POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 05/26/2023
Original article: Dmitry Steshin / Komsomolskaya Pravda
The “green” that has appeared in recent weeks has become a true salvation for artillery and aerial reconnaissance and I could clearly see how these two sectors, the old and the new, honored by the gods of war, finally found a common language and began to work together. Last week, I was told, "our artillery worked so hard on Ugledar that the soldiers don't remember such heavy fire." We follow an unusual activity of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The opponent is constantly maneuvering along the front, he has enough paved roads. The fields have already dried up, so you can drive anywhere. Experts and analysts are right when they speak of the "Ugledar leadership" as interesting for the Banderista counteroffensive that is yet to begin. There can be many targets, such as the beautiful Donetsk-Mariupol highway, which has just been repaired. From the front line, it's a span.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces may attempt, if not to capture Volnovaja, then at least to relieve the pressure on their last remaining forces by defending Marinka near Donetsk. There are many options. However, as officers from the Cascade operational combat tactical formation observe, “if there is an attack in the Ugledar area, it is unlikely to be planned as the main one. Although, on the other hand, an auxiliary blow can easily become the main one, they are all probabilities that have to be calculated. It is difficult to calculate the opponent's plans, but try to detect them as soon as possible in order to hinder or block them.
Russian artillery has long been not standing still, but moving along the front. We move forward with aerial reconnaissance from Cascade and somewhere far away, beyond the woods, the engines of the trucks loading the artillery begin to start. They move at the same time. We hide the car in some kind of shed and I assume the artillery will have found a secluded spot as well. We run to the end of the field and immediately go into the comfortable forest. The guys from the aerial reconnaissance, looking at the clock, turn on the radio and take out the quadcopter. A hand with a quadcopter emerges from the bushes, the second operator calmly says "I'm taking off" and the vehicle rises into the sky like a sail. Briefly, he says to the radio: “A boa constrictor. We are working".
Over the operator's shoulder, I gaze at the screen. Flashes are observed under the apparatus, which the operator counts by moving his lips. Finally, the device is left hanging about 300 meters from the landing. It is difficult for the human eye to understand that this is a fortified area, but the device rotates the camera from left to right and then you can see, against the light, a red dot that stands out in the landscape: they have dug at night and have not had time to cover it. Then the garbage with remains of the green bags of food rations is clearly visible. When the sun goes down, they become even more visible. Our rations blend in much better on the ground. The radio gives a series of commands that are completely incomprehensible to me. But just then a cannon roars in the distance and a white dot appears on the screen. The wind lifts the smoke towards the field. It has been a short flight, but the explorer is happy: “A boa constrictor. Excellent. 10-West”. Another explosion is heard in the woods. "Boa constrictor. Good. Let's go there". The boys only intervene occasionally, always to correct the fire. "Boa constrictor. 10-north. And more. Come on". They are interrupted by one of the Russian aircraft, which can be heard in the distance. One of the operators turns around and says: “Grinders. When they fly, they blind everything around us. You can easily miss a drone.”
Two K-52 helicopters come back over the edge of the field followed by an Mi-8 just behind. I flew one of them on a ground attack in the Kharkiv region. This helicopter is surgical and, as part of a support group, its job is to evacuate personnel if another has been shot down. I cannot resist and ask: “Guys, you have attacked their fortified area, what do you do in response?” One of them smiles under the balaclava. "We shoot 152 millimeters and they 60."
I try to demonstrate my knowledge of the particularities of the Ugledar area: “Polish shells?”
"Yes, you can carry the mortar on your belt, it's done like that."
“Worst of all, they have those shells, they just refill them. They can, for example, shoot a hundred at a square at a time. So they make up for the little power with quantity, like a machine gun. In general, the Poles are good sponsors. The other day, an accumulation was found in an urban settlement, our colleagues flew in, fired a shell at them and that's it”.
I ask a second scout, Boston : "How does the opponent feel now?"
“Right now he has little equipment, but he tries to enter small groups. If our drones notice them, that's it, end of the offensive. Now the battles are different, drones and artillery fight. So the enemy is trying to catch us by surprise. It maneuvers all the time, but I wouldn't say there's been an increase in activity here. Everything goes in waves, it comes and goes.
The scouts take us back to the town where we left the hidden car. In the first rear, it is impossible to find anything. The soldiers say: “Sometimes it is rush hour, with our drones and those of others. Sometimes it seems impossible for them not to collide.” As confirmation of these words, I hear a great roar in the sky, something that flies very slowly and that is obviously not ours, what is it doing there? At the end of the flight, we hear a large thump to the ground, but no smoke. A little later, they explain to me that it was our electronic warfare, which has intercepted one of the Ukrainian drones full of explosives and brought it down to the ground far from the town. I'm not going to look, the sappers are still working there.
The boys show me trophies and curiosities. The first to brag is a combat officer, who arrived at HQ after being wounded by something they show me: an American machine gun. He was captured in one of the fortified areas near Ugledar, perfectly intact and with instructions in Spanish.
“Our Utes is better, but you can't carry that many cartridges, they're nowhere to be found. There are still a couple of boxes left, but it's for two minutes of combat. Maybe you can take it to a museum.” I promise, so Ruyan finally shows me the machine gun. It bears the inscription “Khojloma” and was produced in the late 1980s. It may have been used by a special forces soldier from the second Chechen war. Ruyan immediately fell in love with the machine gun and, with the help of the destroyed Azov regiment, decorated and improved it. He even fitted a new peephole out of his pocket.
A soldier with the nom de guerre Kulinar , a Siberian recruit, approaches us. The cook seems to have come out from under the coal fire, like on the pages of old Russian chronicles. In his hands he carries a rifle and hunting. Knowing that they have been used since 2014 in Donbass, I am not surprised. Sometimes the animals even interfere with the crossing of vehicles. In general, a game soup out front is not something exotic from a restaurant. I ask the cook for the normal thing: no skin, no feathers, but he tells me something unexpected: “I hunt plastic birds, drones. With the Troika, you can cover 60 meters. I myself have brought the weapon recently.”
"Were you able to reach something?"
“Not yet, but I have a good eye. And I've been hunting since I was a kid."
The cook explains that hunting is dangerous. If the operator notices that his drone is being followed, he can drop the ammo on the hunter himself . But Kulinar does not hunt alone, his comrades are, as he puts it, armed with “electronic weapons”. I remember the words of Boston : “We fly with confidence and they try to shoot us down with confidence. But we have expert hands and golden heads, so they hardly ever succeed. And we also have a Siberian hunter. That type of person is what the enemy cannot have, neither Europe nor the United States can hand them over to them”.
Returning from Ugledar, I immediately post a message on social networks: the captured Browning machine gun is looking for good hands. But let it be a museum. In the morning, I find two messages: from the Donetsk and Lugansk History museums. The machine gun has whoever wants it. Let those who rescued her bloodied be the ones to decide.
https://slavyangrad.es/2023/05/26/el-fr ... more-27358
Google Translator
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Russian tanks reach the Atlantic near Lisbon…
The “fake news” title to this article provides a vision of where current U.S. and EU foreign and military policy towards Russia may be taking us if we do not think things through and make a course correction. My point in this article is that no one in leadership positions on this side of the New Iron Curtain seems capable of seeing beyond one move in the grand chess game of the Great Powers now proceeding before the eyes of the world. I dedicate this article in particular to the unidentified but very welcome readers in the U.S. Army who are following me on LinkedIn.
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The starting point for today’s discussion is where I left off in my expose two days ago of the conformist and ill-considered presentation of the Russian-Ukraine war by The New York Times senior diplomatic correspondent in Brussels, Steven Erlanger, at a prestigious downtown club in this city.
I closed that expose by expanding on my question to Erlanger at the start of his Q&A: why were Europe and the U.S. so unprepared for the land war that Russia unleashed on 24 February 2022 given the way they all had taunted the Russian bear ever since 2014 in a manner that could only lead eventually to war. The last insult handed to the Russians came in the period from December 2021 through early February 2022 when the U.S. and NATO rejected out of hand Russia’s demand to enter into negotiations over its proposals for a review and revision of Europe’s security architecture.
The United States and Europe gloated at the way Russia stumbled in the opening days and weeks of the Special Military Operation. They concluded publicly that Russia was far less strong than anyone had supposed. However, the Russians comforted themselves with the old folk wisdom that they as a people are slow to saddle their horses but quick on the course once mounted. Indeed, Russia’s military gradually came into stride and we began to hear from Western military observers that the war had evolved into a full-blown “land war,” a throw-back to the trench warfare and artillery battles of WWI, as opposed to tank battles or carpet bombing from positions of air superiority that the U.S. and its NATO allies have practiced over the past three decades when engaged against Third World victim countries.
Then it turned out that the Russians were firing up to 60,000 rounds of artillery a day, outdoing the Ukrainians firepower by a factor of from three or five to one. Casualty rates on the two sides rose in parallel with the disparity in firepower. The smiles were driven from the faces of our television commentators and political leaders. Now all attention was directed to propping up the Kiev regime with ever more lethal military hardware while cleaning out the armories in Europe to an alarming degree. The Russians were finally understood to have the world’s biggest accumulation of munitions, backed up by the world’s biggest manufacturing capacity in this domain. This is not to mention the new wonder weapons like the hypersonic Kinzhal which the Russians began to introduce on the field of battle a year into the war.
My question was and is: why were these aspects of the coming war in and about Ukraine not foreseen by those in power in the West? This bespeaks gross irresponsibility and incompetence…and, surely, also vast corruption. How else can one understand that the three or four hundred billion euros spent collectively by the EU member states on defense each and every year for the past twenty years versus the 80 billion euros of the annual Russian military budget yielded such a discrepancy in war readiness when it finally came in early 2022? And of course, by extension, why did U.S. stores and manufacturing turn out to be so paltry given its military budget greater than most of the rest of the world combined?
Now that I have flushed out that issue, let us move on. I do not see signs that current leadership in the U.S. or Europe has drawn any lessons from this experience. Instead by all their latest moves on the chessboard they are heading us straight for the checkmate described in the title line to this essay.
Great attention in the Western media has been devoted all this year to the decisions taken in Washington, London, Berlin and Brussels with respect first to shipment to Kiev of advanced tanks, namely the American produced Abrams heavy tank and the German Leopards, then to the shipment to Kiev of American F-16 fighter jets from out of fleets in Europe.
Very little is being reported about the build-up of NATO troop strength and materiel all along the Eastern frontier with Russia. Very little is being reported right now in Western media about the threats coming from Poland to support an armed uprising being planned against the Lukashenko government in Belarus. Indeed earlier this week Polish television interviewed a former deputy minister of defense General Skrzypczak, who is actively pushing for his country to intervene militarily in support of any such uprising, crossing the border into Belarus just as Ukrainian forces in the guise of anti-Putin Russian militia invaded the RF oblast of Belgorod over last weekend causing mayhem, including the destruction of more than 500 houses and shootings that sent Russian civilians to the hospitals with injuries or to the morgue. These “terrorists” as the Russian television describes them were liquidated by Russian security forces, but the threat of further such incursions has raised the temperature and the aggressiveness of Russian public discourse.
Some Russian nationalists, like the head of the Wagner mercenary company Yevgeny Prigozhin, are quoted today in The New York Times for their demands that Russian elites be called to order, that the country be put on a full war footing, that martial law be introduced. Other nationalist orators are saying that traitors like the gal who handed a fatal bomb to the journalist Tatarsky in St Petersburg several weeks ago be summarily executed.
However, a lot more is being said on mainstream Russian television like Sixty Minutes that goes unreported by our press and that goes well beyond cracking down domestically in Russia. The panelists on this show are not just talking heads from think tanks and Moscow State University. They include Duma members from United Russia, LDPR and the Communist Party. And among the Duma members are predominantly heads of relevant Duma Committees like Defense.
One of the most cogent such Duma member panelists is a retired general who has some very specific recommendations on military strategy that our boys in DC would do well to consider.
A lot of print has been spilled and all too many words have been spoken by Western analysts on whether or not Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This is empty talk that ignores two facts. The first is that the Ukraine regime can be decapitated at any moment of Russia’s choosing using the hypersonic missiles at Russia’s disposal equipped with conventional warheads. Secondly, Russia is holding its nuclear option in reserve use of nuclear weapons against NATO, as this Duma member made crystal clear. Let us all remember that Russia has the world’s largest stock of tactical nuclear arms, just as it is the world’s leader in strategic nuclear arms.
If the hare-brained regime in Warsaw proceeds with plans to do Washington’s bidding and create a “second front” by invading Belarus under the guise of local insurgents, Russia will certainly intervene. President Putin specifically stated that yesterday, but you will not find his citation in today’s NYT. If as a follow-on, NATO begins to move against Russia along the vast front line that it has recently manned, then the Russian general’s proposed response is also ready to hand: to use tactical nuclear weapons against these NATO forces, destroy them and move tanks past them to the next point of resistance where it again uses nuclear weapons. This game of leapfrog would logically take those Russian tanks to the Atlantic somewhere near Lisbon as I have indicated in the headline.
And what would the USA do about the destruction of its European allies? An informed guess is nothing. If Washington is now pussy-footing over whose tanks go to Ukraine, over whose F-16s go to Ukraine, all for the purpose of keeping the fight with Russia at the level of proxies, then why would the USA risk instant destruction by Russian strategic missiles just because Europe is burning?
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/05/25/ ... ar-lisbon/
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Zelensky piling up his millions as Nato tries regime change via assassination
Washington continues to stoke the fire in Ukraine, but the blowback may refuse to remain safely in Europe.
Proletarian writers
Wednesday 24 May 2023
Ukrainian puppet actor-president Volodymyr Zelensky has been coming under fire from his own generals. Not for such trivial offences as prostituting himself and facilitating the massacre of his countrymen in the interests of US imperialism, but for taking a bigger cut from the billions pouring into the Kiev treasury than they are able to do ...
The failed bid to assassinate Russian president Vladimir Putin in May, whether directly ordered by the west-backed junta in Ukraine or the work of freelancing fascists, signalled a new level of provocation and threat against Russia.
The drone attack on the Kremlin, taken together with the supply by Britain and others of long-range weapons capable of striking deep into Russian territory, and especially the announcement that the Challenger tanks sent by Britain had been equipped with depleted uranium warheads, all confront Russia with a level of provocation that cannot be tolerated.
Russian ambassador to the USA Anatoly Antonov responded to the botched assassination bid, saying: “Russia will respond to this insolent and presumptuous terrorist attack. We will answer when we consider it necessary. We will answer in accordance with the assessments of the threat that Kiev posed to the leadership of our country.”
Defence minister Sehei Shoigu, recognising the deployment by Britain of depleted uranium shells as tantamount to an invitation to nuclear war, noted that Britain’s decision left the world fewer and fewer steps away from a “nuclear collision”, adding for the sake of clarity: “Naturally, Russia has something to answer this with.”
As a first provisional response to the failed assassination Moscow unleashed a massive barrage of drone strikes on Kiev the like of which had not been seen since the early days of the war.
And from the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, Dmitry Medvedev, came this blunt assessment: “After today’s terrorist attack, there are no options left except for the physical elimination of Zelensky and his clique.” (Zelensky regime’s fate is sealed by MK Bhadrakumar, 5 May 2023)
Ignoring all these warnings, the west continues to pour more weapons into Ukraine, staking everything on the much trumpeted ‘spring offensive’, which, when it arrives, will supposedly strike a blow that will alter the course of the war to the west’s advantage.
Kiev has been dangling this much delayed offensive in front of its imperialist sponsors for months, using it to keep the money and materiel flowing. When put under pressure to name the day on which the promised offensive will eventuate, actor-president Volodymyr Zelensky pushes back, saying that the sooner the allies come up with more weapons, the sooner Kiev will be able to deliver the long-awaited offensive.
This moral blackmail delivers diminishing returns, though. When Zelensky came to visit British prime minister Rishi Sunak, he received promises of lots of drones but no fighter jets, scotching his grand plan of a “jet coalition”.
And the symbolic potency of the do-or-die spring offensive drained pretty rapidly when Ukrainian foreign minister Dmitro Kuleba blabbed to Das Bild: “If Ukraine does not succeed in its counteroffensive against the aggressor country Russia, it will prepare for the next one,” lamely advising everyone “not to consider this counteroffensive as the last one because we do not know what will come of it”.
These words were not reassuring to European governments whose economies have already been sacrificed on the altar of sanctions, and who are now faced with the prospect of going through it all again, with no end in sight. (Ukraine SitRep: Delayed counteroffensive, Russian defence lines, weapon efficiency, Moon of Alabama, 11 May 2023)
Still less reassuring for the USA’s allies was hearing top brass General Mark Milley expressing doubt to Foreign Affairs magazine that Kiev would even launch its ‘counteroffensive’ at all. Other voices have suggested slowing the supply of weapons to Kiev to delay an offensive that could prove to be premature. (Russia launches barrage of drones at Kiev as counteroffensive looms by Roman Olearchyk, Financial Times, 8 May 2023)
The more obvious it becomes that the proxy Ukrainian forces are just the failing tool of US imperialism, the wilder the historical distortions coming out of Zelensky’s mouth have become.
“In a video address on Monday morning, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky honoured the millions of Ukrainians who fought and died during the second world war. ‘We fought then and we fight now so that no one ever again enslaves other nations and destroys other countries,’ Zelensky said. ‘And all those old evils that modern Russia is bringing back will be defeated just as Nazism was defeated,’ he added.”
This grotesque parody of the truth is a reminder that whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. Millions of Ukrainians did indeed fight and die to help rid the world of Nazis – Nazis like Stepan Bandera, the collaborator who is now held aloft as a national hero by the Kiev junta, but who is remembered by most of the rest of us for sending thousands of jews to the gas chambers.
The clown Zelensky dishonours the memory of all those Ukrainians, whether speaking Ukrainian or Russian, who really did fight and die to save the world from fascism. It is to those Soviet heroes that all honour is due.
So gross a distortion of reality as that purveyed by the puppets of US imperialism cannot long fool even the most credulous of holocaust deniers.
Zelensky’s mock-heroic poses on the world stage do not stack up with the political sewer he inhabits, as admirably charted by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh (hotfoot from his recent exposure of US president Joe Biden’s hand in the sabotage of Nord Stream):
“Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments.
“One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400m last year, at least … ‘Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,’ one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me.
“‘And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are … Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally competing,’ I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks …
“The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA director William Burns. His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie.
“The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because ‘he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals’.” (Trading with the enemy, 12 April 2023)
Presumably he is saving pennies towards an early retirement?
https://thecommunists.org/2023/05/24/ne ... mir-putin/
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Why should communists support Russia? Because this weakens the Democratic Party’s influence over our movement.
BY RAINER SHEA
MAY 24, 2023
Image from the League of Filipino Students
To tell what a person or organization truly believes, don’t look at what they say they believe. Look at what things they show, through their practice, that they prioritize and de-prioritize. This is what we must investigate in order to see who shares the most important goal of communists at the moment. This goal being to break the Democratic Party’s influence over the communist movement, and over the wider liberation struggles.
An easy way to apply this judgement is by seeing what the geopolitical stances of a given political actor are. If they portray Washington’s rivals as imperialist, or claim Russia is in the wrong for carrying out a mission to end U.S.-facilitated ethnic cleansing, they’re clearly incorrect from an anti-imperialist perspective. China is not a capitalist state, Russia is not a fascist state whatever its contradictions, and dialectical analyses of these two countries are able to support what I say. The problem the imperial center’s left has is that there are deep ideological influences within it which prevent its dominant voices both from recognizing these realities about the nature of the new cold war; and which prevent even many who recognize them from doing anything besides simply comprehending the information. To effectively combat the Democratic Party’s co-optation efforts, we have to be counter-hegemonic in our practice, to act like U.S. hegemony is the primary contradiction.
As Mao said, there are types who merely absorb revolutionary knowledge without sufficiently putting it into practice, who want to have their Marxism and their liberalism at the same time. In our task of defeating opportunism and reformism in the imperial center, we have to avoid becoming those unprincipled actors. Many individuals like this can be found in our modern discourse landscape. They’re quite prevalent on social media especially, and their arguments can easily turn people who could otherwise have become counter-hegemonic into agents for their opportunist cause.
The trait that defines this type of opportunist, the one whose role is to assist the Democratic Party even if they themselves don’t view their role as such, is they substitute anti-imperialism for wokeness. Not “wokeness” in the term’s original sense, which was revolutionary in that it represented consciousness among the black masses about their systemic oppression. I mean wokeness in its modern, opportunistic sense, where elites have captured woke ideas to turn them into tools for reinforcing liberalism. The liberal versions of these ideas that get produced by those elites are then adopted by the types of radicals who don’t care about anti-imperialism. This radical liberal theory gets used as a way to rationalize engaging in the practices that reinforce Democratic Party dominance: neglecting the informational war against imperialism’s psyops; exclusively trying to appeal to liberals; viewing the element of the people who are most compatible with the anti-imperialist movement, and who show this by being pro-Russia, as necessarily reactionary and irredeemable.
These types of practice interrelate with the imperialism-compatible ideas that assist in Democrat foreign policy. If you believe that nobody can be pro-Russia without being right-wing, and that those who are most open to anti-imperialist ideas should be rejected simply because they aren’t all on the left, then naturally you’ll be incentivized to adopt the anti-Russia stance yourself. To believe the psyops the liberal academic intelligentsia and commentators promote, like that Russia is imperialist or fascist, that “Wagner” exists in the way we’ve been told it exists, and that the Russian side is guilty of the war crimes we’ve been told it’s committed. At the least, adopting such radical liberal modes of practice will lead you to apathy about geopolitics and anti-imperialism. To a habit of rejecting actions that counter U.S. hegemony, under the rationale that “we can’t affect these events” or that “our own conditions matter the most.” Such notions are about justifying the act of making wokeness overshadow anti-imperialism, when under a Marxist synthesis the domestic and international aspects of struggle would be reconcilable.
The imperialism-compatible left presents being apathetic about U.S. imperialism as an indicator of pragmatism and wisdom. It purposely underestimates the amount of power we can gain over international affairs, acting like we in the core lack responsibility to resist our government’s global crimes because supposedly we can’t change what happens in this area. The leftists and self-described communists who talk like this lack the type of ideological upbringing that produces those who’ve invested themselves in the information war. Because when you’ve gained experience in this part of the struggle, it’s become clear to you just how powerful the act of combating imperialist psyops can be.
Our government is alarmed by the idea of its foreign policy narratives being challenged, and has been growing more alarmed lately amid the resistance to the Ukraine proxy war. This is why it’s indicted the Uhuru members and introduced the RESTRICT act, which would criminalize international anti-imperialist outreach. This is why it’s waged a perpetually intensifying censorship campaign against anti-imperialist voices. This is why it’s taken the care to predicate this censorship campaign on the Russiagate psyop, and on the “supporting Russia is reactionary” myth that Russiagate created the foundations for. The centers of power have been showing us that at this stage in the class struggle, their core vulnerability is losing their narrative control. If anti-imperialist perspectives gain too much prominence in mass consciousness, not only will projects like the proxy war be forced to end, but the DNC will lose its status as the gatekeeper of mass movements.
No longer will Marxism be either prevented from becoming mainstream, or diluted into just another critical theory which liberals incorporate into their ideas. Marxism will be able to gain a strong identity and organizing presence, separate from the Democrats and their insidious influence.
If someone is presenting themselves as an authority on social justice issues, while either rejecting anti-imperialist ideas or barely ever advancing these ideas, it doesn’t matter how “radical” they claim to be. The effect of their decisions is one of helping the Democratic Party. Because like there are anti-woke grifters, there are also woke grifters. The anti-revolutionary, opportunistic nature of our present discourse makes it so that there can be pro-imperialists of both the right-wing and “leftist” varieties. To make the concept of being “woke” into something that again has a revolutionary character, communists ironically need to become more wary of wokeness. Because in a discourse climate with as many grifters and frauds as ours has, usually when you encounter someone who’s eager to let you know they support social justice, they seek to use that to cover up the pro-imperialist nature of their ideas.
There’s absolutely a place for LGBT liberation, black liberation, the struggle for tribal sovereignty, and so on. These things are intertwined with anti-imperialism and class struggle, so much that the identity struggles are in essence themselves all class struggles. The danger is when a person or organization is preaching for these struggles, while neglecting anti-imperialism and class. When you see that, you know you’re looking at a Democratic Party infiltrator within radical space.
https://newswiththeory.com/why-should-c ... -movement/
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From Cassad's Telegram account:
forwarded from
Voenkor Kitten Z
Military expert Boris Rozhin on the situation in the Artyomovsky direction at 00.06 Moscow time on May 26, 2023, specially for the channel Voenkor Kotenok Z @voenkorKotenok :
1. The city is completely under the control of PMC Wagner and the RF Armed Forces.
There is a process of rotation of divisions of PMC "Wagner" for rest and replenishment. Positions are transferred to other units.
2. The enemy continues shelling the western outskirts of Artemovsk.
There are no positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Samolet area. "Defense of Bakhmut" continues only virtually.
3. The rewarding of PMC "Wagner" fighters with state awards has begun.
In the DPR, an award "For the liberation of Artemovsk" was established.
4.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces say they have made some progress west of Kleshcheevka, where landings are taking place.
From our side, they report the return of one opornik to the north-west of the city under our control. Fights gradually take on a positional character.
5. The battles near Khromovo also continue, but our troops have not yet entered the village itself. Most likely, this issue will be resolved after the completion of the rotation in the city.
6. The rains that have begun again complicate the active actions of the parties. The fields have been swept away again.
7. The enemy strengthens his defensive positions in Konstantinovka and Chasov Yar. In Konstantinovka today there were traditional arrivals in the clusters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin
Google Translator
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War to victory
May 25, 11:11 p.m
Sergei Pereslegin on the problems of war to a victorious end.
War to victory
In the First World War, Germany each year set new military goals and formulated the conditions on which it would conclude peace. But every year the position of Germany worsened, especially by 1916. There was an increasing discrepancy between the military and political reality and the requirements that she set for the conclusion of peace. It was clear that Germany needed to withdraw from the war on any grounds, up to agreeing to peace without annexations and indemnities (as the Bolsheviks formulated) or giving up Alsace, but keeping Lorraine. But Germany continued to demand French, Belgian, Russian territories, British colonies. This meant that Germany could not agree to any peace other than its total defeat. And it was the defeat of Germany that had to be accepted in the end.
Ukraine is the world's first media power, we have repeatedly spoken about this. Opponents of Russia are waging an effective information war. The West loudly declared victory when planes and helicopters were shot down in the Bryansk region, and when the Patriot air defense system was hit, it was stated that he was slightly injured.
The battle for Bakhmut is over. The struggle for the city lasted more than six months. This is a major victory. Russia is naturally waiting for sane proposals to end the conflict. The counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not begin. This is a significant result on the physical battlefield. The West and Ukraine again answer in the communication space that they will not agree to any peace, except for the complete defeat of Russia. They insist on peace on Zelensky’s terms, a peace that destroys the Russian elites, a peace that gives Ukraine all the occupied territories that have become Russian.
Russia is interested in ending this war sooner or later. Since it was not possible to end the war in the form of a blitzkrieg, now there is no interest in doing it too quickly, because. the conditions of the war allow Russia to carry out many changes in the economic field with less caution.
Ukraine, according to its cultural code, would agree to peace on any terms, but this absolutely does not suit the Ukrainian elites. Peace will come to Ukraine after the change of these elites, and we are talking about when this will happen and under what circumstances. At this point in time, we can say with confidence that in terms of the number of deaths per elite rotation, Russia is now sharply outperforming Ukraine. We replace the leadership with heavy losses much faster and more vigorously than the Ukrainians do.
The United States is certainly interested in the conflict somehow successfully ending before the presidential election. But by and large, America is not so important how the conflict ends and when. And in Europe now, in principle, they do not want an end to the conflict. And even if it ends on their terms with the complete defeat of Russia, an extremely unpleasant question will be raised - what to do next? Now, like Russia and Ukraine, they can write off internal problems for war. But this possibility will soon be crossed out. Therefore, the collective West claims at the G7 summit that they do not need peace, and, apparently, Russia and Ukraine will fight until the complete victory of one of the parties. After that, the collective West will recognize the world in form - we will never recognize this, but for now we will agree that there are current realities. The realities of the division of Korea have existed for more than 60 years and have not been recognized by the West.
Secretary General Guterres made an interesting statement about the need to reform the UN and reform the global monetary system, bringing them to new realities. But which TNCs will agree to comply with the UN orders? It looks unrealistic.
(с) Sergey Pereslegin
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8380783.html
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US Military Aid to Ukraine ‘Will Soon Be Tapped,’ Talk of More Funding ‘On Back Burner’
MAY 24, 2023
A group of Ukrainian soldiers receive a shipment of US-made missiles in early February, 2022. Photo: AFP/Sergey Supinsky.
As Russia took over control of the city of Artemovsk (Bakhmut), a major transport and logistical hub in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Ukraine’s President Zelensky, fully aware that he was under pressure to pull off some imminent battlefield success for his Western patrons, descended upon the G7 summit, pleading for fresh military aid.
It won’t be long before billions of dollars of US-approved military aid to the Kiev regime is tapped, and any talk of more funding is on the back burner, a US report claims.
Last year, Washington approved a whopping $113 billion in overall aid and military assistance to Ukraine through emergency supplemental funding measures. Around three-fifths of the sum had been allocated to defense needs, such as procurement of new munitions and equipment, replacement of Department of Defense (DoD) stocks provided to Ukraine and funds allocated to training.
Close to $37 billion has already been spent, said the report, citing the US Defense Department. Even if one were to take into consideration the accounting error discovered in March through an internal audit and revealed by the Pentagon on May 18—which would add another $3 billion—that would leave between $10 billion and $13 billion. The rate of spending witnessed at the moment may indicate that the funds for propping up the Kiev regime could be exhausted by September—the end of the fiscal year.
For all the much-touted readiness of Washington to support the Kiev authorities for as long as it takes, President Joe Biden’s troubles on the home front have required attention. The ongoing impasse between the White House and the Republicans regarding the debt ceiling is cited by lawmakers as one of the reasons any talk about the next round of funding for Ukraine is being put aside. Another reason is uncertainty regarding the “counteroffensive” that Ukraine promised but which has so far failed to materialize.
There is no clarity regarding whether the Republican-controlled House will continue to toe the line of relentless determination to provide one package of aid after another for Ukraine.
One lawmaker—Democrat Representative for Massachusetts, Bill Keating—confirmed in the report that a lot would ultimately depend on Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
“It’s not a precise science to say what, because it could be gains that were made that make more support less necessary… Or there could be damage inflicted where there has to be more [assistance],” Keating said, adding that Kiev has “enough right now for the near future.”
US Congress last approved the final package for Ukraine in December 2022, to cover most of 2023. When elected GOP-controlled House Speaker, the California Republican Kevin McCarthy, said there would be no “blank check” for Ukraine. However, in May he indicated that the House would stick to its guns with “what we’ve been doing.”
But meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the G7 in Hiroshima, Japan, US President Joe Biden touted a military aid package for Kiev that included artillery, armored vehicles, ammunition, and training.
“Together with the entire G7, we have Ukraine’s back and I promise we’re not going anywhere,” Biden told Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president was in Hiroshima to plead for more weapons aid after Russia took control of the city of Artemovsk. The Russian military confirmed May 21 that operations by assault detachments supported by artillery and aviation of the Southern Group of Forces had led to the total liberation of the DPR city.
Just days earlier, Washington gave allies the go-ahead to transfer US-built F-16 jets to Ukraine. Biden also informed his G7 counterparts that the United States would support a joint effort to train Ukrainian pilots on fourth generation fighter aircraft, including F-16s.
Western countries have been supplying military aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The aid evolved from artillery and training in 2022 to heavier weapons, including tanks, later that year and in 2023.
The Kremlin, in turn, has repeatedly warned against continuously funneling arms to Kiev. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said any cargo that contains weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia. Moscow has repeatedly emphasized that the heavy levels of military aid being handed to Ukraine is only prolonging the conflict.
https://orinocotribune.com/us-military- ... ck-burner/
Even though there is still no accurate data on health problems in Afghanistan and will not be available in the coming years, the number of cancer patients is growing every year. In 2008 there were about 14 thousand of them, in 2009 - already 16 .
Kyiv : On Sunday, the territory of the Imperial Tobacco Ukraine enterprise also came under attack . Today, local residents reported a series of explosions and debris falling in several districts of the capital: one of the ammunition collapsed near Zhuliany airport.
During the night strike on Kiev, the positions of the air defense systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were hit . The Russian army used both Geraniums and cruise missiles, once again proving the effectiveness of combined strikes, especially against Western air defense systems. As a result, ours achieve both the destruction of anti-aircraft missile systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the consumption of expensive ammunition by Ukraine. And all this against the backdrop of an acute shortage of Patriot air defense systems and shells for them.
The situation on the fronts for the past day:
The Svatovo-Kremennaya direction
Air defense systems destroyed the Ukrainian Su-25 in the area of Zolotoy Balka , Kherson region.
The Vyruss believed in themselves again and decided to organize a PR campaign in our border area, driving in two tanks in the direction of Novaya Tavolzhanka, Belgorod Region. As a result, the militants came under fire from Russian tanks. Our fighters destroyed one tank, and the second was abandoned by the crew that fled the battlefield.
Positional battles on the Svatovsky sector of the front: advancing west of Kuzemovka
Polish Volunteer Corps: Cannon fodder for sabotage
However, shaking their weapons, threatening Russian soldiers, the Poles repeat their age-old mistake : by taking upon themselves the succession of the “Hussar of the death squadron”, they forget history. The detachment “protected” the Poles from the Bolsheviks for no more than a couple of years, after which it was defeated: the surviving members fled in all directions, and Sila-Novitsky completely fled, hiding like the last coward and drank himself.
