire for all-out war between the West and Russia. Some have trained Ukrainian forces in clandestine sabotage tactics.

Members of the national security cabal tacitly acknowledged that their proposed operations stretched the bounds of British law. Thus they suggested that London should be “prepared to creatively use the law” to meet its goals, and even be willing to erase “legal restrictions on UK deniable ops” against Russia.

Some of Project Alchemy’s most extreme recommendations have already been implemented, often with calamitous results. These include the cell’s proposal to strike Crimea’s Kerch Bridge, which prompted a Russian escalation that saw punishing attacks on Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure. Alchemy also envisioned the construction of a secret, Gladio-style army of Ukrainian partisan fighters to carry out assassination, sabotage, and terror missions behind enemy lines.

It appears the British premier, Keir Starmer, fell under the influence of the Project Alchemy cabal soon after his election in July, when he eagerly embraced the role of “wartime prime minister.” After pledging to support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” however, Starmer is quietly backing away from the maximalist policy. In Kiev, Ukrainians are left to ponder how their “friends” in London got them into this mess, and why they can not, or will not get them out of it.

The British spooks who gathered around Project Alchemy reasoned that the longer the proxy war continued, the more Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “credibility at home and abroad drops, and his ability to fight NATO is degraded.” Today, Project Alchemy’s gambit has clearly backfired, as Putin remains popular within Russia, while a crumbling Ukrainian army loses territory by the day despite constant re-arming by the West. But the war planners in London remain staunchly committed to escalation, refusing to shelve their diabolical proposals.

Britain takes ‘unilateral lead’ on ‘regime change’ in Russia

Project Alchemy was founded on the personal orders of Lt. General Charlie Stickland, who is charged with “planning, executing and integrating UK led joint and multinational overseas military operations” as the head of Britain’s Permanent Joint Headquarters. Stickland boasts in leaked communications that his family “come from a long line of pirates and buccaneers.” In his email signature, the general identifies himself as an “LGBTQ+ Advocate” in rainbow-colored text.

Stickland and his assistant, Maj. Ed Harris, did not answer The Grayzone’s calls to their personal phones, nor did they respond to detailed questions submitted to them through WhatsApp.

🇬🇧 🇳🇴 Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland CB OBE, (Chief of Joint Operations), Minister of the Lords, Baroness Annabel Goldie, and a delegation of senior multinational officers and officials visited Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel being trained in the UK.
@Admiral @Permanent pic.twitter.com/rOJ38aRXcL

— Генеральний штаб ЗСУ (@GeneralStaffUA) February 11, 2023


Stickland convened the first meeting of Project Alchemy’s on February 26, 2022, just days after Russian troops made their initial foray into Ukraine. According to minutes of the gathering, “an assortment of leading academics, authors, strategists, planners, pollsters, comms, data scientists and tech” was on hand to produce a “grand strategy options paper.”

The paper consisted of a series of proposals for the British government to “defeat Putin in Ukraine and set the conditions for the reshaping of an open international order of the future.” Throughout the document, the need to “keep Ukraine fighting” was described as London’s “main effort” in the conflict.

In an email to British military apparatchiks dated March 3 2022, Stickland described Alchemy’s paper as the result of “some mischief I’ve been up to” with “a group of ‘sideways thinkers.’” He expressed satisfaction that “this has been seen by all sorts of people,” including senior British government and military officials, “and landed well.”

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An Excel document listing potential and confirmed recruits for the effort, authored by project chief Dom Morris, names a number of individuals from the private sector and academia alongside high-ranking army officials. Currently a fellow at King’s College’s “Centre for Grand Strategy,” Morris was listed in the document as a “civilian leader.” The role of “military leader” was to be carried out by Simon Scott, a brigadier in the British army who was appointed O.B.E. in 2013 for his “gallant and distinguished services” in Afghanistan.

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Information operations were to be headed by a still-to-be determined member of Britain’s 77th Psychological Operations Brigade. Also listed as a participant in information operations was longtime British psychological warfare operative Amil Khan, founder of the “counter-disinformation” analysis firm Valent Projects.

In 2021, The Grayzone revealed how the then-Prince of Wales, King Charles, enlisted Khan’s Valent Projects to astroturf a pseudo-socialist YouTube influencer to attack skeptics of the government’s ham-fisted response to Covid. Previously, Khan participated in the UK Foreign Office’s program to foment regime change in Syria.

Months after Alchemy put Khan forward as a member of its team, The Grayzone exposed him for plotting with celebrity-left journalist Paul Mason to destroy this publication. One leaked email showed Khan proposing a “full nuclear legal [attack] to squeeze [The Grayzone] financially.” The newly-uncovered documents indicate the decision to assail The Grayzone was met with approval from the highest ranks of the British government.

‘Ukraine’s Next Chapter – Elders Grand Strategy Options Paper’

Within Project Alchemy’s covert war room, the obsession with a long war quickly took hold. Members of the cell took their cues from a policy paper Stickland attributed to “The Elders,” which he described as “a group of Fusion players,” referring to the strata of academics and defense industry figures with strong ties to the British military.

An Alchemy document composed under Stickland’s watch and titled, “Ukraine’s Next Chapter – Elders Grand Strategy Options Paper,” suggests that members of the cabal had convinced themselves a “palace coup” inside the Kremlin was inevitable. So long as Russia struggled inside Ukraine, they believed, British intelligence would be granted “the opportunity to challenge” Moscow’s ever-growing “stature as a competent international actor” on the world stage.

“A long war against a small state makes [Putin] look a fool,” the Alchemy paper asserted. “He is obsessed by the end of Ghaddafi – he will want to avoid that… Pressure will pile on from oligarchs as a long war drags on – he will not want to give them excuses to threaten his authority.” The group reasoned that “a long war will affect [Putin’s] international credibility,” as “a failure to quickly defeat Ukraine will seriously… reduce his credibility with new rich friends in Belarus, Hungary, China, India, Middle East, Brazil etc.

“Most importantly,” protracted Russian involvement in Ukraine “will embolden NATO,” Alchemy argued. Convinced that Putin would fail in the eastern Donbas region, triggering a collapse of his government, Project Alchemy members openly fantasized about absorbing Russia into the Western-dominated financial order afterwards under the guise of a “Post Putin Marshall Plan.” Of particular interest was London’s “re-engagement” with Moscow “in global energy and commodity markets,” a seeming reference to the West’s desire for cheap Russian gas and wheat.

“Discreet operations”: reviving ‘Operation Gladio’ terror ops in Ukraine

To accomplish the balkanization of Russia, Project Alchemy’s plotters took inspiration from Operation Gladio, a CIA and NATO-orchestrated covert operation that saw fascist paramilitaries carry out false flag terrorist attacks across Western Europe after World War II in a bid to prevent communism from taking root.

A section detailing potential “discreet operations” in Alchemy’s strategy paper, which stressed the “need to intervene in every way except ‘official,’” explicitly recommended “Stay-behind Gladio handbooks/ Partisan Pamphlets” which would be “updated for Information Age.”

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Another move Alchemy proposed was to deploy Britain’s “strong” private military [PMC] industry “to out Wagner, Wagner.” In other words, the group aimed to establish a British rival to the Russian mercenary force founded by the now-deceased commander Yevgeny Prigozhin. This objective required the formulation of “a new doctrine, operating concept, and legal framework, for effectively integrating the activities of PMCs and other [non-military] actors.” Under these guidelines, British mercenary firms capable of using “sophisticated weaponry like SAMS, cyber, combat air, drones” would be employed to “operate and train and accompany Ukraine formations.”

These operations were all intended to ultimately be “sponsored and commanded” by the UK government, “using discreet cover” to avoid triggering NATO’s Article 5.

Following the production of their grand strategy paper, Stickland invited his team of “sideways thinkers” at Project Alchemy to submit further proposals for Gladio-style operations. Among the pitches that arrived was a “mission” to “disable the Kerch Bridge in a way that is audacious, and disrupts road and rail access to Crimea and maritime access to the Sea of Azov.” The blueprints of this highly provocative plot were exposed by The Grayzone in October 2022, in the immediate aftermath of the truck bomb attack that crippled the Kerch Bridge.

Alchemy’s team also produced a PowerPoint presentation entitled, “Training a Ukrainian Commando Force to restore Maritime Sovereignty – Elders,” outlining plans to construct a 1,000-strong Ukrainian commando force “trained in Britain by military veterans equipped with British equipment” to “degrade the Russian Navy and open another flank in the fight for Kherson and the south of Ukraine.”

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Alchemy’s team had been working on the plan for at least three months by the time of the presentation’s submission. “Ukrainians abroad and volunteers inside Ukraine” had already been recruited, in advance of 12 weeks basic training “in the use of all troop weapons including mortars, anti-tank missiles, sniper craft, cliff assault, small craft training, demolitions,” the proposal stated.

The plan called for formally integrating the commandos into the Ukrainian Navy. Alchemy boasted that the prospective force “will be a force multiplier and highly mobile,” while Russia’s “outdated doctrine will struggle with a highly motivated and well-equipped naval force conducting hit and run operations and targeting Crimea.”

Moreover, “individuals who are fluent Russian speakers and deemed suitable for covert undercover operations,” including “female operators,” would be “inserted into southern occupied Ukraine and Crimea for intelligence gathering and sabotage of key infrastructure targets.” They would be trained by MI6 officers. For this, Alchemy asked the British government for a total of £73.5 million. “The program is at a high state of readiness. We are ready to go,” the presentation forcefully declared.

The enormous sum was to be paid to Elders Services Ltd that was founded by Alchemy members and registered to an address just 15 miles from Fort Monckton, which was described by former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson as “the SIS’s field operations training centre.” It is unknown how much money, if any, the firm received from the British government for resuscitating Operation Gladio in Ukraine. Elders Services Ltd shuttered in March 2023 after less than a year of operation, without filing financial accounts.

British spies call for ‘action’ against The Grayzone

Behind the Project Alchemy team’s bravado was a sense that Western hegemony was crumbling on the icy borderlands separating Ukraine from Russia. Referring to the rising BRICS alliance, which gathered in Kazan, Russia this October to challenge the US-dominated financial order, Alchemy planners urged British leadership to “prepare for SWIFT II,” as SWIFT was “going to be destroyed” by the West’s anti-Russia sanctions, “slowly, but inevitably.”

According to Alchemy’s analysts, countries across the globe would naturally “see the need for a non-US alternative” means of safely parking their cash and trading. In a rare show of political sobriety, the British spooks predicted that sanctions on Russia combined with the Ukraine proxy war would impose higher prices on consumer goods and “hit British voters in the pocket.”

This posed “a threat to public support” for the British government’s “hard line” on Ukraine, they warned. “Domestic UK public opinion” would understandably get “fed up” paying more for everyday goods, meaning “pressure grows for a compromise.”

To prepare the British public for the coming storm, Project Alchemy’s plotters proposed what they blandly described as “information operations,” but which could be more accurately described as a blend of domestic state propaganda and malign attacks on disruptive media outlets.

The task they outlined not only included “[dismantling] Russian disinformation infrastructure” by pressuring social media to ban RT and Sputnik, but also targeting critical independent media like The Grayzone.

“A number of actions can be undertaken against these outlets. The most obvious is legal since the content of these media outriders is frequently in contravention of media law in the UK, US and EU,” Alchemy insisted.

“Aggrieved parties currently tend to ignore libel/defamation by these outlets. Were they to aggressively pursue these outlets, it is likely they would be forced to close.”

The Grayzone, it was claimed, had thus far “managed to obscure” its funding – a suggestion that this outlet is covertly funded by Russia or some other enemy state, which is completely false. The paranoid fantasies of British intelligence may explain why this journalist was quizzed on the subject by British counter-terror police when they detained and interrogated him at Luton International Airport in May 2023.

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Alchemy plotters seek to place Britain at lead of war with Russia

In addition to playing a leading role in media manipulation, Alchemy sought to place Britain at the forefront of the International Criminal Court’s agenda to investigate and prosecute the Russian government for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

Alchemy suggested London “set international conditions, collection mechanisms and funding for collection of data and evidence” in the proxy conflict, and “provide all possible support, including intelligence” to the ICC “in its efforts to investigate war crimes,” just as British spies did for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Though not named in the document, high-profile British lawyers, including celebrity Amal Clooney, have since emerged at the forefront of efforts to prosecute Russian officials for war crimes, and establish an ICTY analog. As The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal reported, Britain played a critical role in the appointment of Amal Clooney’s mentor, Karim Khan, as ICC prosecutor.

Project Alchemy’s provocative proposals appear to have reached the desk of PM Keir Starmer in some form. At NATO’s 75th anniversary summit, Starmer issued his full-throated endorsement of deep strikes by the Ukrainian military into Russia. Echoing the aggressive language found in Alchemy documents, he pledged to “deliver £3 billion worth of support to Ukraine each year… for as long as it takes.”

But as the Ukrainian military’s offensive in Russia’s Kursk region falters, the Biden administration has distanced itself from the calls for striking into the Russian heartland. Fortunately for British leaders hellbent on taking the fight to Moscow, Project Alchemy has ensured that a platter of off-the-books options remains handy.

As Alchemy noted in its grand strategy paper, “The UK seeks always to act multilaterally, but is prepared to take a unilateral lead where achieving multilateral consensus might prove time-consuming or difficult.” Among the war’s covert sponsors, who were safely ensconced over 1,000 miles away from the front lines, it was firmly agreed: “we should attempt at all costs to keep Ukraine fighting.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/11/ ... -fighting/

*******

Treasonous inevitability
The western warhawk calculation, Azovite doubts on missiles and North Koreans, forever war

Events in Ukraine
Nov 18, 2024
∙ Paid

Today’s topics:

Why Biden gave Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles on Russian territory. The pre-Trump calculation

How Azov’s military analyst argues that these missiles won’t change much, and - shock horror - that there probably aren’t any North Koreans fighting alongside Russia (the putative US rationale for increasing Ukrainian missile capabilities)

Harsh punishment for any pro-peace sentiment within Ukraine - even for parliamentarians

As usual, I can never shake off the feeling that there is a direct positive correlation between the amount of ‘pro-peace’ editorials published in leading western media, and the degree of NATO-Russia military escalation.

On November 17, the NYT published an article on the war in Ukraine that I can essentially entirely agree with:

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Dozens of people, and often hundreds, are dying every day in this grinding war. Mr. Trump should seize the chance to save lives. Nobody is coming to save Ukraine. A settlement will eventually be needed.



I believe it’s right to call Ukraine a proxy war, because I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the Biden administration has supported the war not only in deference to righteous Ukrainian determination to fight off Russia but also because the war was a chance to debilitate our enemy without directly engaging it.



The United States staked out an awkward middle ground — supporting the war enough to keep it going, but never enough to win.


Remarkable, right? A far cry from the usual sentimental warmongering.

The catch
But then the next day, US president Biden authorized Ukraine to hit Russian territory with western-supplied missiles. This had previously been previously off-limits to Ukraine, though this didn’t stop a range of drone attacks against various targets in Russia, or, of course, Ukraine’s military invasion and occupation of the Kursk region.

Indeed, according to western media, Biden changed his position because of Kursk. Of course, the reason they give is ‘Russian use of North Korean soldiers to take back Kursk’, though there still hasn’t actually been any confirmation that that DPRK soldiers are fighting there.

But this tracks with my recent article on the crucial importance of Ukraine’s control of (parts of) the Kursk region, insofar as it allows Kyiv to make any discussion of a ceasefire impossible. And since Trump’s team seems more likely to push for such a resolution than the Democrats, perhaps Biden decided to make sure that Ukrainian forces wouldn’t be pushed out of the area before Trump’s inauguration.

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Ukraine may not have many of these long-range missiles, but it certainly can’t hurt to use them to put some more pressure on Russian supply lines. Like all wunderwaffen, it won’t change the overall tides. But as Keynes said, in the long run we’re all dead. I think the calculation is as follows: if we prolong and intensify the war until Trump’s inauguration, Putin-Trump inaugurations will be more tense and difficult than otherwise. And besides that, neither side is much inclined to look weak. Hence, a hotter situation at the frontline even further increases the chances of negotiations failing. A relatively rational calculation, in my view. Let’s see if it’ll work out.

(Paywall with free viewing option)

https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/ ... vitability

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Interpreting The Times’ Report About A Ukrainian Think Tank’s Nuke Proposal

Andrew Korybko
Nov 18, 2024

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The top takeaway isn’t that Ukraine might soon develop nukes, which it couldn’t make any progress on without Russia detecting it, but that Ukraine might soon build its own long-range ballistic missiles and thus lead to Russia compromising on its goal of demilitarizing Ukraine if it’s unable to stop this.

The Times sent tongues wagging after their report last week about a Ukrainian think tank’s proposal advising their country to accelerate the construction of crude nuclear weapons if Trump cuts off aid. This follows similar comments from Zelensky last month that he then swiftly backtracked and which were analyzed here. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry denied any such intentions and Zelensky’s top advisor Mikhail Podoliak claimed that such a plan wouldn’t deter Russia even if it was successfully implemented.

The abovementioned developments were newsworthy in their own right, but it’s regrettable that other aspects of The Times’ report were drowned out by the sensationalism of this story. The present piece will therefore draw attention to three points that most folks might have missed if they didn’t read the original report and instead only relied on others to inform them of the gist about it. The significance of what was left out from this story will then be analyzed too since it’s arguably the most important part.

The first point that many missed is that the director of the think tank that produced the report claimed near the end of The Times’ article that his country is just six months away from producing its own long-range ballistic missiles, which could reach as far as 1,000 kilometers/621 miles. That could place Moscow in Ukraine’s crosshairs if such missiles are launched from west of the Dnieper or St. Petersburg if they’re launched from Chernigov Region. He might just be bluffing, but it’s still worth pointing out.

The second point is that the aforesaid director and the report’s author agreed that “should the US abandon Ukraine, Britain could honour its security obligation under the Budapest memorandum by helping Ukraine to develop a nuclear deterrent.” And finally, the author claimed that “the threshold for developing a nuclear rearmament programme would be Putin’s troops reaching the city of Pavlohrad”, after which Dnipro and Kharkov could then be captured by Russia before nukes are developed.

Pavlograd is only around 96 kilometers/60 miles from the front and directly on the highway between Pokrovsk, which Russia might soon lay siege to or capture, and Dnipro on that eponymous river’s banks. Unlike what he claimed about Kharkov, however, Russia’s capture of Pavlograd would actually make it easier to then lay siege to or capture nearby Zaporozhye to the south than that northern city. In any case, Russia’s victory in the impending Battle of Pokrovsk could lead to the collapse of the entire front.

To review, most news outlets that reported on this story didn’t mention that: 1) Ukraine claims to be just six months away from producing its own long-range ballistic missiles; 2) some in the country want the UK to help them rapidly develop nukes; and 3) they’re worried that the entire front might soon collapse. Whether any of this is true or not, it might be meant to pressure Trump into perpetuating or even escalating the conflict in order to avert Ukraine and the West’s supposedly impending strategic defeat.

This assessment is supported by a former commanding officer of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment who talked to Times Radio about this and was quoted in their report. He told them that “Trump will take note because the last thing we want is more nuclear proliferation and any sort of nuclear strike in Europe, be it from Ukrainians or the Russians.” The problem though is that the attention given to the think tank’s nuclear proposal might backfire if Trump feels blackmailed.

As was explained here, Trump probably really does appreciate the two parts of Zelensky’s “Victory Plan” that call for letting the West extract some of Ukraine’s alleged $10-12 trillion of critical minerals and replacing US troops in Europe with Ukrainian ones as America ‘Pivots (back) to Asia’ to contain China. Therefore, Ukraine doesn’t need to follow this carrot up with the stick of threatening to build nukes if he doesn’t agree to continue supporting it, especially not in cahoots with the British behind America’s back.

What might be much more convincing for Trump is the other two underreported parts of this story about how Ukraine is just six months away from producing its own long-range ballistic missiles but is also possibly on the brink of a catastrophic military collapse that could prevent that from happening. He reacts much better to promises and potential opportunities, not threats and blackmail, and he’s also known for his short attention span that makes him averse to reading anything other than bullet points.

For that reason, if the UK and Ukraine thought that this report might move the needle in the direction of getting Trump to perpetuate or even escalate the conflict instead of pull out as soon as possible, then they’ll probably be disappointed since he almost certainly only heard about the blackmail part. The most important part about the opportunity for Ukraine to develop its own long-range ballistic missiles if only Trump buys it more time to prevent a collapse, regardless of veracity, is likely still unknown to him.

Russia knows about it though since its media widely reported on what The Times wrote, so another way in which this attempt to pressure Trump might also backfire is if Russia demands guarantees during negotiations with the US that Ukraine won’t develop such capabilities. It’s unclear how that would work, especially since Ukraine is unlikely to let Russian inspectors travel to suspected facilities, but Moscow can’t allow Kiev to obtain and keep this technology otherwise it won’t succeed in demilitarizing Ukraine.

Russian officials have issued strong statements in response to news about the West considering giving Ukraine their long-range missiles so it would be inconsistent for them to turn a blind eye to it either domestically developing this technology or using others’ arms under the cover of them being their own. It was assessed earlier this month that “The Clock Is Ticking For Russia To Achieve Its Maximum Goals In The Ukrainian Conflict” so this latest report further adds to the already intense sense of urgency.

Provided that there’s some truth to the claim that Ukraine will develop its own long-range ballistic missiles within six months or at least by the end of next year, then Russia knows that this will be a fait accompli if it doesn’t decisively defeat its opponent by then. Likewise, this same outcome might be inevitable if Trump successfully ‘escalates to de-escalate’ to end the conflict on better terms for the US before then too, the scenario of which readers can learn more about here, here, and here.

The top takeaway from The Times’ report therefore isn’t that Ukraine might soon develop nukes with or without British assistance, which it couldn’t make any progress on without Russia detecting it as Sputnik explained here, but that Ukraine might soon build its own long-range ballistic missiles. That would likely lead to Russia having to compromise on its goal of demilitarizing Ukraine, which was one of the main reasons behind the special operation, thus possibly leading to more compromises on other goals too.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/interpre ... port-about

I doubt Russia would be in a mood to compromise if threatened by Uke ballistic missiles. I suspect getting them built and deployed would be a major challenge given Russia's air superiority.

One gets the impression that little Andy doesn't want Russia to achieve it's stated goals.

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To Prolong The War In Ukraine U.S. Allows ATACMS Use On Russia

President Joe Biden, or whoever is thinking for him, is doing his best to make peace in Ukraine less likely:

President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied missiles to strike deeper inside Russia, easing limitations on the longer range weapons ..
...
Putin has warned that Moscow could provide long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets if NATO allies allow Ukraine to use their arms to attack Russian territory.
...
The longer-range missiles are likely to be used in response to North Korea’s decision to support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to one of the people familiar with the development.


The ATACMS missiles Ukraine had so far been allowed to fire, mostly against Crimea, have been carriers of cluster ammunition with a reach of some 160 kilometer.

We do not know yet if the new authorized use for ATACMS munition on targets within Russia is only relevant for the cluster ammunition missile type or for high explosive ATACMS missiles with a reach of 300 kilometer.

However, the Russian President Vladimir Putin has correctly pointed out that ANY use of ATACMS requires the involvement of NATO (U.S/UK) assets for acquiring the targeting data and for planing and programming the missile's mission.

Any use of ATACMS onto Russian proper is thus an act of war by NATO against the Russian Federation. The Russian response to such will be appropriate but may well surface in a theater far from Ukraine.

The military usefulness of ATACMS attacks on Russia is in doubt:

The overall supply of ATACMS missiles is short, so U.S. officials in the past have questioned whether they could give Ukraine enough to make a difference.

The ostensible reason for allowing the use of ATACMS is the defense of the Ukrainian troops which have invaded the Kursk oblast of Russia.

During that invasion the Ukrainian units went further into Russia than their usual 20 kilometer deep artillery cover allowed for. To further support them HIMARS missile launchers with GMLRS missiles and a reach of 70 kilometer were pulled to the front. Only a few of them survived their service near the Russian border. During August and September of 2024 the Russian forces wacked six or seven of those. (Just today another was reported to have been destroyed.)

ATACMS are no wonder weapons. The running tally of the Russian ministry of defense reports lists 235 successful interceptions of ATACMS missiles.

Using ATACMS to support the Ukrainian bridgehead in Kursk will make it slightly more difficult for Russia to eliminate the incursion. Russia has said that it will not negotiate until Ukrainian troops have left its country. To prolong the existence of the bridgehead will thus prevent a fast peace agreement which president-elect Donald Trump may have in mind.

To further argue for the deployment of ATACMS against Russia the Biden administration is pointing to the North Korean bogeyman:

North Korea has provided thousands of troops to Russia to help Moscow try to claw back land in the Kursk border region that Ukraine seized this year. ..
As many as 12,000 North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, according to U.S., South Korean and Ukrainian assessments.


'Assessments' are analyst estimates for which there is no evidence.

Nothing has been shown that would provide that there are any North Korean soldiers in Russia. The claim that a division sized contingent of North Korean soldiers is preparing to fight in the Kursk region was made by Ukraine only after a U.S. think-tank had proposed to use it as an item of larger propaganda campaign.

Russia has sufficient forces to eliminate the Ukrainian troops on its ground. It is highly doubtful that any Russian command would agree to include North Korean units in any Russian operation. Thus the 'North Korean soldiers' propaganda claim continues to be just that.

The incoming President Donald Trump has publicly said that he will seek to end the war in Ukraine as soon as possible. The Biden administration has not only helped to start that war but is seeking to prolong it as long as possible.

Militarily the use of ATACMS against targets in Russia will not provide any significant advantage to the Ukrainian forces. There is no way left for them to sustain or win in this war. Their defeat is inevitable.

But allowing the use of ATACMS against Russia will escalate the war into a new dimension. It will prolong the path to any peace agreement. This to the sole benefit of those who are politically and financially invested in this war.

Posted by b on November 18, 2024 at 17:15 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/11/u ... .html#more

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North Korean troops in Kursk: pretext for American escalation or cause?

In the past couple of weeks, there have been numerous articles in The New York Times and other mainstream disseminators of the CIA and White House propaganda lines regarding an alleged presence of North Korean troops in Russia to fight in Kursk against the Ukrainian forces there. US intelligence was said to have spotted via satellite images some 12,000 North Korean infantrymen in Russia of whom 10,000 were said to have been incorporated into a Russian force numbering 50,000 that would, any day now, make an all-out attack on the remaining Ukrainians occupying this Russian Federation territory.

Those same articles told us that the United States government considered the introduction of North Korean troops into the battle to represent a big escalation in the war by the Kremlin. So it was just a matter of time before Washington would respond with its own counter-escalation. Yesterday’s announcement by Biden’s office told us he has just decided to give Kiev freedom to use American supplied ATACMs missiles with a 300 km radius of operation to strike inside the Russian Federation as it wishes.

As I observed yesterday, this decision overturns Biden’s decision of 14 September never to allow its medium or long range missiles to be used inside the RF. This was a decision forced on him by Pentagon officials who would have made reference Putin’s clearly stated intention days earlier to make this a casus belli against the suppliers of the missiles (in the case of ATACMS) or of the technology needed to operate such missiles (in the case of Storm Shadow).

Lest we hyperventilate about the risks to which Biden was now exposing the Continental USA,unofficial US news sources tell us this morning that Washington has insisted that Kiev strike with ATACMS only targets within the Kursk oblast, supporting the notion that the objective is strictly a proportional tit-for-tat over the North Korean presence there. Indeed, if the Russians’ version of how such weapons are used, namely that all preparation and targeting is done by U.S. soldiers or U.S. military contractors, whatever strikes on Russia using ATACMS Kiev may claim, real control rests with Americans so they know very well what will be hit and where.

Let us put aside for the moment that the limitation on geography for attack is only temporary and will be expanded in the near future whenever Washington is ready to up the ante. Let us be explicit about what attacking the Kursk region means.

There are only two possible types of targets in Kursk oblast worthy of discussion. One is troop concentrations of Russians and North Koreans performing the mopping up operation in Kursk. ATACMS strikes there probably will not initially force the Russians to respond. The second is the nuclear power plant in the region which was believed to be the prize initially sought by Kiev when it began its incursion.

Let us remember that the Kursk nuclear power plant is an early type plant which has no protective concrete dome over it to contain radioactive leaks and to prevent missile strikes from disabling it. Accordingly, an ATACMS strike on the plant will likely create a big, even devastating leak of radioactive particles across the region, meaning predominantly on Russian territory. Such an eventuality would force the hand of Putin to respond with a nuclear attack, likely on the Continental United States with all that means.

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Before closing out this commentary, I am obliged to say what significance I see in the entry of North Korean soldiers on Russian Federation territory and possibly their deployment in Kursk.

I agree with Washington that this represents an important escalation by the Russians. But it has nothing to do with the war in and about Ukraine. It is a Russian response to U.S. actions in the Far East, where it is mobilizing South Korea and Japan against China in its containment policy there, against North Korea to apply maximum threats against Pyongyang, and ….against Russia in its containment policy on the RF everywhere.

By exercising its rights under the recently ratified mutual defense treaty with North Korea and inviting Pyongyang to move a substantial contingent of fighting men to the Western border of the Russian Federation, Moscow is serving notice on Washington that its own ‘sphere of influence,’ if I may paraphrase Barack Obama in his widely quoted insult to Putin about his country’s place in the world, extends to many, many areas, as should be expected from the world’s largest country accounting for 12 percent of the world’s land mass.

Let us be frank, Russia is well positioned by its common land border with North Korea to enable Pyongyang to overrun South Korea at any time of its choosing. And this is what has set off alarm bells in the Biden camp, not the paltry supplemental fighting force that North Korea adds to a 600,000 Russian military in or just near the war zone with Ukraine.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/11/18/ ... -or-cause/

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Pushkin is eternal. But you are not.
November 18, 21:10

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A message from a brave resident of Nazi-occupied Krivoy Rog.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9503970.html

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

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