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Tucker Carlson Sets Record Straight on Allegations of Hosting Russian TV Program

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 22.05.2024

Tucker Carlson has refuted reports that he has become a host on Russian television.

This claim was unequivocally false, the journalist told Sputnik.

“By claiming I work for a foreign government, Newsweek is trying to justify a FISA warrant that would allow the Biden administration to continue to spy on me. It’s disgusting,” he said.

Similarly, in a post on X, Neil Patel, the CEO of the Tucker Carlson Network, said the network “has not done any deals with state media in any country.” He added that “Whoever is currently pretending to be the old Newsweek brand would know that if they had checked with us before printing like news companies are supposed to do.”

Tucker Carlson’s representative Arthur Schwartz also dismissed such reports as “pure nonsense” in an an email to Forbes.

Earlier, Newsweek reported that the US journalist – a former Fox News anchor – was launching his own show on Russian state TV. The unsubstantiated claim that was then widely picked up by users on social media.

Carlson was fired by Fox News in April 2023 after the outspoken anchor spent over two years using his popular prime time “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show to pillory the Biden administration, the military-industrial complex, and US warmongering. He has since launched a new media company and interview show on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Earlier in the year, Carlson said that his lawyers warned him that the United States could arrest him on sanctions violations for conducting an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. However, the pundit said he was happy to face such a risk and rejected the premise of such charges.

On February 9, the American journalist released his interview with Putin, which garnered over 100 million views in 24 hours on X. The long-time TV news anchor said at the time that he organized the interview because he felt it was his journalistic duty to inform Americans about the realities of the conflict in Ukraine and its consequences.

Needless to say, the hypocrisy of Western journalists and legacy media was laid bare in the attack they launched at Tucker Carlson, accusing him as a traitor after the sit-down with the Russian leader.

Furthermore, in a series of clips posted to his internet channel about his experiences from his eight-day stay in Russia, Carlson attempted to debunk myths and stereotypes about Russia and life in the capital in the midst of the West’s sanctions ‘total war’.

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Peter Daszak Gets DOD and CIA Funding. Why Don’t They Ask About That?

“Suspending” HHS funding to EcoHealth is pure theater. No real oversight is happening.

BY DEBBIE LERMAN | MAY 17, 2024

Peter Daszak is the President of EcoHealth Alliance, the organization most closely associated with the potential lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that may have started the Covid crisis.

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has recently done a lot of “research” on Daszak and EcoHealth, resulting in a published report on May 1, 2024 with the earth-shattering finding that there exist “serious and systemic weaknesses in the federal government’s—particularly NIH’s—grant making processes.” Furthermore, these very bad weaknesses “not only place United States taxpayer dollars at risk of waste, fraud, and abuse but also risk the national security of the United States.”

This sounds pretty serious: Our taxpayer dollars and our national security are at risk. Some very bad things are happening, apparently. What are those bad things? “Weaknesses in the NIH’s grant making process.” Is that really all the Committee could come up with? If those grant-making weaknesses are so terrible, what does it recommend we do about them?

Based on its findings, the Committee recommended some very broad, but not very specific, actions:

  1. To Congress: “Reign in [they used “reign” instead of “rein” – a noteworthy Freudian slip] the unelected bureaucracy, especially within government funded public health.
  1. To the Administration: Recognize EcoHealth and its President, Dr. Daszak, as bad actors…and ensure neither EcoHealth nor Dr. Daszak are awarded another cent, especially for dangerous and poorly monitored research.

The Administration must have taken heed, because a mere two weeks later, on May 15, 2024, the Subcommittee made this triumphant announcement:

“HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action.”

Note the bizarre disconnect between the description of “this corrupt organization” and its “abhorrent, indefensible” actions, and the accusations leading to such extreme claims, which include conducting research without proper oversight (nobody ever does that!), violating requirements of its NIH grant (a bureaucratic infraction) and “apparently” making false statements to the NIH (not even for sure).

In any event, “swift action” must be taken. What exactly is that action?

“HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding” to EcoHealth. “Begun efforts” – sounds like concrete results are imminent. Not just imminent but consequential. Like “future debarment” and “funding suspension.” (sarcasm intended)

But wait. Didn’t they already do that? Yes, they did.

2020 funding suspension

Quick reminder: On April 24, 2020, the NIH canceled funding for Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) gain-of-function research led by EcoHealth Alliance, because the Trump Administration suspected (or knew) such research may have had something to do with the Covid pandemic.

The scientific world was outraged. Seventy-seven U.S. Nobel Laureates and 31 scientific societies wrote to NIH leadership requesting review of the decision. Gain-of-function research must continue! In August 2020 the NIH reversed the cancellation and started funding EcoHealth and WIV again. [ref]

The Nobel Laureates and scientific societies won the day: Humanity-saving research to develop deadly pathogens not found in nature could continue unhindered by radical NIH funding cuts.

And yet: NIH grants are a mere fraction of EcoHealth Alliance’s overall government funding.

So which funds are being “suspended” this time around?

Actually, none.

The very threatening “notice of suspension and proposed debarment” sent to EcoHealth Alliance by HHS on May 15, 2024, reassures the organization (whose behavior has been abhorrent and indefensible) that “suspension and debarment actions are not punitive.”

We’re not trying to punish you for your bad behavior, the letter says. We just want to make sure there are non-punitive “consequences” for that behavior. For example:

Offers will not be solicited from, contracts will not be awarded to, existing contracts will not be renewed or otherwise extended for, and subcontracts requiring United States Federal Government approval will not be approved for EHA [EcoHealth Alliance] by any agency in the executive branch of the United States Federal Government, unless the head of the agency taking the contracting action determines that there is a compelling reason for such action.

[BOLDFACE ADDED]

In other words, if the head of the “agency taking the contracting action” determines there is “a compelling reason” to contract with Ecohealth, then this whole suspension and debarment thing is moot. So not punitive. And, pretty much, no consequences. And, also, no funds “suspended.”

Nevertheless, given the horrendous behavior of EcoHealth, as detailed in the announcement of the non-punitive consequences – how could any government agencies possibly have compelling reasons to engage in “contracting action” with “this corrupt organization”?

EcoHealth is mostly funded by the State Department and Pentagon

In an extensive expose on Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, The Intercept reported in December 2021:

EcoHealth Alliance’s funding from the U.S. government, which Daszak has said makes up some 80 percent of its budget, has also grown in recent years. Since 2002, according to an Intercept analysis of public records, the organization has received more than $118 million in grants and contracts from federal agencies, $42 million of which comes from the Department of Defense. Much of that money has been awarded through programs focused not on health or ecology, however, but on the prevention of biowarfare, bioterrorism, and other misuses of pathogens.

[BOLDFACE ADDED]

Here’s what nearly two decades of government funding for EcoHealth Alliance looks like (graph from Intercept article):

As RFK Jr. wrote, based on this information, in The Wuhan Cover-Up:

By far, Daszak’s largest funding pool was the CIA surrogate, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Through USAID, the CIA funneled nearly $65 million in PREDICT funding to EcoHealth between 2009 and 2020.

(p. 228, Kindle Edition)

Yet another article examining Daszak’s military/biodefense ties appeared in Independent Scientist News in December 2020, reporting that most of EcoHealth Alliance’s Pentagon funding “was from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which is a branch of the DOD which states it is tasked to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.”

Furthermore,

The military links of the EcoHealth Alliance are not limited to money and mindset. One noteworthy ‘policy advisor’ to the EcoHealth Alliance is David Franz. Franz is former commander of Fort Detrick, which is the principal U.S. government biowarfare/biodefense facility.

The ISN article also provides a handy spreadsheet detailing EcoHealth funding.

So what is the Oversight Committee overlooking – and why?

There is no mention of DoD, DTRA or USAID funding in the Committee’s announcement or in the utterly performative, 100% toothless notice of suspension and debarment they sent to Peter Daszak. Does the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability not know who the major government funders of EcoHealth Alliance are?

If any agency can bypass the suspension and debarment by “determining that there is compelling reason” to fund EcoHealth, what is the point of those non-punitive consequences?

Why this charade of accountability when, in fact, the supposed overseers are willfully ignoring what’s actually going on?

Clearly, the Committee is not interested in investigating Daszak’s role in the biodefense industry that was responsible not just for the gain-of-function research that may have created SARS-CoV-2, but for the entire Covid pandemic response – which was most definitely not about public health and was, in fact, all about creating and administering the medical countermeasures which were the monomaniacal focus of the biodefense responders.

What to ask Peter Daszak if we had actual oversight

If the Committee were serious about investigating Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, here are some questions they would ask:

Non-public health funding sources and projects

  • Most of the government funding for EcoHealth Alliance comes not from public health agencies but from USAID (State Department/CIA) and the Pentagon. What projects are these non-public health agencies funding? Are these projects related to biodefense/biowarfare research?
  • Is the USAID and Pentagon-funded virus research conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners intended primarily to prepare for naturally occurring pandemics or for potential biowarfare/bioterrorism attacks?
  • Do the USAID and Pentagon-funded projects conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners involve creating pandemic potential pathogens as part of biodefense/biowarfare research?
  • Do you know or suspect that SARS-CoV-2 was an engineered virus created as part of a USAID and Pentagon-funded biowarfare/biodefense project?
  • Do the USAID and Pentagon-funded projects conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners involve work on medical countermeasures against potential biowarfare/bioterrorism agents?

Disease X op-ed

  • On February 27, 2020, before the Covid pandemic had been declared and before anyone in the U.S. had died of Covid-19, you wrote an op-ed for The New York Times stating that the novel coronavirus was “Disease X.” You explained that the term Disease X was coined by you and a bunch of experts at the World Health Organization in 2018. In your report from 2018, it says:

“Disease X represents the awareness that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently not recognized to cause human disease. Disease X may also be a known pathogen that has changed its epidemiological characteristics, for example by increasing its transmissibility or severity.”

Why were you so sure, so early on, even before we knew there was a pandemic, that this was Disease X? What was it about SARS-CoV-2 (which, after all, was named as a direct successor of the original SARS, to which it was said to be very similar) that made it seem so uniquely dangerous to you? Why did you feel you had to warn the whole world about it on the pages of the NYT? 

  • Did you think SARS-CoV-2 was a known pathogen that had “changed its epidemiological characteristics” by “increasing its transmissibility or severity”? If yes, what made you think that?
  • Did you think SARS-CoV-2 was a potential bioweapon that had been developed using funds from USAID and DOD by EcoHealth Alliance and/or its research partners in China or elsewhere?
  • The New York Times has subsequently erased your Disease X op-ed from their online 2/27/2020 issue. You can only find it through the direct link. Why do you think they have made it all but impossible for anyone who doesn’t already know about the article to find it? Do you regret having written it?

Linking Disease X to genetic vaccine platforms

  • In the NYT op-ed, you provided a link from the term “Disease X” to a 2018 CNN article in which Dr. Anthony Fauci says that, in order to combat such dangerous as-yet-nonexistent pathogens, “the WHO recognizes that it must “nimbly move” and that this involves creating “platform technologies.”

Fauci goes on to say that “scientists develop customizable recipes for creating vaccines. Then, when an outbreak happens, they can sequence the unique genetics of the virus causing the disease, and plug the correct sequence into the already-developed platform to create a new vaccine.”

That sounds an awful lot like the mRNA platform used for the Covid countermeasures that came to be known as the “mRNA vaccines.”

Why did you link to that particular article from your op-ed about disease X? Were you suggesting that the solution to the pandemic that you appeared to be predicting would be a genetic platform in which the “correct sequence” could be plugged to create vaccines?

  • Were you already aware of the Covid mRNA vaccines being developed at the time of your op-ed (February 27, 2020) by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer, long before the official launch of Operation Warp Speed (May 2020)?
  • Is it true that the Pentagon considered the mRNA platforms to be the preferred countermeasures against Covid-19, and that these were always intended to reach full funding and development, starting all the way back in January 2020?
  • Was the USAID and Pentagon-funded research conducted EcoHealth and/or its partners related to the development of such mRNA vaccines? If so, how?

The need for a crisis to justify funding and development of genetic vaccine platforms

“Until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs such as a pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process.”

It sounds like you’re saying we need the media to hype up a crisis so that investors will want to fund the type of pan-coronavirus vaccine that is exactly the genetic platform you highlighted in your op-ed, and also exactly the platform that emerged into public awareness shortly after your op-ed, and became known as the Covid mRNA vaccines.

Can you explain this uncanny overlap between your description of what was needed to get such platforms developed in 2016 and what actually happened in 2020?

  • Did the USAID and Pentagon-funded research on coronaviruses conducted by EcoHealth Alliance and/or its partners support the development of such platforms? If so, how?
  • Were you aware of a plan to use the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 as a trigger for the media hype, public-private funding, and massive mRNA vaccine development and deployment in early 2020 – exactly as you described them in 2016?
  • If you were aware of such a plan, who was involved in it, and what was your role?

CONCLUSION

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has made a big show of publicly chastising Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance for terrible behavior in the way they managed their funding from the NIH. The Committee has also highlighted very bad weaknesses in the grant making process of the NIH that need to be corrected.

As a result of the Committee’s recommendations, the HHS (parent agency of NIH) has issued a non-punitive notice to Peter Daszak, stating that EcoHealth cannot receive another penny of government funding… unless a government agency decides there is a compelling reason to provide such funding.

Clearly, all of the Committee’s investigations, reports, recommendations and notices in this matter are purely performative, considering 1) they actually impose no consequences, and 2) they ignore the fact that most of Daszak and EcoHealth’s funding come from military and state department sources for work on biodefense/biowarfare-related projects.

Is the Committee’s work just another example of bureaucratic incompetence and “waste, fraud and abuse” of our precious taxpayer dollars?

Or is it an intentional diversion, to distract us from the work the U.S. government was/is actually funding at bioweapons labs like the one in Wuhan, engineering pandemic potential pathogens and then deploying global public-private partnerships to develop medical countermeasures against those pathogens – all of which came together to create the catastrophe known as the Covid pandemic?

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The thorn of Palestine: Re-invading Jabalia was a Fatal Israeli mistake

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 22, 2024

Around a week ago, the Israeli military decided to launch a sudden series of offensives against eastern Rafah, along with the Zeitoun neighborhood and Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip. Despite claiming to have already dismantled the Resistance in northern Gaza months ago, what they have experienced there recently has been death and embarrassment.

On May 6, after Hamas announced it had accepted a ceasefire proposal that would have led to a comprehensive prisoner exchange and the end of the war, the Zionist entity freaked out and decided to push ahead with its planned incursion into the southernmost Gazan city of Rafah. It began by pushing forward around three kilometers to reach the Rafah Crossing, before expanding its operation further in the eastern areas of Rafah.

What the Zionists also committed themselves to was the re-invasion of the Zeitoun neighborhood, later launching another incursion into Jabalia town and refugee camp. While the Israeli military was surprised by the performance and qualitative leap in the tactics of the Resistance, compared to previous months, in all areas of Gaza, the Jabalia Resistance battalions had something new in store.

The Israeli military decided that a re-invasion of Jabalia was their next primary focus, but have failed to produce any viable justification for its actions, especially when the Zionist leadership claimed to have already defeated the Resistance there months ago. When entering the densely populated area, it is likely that they believed it to be easier than the times before and conducted the offensive in a very similar manner to how it had done throughout the war.

While the Resistance had previously waited for the Zionists to invade an area, before launching their guerrilla-style counterattacks, there was a change in strategy on the part of the Resistance battalions this time. The Palestinian Resistance opted to confront the Israelis head-on and to try to hold them back for as long as possible, in an effort to see whether they could successfully kick them out. The Resistance battalions in the Jabalia refugee camp, the area known in Gaza as “the Thorn of Palestine”, adopted the attitude of the previous generations of al-Qassam brigades fighters during the Second Intifada and adopted the phrase of the people: “You will not enter our camp.” This embodies the frequently repeated line of al-Qassam’s spokesperson, Abu Obeida, who states that “this is a resistance of victory or martyrdom.”

The Jabalia refugee camp is famous for having started The Intifada in 1987 and is considered by many to be to Gaza what the Jenin refugee camp is to the West Bank, a hotbed and stronghold of Resistance. After several attempts by the Israeli military to take over the Jabalia refugee camp during the early 2000s, the Zionist entity launched an invasion of northern Gaza in October of 2004, with a special focus on the Jabalia camp. Yet after killing over 130 Palestinians – most of whom were civilians – they were forced to retreat. Their primary stated goal at the time was to prevent the firing of rockets, which had just killed two Israelis, but failed to prevent the Resistance from continuing its rocket attacks shortly afterward.

This time around, the Resistance is not the same as the Resistance in 2004 and doesnt resemble the Resistance in previous battles. In the earlier days of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the casualties inflicted on the Zionist forces were surprisingly high. Nobody expected that the Resistance, after eight months of war, would have become stronger and capable of implementing more complex operations than before. The Resistance managed to carry out dozens of ambushes, fire over 100 RPG warheads at Israeli military vehicles, plant explosive charges under tanks, use drones to drop anti-personnel munitions, carry out sniper operations, and engage in various gunbattles. The Jabalia battalions also managed to cut off the supply line to the invading army, forcing them to change it multiple times.

On top of all of this, the Israeli military and political leadership have been shown to be liars before their own population. Their soldiers are growing tired and ill-motivated, they return to their families in body bags or with serious injuries, in a location that their regime claims was pacified and that the Resistance there was already defeated. Even the rocket fire from the northern Gaza Strip has increased over the past weeks, while the dozens of videos published by the Resistance factions prove that the tunnel systems are still intact and effective at launching attacks.

As is always the case, the Zionist entity has inflicted mass murder against Jabalia’s civilian population, callously blowing up civilian infrastructure and committing a litany of war crimes. While the impacts of these cruel practices cannot be diminished by the effectiveness of the Palestinian Resistance, it demonstrates that murdering innocent people does not equal a military victory. What the effectiveness of the Resistance does do, however, is to inspire steadfastness in the people and to grant solace to those afflicted as the result of the Zionist crimes against their families.

Although it is not completely clear why the Resistance suddenly decided to alter its tactics in Jabalia, there are a few factors that could have contributed to making this decision. The first is the scale of the atrocities committed against civilians in places like al-Shifa Hospital, during the more recent Israeli incursions into populated areas. When the Zionist invaders enter areas and seize control of civilians, they imprison, torture, execute, sexually abuse, and use them as human shields. It is likely that the Resistance may have sought to change tactics in Jabalia in order to prevent a repeat of the ways in which the Zionist militants treated civilians elsewhere.

Another reason could have been to learn from the enemies’ reactions to such tactics, this could be especially useful for the Resistance fighters in Rafah, who will likely use a wide variation of tactics themselves and will benefit in attaining new knowledge from what has occurred in Jabalia. Unlike the Zionists, who continue to make amateurish mistakes that are laughable when comparing them to other nations’ armed forces, the Palestinian Resistance is constantly evolving and learning from battle experience. This is not to say that the temporary entity does not learn at all, or adapt in different ways, but it is clearly still failing to correct basic issues and failures in the field.

Once again, the Israelis have been pricked by the Thorn of Palestine and are losing more confidence in the face of an unrelenting, motivated, and focused Resistance. What we are seeing from the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza is unprecedented and will be studied for years to come. With limited tools and while their people are subjected to starvation and genocide, the Resistance continues to write epics through some of the most astounding battles in Urban Warfare history.

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Israeli soldier confesses to killing US elderly man in West Bank

Al Mayadeen | May 22, 2024

A self-proclaimed soldier from “Israel’s” infamous Netzah Yehuda battalion has admitted that his unit killed 78-year-old Palestinian-American, Omar Asad, in January 2022, according to recordings obtained by The Grayzone.

However, after announcing plans to sanction the battalion, the Biden administration withdrew the decision without offering further explanation.

“Four of these units [Israeli units] have effectively remediated these violations, which is what we expect partners to do,” the US State Department claimed.

The fifth unit appears to be Netzah Yehuda, an all-male unit of Orthodox Jewish nationalists that operates exclusively in Ramallah of the occupied West Bank and is accused of crimes, including sexual assault and beating at least three older men to death while they were lying on the ground while in custody.

Netzah Yehuda soldiers detained Asad and left him outdoors in harsh conditions, bound and blindfolded until he died. Instead of punishment, all the soldiers got was a slap on the wrist, and compensation was paid to Asad’s family.

A report by Washington DC-based human rights organization, DAWN, found that at the time of the killing, the commander of the unit, Lt. Col. Mati Shevach, was promoted to Deputy Commander of the Kfir Brigade, which oversees the Netzah Yehuda formation.

Spokesperson Vedant Patel responded during an April 29 State Department press briefing to questions regarding why the administration had hesitated to sanction the battalion.

“This is an ongoing process,” Patel said, further claiming, “I’m not going to speak to it more specifically, but consistent with the memorandum of understanding that we have with the government of Israel, we are engaging with them, consulting with them as it relates to not just this broader process but additional information that they’ve shared.”

The Grayzone obtained the glorified account of the killing of Asad, which according to the self-described soldier’s account, the unit brutalized Asad as punishment for supposedly interfering with a raid.

“This geezer who’s like trying to interfere with our operation, we’re going to like, f*** with him for a night,” the soldier said, as he called Arabs “murders, criminal animals” and boasted about killing and torturing Palestinians, likening himself to Americans who photographed themselves with dead Japanese soldiers during World War II, “doing funny things with their bodies.”

“Yeah, I enjoy it because they’re our enemy,” he expressed.

Read also: IOF units ‘remediated’ after rights violations, no Leahy sanctions

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NGO updates complaint to Met Police on UK ministers’ complicity in Israel war crimes

MEMO | May 22, 2024

An NGO has submitted a complaint to the United Kingdom’s Scotland Yard against Israel’s use of “starvation as a weapon of war” and targeting of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, in what is the latest such complaint regarding war crimes in Gaza to be reported to British police.

According to the London-based International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), it submitted a complaint to Scotland Yard’s War Crimes Team regarding Israel’s suspected use of “starvation as a method of warfare” and for ‘wilfully causing great suffering’ to Palestinians.

Although filed in the UK, both crimes are illegal under British and international law, including under the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court Act 2001. Using starvation as a weapon of war also violates the Geneva Convention, a major keystone of contemporary international law.

The 60-page complaint – which was added to by a further 800 pages of evidence – includes accounts collected by ICJP’s investigation and legal teams, which include former British police detectives who collected the evidence to the standards of British police forces.

The evidence reportedly includes that collected from first-hand eyewitnesses, expert reports and expert evidence from nineteen medical professionals who have worked within the besieged Gaza Strip since October, when Israel began its ongoing offensive.

According to ICJP’s Director, Tayab Ali, “Complicity comes in many forms, whether that be providing political cover, encouraging criminal acts, supplying weapons or, as in the case of starvation, withholding funds from agencies that provide life sustaining humanitarian aid”.

The extensive complaint notably builds upon and expands an existing complaint issued by the ICJP back in January this year, which named four British government ministers for alleged complicity and criminal responsibility in Israeli war crimes. This latest update, however, further implicates a fifth senior government minister as an alleged perpetrator of those crimes.

Due to the war crimes’ illegality under British law and subsequent ability to be prosecuted in the UK, Scotland Yard’s War Crimes Investigation Team will now reportedly consider the complaints leading up to an ultimate decision on whether to open a formal criminal investigation on the matter. If that proceeds, there is the possibility that police will then question, arrest, and prosecute the alleged perpetrators and those complicit.

READ ALSO: Boris Johnson accused of obstructing investigations into war crimes in Gaza

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Norway, Spain, Ireland to formally recognize Palestinian statehood

The Cradle | May 22, 2024

Norway, Ireland, and Spain announced on 22 May that they will formally recognize Palestine as a state next week, drawing the ire of Israel as the country immediately recalled its ambassadors to Dublin and Oslo.

“There cannot be peace in [West Asia] if there is no recognition … In the midst of a war, with tens of thousands killed and injured [in Gaza], we must keep alive the only alternative that offers a political solution for Israelis and Palestinians alike: Two states living side by side, in peace and security,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said on Wednesday.

Shortly after Oslo’s announcement, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said his country would also recognize a Palestinian state.

“Today, Ireland, Norway, and Spain are announcing that we recognize the state of Palestine,” Harris said at a news conference. “I’m confident that further countries will join us in taking this important step in the coming weeks,” he added.

Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said via social media that the recognition will become official on 28 May.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez followed suit, announcing Wednesday that the country’s council of ministers would also recognize an independent Palestinian state on 28 May. He also accused his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu of putting the two-state solution in “danger” with his policy of “pain and destruction” in Gaza.

In response to the news, Tel Aviv immediately recalled its ambassadors to Ireland and Norway and pledged to recall its envoy to Spain. The foreign ministry also summoned the ambassadors from the three European nations to “reprimand” them.

Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz called the show of support for Palestinians a “folly,” adding that recognizing Palestinian statehood “[sends] a message to the Palestinians and the world: Terrorism pays.”

Palestinian officials welcomed the announcement by three European nations, with Hamas calling it an “important step.”

“We welcome the announcement by Norway, Ireland, and Spain of recognition of the State of Palestine, and we consider it an important step on the path to consolidating our right to our land and establishing our independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the statement by the Palestinian resistance says.

“Historical moments in which the free world triumphs for truth and justice after long decades of Palestinian national struggle, suffering, pain, occupation, racism, murder, oppression, abuse and destruction to which the people of Palestine were subjected,” the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) said via social media.

Nine European countries — Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Sweden, Malta, and the Greek Cypriot administration — have already recognized Palestine as a state.

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The latest Democracy Perception Index reveals shifts in global perceptions

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 21, 2024

The Democracy Perception Index (DPI) issued its 2024 report on 8 May, revealing important and interesting shifts in global perceptions about democracy, geopolitics and international relations. The conclusions in the report were based on the views of over 62,000 respondents from 53 countries, representing roughly 75 per cent of the world’s total population.

The survey was conducted between 20 February and 15 April this year, when the world was largely transfixed by the Israeli war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

It is important to note that the DPI, although informative, is itself conceived in a biased context as it is the product of a global survey conducted by western-based companies and organisations.

The DPI results were published ahead of a scheduled 2024 Copenhagen Democracy Summit, whose speakers will include Hillary Clinton, US Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell and President of the European Council Charles Michel. The first speaker listed on the conference website is Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Founder and Chairman of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, which commissioned the DPI.

All of this is reflected in the kind of questions which are being asked in the survey, placing greater emphasis on whether, for example, ties should be cut with Russia over Ukraine, and China over a war that is yet to take place in Taiwan. Such major shortcomings notwithstanding, the outcome of the research remains interesting and worthy of reflection.

There are some major takeaways from the report. For a start, there is growing dissatisfaction with the state of democracy, and such discontent is not limited to people living in countries perceived as non-democratic; it also includes people in the US and Europe.

What’s more, democracy, in the collective awareness of ordinary people, is not a political term often infused as part of official propaganda. When seen from the viewpoint of the people, democracy is a practical notion, whose absence leads to dire implications. For example, 68 per cent of people worldwide believe that economic inequality at home is the greatest threat to democracy.

On the question of “threats to democracy”, there is growing mistrust of Global Corporations (60 per cent), Big Tech (49 per cent) and their resulting Economic Inequality (68 per cent), and Corruption (67 per cent). This leads to the unmistakable conclusion that western globalisation has failed to create the proper environment for social equality, empower civil society or build democratic institutions. The opposite, based on people’s own perceptions, seems to be true.

Then we have global priorities which, as seen by many nations around the world, remain committed to ending wars, poverty, hunger, combating climate change, etc. However, this year’s top priority among European countries, 44 per cent, is also centred on reducing immigration, a significant number compared with the 24 per cent who prioritise fighting climate change.

Although the world appears to be divided about cutting ties with Russia and China, the selection of the question again reeks with bias.

The respondents in western countries, who are subjected to relentless media propaganda, prefer cutting such ties, while most people in the rest of the world prefer keeping them. Consequently, due to China’s positive perception in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, the DPI gave Beijing a “net positive”. Russia, on the other hand, is on the “path of image rehabilitation in most countries surveyed with the exception of Europe,” reported Politico.

The greatest decline was suffered by the United States, largely due to Washington’s support for Israel in its ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. “Over the past four years… perceptions of the US’s global influence became more positive – peaking in 2022 or 2023 – and then declined sharply in 2024,” the report concluded.

The large drop took place in the Muslim countries that were surveyed: Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkiye, Morocco, Egypt and Algeria. Some western European countries are also becoming more critical of the US, including Switzerland, Ireland and Germany.

Most people (55 per cent compared with 29 per cent) believe that social media has a positive effect on democracy. Despite growing social media censorship, many in the Global South still find margins in these platforms which allow them to escape official or corporate media censorship. Growing criticism of social media companies, however, is taking place in western countries, according to the survey.

Despite official propaganda emanating from many governments, especially in the west, regarding the greatest threats to world peace, the majority of people want their governments to focus on poverty reduction, fight corruption, promote economic growth, and improve healthcare and education, while working to reduce income inequality. “Investing in security and defence,” came seventh on the list.

Finally, people in countries which have an overall negative perception of the United States include some of the most influential global and regional powers, such as China, Russia, Indonesia, Austria, Turkiye, Australia and Belgium.

Despite massive media propaganda, censorship and scaremongering, people around the world remain clear on their collective priorities, expectations and aspirations, which are real democracy, social equality and justice. If these collective yearnings continue to be denigrated and ignored, we should expect more social upheaval, if not outright insurrections and military coups in coming years.

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Some EU States Mulling Sanctions Against Georgia Over Foreign Agents Bill – Reports

Sputnik – 22.05.2024

Some EU member states are considering imposing sanctions on Georgia, including the suspension of visa-free travel regime, over the foreign agents bill, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the situation.

On Saturday, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili vetoed the controversial foreign agents bill that had been adopted by the country’s parliament last Tuesday. The parliament needs a simple majority to override the veto.

A number of EU countries, led by Estonia, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Sweden, aim to discuss restrictive measures towards Georgia at the EU Foreign Affairs meeting next week, the Financial Times reported.

The potential sanctions include suspending visa-free travel to the European Union by Georgians, freezing of EU funds for the country and some targeted sanctions, the newspaper cited the officials as saying.

If the foreign agents bill is enacted, Georgia’s EU accession progress will face a major setback, an EU official said.

The draft law “On the Transparency of Foreign Influence” was initially submitted to the Georgian parliament in February 2023 but was withdrawn the following month amid a wave of protests and pressure from Western countries. After revision, the term “foreign influence agent” was replaced with “organization promoting the interests of a foreign power,” while the rest of the content remained the same.

The latest iteration of the bill has sparked weeks of mass protests in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi amid concerns that it could block the South Caucasus nation’s path to EU membership. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell criticized the bill in March, saying its adoption could have serious repercussions for EU-Georgian relations.

The West is acting as harshly and “crazily” as possible with regard to Georgia because it failed to destabilize the situation in the country earlier, as it did with Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

The EU’s call on the Georgian authorities to ensure the right of citizens to protest can be interpreted as interference in internal affairs for the purpose of regime change, Maria Zakharova said. According to her, otherwise the EU’s call “can be interpreted as interference in the internal affairs of the state with the aim of regime change.

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Corruption | | Leave a comment

Ukraine launches drone attack near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant

RT | May 22, 2024

Kiev’s forces have once again attacked the grounds of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) using a kamikaze drone, the facility’s press service reported on Wednesday. The facility is the largest of its type in Europe.

According to a message issued by the service on Telegram, the drone reportedly hit a transport workshop of the ZNPP but did not cause any casualties or critical damage to the facility.

The strike comes amid a series of UAV attacks on the city of Energodar, located next to the facility, over the past two days, the press service said. It stressed that the shelling of civilians and attacks on the nuclear plant and its infrastructure are “unacceptable and clearly constitute terrorist acts.”

Throughout the Ukraine conflict, the ZNPP has repeatedly been targeted with drones and artillery since the Russian military captured the facility in the early months of its campaign.

The co-chairman of the council on integrating Russia’s new territories, Vladimir Rogov, also claimed in an interview last month that Ukraine’s special forces were in the midst of conducting exercises that focused on crossing the Dnieper river and capturing a “large man-made object.” According to Rogov, this “object” appears to be the ZNPP.

Moscow and Kiev have blamed each other for the shelling of the plant while Ukraine and its Western backers have accused Russia of using the facility as cover for its troops.

However, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi was unable to confirm the accusations after personally visiting the facility on several occasions. Following his latest visit in April, he admitted seeing armored vehicles and some security presence at the station, but said that there was “no heavy weaponry” or prohibited arms such as tanks, artillery or rocket launchers.

Nevertheless, Grossi was unable to determine which side had been attacking the facility, stating that the IAEA does not have a mandate to make such determinations and that “indisputable evidence” was needed to establish the culprits.

Meanwhile, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, stated last month following a UN Security Council meeting that the West, after accusing Russia of being responsible for the dangerous situation at the ZNPP, has effectively issued Moscow an ultimatum: “hand over control of the ZNPP to Kiev and then the attacks will stop.”

Nebenzya stated that the West had thereby “not only betrayed the Zelensky Regime completely, but also actually admitted to complicity in these irresponsible attacks.”

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Environmentalism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Deadly Chemicals Found at US ICBM Bases Threaten to Send Personnel to Early Grave

Phalus © Photo : US National Park Service
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 22.05.2024

Introduced into service in the 1970s, America’s Minuteman III ICBM arsenal has been plagued by notoriously outdated tech, including computers using eight-inch floppies until the late 2010s. Efforts to modernize the missiles have been problematic, with the Air Force forced to ‘safely terminate’ a test launch in November after detecting an ‘anomaly’.

Personnel operating current and former US ICBM bases have been exposed to cancer-causing agents known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the Air Force has acknowledged.

“PCBs are likely present in decommissioned Titan and Peacekeeper missile facilities that the Air Force no longer has the ability to conduct sampling in,” Air Force Global Strike Command chief General Thomas A. Bussiere said in a release put out earlier this week.

But the pale yellow-colored, viscous substances have also been found at active Minuteman III sites. Bussiere said sampling “identified the continued presence of PCBs” at Minuteman bases “despite a comprehensive removal effort in the 1990s.”

“One of the consistent concerns we’ve heard throughout the Missile Community Cancer Study is that service members, retirees, and veterans have trouble explaining their concerns over potential exposure to toxic chemicals with their healthcare providers, especially civilian providers who don’t have access to military medical database,” Air Force Global Strike Command Surgeon General Gregory Coleman said.

“While this memorandum from Global Strike Command cannot capture the specifics of any individual Airman or Guardian’s service in the missile fields, it can serve as a starting point for discussions and documentation of potential exposure,” Coleman added.

PCBs are chemical compounds used in an array of old equipment, including electronics. They were banned in the US in the late 1970s, and worldwide in the early 2000s. They share characteristics with other persistent organic pollutants, easily contaminating the local environment, including rivers, soil, and farms.

They are extremely hard to break down or degrade, with elimination difficult and costly (incineration, for example, requires heating to temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius or above).

The substances are linked to diseases impacting the central nervous system, and endocrine disruption. PCBs can also cause aggressive skin and liver cancers, and have a suspected role in the development of other ailments by weakening the immune system. They easily penetrate skin and even protective equipment, including synthetic polymers and latex.

The US is expected to spend over $131 billion to replace its Minuteman III missiles with the new Sentinel missile program. The program has faced a string of delays and cost overruns, with the first test flight expected to take place in 2026 at the earliest.

The Pentagon is expected to spend a staggering $1.5 trillion (and rising) on its multi-decade nuclear rearmament program – which was begun by the Obama administration in 2016.

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism | | 1 Comment

Dubious Eagle: Why Has Pentagon Pumped $756 Mln Into Hypersonic Missile That Doesn’t Fly?

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 22.05.2024

The US Army has been teasing the deployment of its ground-based Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) system since 2021, with the system touted as the Pentagon’s first nearly operational hypersonic missile amid development delays and cancellations plaguing nearly a dozen similar projects for and by the Army, Air Force, Navy, and DARPA.

The US Army has awarded Lockheed Martin another $756 million for its delay-plagued LRHW “Dark Eagle” program, with the contract involving the provision of battery equipment, unspecified logistics, systems, and software engineering support.

In development since 2017, the LRHW’s $41 million apiece truck-launched missiles are expected to be able to accelerate to speeds up to Mach 17, and boast a 3,000 km operational range. The system uses the common All Up Round (AUR) munition also used in the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) program.

But like other US hypersonic missile efforts to date, Dark Eagle has become a somewhat “Dubious Eagle” after a string of testing issues. The Congressional Research Office has counted at least five failures to date:

  • In October 2021, an LRHW test failed when the Common-Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) did not deploy.
  • In June 2022, the complete LRHW missile system suffered another test failure.
  • A scheduled LRHW test was canceled in October 2022 to “assess the root cause” of the June 2022 failure.
  • In March 2023, a scheduled test launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida was scrapped.
  • A second planned test at Cape Canaveral was canceled in September 2023, followed by an Army statement that it would not be able to meet the goal of deploying Dark Eagle in the current fiscal year.
  • A November 2023 review by Army and Navy acquisition execs blamed the delays on unspecified “problems” with the Lockheed-made launcher, and said the issues would take “months” to iron out.

The poor track record of US hypersonic missile programs to date has been surprising, given the tens of billions of dollars in research and development funding lavishly doled out by Congress in annual defense budgets – which typically outpace the defense spending of all of Washington’s major adversaries combined.

Last month, veteran Russian defense observer and missile expert Dmitry Drozdenko told Sputnik that the reason hypersonic weapons are so difficult to develop comes down not to the ability to accelerate vehicles to hypersonic speeds (which has been possible since virtually the dawning of the missile age), but creating materials that can withstand the ultra-hot temperatures hypersonic missiles encounter during flight – when they are covered by clouds of plasma. The USSR was leagues ahead of the US in the study of plasma physics during the Cold War, with Russia inheriting this invaluable knowledge and putting it to good use to field its first-in-the-world hypersonic missiles.

“Technologies are developed by people,” Drozdenko explained. “Money is one means of developing a technology, but it can happen that a technology is created with a minimum amount of funds. It can turn out that you have a lot of money, but the technology doesn’t work out. Therefore, money is not the main thing here. The main thing is people, and having the appropriate academic knowledge,” the observer said.

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

Failure in Ukraine presents the West with a clear yet difficult choice

By Sergey Poletaev | RT | May 22, 2024

In our last article, we analyzed Kiev’s military prospects in light of its new mobilization law. Here we consider the West’s options in the proxy war it’s using the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) to fight.

Western officials have been talking about sending troops to Ukraine since the beginning of the year. French President Emmanuel Macron said that he is ready to consider “any scenario,” including a ground operation. Government officials in Estonia and Lithuania (including Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte) were quick to support him. And the Leader of the House Democratic Caucus Hakeem Jeffries became the first US politician who didn’t exclude the possibility of sending troops.

Formally, Ukraine hasn’t requested Western troops – Kiev has only demanded more weapons. But now, the New York Times reports that Kiev has officially asked the US and NATO to send military instructors to train 150,000 recruits on its territory, closer to the front line. Though the US has refused to comply with the request, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown Jr, has said that a NATO deployment of trainers appears inevitable, and that “we’ll get there eventually, over time.”

The subject of sending troops to Ukraine comes up quite often but, so far, Western countries have steered clear. Why? Is a full-fledged NATO intervention in Ukraine possible and what would happen if it took place? And how else might the West turn the course of the conflict in its favor?

A larger-than-life bet

Western doctrine in regard to Russia was defined even before the start of the full-scale conflict: the idea was to fight Russia “with the hands of” Ukraine and on Ukrainian territory. The goal was to force Russia to play by Western rules (ideally, by defeating it on the battlefield) and reassert the US-led bloc’s shaky global hegemony. But, at the same time, officials wanted to minimize their own risks and avoid being drawn into a direct military confrontation that could result in a nuclear war.

The second staple of this doctrine – a total trade war – has not yielded the desired results. In 2022, it became clear that the West overestimated the degree of its control not only over the international financial system, but even over its own financial flows. Despite certain losses and additional costs, Russia has been able to replace old trade ties with new ones and to do so with a minimal loss of revenue. The severe sanctions imposed by the West on its own companies turned out to be quite useless, since for the most part Russia continues to receive the latest Western products and technologies.

As for the idea of defeating Russia on the battlefield, the turning point occurred in the summer of 2023. After the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, it became clear that the AFU would not be able to impose peace on its own terms. The problem is that in the conflict with Russia, the West has gone ‘all in’ and any military outcome that could be regarded as beneficial for Moscow – even negotiations on an equal footing – would now be regarded as a defeat. The whole world would realize that they can stand up to the hegemon and not just avoid becoming an outcast, but even gain some benefits. The West cannot allow this, since it could cause a chain reaction on a global scale.

Two options

By the beginning of 2024, Western countries faced a dilemma: In the current proxy war it was clear that they were losing and Ukraine was getting weaker, while Russia was growing stronger. Western leaders realized that the situation will continue to get worse until the middle or end of 2025 – by which time their own military production should gain momentum and Moscow may begin to experience a shortage of volunteers at the front. In other words, the worst-case scenario meant that Russia would be able to conduct at least three more successful military campaigns (summer and winter ‘24, and summer ‘25) with superior military forces.

The logic of the conflict is pushing the West towards the choice that we wrote about back in May 2022 – either intervening directly and fighting Russia on its own, or starting serious negotiations with Russia on the topic of Ukraine’s NATO membership and, more broadly, security in Eastern Europe.

Paradoxically, though, the West has chosen a third option: doing nothing. And it’s not just because of inertia, but also down to the weakening position of globalist elites, who have many unsuccessful ‘crusades for democracy’ behind them, from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

As of now, the AFU is growing weaker, the scale of the hostilities is growing, and the chances of the West directly entering the war, with potentially catastrophic consequences, are increasing every day. In the fall of 2022, before the limited mobilization in Russia, 10-15 NATO brigades could have turned Ukraine’s notable but rather meaningless victories near Kharkov and Kherson into a strategic success – for example, they could’ve ensured a breakthrough to the Azov Sea and a subsequent blockade of Crimea – but now it would take a lot more effort to simply support the front.

Fooling the system

The reason for the West’s indecisiveness is clear: it fears an escalation of the conflict. Russia is the world’s largest nuclear power and President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that he will not tolerate a widespread NATO intervention, which will result in a nuclear war.

Moscow’s warnings have challenged Western countries, headed by the US, to find ways “to intervene without intervening” and to enable Ukraine to win (or at least save face) without directly defeating Russia. In short, Western countries are forced to walk the thin line between defeat and nuclear war, without a clear end goal in sight.

After the failure to cut open a land corridor to Crimea, the West has not been able to find an alternative military strategy. Moreover, it has no idea how to get out of the war of attrition which, even in the case of a positional deadlock and a ‘static’ front, will result in Ukraine’s defeat, since an opponent that is many times weaker (Ukraine’s current population is at least five times less than that of Russia) will inevitably lose. We see plenty of such examples in history.

In this situation, the only thing that Western strategists have managed to come up with is to continue supporting the AFU and “increase costs” for Russia in the hope that Putin will get tired of fighting. Of course, no one in the West takes Ukraine’s suffering into account. It takes for granted the fact that Ukrainians will continue to die en masse just so that the West can save face. Neither do they care about Ukraine’s demographic and social collapse (unprecedented in post-WWII Europe) or the destruction of its infrastructure, which will prevent not only a normal economy but even normal life in these territories for many decades. Such issues are simply ignored or considered collateral damage.

The West may not explicitly state its strategy in regard to Russia, but it is clearly expressed in various publications and statements: the goal is to support the AFU at the front and at the same time move the conflict deeper into Russian territory in the hope that Putin will beg for mercy before Ukraine collapses.

It is unlikely that Western leaders still hope to see a victory for Kiev on the battlefield. The more likely goal now is either the “Korean scenario” where no one wins and Ukraine is kept as Russia’s opponent, or the “Palestinian scenario,” ie, eternal war on Ukraine’s former territory. What is clear is that the West will do anything it can to avoid holding serious negotiations with Russia.

War of the cities

Despite the growing escalation and the West’s increasing involvement in the conflict, one red line still exists: Ukraine is not allowed to hit Russia’s”old” territories – ie, those territories which the West recognizes as part of Russia – with Western missiles.

However, the ways in which Ukraine (with the West’s approval) circumvents this ban resemble the methods of an ingenious lawyer who finds the most unexpected loopholes in laws. For example, if “territory” is interpreted as “land” then air targets are not considered “territory” and Ukraine may hit air targets in internationally recognized Russian airspace; if a long-range drone has Western components and Western targeting, but was assembled in Ukraine, this also doesn’t count; and if Western weapons are used under a false flag (for example, by the Ukraine-based paramilitary group Russian Volunteer Corps) – this is fine, too. Of course, there are many such examples.

Why so? It is unknown whether any clear agreements regarding this issue exist but, in any case, Moscow has clearly stated that any obvious attacks on its “old” territories will allow Russia to retaliate and hit Western cities directly – not through proxies.

In military terms, the AFU will hardly benefit from such an escalation. Firstly, by resorting to such strikes, the Ukrainian army won’t change the strategic situation at the front, just as bombing Russia’s “new territories” and Crimea with all sorts of weapons hasn’t helped.

Secondly, the supply of Western missiles is not enough to overload Russian missile defense systems and achieve real military goals. Even though occasional missiles hit its territory, Moscow has adapted to the situation, takes measures to prevent future attacks, and carries out retaliatory strikes.

In other words, by striking Russian cities, (an unheard-of idea even in the most intense years of the Cold War), the West will not achieve anything but will only face increased risks and an escalation which it wishes to avoid.

However, it is possible that the desperate situation at the front and the need for some kind of propaganda success will sooner or later force the West to take such a step – and perhaps this may happen very soon. So far, this seems to be the most likely scenario that may lead to an escalation of the conflict beyond the zone of the Ukrainian “sandbox.”

Boots on the ground

And what about sending troops to Ukraine – will the West actually do it? This is unlikely. As pointed out already, in the past two years the scale of the conflict has changed and, in order to achieve success, NATO would now need to send dozens of brigades to Ukraine (at least 100,000-150,000 people), several hundred aircraft, and launch huge cruise missile attacks (hundreds of volleys per day).

Finally, even though such efforts might stabilize the situation at the front and save the AFU (supposing that the Kremlin does not declare a greater or even full mobilization in response), it would not guarantee Russia’s defeat but would only bring nuclear war closer.

In a direct intervention, NATO ground forces (just like Ukrainian ones today) will eventually face a shortage of ammunition and, in the air, NATO forces will suffer damage from Russian missile defense systems and will be exposed to attacks (currently, NATO reconnaissance operates over the Black Sea without any obstacles). Moreover, conflict with China also looms on the horizon and, if NATO empties its arsenals in Ukraine, China may either watch the situation unfold or offer Russia direct assistance.

As a result, NATO countries would find themselves in a positional conflict with heavy losses and unclear goals. Eventually, though, this may help to resolve the contradictions between Russia and the West, since, like a stubborn child, the US-led bloc may feel it has to try all means of resistance before giving in.

Another option for the West would be to move troops to Ukraine “symbolically”– for example, to send one or two brigades that would serve as instructors for AFU recruits (though it must be said that, two years into the war, the veterans on both sides of the front line are the ones who should teach the rest of the world, including NATO, how to fight), or just maintain aircraft.

Of course, it goes without saying that any third-country troops stationed in Ukraine will become a military target for Russia.

***

In conclusion, we may say that the Western doctrine – ie, the combination of a total trade war and a proxy war – has failed to bring about victory and has put its “client” (Ukraine) at risk of a major defeat. The West is still afraid to get directly involved in the conflict, even when it comes to striking “old” Russian territories or operating missile defense systems under its own flag, not to mention directly sending troops.

At the same time, the West avoids serious negotiations with Russia and prefers to go with the flow, consoling itself with the idea that Russia will eventually get burned by growing costs and retreat.

Meanwhile, Moscow is adapting to the situation, rebuilding its economy, trade relations, and society in order to live and successfully develop in the reality of a long conflict. The West’s strategy (or rather, the absence of such) has been clearly unsuccessful – especially considering the current level of involvement in the conflict, Ukraine may exhaust its forces long before Russia experiences any major inconvenience at the front.

Sergey Poletaev is an information analyst and publicist, co-founder and editor of the Vatfor project.

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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