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NATO adopts new anti-Russia defense plan

RT | July 13, 2023

NATO passed a new defense plan at the Vilnius summit on Tuesday. The whopping 4,400-page document details the defense of critical locations in case of “an emergency” and lists a potential attack by Russia as one of the biggest threats, according to German media. The bloc’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg has welcomed what he called “the most comprehensive defense plans since the end of the Cold War.”

The document addresses two “main threats – Russia and terrorism,” and accuses the former of being “the greatest and most immediate threat to the security of allies and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic region,” according to Germany’s Bild tabloid.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also called on his country and the other NATO members to “arm ourselves against a threat to our territory,” Bild added. The new plan also lists the military capabilities the bloc’s members must demonstrate, including new member Finland and applicant, Sweden.

The document reportedly claims a “violent” and “revisionist” Russia could potentially attack NATO territory. “We recognized that we could indeed be faced with an Article 5 situation again, in which part of NATO territory is under direct attack,” a military bloc official told German news agency, dpa.

To counter the supposed ‘Russian threat,’ the bloc plans to massively increase its Response Force (NRF) from the current 40,000 troops to over 300,000, comprising land, sea and air units, as well as rapidly deployed Special Forces.

The bloc also plans to significantly increase weapons production and stockpiling. The new strategy includes a “new Defense Production Action Plan to accelerate joint procurement, boost production capacity, and enhance Allies’ interoperability,” the NATO statement said.

According to Bild, the bloc would seek to build up armored “heavy forces,” and deploy more long-range artillery systems and missiles, as well as air defense systems.

NATO also plans to enhance what it calls ‘deterrence measures’ by sending additional forces to the Baltics and Eastern Europe. Battlegroups comprising 1,000 soldiers are to support the national armies of the Baltic States and Poland, Bild reported, citing the document.

The UK will be responsible for Estonia, Canada for Latvia, Germany for Lithuania, and the US for Poland, the German media outlet said. Berlin also plans to station a brigade of 4,000 soldiers in Lithuania, according to the German media.

Germany is also reportedly expected to serve as the NATO logistics hub in case of a major conflict. The bloc is also considering establishing a second Land Command, in addition to the existing station in Türkiye’s Izmir. Wiesbaden in Germany is being considered as a potential location since it already hosts a large US base, Bild reported.

Russia repeatedly stated that it considers NATO’s buildup on its borders as well as the bloc’s expansion to the east a threat to its national security. It also named preventing Ukraine from joining the bloc among the main reasons for launching its military operation in the neighboring country in February 2022.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | 1 Comment

Biden mobilizes reservists

RT | July 14, 2023

President [?] Joe Biden announced on Thursday that up to 3,000 members of the US military’s Selected Reserve will be activated as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, the informal designation for Washington’s efforts to support Kiev in the ongoing conflict.

Biden has authorized the Defense and Homeland Security departments to “order to active duty any units, and any individual members not assigned to a unit organized to serve as a unit of the Selected Reserve, or any member in the Individual Ready Reserve mobilization category and designated as essential” by the department regulations.

The number of mobilized reservists is “not to exceed 3,000 total members at any one time, of whom not more than 450 may be members of the Individual Ready Reserve,” according to the White House.

Biden’s executive order cites section 12304 of Title 10 of US Code (General Military Act), allowing the president to call up reservists for situations “other than during war or national emergency,” including named operations or cases of “a use or threatened use of a weapon of mass destruction; or a terrorist attack or threatened terrorist attack” in the US that results or could result in “significant loss of life or property.”

The US military, however, described the mobilizations as merely expanding entitlements and access to funding. Army Lieutenant General Douglas Sims, the Joint Staff director of operations, told the reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that the order “benefits troops and families with increases in authorities, entitlements and access to the reserve component forces and personnel.”

“This will not change current force-posture levels in Europe,” European Command (EUCOM) spokesman, Navy Captain Bill Speaks, said in a statement about the order, explaining that it is intended to “ensure long-term resilience in EUCOM’s continued heightened level of presence and operations.”

Operation Atlantic Resolve is the informal name for actions the US military has taken since April 2014, after Crimea rejoined Russia following the Washington-backed coup in Kiev.

The Selected Reserve consists of personnel who can be immediately mobilized in the event of an emergency. Members of the IRR are trained soldiers, some of whom have recently left active duty, but still have reserve obligations. Homeland Security is involved because the US Coast Guard is under its jurisdiction.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | 3 Comments

The appropriations committee marked up their bill and the budget for the WHO remains at zero!

MERYL NASS | JULY 13, 2023

Furthermore, there is also in the bill no money for operationalizing the Pandemic Treaty unless it goes through the Senate for approval:

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Santa Clara University Students Must Take Covid Vaccines or Withdraw

By Lucia Sinatra | Brownstone Institute | July 11, 2023

College COVID vaccine mandates remain some of the most coercive mandates ever declared. While most colleges have now rescinded their mandates, some colleges refuse to let go, and Santa Clara University in California is one of the most oppressive.

In late April 2021, after most incoming freshmen had committed, SCU announced that all students were required to get COVID vaccines for fall enrollment or after full approval, whichever was later.

Then by mid-summer, SCU announced that students would be required to receive the vaccine even if it remained authorized only for emergency (EUA) and despite the fact that the CA Health and Safety Code codifies the Nuremberg Code. Section 24172 states

“(t)here is, and will continue to be, a growing need for protection for citizens of the state from unauthorized, needless, hazardous, or negligently performed medical experiments on human beings. It is, therefore, the intent of the Legislature, in the enacting of this chapter, to provide minimum statutory protection for the citizens of this state with regard to human experimentation and to provide penalties for those who violate such provisions.”

SCU (and many other CA colleges and universities) are in direct violation of this Code for removing informed consent by mandating EUA medical treatments.

Despite lack of efficacy or adequate safety data for this overwhelmingly healthy young adult population, in December 2021, SCU mandated the booster, midway through the academic year when students would have no choice but to comply or leave tens of thousands of dollars behind. SCU’s three-dose requirement remained through the 2022-23 school year.

In complete disregard for the end of the emergency declarations, in early April 2023, when most universities like nearby Stanford were announcing the end of their COVID vaccine mandates, SCU updated its requirement for incoming freshmen.

On May 8th, one week after the fall 2023 enrollment deadline, SCU quietly updated its COVID vaccine policy to require one bivalent dose for incoming freshmen (but not returning students) regardless of how many COVD vaccines they had previously taken. SCU backdated this announcement to May 1st thinking no one would take notice, but in private emails from incoming students we learned that some were furious. We encouraged them to withdraw and accept another offer.

On May 31st, SCU updated its policy again. They now require either three previously taken monovalent doses or one bivalent dose for all community members. As with the University’s previous mandates, SCU offers no religious exemptions and limited medical exemptions for students even in the most extreme of circumstances as explained below. Faculty and staff, however, are permitted to request exemptions.

SCU’s policy is determined by its opaque “COVID-19 team,” believed to be led by campus physician Dr. Lewis Osofsky, who also holds several positions at Santa Clara County Medical Association (SCCMA). SCCMA partners with the Santa Clara County Public Health Department (SCCPH) to maximize COVID-19 vaccinations. Santa Clara County is one of the most vaccinated counties in the country, with more than a third having received the bivalent booster, twice the national average, and 88.5 percent having received the primary series.

Osofsky’s positions in the SCCMA include chair of the Professional Standards and Conduct committee, tasked with promoting high ethical standards for physicians and investigating disputes involving unethical conduct. This is ironic, as Osofsky is believed to be a driving force behind SCU’s ethically-indefensible mandate. Medical ethics would require, at a minimum, both transmission prevention and a proven benefit for students. An antibody increase from vaccines, with no established antibody level correlate of protection, wanes in mere weeks, and cannot support the ethics of a mandate. In fact, a recent study demonstrated that the “greater the number of vaccine doses previously received the higher the risk of COVID-19.”

It is alleged that Osofsky has improperly denied student medical exemptions. In a March 2022 lawsuit filed against SCU, Harlow Glenn, one of the student plaintiffs, claims that she had serious adverse reactions to her primary series COVID vaccines, including an emergency room visit due to leg paralysis and abnormal bleeding. According to the complaint, Osofsky refused to grant her a medical exemption for the required booster and actively interfered with her doctor-patient relationship by contacting her private doctors to persuade them to retract their medical exemption documentation.

Such aggressive tactics are nothing new for Osofsky, as he apparently employs them against patients in his private pediatric practice. Parents have complained in online reviews that Osofsky’s office forced vaccines and didn’t listen to their concerns. As it turns out, Blue Cross Blue Shield pays pediatricians in private practice a $40,000 bonus for every 100 patients under the age of 2 that they fully vaccinate, if at least 63 percent of the patients are fully vaccinated (including the annual flu vaccine).

Osofsky’s roles with SCCMA, which is in partnership with the SCCPH whose goal is to maximize COVID vaccination, as well as his aggressive private practice approach to vaccination, have likely played a large role in SCU’s continued COVID vaccine mandates.

On June 14, 2023, attorneys for the plaintiffs filed their opening brief against SCU in the Sixth Appellate District in California. It is expected that SCU will oppose the appeal and insist on its right to demand that students submit to EUA boosters to “protect the campus community.” Protect the community? That justification went out the window long ago when CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted that the COVID vaccine did not prevent infection or transmission. Recently released documents confirmed that Walensky actually knew this information in January of 2021, well before colleges announced COVID vaccination requirements.

Given that the emergency is officially over, and the shots have proven to be both ineffective and in some cases harmful, now more than ever, SCU must defend the science and ethics behind their refusal to drop them.

In the absence of such transparency, we are left to assume that Osofsky, along with SCCMA and SCCPH, must be using SCU students as mere pawns to achieve their unscientific and authoritarian vaccination goals and quotas.

Lucia is a recovering corporate securities attorney. After becoming a mother, Lucia turned her attention to fighting inequities in public schools in California for students with learning disabilities. She co-founded NoCollegeMandates.com to help fight college vaccine mandates.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 2 Comments

Democrats, Republicans Face Off During U.S. House Hearing on COVID Origins and Possible Cover-Up

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 12, 2023

Two coauthors of the March 2020 Nature Medicine paper that asserted, just months into the pandemic, that COVID-19’s origins were “clearly” natural rather than lab-made faced questioning Tuesday during a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus pandemic.

The hearing investigated “whether government officials, regardless of who they are, unfairly and perhaps biasedly tipped the scales toward a preferred origin theory,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), committee chair, said in opening remarks.

“We are examining whether scientific integrity was disregarded in favor of political expediency, maybe to conceal or diminish the government’s relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology or perhaps its funding of risky gain-of-function coronavirus research,” he said.

Tulane virologist Robert Garry, Ph.D., and Scripps Research evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., denied the allegations in written testimony submitted prior to the hearing as “absurd and false.” And in more than three hours of questioning Tuesday by committee members, they insisted their conclusions in the paper were based solely on the “scientific process.”

Republicans’ questioning focused on demonstrating the Nature Medicine paper was coordinated and unduly influenced by government officials.

Lawmakers laid out evidence that all of the authors initially expressed serious concerns the virus may have leaked from a lab and of how that position changed just a few days later after a Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins and Jeremy Farrar, Ph.D.

The scientists drafted their paper “The Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2” within a few days of the call and published it the following month. The early drafts were shared with Farrar, Collins and Fauci, Paul Thacker reported.

Prior to yesterday’ hearing, the panel’s Republican majority issued a report, “The Proximal Origin of a Cover-up,” asserting a coordinated effort by Fauci and others to downplay the lab-leak hypothesis and suppress scientific discourse.

The report was based on 25 hours of testimony by the authors of the Proximal Origins paper and a review of 8,000 pages of documents, including subpoenaed emails and slack messages that had not yet been revealed publicly.

The evidence showed that in conversations with one another, the Proximal Origin authors expressed a lack of certainty about their singular conclusion but feared the political fallout of giving credence to the lab origin hypothesis.

Democrats vehemently countered the Republican assertions, insisting Fauci and Collins had no role in the findings. They produced their own report — “They Played No Role” — drawing on the same evidence to conclude that “that there was no cover-up of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and no suppression of the lab leak theory on the parts of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins.”

In the highly partisan hearing, the Democrats used their time to accuse Republicans of having a “vendetta,” of “weaponizing” the origin discussion, using “extreme rhetoric” and of making “baseless allegations” that they claimed were responsible for the public’s loss of faith in public institutions.

Ranking Democrat Dr. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) repeatedly accused the Republicans of “confirmation bias” in their assertion that the lab leak is the more probable origin of the virus and of making “conspiratorial accusations without proof,” rather than “pursuing an objective analysis of the virus’s origins that is free from political interference.”

The ‘Proximal Origins’ fallout

The paper in question, “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” played a key early role in shutting down debate about the origin of the virus.

Top public health officials used the paper as “independent science” to influence public discussion of the topic. Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) posted the findings on the agency website. And in an April 17, 2020, press briefing at the White House, when asked whether COVID-19 had come from the Wuhan lab, Fauci cited the paper’s conclusions as definitive.

The paper had a major impact in the scientific community and the popular press, spurring thousands of articles declaring the lab-leak theory to be implausible or a conspiracy theory.

But communications obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by U.S. Right to Know, and a memo released in March by the congressional subcommittee have since showed that Collins, Fauci and Farrar of the Wellcome Trust played a key, previously undisclosed role in persuading the scientists to write the paper.

The FOIA requests also revealed that all of the paper’s authors had privately expressed suspicions that the virus was engineered or about the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s store of novel coronaviruses and work on them at low biosafety levels, US Right to Know reported.

‘Proximal origin of a cover-up’ vs. ‘they played no role’

Republicans questioned the scientists on their rapid shift from thinking that the virus was likely lab-made to their certainty, professed in both drafts and final versions of the paper, about its natural origins in a matter of days.

Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) quoted a communication from Garry where he said:

“I really can’t think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from, from the bat virus or one very similar to it to, uh, COVID-19 where you insert exactly four amino acids, 12 nucleotides and all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function.

“I just can’t figure out how this all gets accomplished in nature.”

She said, “So then within a matter of days, something changed, and that’s what this committee is trying to get to the bottom of, what happened within that three day period between the conference call and the paper that all of a sudden you did a 180.”

In response to repeated questioning on this topic, Andersen and Garry insisted their change in thinking was based on “the scientific process.”

They said new evidence emerged that changed their thinking, that their shift in thinking “evolved over time from early hypotheses to later conclusions published in the paper.” And that their shift had nothing to do with pressure from Fauci, Collins or Farrar.

Rather, Andersen said their paper presented “an agnostic view of what the evidence actually does tell us.”

Garry testified that Collins and Fauci had very little input at the Feb. 1 teleconference and he thought they were just on the call “to gather information” from the experts.

Andersen and Garry along with several of the Democratic committee members repeatedly emphasized that Farrar — not Fauci or Collins — coordinated the call and provided the authors with significant guidance on the paper. Andersen said, “I describe him as a father figure” for the paper, Andersen said, “because I think that captures it.”

Ruiz and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) both suggested Farrar’s role in organizing the call exonerated Fauci and Collins, effectively disproving the idea that there was political interference in the findings.

But, Farrar — former director of the Wellcome Trust and currently chief scientist at the World Health Organization — has been a central figure in dismissing the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy theory,” Sam Husseini reported.

In February 2020, along with Peter Daszak, 25 other scientists signed a letter in The Lancet that dismissed the possibility of a lab origin of COVID-19.

“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” the letter said.

Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) questioned whether this continued certainty about natural origins today made sense given that it contradicted the testimony by former director of the National Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe told the committee that, “If our intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak theory was placed side by side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a naturally occurring spillover theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long and overwhelming while the spillover side would be nearly empty, nearly empty.”

Ruiz claimed that most government agencies — four of them — deny the lab leak theory with low confidence. But the FBI and the Department of Energy have also determined with moderate confidence that the virus most likely originated in a lab.

Democratic members alleged the Republicans’ effort to investigate the politicization of the investigation of the origins of the pandemic inhibited the work of preparing for “the next pandemic.”

Ruiz said the Republicans’ actions had also led to “threats against scientists and public health officials.” Anderson agreed, saying “the misinformation, dis and conspiracy theories around the paper have resulted in significant harassment and threats” similar to those undergone by Peter Hotez, and alleged that he is on a “kill list.”

Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) said that such investigations “are actually creating a very chilling effect on the scientific process,” which hinders the ability of scientists and public health officials to thoroughly investigate and study future disease outbreaks.

She suggested that in the future the researchers should “double think what they put on their slack messages and channels and their emails and their text threads.”

But just last week the House subcommittee began investigating Dr. David M. Morens, a 25-year veteran of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), after it was revealed he used his personal email address to evade FOIA requests for communications related to the origins of COVID-19, The Defender reported.

Wenstrom broke the news in the meeting that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was also involved in the investigation.

Near the end of the hearing, both Garry and Andersen confirmed that they had been consulted by the CIA and FBI about the origins of COVID-19.

Wenstrup concluded by saying,“We’re exploring a potential coverup. That is what we are doing.”

He added, “You receive federal dollars, we appropriate those. Congress appropriates those federal dollars. We have a responsibility of oversight on behalf of our constituents and the very taxpayers that pay you. Sorry about that. But it’s our job whether you like it or not. And I take it seriously.”

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Saudi imports of Russian fuel soared tenfold in June

The Cradle | July 13, 2023

Saudi Arabia imported record levels of Russian fuel oil in June, bringing in 910,000 metric tons, a nearly tenfold increase from the same period last year, to meet summer power generation needs.

Since the start of 2023, Saudi imports of Russian fuel have nearly doubled from last year. As of June, the kingdom imported 2.86 million metric tons of fuel oil, exceeding the 1.63 million metric tons imported for all of 2022.

Alongside many countries in the Global South, the kingdom has been ramping up its purchases of discounted Russian fuel over the past several months, allowing Moscow to negate much of the effects of western sanctions and a G7 price cap imposed on their energy sector.

The news comes just over a month after Saudi officials announced plans to cut oil production levels by an extra one million barrels per day (bpd) in July – a cut that came on top of a massive reduction in oil output implemented since last October by OPEC+ member states, including Russia.

In May, Bloomberg reported, “Saudi Arabia is snapping up millions of barrels of Russian diesel that Europe no longer allows, while simultaneously sending its own supplies back to buyers in the EU.”

Traders and analysts believe the kingdom has been conducting this scheme to generate higher profits by taking advantage of western sanctions.

India and China are two other nations taking advantage of the situation, buying as much as 80 percent of the oil that Moscow exported in May.

“In May 2023, India and China accounted for almost 80 percent of Russian crude oil exports,” the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report.

Russian fuel exports to Africa have also skyrocketed over the past year, increasing nearly 14-fold since the start of the war in Ukraine. Before March 2022, Moscow exported 33,000 bpd of refined products to African nations; by March 2023, exports soared to 420,000 bpd.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Putin comments on the future of the grain deal

RT | July 13, 2023

Russia is considering putting its participation in the UN-facilitated grain deal on hold until its food and fertilizer exports are unblocked, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. None of the promises made to Moscow under the agreement have been fulfilled as of yet, he said, adding that the deal has been a “one-way street case.”

Moscow may no longer be willing to extend the agreement just out of hope that the Western nations and the UN fulfill their end of the bargain, the president said. “We can suspend our participation in this deal,” he said, adding that “everyone is once again telling [us] that all the promises made will be kept.” “Let them deliver on this promise first; then we’ll immediately return to the deal again,” Putin maintained.

Formally known as the Black Sea Initiative, the agreement between Moscow and Kiev was mediated by the UN and Türkiye back in summer 2022. The deal was accompanied by a Russia-UN memorandum aimed at facilitating unimpeded Russian agricultural exports.

The goals of the memorandum included allowing Russia’s major agricultural lender, Rosslekhozbank, back onto the SWIFT payments system, enabling deliveries of spare parts for agriculture machinery, reanimating the Tolyatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline, sorting out insurance and logistics, as well as “unfreezing” Russian assets.

According to Putin, none of those aims have been achieved as of now. “Nothing – and I want to underscore it – nothing has been done. That was a one-sided game all along. Not a single goal linked to the interests of the Russian Federation was met,” he said, adding that Moscow had repeatedly extended the deal in good faith despite those facts.

The president also said he had not seen a letter UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres sent him earlier this week. The UN said earlier that the letter contained suggestions aimed at fulfilling the Russia-UN memorandum and preserving the deal. The international body also said that Moscow had allegedly received the letter and was reviewing it.

The deal was originally touted as a way to avoid a food crisis by steering grain toward poor nations. Yet, according to Moscow, only a tiny percentage of the grain exported from Ukraine as part of the agreement was shipped to such nations, while the bulk of it ended up in Europe.

“Out of all the foodstuffs and grain in particular shipped away from the Ukrainian territory, only slightly more than three percent were delivered to the world’s poorest nations,” the Russian president said on Thursday. Now, many European nations have started forgoing Ukrainian grain, he told the Russian media, adding that it is the West and not Russia that “started discriminating against Ukrainian grain.”

Originally intended to last three months, the deal was prolonged numerous times over the past year, despite growing concerns repeatedly voiced by Moscow over its failure to provide any benefits for Russia. The Kremlin has repeatedly warned over the past month that it sees no reason to extend the deal, which is set to expire on July 17.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , | 1 Comment

NATO Spent Decades Preparing For Proxy War With Russia in Ukraine

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 12.07.2023

Even before the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, Britain, Sweden, Canada, and the United States were investing in Ukraine and building up their capabilities, the UK defense minister has stated at the NATO summit in Vilnius. Does it mean NATO has long prepared for a proxy war with Russia?

The US neocons and their likeminded NATO allies have long been apparently seeking to knock Russia out of the political arena before trying to crack down on China in a bid to preserve the US dominance, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski believes.

“I think that the US officials and advisors (along with those in NATO) believe that they must be able to exploit Russian resources prior to any direct confrontation with China,” Kwiatkowski, who is also a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik. “The neoconservative ideology that over half of Congress embraces, and that the US defense and security complex embraces, envisions and demands a unipolar globe, with the US and its debt-funded governmental system, at the top. For them, this is an existential issue, albeit most Americans don’t see it that way.”

It seems that Ukraine appeared a convenient candidate for the role of a “hammer” against Russia.

For How Long Has Ukraine Received Western Military Assistance?

Ukraine has been a leading recipient of Western military supplies since the early 1990s when the country gained independence, with the US spearheading the initiative. In the first ten years after independence, Ukraine received almost $2.6 billion in assistance from the US. Until 2014, Ukraine had been receiving an estimated $105 million per annum, including foreign military financing.

NATO’s North Atlantic Cooperation Council embraced Ukraine as a “partner country” in 1991 and included it in the Partnership for Peace program in 1994. Washington’s NATO ally, the UK, played an important role in the effort, holding joint military exercises with the Ukrainians, as well as providing training and funding to the nation’s armed forces.

Thus, the first joint Ukrainian-British military exercises “Cossack steppe” were held in the second half of the 1990s as part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. The NATO-Ukraine Commission was established in 1997 with the aim of developing the relationship between the nation and the bloc and directing cooperative activities.

As per UK government documents, the Ministry of Defense spent approximately £3.9 million supporting Ukraine through the Defense Assistance Fund and the Conflict Pool between 2009 and 2014.

Many of the activities funded through these mechanisms supported “command, control and communications capabilities (C3).” In particular, the UK held joint exercises with the Ukrainian military, provided military education to the nation’s specialists, and “contributions to NATO coordinated activities.” Both UK civilian and military personnel had been deployed to Ukraine during that period of time while Ukrainian personnel were sent to the UK.

Following the illegitimate coup d’etat in Kiev in February 2014, the West stepped up military assistance to the new Ukrainian authorities.

Between 2014 and 2021, the United States provided over $2.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, which included the provision of trainers, selected weaponry systems (such as counter-mortar radars), and Javelin anti-tank missiles.

The boost in military assistance was justified by NATO member states by the alleged “Russian invasion” in Donbass. However, it is well documented that Donbass declared independence in response to the illegitimate coup d’etat in Kiev fomented with the assistance of nationalist and neo-Nazi paramilitary groups and subsequent Russophobic policies of the new government. The Donbass breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk Republics started largely forming militias after the interim Kiev government kicked off what it called “anti-terrorist” operations (ATO) against the region.

“Kiev had been on the offensive with the Donbass with Western support, for a number of years, even before 2014, and this is well documented,” explained Kwiatkowski. “Other Eastern and Southern European countries had been ‘encouraged’ by Western powers, as we saw with Yugoslavia, to break up into smaller national and ethno-cultural countries, and the peaceful divide between the Czech Republic and Slovakia was also allowed and supported. This is primarily because the newly smaller countries added potential members to NATO and the EU – all controlled and controllable by the US-EU elites.”

Moscow came up with the idea of the Minsk Agreements to stop hostilities in Eastern Ukraine. Russia, France and Germany played the role of guarantors of the accords.

Nonetheless, as ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President François Hollande admitted last year, the Minsk agreements were signed by Western powers to buy time in order to bolster the Ukrainian military capacity.

“In the case of the political separation desired by the Donbass, and the Minsk agreements that were designed to allow that autonomy, the Russian-speaking East, if autonomous, would not have chosen to be a part of the NATO borg,” said the former Pentagon analyst. “Hence, that independence would not be allowed. Yes, NATO and the US supported such an offensive, and were preparing for it actively, as comments from many US and European officials and diplomats have confirmed. Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel have publicly confirmed this, as have many others.”

Ukraine Extensive Training and Naval Provocations

US allies jumped on the bandwagon, forwarding their military assistance to Ukraine through the NATO-Ukraine Commission, and through initiatives such as the US/Canada/UK/Ukraine Joint Commission for Defense Reform and Security Cooperation which was established in July 2014.

In particular, Britain kicked off and then expanded Operation Orbital, envisaging extensive training of the Ukrainian military including combat actions in urban environments.

These activities included:

· medical, infantry and survival skills training;
· countering improvised explosive devices;
· training for defensive operations in an urban environment;
· operational planning;
· engineering;
· countering attacks from snipers, armored vehicles and mortars.

It meant that those Ukrainian soldiers that had undergone training under the program would pass on their knowledge and techniques to their military peers. Britons also expanded the scope of the training package to embrace all branches of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.

In June 2020, Ukraine was offered Enhanced Opportunity Partner status with NATO which provided Ukraine with preferential access to NATO’s exercises, training and exchange of information and situational awareness. The status envisaged increasing interoperability between Ukraine and NATO member states. In September 2020, Ukraine hosted the Exercise Joint Endeavour with British, US and Canadian troops, held within the framework of Ukraine’s new enhanced NATO status.

In June 2021, the UK, Ukraine and industry signed a Memorandum of Implementation to a new Naval Capabilities Enhancement Program (NCEP). The program in particular included:

· Ukraine’s acquisition of two refurbished Royal Navy Sandown-class minehunters;
· the sale and integration of missiles on new and in-service Ukrainian Navy patrol and airborne platforms, including a training and engineering support package;
· The UK’s assistance in building new naval bases in the Black and Azov Seas;
· the development and joint production of eight fast missile warships;
· The participation in the Ukrainian project to deliver a modern frigate capability.

The same month, the UK Carrier Strike Group led by HMS Defender was deployed in the Black Sea “in a show of solidarity with Ukraine” and illegally entered Russian waters off Crimea and proceeded to sail through, prompting Russian warships and aircraft to surround the ship and fire warning shots in its vicinity to force it to leave. Even though the UK initially denied that it resorted to deliberate provocations, leaked British government documents proved otherwise.

Russia’s Draft Security Agreements

Russia has repeatedly raised the red flag over the NATO-Ukraine rapprochement and the transatlantic bloc’s enlargement. In accordance with its Declaration of State Sovereignty (July 16, 1990) Ukraine pledged to permanently remain a neutral country. In addition, in the early 1990s, Western powers asserted to Moscow that NATO wouldn’t expand towards Russia. At the same time, the US and its allies refused to consider Russia’s bid to join NATO while encouraging former Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact member states to join.

Russia outlined its longstanding concerns with regard to Ukraine’s military buildup on its doorstep and NATO’s expansion in draft security agreements which were handed over to the US and NATO in December 2021.

The agreement particularly sought guarantees of NATO’s non-enlargement and non-admission of Ukraine to the bloc. The US and NATO rejected the major provisions of the agreement leading to Russia’s special military operation aimed at de-militarizing and de-Nazifying Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine Conflict is US/NATO Proxy War Against Russia

Even though in March 2022, Ukraine and Russia struck a preliminary deal in Istanbul to stop hostilities, the US and the UK openly opposed the agreement, pledging more weapons to Kiev and declaring the goal of bleeding Russia white.

“The US is waging a proxy war, because that is what the US has been waging against various named enemies, for the past 70 years, and it is how we are organized to fight,” said Kwiatkowski. “It is an open secret that the Pentagon, even with close to a trillion dollar budget, does not and, at this point, cannot defend US territory. The US elites and the US defense establishment self-perpetuation is wholly disconnected from the people here who pay its bills. Poor and non-strategic US leadership placed the US in a lose-lose situation.”

According to the US military expert, three problems have emerged in the result of Washington’s misreading of the Russia and Ukraine conflict:

· First, that intent of weakening and isolating Russia did not play out “as it must have done in Jake Sullivan’s brainstorming sessions.”
· Second, the supplies have illustrated a variety of strategic weaknesses in US and NATO defense industrial production, where we see Joe Biden actually stating the obvious that the “US is out of ammunition.”
· Third, taking the Ukraine-Russia destruction project on at a time when the US is experiencing financial weakness, with very limited reserves of gold, guns and “war spirit” demonstrates that the “war planning” of the White House and Pentagon has been done in a vacuum, and under false assumptions.

As per Kwiatkowski, peace is possible but it may require a difficult re-evaluation of the US role in the world while neocons and war profiteers do not accept this re-evaluation.

“Their ideology is mated to unipolar US power,” the US military veteran said. “I suspect some leaders in the West are beginning to understand that there is a way to peace, and it starts with acceptance of the truth of all sides, and negotiations based on that truth. Imagine a sane US government, a concerned NATO, a true patriot of Ukraine in Kiev, and the Russians all speaking honestly. As Trump stated months ago, this war could be ended in one day.”

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Germany creates equity in Western Ukraine

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 13, 2023 

The hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxon axis is pivotal to the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is only partly true. Germany is actually Ukraine’s second largest arms supplier, after the United States. Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged a new arms package worth 700 million euros, including additional tanks, munitions and Patriot air defence systems at the NATO summit in Vilnius, putting Berlin, as he said, at the very forefront of military support for Ukraine. 

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius stressed, “By doing this, we’re making a significant contribution to strengthening Ukraine’s staying power.” However, the pantomime playing out may have multiple motives. 

Fundamentally, Germany’s motivation is traceable to the crushing defeat by the Red Army and has little to do with Ukraine as such. The Ukraine crisis has provided the context for accelerating Germany’s militarisation. Meanwhile, revanchist feelings are rearing their head and there is a “bipartisan consensus” between Germany’s leading centrist parties — CDU, SPD and Green Party — in this regard. 

In an interview in the weekend, the CDU’s leading foreign and defence expert Roderich Kiesewetter (an ex-colonel who headed the Association of Reservists of the Bundeswehr from 2011 to 2016) suggested that if conditions warrant in the Ukraine situation, NATO should consider to “cut off Kaliningrad from Russian supply lines. We see how Putin reacts when he is under pressure.” Berlin is still smarting under the surrender of the ancient Prussian city of Königsberg in April 1945. 

Stalin ordered 1.5 million Soviet troops supported by several thousand tanks and aircraft to attack the crack Nazi Panzer divisions deeply entrenched in Königsberg. The capture of the heavily fortified stronghold of  Königsberg by the Soviet army was celebrated in Moscow with an artillery salvo by 324 cannons firing 24 shells each.  

Evidently, Kiesewetter’s remarks show that nothing is forgotten or forgiven in Berlin even after 8 decades. Thus, Germany is the Biden Administration’s closest ally in the war against Russia. The German government has stated its understanding for the Biden administration’s controversial decision to supply Ukraine with cluster ammunition. The government spokesman commented in Berlin, “We are certain that our US friends did not make their decision lightly, to deliver this sort of munition.” 

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier remarked, “In the current situation, one should not obstruct the USA.” Indeed, the top CDU figure Kiesewetter suggested in an interview with the Green Party-affiliated daily taz that not only should Ukraine be given “guarantees, and if necessary, even provided with nuclear assistance, as an intermediary step to NATO membership.” 

Coinciding with the NATO summit in Vilnius (July 11-12), Rheinmetal, the great 135-year old German arms manufacturing company, has disclosed that it is opening an armoured vehicle plant in western Ukraine at an undisclosed location in the next twelve weeks. To begin with, German Fuchs armoured personnel carriers will be built and repaired while there are plans afoot to manufacture ammunition and possibly even air defence systems and tanks. 

Rheinmetall’s CEO told CNN on Monday that like other Ukrainian arms factories, the new plant could be protected from Russian air attack. Germany has more than doubled the 2022 allocation of €2 billion for upgrading Ukraine’s armed forces. It now touches around €5.4 billion with further plans to increase to €10.5 billion.

Now, is this all about Russia? Germany cannot be unaware that Ukraine has simply no hope on earth to defeat Russia militarily. Germany is playing the long game. It is creating equity in western Ukraine where it is not Russia but Poland that is its contender. Ever since the Tsarist army advanced into Galicia in 1914, Russia has had a difficult history with Ukrainian nationalists. If the current war in Ukraine spreads to western Ukraine, that cannot be Russia’s choice but out of some necessity forced upon it.  

The Soviet victory in Ukraine in October 1944, the Red Army’s occupation of eastern Europe, and Allied diplomacy resulted in a redrawing of Poland’s western frontiers with Germany and Ukraine’s with Poland. Simply put, with compensation of German territories in the west, Poland agreed to the cession of Volhynia and Galicia in western Ukraine; a mutual population exchange created for the first time in centuries a clear ethnic, as well as political, Polish-Ukrainian border. 

It is entirely conceivable that the ongoing Ukraine war will radically change the territorial boundaries of Ukraine in the east and south. Possibly, it can re-open the post-WW II settlement with regard to western Ukraine as well. Russia has repeatedly warned that Poland aims to reverse the cession of Volhynia and Galicia in western Ukraine. Such a turn of events will most certainly bring to the fore the issue of the German territories that are part of Poland today. 

Perhaps, it was in anticipation of turbulence ahead that last October, eight months after the Russian intervention began in  in February, Warsaw demanded WWII reparations from Berlin — an issue which Germany says was settled in 1990 — to the tune of €1.3 trillion. 

Under the Potsdam Conference (1945), the “former eastern territories of Germany” comprising nearly one quarter (23.8 percent) of the Weimar Republic with the majority ceded to Poland. The remainder, consisting of northern East Prussia including the German city of Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad), was allocated to the Soviet Union.   

Make no mistake about the importance of the Eastern border for German culture and politics. Indeed, there is always something volatile about a “handicapped” Great Power when a whole new intensity appears in political, economic and historical circumstances, which prompts those in power to turn ideas into reality, and revanchist and imperialistic discourses that were quietly but steadily streaming below the surface of the carefully considered diplomatic efforts begin to probe pan-nationalist expansion.

In retrospect, Germany’s — in particular, then foreign minister and current president Steinmeier’s — diabolical role to align Germany with the neo-Nazi elements during the regime change in Kiev in 2014 and the subsequent German perfidy in the implementation of the Minsk Agreement (“Steinmeier formula”), as admitted recently in February by former Chancellor Angela Merkel should not be forgotten. 

Suffice to say, even as Russia is winning the Ukraine war, the concern of the German foreign policy makers once again faces the need to redefine what was German. Thus, the war in Ukraine is only the means to an end. Recent reports suggest that Berlin may be moving, finally, toward meeting Ukraine’s pending demand for Taurus cruise missiles with a range exceeding 500 kms and unique “multi-effect war head” that can be a game changer in the combat dynamics on the battlefield and create the prerequisites for victory. 

Equally, German soldiers already comprise about half of the NATO battlegroup already present in Lithuania. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said two weeks ago while on a visit to Vilnius that Germany is preparing the infrastructure to permanently base 4,000 soldiers (“a robust brigade”) to Lithuania so as to have the capability to maintain military flexibility at the Eastern flank. The decision has support from both Germany’s governing coalition and its main opposition.

The CDU foreign policy expert and member of the Bundestag, Kiesewetter called the idea of establishing a German base in the Baltics a “decision of reason and reliability.” Indeed, there have been past attempts, historically speaking, to create German rule in the Baltics based on revisionist claims towards the new states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania where German colonists had settled as far back as in the 12th and 13th centuries. 

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Stoltenberg admits NATO began preparing Ukraine for war with Russia since 2014

By Ahmed Adel | July 13, 2023

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted that the alliance had prepared Ukraine for war with Russia since 2014. At the same time, French Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced on July 12 that the French military has already trained 5,200 Ukrainian troops and plans to train a total of 7,000 troops by year’s end.

“France’s support for Ukraine is not weakening. […] Almost 5,200 Ukrainian soldiers have already been trained by France, including 1,600 in Poland. There will be almost 7,000 by the end of the year,” Lecornu tweeted.

According to Lecornu, Ukrainian troops are learning how to operate French military equipment transferred to them and practice modern combat tactics, such as forming battalions that can manoeuvre as a coherent tactical unit.

Meanwhile, the British government announced that more than 19,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been trained in the country over the past six months and that Ukraine can expect more material support.

“In the past six months, the UK has also expanded its military training programme for Ukrainian recruits. This programme has trained more than 19,000 soldiers to date and training for Ukrainian pilots in the UK will begin this summer,” the British government said in a statement.

The UK, through NATO, also plans to establish a medical rehabilitation centre “to support the recovery and return of soldiers to Ukraine’s lines of defence after being injured in combat.”

“[The British PM announced a] major new tranche of support for Ukraine, including thousands of additional rounds of Challenger 2 ammunition, more than 70 combat and logistics vehicles and a £50m support package for equipment repair,” the statement added.

Although these announcements are recent revelations, NATO training of the Ukrainian military is not new. Stoltenberg said that the Alliance began supporting the Ukrainian military long before the start of the war.

“I welcome the military support that Allies have provided now for months, actually starting back in 2014,” Jens Stoltenberg told a press conference after the first day of the Alliance summit.

The NATO chief had previously confessed that Western military preparations began nine years ago.

“Since 2014 […] NATO has implemented the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence in a generation. With, for the first time in our history, combat ready troops in the eastern part of the Alliance, with higher readiness, with more exercises, and also with more defence spending,” he said on May 24. “So when President Putin launched his full-fledged invasion last year, we were prepared.”

In a joint statement after the first day of the summit in Vilnius, NATO leaders declared that the deepening partnership between China and Russia is contrary to the values ​​and interests of the alliance.

For his part, Russian President Dmitry Peskov said, before referencing NATO as an alliance that is “aggressive in nature,” that Moscow-Beijing relations “have never been aimed against third countries or alliances in any way”

Peskov said that NATO “is not an alliance that was conceived, created, and built with the goal of ensuring stability and security. It is an offensive alliance. It is an alliance that breeds instability and aggression.”

During the NATO summit’s first day, member countries agreed to bring Ukraine closer to the alliance. However, the concrete provisions proposed to achieve this disappointed Ukraine. It was not lost on major outlets, such as the New York Times, that Zelensky criticised NATO’s attitude.

Zelensky regretted in a tweet the “uncertainty” and “weakness” of NATO before the summit even started. “It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance,” the tweet added.

Considering the humiliation Zelensky has experienced for being photographed isolated and alone at the NATO summit while member leaders talked amongst themselves, the Kiev regime should have realised that they are being used as nothing more than pawns in a now failed attempt to weaken and contain Russia.

It is evident that NATO is doing all it can to support Ukraine, short of using member states’ conventional militaries, and will continue with such a policy until at least the end of 2023, as the French and British announcements demonstrate.

Nonetheless, despite this support from France and Britain, Zelensky chastised NATO’s wider admission policy as “absurd,” prompting even UK Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace to highlight that Kiev does not express enough “gratitude” for the support it receives. Yet, this constant humiliation and the complete destruction of its military and economy has not been enough for the Kiev regime to realise that it is nothing more than an expendable proxy for NATO.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

France’s Le Pen Slams Macron for Pledging Long-Range Missiles to Ukraine

Sputnik – 13.07.2023

Marine Le Pen, former president of the French right-wing National Rally party and the current chairwoman of its parliamentary faction, said it was “irresponsible” of the French president to pledge long-range missiles to Ukraine.

“I do not understand why Emmanuel Macron is not integrally focused on organizing a conference for peace to put an end to this [conflict],” Le Pen was quoted as saying by French media.

The leader of the National Rally group in the lower house of parliament spoke to the press on Wednesday during a trip to the riot-hit city of Beauvais, north of Paris.

She warned that a strike “on a third country can trigger a third world war … We do not know how a third country would react if it were hit by a weapon supplied by France.”

Macron’s decision to supply Ukraine with SCALP missiles, the French equivalent of the United Kingdom’s Storm Shadows, prompted a strong reaction from both sides of the political aisle in France. The right-wing Republicans slammed it as escalatory while the leftist France Unbowed warned of a possible direct conflict with Russia.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

US cluster bombs already in Ukraine – military

RT | July 13, 2023

Kiev has already received cluster munitions promised by the US, a Ukrainian general has told CNN. Washington has attempted to justify the delivery of the controversial arms by claiming that Ukraine would minimize the long-term threat to civilians when using them.

“We just got them, we haven’t used them yet, but they can radically change [the battlefield],” Brig. Gen. Aleksandr Tarnavsky told the US news network on Thursday. He added that he expects Ukrainian troops to push Russian forces back from their defensive positions thanks to the delivery.

Cluster bombs discharge dozens of submunitions over a large area. Some of the bomblets fail to detonate and can maim or kill years after their deployment. Over 100 nations, including many NATO members, have banned their production and use.

The US decided to supply Ukraine with old 155mm artillery shells with cluster payloads stockpiled during the Cold War. President Joe Biden described the move as a stopgap, claiming that Kiev’s foreign backers had no regular munitions of that caliber left to share, and that they were in the process of ramping up production.

The US is not party to the 2008 convention on cluster munitions, but still had to bypass its own rules, which normally ban exports of cluster bombs with a dud rate of over 1% (meaning more than one in 100 submunitions fail to explode).

The Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICMs) which the US has sent to Ukraine demonstrated an average dud rate of 14% during a 2000 study. The Pentagon, however, has claimed that less than 2.35% of bomblets would fail in the version supplied to Kiev’s forces.

Tarnavsky insisted Ukraine would not fire cluster shells at settlements held by Russia.

Ukraine has a stockpile of Soviet cluster munitions and has used them in places where unexploded bomblets posed a threat to civilians, according to Human Rights Watch. The international watchdog was among those to urge Washington to reconsider its plans.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said this week that Moscow has the means to respond in kind to Ukraine’s use of American arms.

“Russia has cluster munitions, as they say, for all occasions,” the minister warned, adding that the Russian arsenal is superior in capability and diversity.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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