Russia’s Ukraine operation has no deadline
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | APRIL 13, 2022
In his first extended remarks in nearly a month about the conflict in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that peace talks had reached a “dead end” and pledged that Russia’s “military operation will continue until its full completion.”
Putin defined a more limited aim for the war, focusing on control of the Donbass — and not all of Ukraine. Putin reiterated that Russia’s actions so far in several regions of Ukraine were intended only to tie down enemy forces and carry out missile strikes with the purpose of destroying the Ukrainian military’s infrastructure, so as to “create conditions for more active operations on the territory of Donbass.”
In his words, “Our goal is to provide aid to the people of Donbass, who feel an unbreakable bond with Russia and have been the subjects of genocide for eight years.”
Asked why the operation cannot be speeded up, Putin told reporters: “I often get these questions, ‘can’t we hurry it up?’ We can. But it depends on the intensity of hostilities and, any way you put it, the intensity of hostilities is directly related to casualties.”
He made it clear that “our task is to achieve the set goals while minimising these losses. We will act rhythmically, calmly, and according to the plan that was initially proposed by the General Staff.” He added, “The operation is going according to plan.”
Clearly, Mariupol port city in the south of Donbass could have been conquered with brute force. But that would have caused horrific casualties. Instead, the enemy forces — Ukrainian military, neo-Nazi Azov battalion and foreign mercenaries — have been steadily cornered and entrapped in two main locations, namely, Azovstal steel mills and the city’s main port.
The Russian forces have gained control of the port, while in Azovstal, about 3000-strong enemy forces have been surrounded, who include possibly dozens or hundreds of military officers from the NATO countries — and, surprisingly, Sweden. The experts estimate that the fall of the city into Russian hands is imminent. The Russian Ministry of Defence announced on Wednesday that over 1,000 Ukrainian troops, including 162 officers, surrendered earlier in the day in Mariupol.
In retrospect, the main purpose behind the frantic diplomatic efforts by some of the NATO countries (France and Germany, in particular) to sponsor “humanitarian corridors” out of Mariupol had a nefarious agenda to exfiltrate the Western officers trapped in the city. The heart of the matter is, NATO forces are de facto deployed in Ukraine, as foreign volunteers or as military instructors, and, equipped with heavy military equipment, they are fighting the Russian Army.
A French journalist who managed to sneak in with French “volunteers” has since come out with a video showing that American military personnel coordinate the foreign military in Ukraine and are directly handling the training and enrolment of the foreign “volunteers” in the Ukrainian forces.
In such conditions, quite obviously, peace talks between Moscow and Kiev cannot progress. The big question is: Does the Biden administration want the conflict to end and a peace agreement to be negotiated? The answer seems ‘no’. In fact, the US is fuelling this conflict.
The US Senate has approved a draft law on lend-lease, which will greatly simplify supplies to Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US will provide Ukraine with heavy equipment, including Soviet air defence systems. The Biden administration is said to be preparing to announce more than $700 million in additional military assistance to Ukraine, which is likely to include heavy ground artillery systems, helicopters and armoured vehicles. The US had provided more than $2.4 billion in military assistance to Ukraine during Biden’s presidency, including $1.7 billion since Russia began its special operation in Ukraine in late February.
Interestingly, Putin confirmed yesterday the reports that British intelligence had stage-managed the so-called Bucha killings to pillory Russian military and create an international ruckus. The Pentagon had ostentatiously distanced itself from the controversy riveted on what turned out to be fake news. Putin said:
“There is a lot of commotion, but they (EU and US) just needed to adopt a new package of sanctions, as we know very well. Today, we discussed their special operation, the psychological operation carried out by the British.
“If you want to know the addresses, the secret meeting places, the licence plate numbers, the brands of vehicles they used in Bucha, and how they did it, the FSB of Russia can provide this information. If not, we can help. We exposed that ugly, disgusting position of the West together with our Russian friends, in full and from the beginning to the end.”
The Russian and Ukrainian forces have been regrouping and strengthening their positions in Eastern Ukraine through the past fortnight in preparation for a decisive battle for the Donbass. The Russian forces are preparing to encircle a huge concentration of Ukrainian troops, estimated to be in the region of 100,000 servicemen drawn from the best units of the armed forces. Kiev is also transferring all available forces to the eastern front in order to stop the Russian offensive.
Putin’s remarks yesterday suggest that Russia is not looking for a quick victory at any cost. Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow “had no other choice” and that the operation aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine and to “ensure Russia’s own security”. He vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfilment of the tasks that have been set.”
To be sure, fighting in eastern Ukraine will intensify over the next two to three weeks but the final outcome will take time. The Ukrainian forces and the foreign fighters who have flocked to the eastern region are well-equipped and will not only put up stiff resistance but may even carry the fight into Russian territory.
This grim scenario is fraught with the real danger that NATO may increasingly be finding itself at war with Russia in Ukraine. According to Western media reports, elite British and US special forces units are deployed in Ukraine, including servicemen of the British Special Air Service (SAS) and soldiers of the First Operational Unit of Special Forces “Delta” of the US Army.
There have been reports that the operations in Mariupol were under the command of an American general who attempted to escape by helicopter sent to rescue him a week ago, but was intercepted by the Donetsk militia involved in the operation alongside the Russian forces, and was taken into their custody. It is entirely conceivable that the Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Moscow mission on Monday and his “very direct, open and tough” talks with Putin at a one-to-one meeting at the latter’s Novo-Ogaryovo residence near Moscow was in coordination with Washington. There has been no readout of the 75-minute meeting from the Kremlin.
Rallying Round the False Flags
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 12, 2022
Another day, another provocation, and Western leaders are frothing at the mouth with denunciations of Russian “barbarity”. U.S. President Joe Biden signs off on more weapons to Ukraine while European counterparts slap more economic warfare sanctions on Russia.
Just when the Western media had saturated “reports” of Russian troops executing civilians and leaving their bodies to rot on the streets of Bucha, then we read of more horror from accusations that Russian forces fired a missile at a train station in Kramatorsk killing over 50 people, including women and children.
Last week the Western media were telling us about Russian forces bombing a theatre in Mariupol and killing people sheltering in the basement. The week before it was an alleged Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in the same city.
The onslaught of the reports of these alleged atrocities is itself telling. There is hardly any time for the Western public to think critically about the reports and whether they are credible. We are being bombarded with sensation and disgust and forced to rally around the flag of supposed Western values such as democracy and morality. That means sending more weapons to Ukraine to “defend” that country from Russian “barbarity”.
Let’s take the latest incident in Kramatorsk on April 8. The New York Times and other Western media reported that a Russian missile hit a train station and killed at least 50 people who were trying to evacuate the city. The impression conveyed in the reporting is that civilians are fleeing as Russian troops advance on more of the Donbass territory.
Russia denied that its forces fired on Kramatorsk. It described the incident as a provocation, or what others would call a false flag operation. The Russians said the missile was fired by the NATO-backed Ukrainian military some 45 kilometres from Kramatorsk.
So, who’s right?
One important fact that all media reported, including the New York Times, is that the explosion was caused by a Tockha-U short-range ballistic missile. Fragments of the munition were identified and photographed near the scene of carnage at the train station.
The Soviet-era weapon is no longer used by the Russian military as of 2019. It is, however, widely used by the Ukrainian military.
Indeed, the Ukrainian military has been firing Tockha-U missiles into the pro-Russian Donbass territory for years, killing civilians indiscriminately. Last month, a missile killed over 20 people when it struck Donetsk city.
Western media have not been reporting that. They have hardly reported that the NATO-backed Kiev Ukrainian forces have been waging a war on the pro-Russian people of Donbass for eight years since the CIA-sponsored coup in Kiev in 2014. The Western media don’t tell you that the NATO bloc has been weaponizing and training Ukrainian regiments like the Azov Battalion that are infested with Nazi supporters who view the killing of Russians as a noble mission. The Western media don’t tell you why Russia views Ukraine and its NATO ambitions as a national security threat and that Moscow went into Ukraine on February 24 because of mounting attacks on civilians in the Donbass.
The Kramatorsk “crime against humanity” that Biden, Johnson, Macron and Von Der Leyen have been denouncing as “cynical” and “abominable” was in all probability carried out by the Ukrainian military that the United States, NATO and the European Union are supporting and sending weapons to.
The same goes for the reported killings in Bucha. Western media and leaders have roundly condemned Russia for allegedly carrying out the atrocity. The Western media have relied totally on Ukrainian claims concerning Bucha, as they have for Kramatorsk and other alleged atrocities.
But if you can withstand the hype and hyperbole, the shock and awe of the media blitz, the claims don’t stand up to scrutiny. The alleged Bucha atrocity came to light in Western media four days after Russian troops withdrew from that city on March 30, and the freshly dead corpses on the streets were filmed by the Ukrainian military. The alleged Russian atrocity has been convincingly debunked, just as Moscow has been saying, blaming it on a provocation.
The earlier bombing of the maternity hospital and the theater in Mariupol were also false-flag attacks carried out by the NATO-backed Ukrainian military. So too was the alleged killing of dozens of Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island. Remember how Western media reported Ukrainian defenders on the island radioing the Russian forces to “go fuck themselves” before they were blasted to death. Turns out the Russians safely evacuated the surrendering Ukrainians under normal laws of war having afforded them safe passage from the island.
The Western media are playing the public like an organ-grinder. The U.S. media have even admitted to spinning false information in the cause of an “information war” against Russia.
And so we see people like Pope Francis kissing the flag and praying for Ukraine and condemning Russia, we see Biden and European leaders calling for war crimes prosecution of Russian President Vladimir Putin and ordering up more weapons to Ukraine. We see American actors like Sean Penn going into hysterics threatening to “melt down” his Academy Awards in protest over Russian barbarity. Maybe Sean’s next project will be starring in a movie about fighting to the death to defend Snake Island!
Ukrainian comedian-actor-president Vladimir Zelensky (a Jewish frontman for a Nazi regime) said of the Kramatorsk atrocity – and it was an atrocity, but one carried out by his military: “Lacking the strength and the courage to stand up to us on the battlefield, they [Russia] are cynically destroying the civilian population. This evil knows no limits. And if it is not punished it will never stop.”
Cue the anguished tears, condemnations, and billions of dollars/euros of taxpayer-funded aid and lethal weapons to the Ukrainian regime – because we are all supposed to rally around the flag of Western democratic and moral virtue. Even that latter claim is one big false flag.
Ukraine to use POWs for false flag op – Russia
Samizdat | April 9, 2022
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Saturday that Ukraine will use the bodies of captured Russian soldiers to manipulate Western reporters in Irpin, a town near Kiev. Ukraine previously accused Moscow of killing hundreds of civilians in the area around the capital, which Russia denies.
Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Kiev is “preparing another provocation with the goal of accusing Russia of mass killings of civilians.”
Konashenkov claimed that Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officials are planning to take the bodies of people who “died from Ukrainian artillery” from a morgue to the basement of one of the buildings on the eastern outskirts of Irpin.
“The SBU will then stage the ‘neutralization’ of a ‘Russian reconnaissance unit’ at the Pushcha-Vodytsia forest, which will [according to Kiev] arrive in Irpin to ‘kill the witnesses of Russia’s war crimes.’”
The spokesman claimed that the Ukrainian forces will present the “bodies of captured Russian soldiers, who had been tortured and killed by nationalists” as “evidence” to the Western media.
Ukraine earlier accused Russian troops of killing more than 400 civilians in Bucha, also near the capital. EU officials and foreign reporters were shown what Kiev said were mass graves and bodies of people shot execution style. Moscow has denied any involvement in the deaths, insisting that the killings happened after its forces retreated from the area late last month.
Earlier, Moscow launched an investigation after several videos which emerged online, purportedly showing Ukrainian fighters torturing and executing Russian soldiers. Kiev claimed the videos were staged and said that its soldiers do not violate the rules of war.
Russia comments on details of deadly missile strike in Kramatorsk
Samizdat | April 8, 2022
The Tochka U ballistic missile, which reportedly killed dozens of civilians in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Friday, came from a town under the control of Ukrainian forces, the Russian Defense Ministry claims.
The missile came from the town of Dobropole, around 45km southwest of the city, Moscow stated.
The deadly strike hit the main train station in Kramatorsk when an estimated 4,000 people were waiting for evacuation trains there. The latest casualty count by the city administration said 39 people were killed in the incident and 87 were injured.
Kramatorsk is a city in the northern part of the Donetsk region, and is claimed by the Donetsk People’s Republic as part of its territory. When hostilities broke out in eastern Ukraine in the wake of the 2014 Maidan coup, the city remained under Kiev’s control.
Kiev accused Russia of hitting the station, claiming civilians were targeted deliberately with the intent to kill. President Volodymyr Zelensky said it serves as the latest example that Russia is “evil that knows no boundaries.”
Initial claims from Ukrainian officials said an Iskander missile was used, but images of a Tochka U tail part taken at the scene later flooded social media. Kramatorsk Mayor Aleksandr Goncharenko said missile debris was found 40 meters from where most of the damage was done.
The Russian Defense Ministry denied any responsibility for the attack. It said that Ukrainian troops must have targeted the station to disrupt the evacuation and keep civilians in the city so that they could be used as human shields during an upcoming fight for it.
The ministry claimed that Kiev is the only party in the Ukraine conflict that uses outdated Soviet-made Tochka U missiles. It said that pro-Ukraine accounts on social media claim that Russia has them as well, but the images presented as evidence were taken in Belarus, which does have some Tochka U systems in its arsenal.
MSM’s Bucha Tall Tale

BY NICK GRIFFIN | SAMIZDAT | APRIL 5, 2022
“The Bucha Massacre” has now become the driving force for the propaganda push for even more NATO involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.
Yet the claim that this is a Russian war crime is so patently false that a rational observer can only be left astounded by the combination of bare-faced nerve and slapdash incompetence displayed by the media outlets and politicians pushing this disgusting smear.
The latest effort of the Western media to deny Russian rebuttals is the claim that satellite photos show the bodies were there for weeks. Far from ‘proving’ the case against Russian troops, however, this new assertion in fact raises yet more questions which undermine the Western story.
The satellite photos certainly appear to show bodies, but they also show no sign at all of the burnt out cars which are such a prominent feature of the ground photos and videos. Are we supposed to believe that these vehicles were carefully driven in and positioned between the corpses after the shooting spree?
A similar suspension of belief is required when considering the dates involved. The ‘Bucha Massacre’ entry in Wiki (accessed 09.25 on 5th April 2022) reads as follows:
‘On 4 April, satellite images were provided to The New York Times by Maxar Technologies. The Times compared images to video evidence and concluded: “many of the civilians were killed more than three weeks ago, when Russia’s military was in control of the town.” The images of Yablonska Street show at least 11 “dark objects of similar size to a human body” appearing between 9 March and 11 March”.’
Wiki also tells us that Ukrainian troops re-entered Bucha on April 1st, following the redeployment of the Russian force to south eastern Ukraine.
Maxar Technologies, as a major contractor for NASA, is of course an integral part of the NATO military-industrial complex. As such its assertions with regards to the conduct of the conflict in Ukraine have to be regarded with caution. That said, Maxar’s dates of 9th– 11th March seem to be causing some concern in mainstream media outlets promoting the Russian massacre claim.
The Maxar dates should indeed raise eyebrows. The idea that bodies could lie in the open air for three whole weeks without undergoing massive decay is only remotely credible because the average Westerner thinks that Ukraine is in some kind of winter weather deep-freeze in late March.
Yet a look at the weather data for Kiev for March 2022 reveals that there has not been one single day in the city (of which Bucha is a suburb) with temperatures below freezing since March 11th. The average daily temperature in the last few days of the month was 6 degrees centigrade – the same as the English city of Leeds. That average in turn of course includes highs in the spring sunshine. The weather graph for Kiev for the last week in March shows the situation very clearly, with temperatures up to 15 and 17 degrees:

March weather in Kiev
Anyone who has walked past an animal killed and left on the road for a few days under such conditions will be able to imagine the appalling stench which would come from so many human bodies left in the spring sunshine for three weeks, yet not one of the Ukrainian soldiers or police shown examine the bodies can be seen wearing a mask, making any expression of revulsion or mentioning the smell.
As more graphic images have emerged of the victims, the evident freshness of the corpses seems to have prompted a revision of the dates of the alleged ‘Russian massacre’. By 5th April, for example, the UK Daily Mail’s lead story was claiming that the satellite photos showing the bodies on the road were taken on 19th March. No explanation was given for the ten-day change.
But even accepting the revised time-line, there is still the problem that none of the bodies shown in videos or photos has any sign of decay or damage from carrion-eaters. In order to believe the accounts and videos put out by Kiev and the Western media, it is also necessary to believe that Ukraine has no stray dogs, no rats and not one single crow or other carnivorous bird.
Look again at the video footage of the Ukrainian troops driving along the corpse-lined road. Do you see any carrion-eating birds flying up from any of the bodies?
For that matter, why were some of the bodies not crushed by the Russian tanks which withdrew from and through the town? Do you really believe that soldiers brutal enough to slaughter dozens of defenceless civilians would then be considerate enough to slow down their withdrawal from the area by carefully weaving their heavy armour around each corpse?
Returning to the weather, there was of course rain during the three weeks the bodies are supposed to have laid (not) rotting in the road. Looking at the cardboard of the green boxes of the food aid packages lying near some of the (clearly fresh) corpses, it is clear that they have not been subjected to bad weather. The presence of those packages is also, of course, another important pointer as to the truth in this matter – for they are Russian.

Thus, in order to believe the Western propaganda narrative, we must swallow yet another ridiculous tall tale: The ‘analysts’ have spent the last month repeatedly telling us that the Russian army cannot even supply its own troops with fuel or food; but now they would have us believe that the Russians went to all the trouble of taking vast quantities of emergency food parcels to the occupied suburbs of Kiev, handed them out to civilians – and then promptly shot them.

On top of all this, there are four key facts which have already received considerable attention on Telegram (the last uncensored social media platform of any size in the West), though which have predictably enough been routinely ignored by the warmongering mainstream media.
The first of these is the video of the Mayor of Bucha speaking about how the Russian troops have left and that a ‘clean-up’ is now underway. As a non-Russian speaker I cannot judge for myself, but the comments by Russian-speakers accompanying this video on Telegram say that he does not mention the bodies of civilians.
The second fact, closely related to this, is the video which shows a detachment of the paramilitary Ukrainian National Police clearing the roads of burnt out and abandoned vehicles. Again, there is no sign of the bodies which appeared on the streets the following day.
Third, and perhaps most devastating of all, are the white armbands on a number of the bodies. These are clearly shown in the main video of Ukrainian troops driving along the corpse-strewn road, and they are also visible on several of the bodies of victims of torture and murder in cellars in Bucha.
The fact that Ukrainian forces wear blue armbands, while Russian troops wear white ones, is universally accepted. A number of videos from various parts of the conflict zone also show civilians wearing white armbands, as a sign either of sympathy with the Russians or at least neutrality.

Situation in Ukraine
Video: Kiev Territorial Defence in Bucha Given Green Light to Shoot Those Not Wearing Blue Armband 3 April, 16:38 GMT
Thus the appearance of white armbands on the victims of ‘the Bucha Massacre’ is overwhelming evidence that the victims were ethnic Russians. They were murdered not by Russian troops – who were of course sent in with a key aim of stopping the persecution of Russian-speakers by racist neo-Nazis – but by Ukrainians.
This should come as no surprise, for the whole history of Ukrainian nationalism is based on the mass murder of ‘unclean’ and ‘sub-human’ civilians from other ethnic groups, most notably the Poles of Wolyn and Eastern Galicia, Jews, Hungarians, Romanians and, of course, Russians.
Finally, we come to the video clip from the streets of Bucha, which was posted and then removed from the social media account of the known Ukrainian neo-Nazi ‘Botman’: “There are guys without blue armbands. Can we shoot them?” “F**k, yeah!”
The truth of the massacre is so clear that we can see why Western leaders such as Boris Johnson are so adamant that there should not be a proper international investigation into the crime.
Instead, they are using the most blatant fake news to justify imposing another round of sanctions pain on their own people, and to excuse the sending of billions of pounds, dollars and euros worth of high-tech weapons in order to prolong the war. One has to wonder about the scale of the kick-backs these real war criminals are getting from their military-industrial complex cronies!
Bucha, Budapest and the Multiplying Problems of Real War Criminals
By Tom Luongo | Gold Goats N’ Guns | April 5, 2022
Fungal President Joe Biden openly declared Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in a recent outburst while speaking at NATO. He’s repeated this in the wake of the initial images coming out of the town of Bucha, Ukraine where an alleged massacre of civilians by Russian soldiers took place.
Like many incidents similar to this in the past it is hard to take any of these claims of blame seriously. The US and UK have staged many a ‘false flag’ operation in the past at convenient times to gin up diplomatic outrage to advance a particular political agenda.
That agenda is always to justify more war to deal with the villain du jour. Today it’s Putin. In the past it’s been Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic or Bashar al-Assad. The playbook is always the same. Shocking images and film of honest-to-god atrocities against civilians and an endless back and forth of accusations and suppression of real information about the event.
Sadly, that becomes the focus not the fact that civilians were murdered for political gains.
Bucha seems to fit this pattern quite well, if more crudely implemented than events like this in the past.
The censorship is nearly total to support the ‘current thing,’ in this case Bucha. But it is no different than the campaigns against certain medications to fight COVID-19.
When it comes to foreign policy objectives, there is always a common denominator in these events to frame that villain and Putin, in particular, as some evil madman… British intelligence.
From the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, to the downing of MH-17 over Ukraine, to the ammonia gas attack in Douma, at the center of these allegations is always some arm of the Brits.
All the roads to RussiaGate lead through Ukraine and British Intelligence. At some point you just have to face the face of the agitator. Every one of those stories have logical inconsistencies wide enough to drive a column of tanks through.
These are painstakingly worked through by investigative journalists pushed to the fringe by the technocrats’ willing partners in Silicon Valley to minimize their influence over the narrative.
That, in itself, should be considered prima facia evidence of malfeasance but sadly it isn’t.
From the moment Russia’s troops crossed the border into Ukraine on February 24th there has been a clear strategy by the Russian Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs to head off potential false flags publicly before they could be pulled off.
The Russian Foreign Ministry singled out the UK for its histrionics saying if they wanted to lead the charge, they’ll get the worst treatment.
With the pullout of Russian troops from around Kiev however, they have little control over the preparing of the stage. You believe what you want to believe about Bucha, I don’t care.
Given the track record of Russia’s accusers here I’m taking the position that these allegations have to be incontrovertibly proven publicly for me to believe a word of them. Here’s one version of the story (warning: very graphic).
That is how low the credibility of the sources on this are. The UK government has been, along with Biden’s Dept. of State and National Security Council, the most belligerent in their response to Russia’s military operation. Their history and naked hatred of all things Russian stretches back multiple centuries.
In short, they have motive, means and opportunity to stage a false flag to push public sentiment further towards NATO’s intervention into Ukraine officially, therefore a false flag is the most likely scenario.
Complaints about how Russia waged the initial part of this war have centered on their unwillingness (but not opposition) to target civilians. Kiev could have easily been taken if the Russians wanted to commit massive atrocities against civilians.
They did not do so. That flies in the face of what’s being alleged about Bucha. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen the way it is being alleged, but the burden of proof lies with the accuser (Ukraine) and their allies (The US and UK).
And the main amplifier of this story, the UK, blocked not one but two proposals by the Russian Federation to investigate what happened in Bucha. We can’t have that, there’s a war to escalate.
Remember this story is only possible because the Russians first got repulsed from taking Kiev and then pulled back from the areas surrounding it. They are redeploying forces and regrouping for a major push against Ukrainian forces trapped in the eastern part of Ukraine.
That operation will likely wipe out what’s left of the UAF troops there and push the next phase of this war on the ground to its natural state of equilibrium for the next few months.
There are so many people whose crimes in Ukraine would be exposed by a Russian win there that it is truly existential to keep that from happening. It goes deeper than even the ideology of the West which needs to subjugate Russia if the Davos plan for global governance is going to have any hope of succeeding.
This is also personal for everyone from Joe Biden himself to hundreds, if not thousands of people complicit in the various schemes, plots and crimes committed in the petrie dish of corruption they’ve staged their attacks on common decency from.
So, when I say they have motive, means and opportunity, I mean it. These are the same people who impeached Donald Trump over a phone call. Of course they will say the quiet parts out loud about what they want to do to Putin for screwing up their grand plans.
This brings me back to my article from the other day handicapping the Hungarian elections. Because Hungary is now in a very strong position I posited they’d be in if Viktor Orban won the election, which he did, emphatically. And that means the EU is in a very precarious position to continue supporting an anti-Russia policy stance.
With a fiscally, monetarily (they are not on the euro) and energy independent Hungary there is little argument for them staying in the EU if Brussels is going to treat them as second class members. Orban and his government have been resolute in their refusal to get involved in the Russia/Ukraine conflict even though there has been serious pressure applied by NATO.
In anticipation of any resistance to the EU’s new set of draconian and frankly insane sanctions on Russia the European Commission wasted no time in announcing they are beginning ‘rule of law’ procedures against Hungary to cut them out of any monetary distributions within the bloc.
The European Commission will soon trigger a powerful new mechanism to cut funding to Hungary for eroding the bloc’s rule-of-law standards, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday.
The announcement comes two days after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán won a fourth consecutive term in an election that international observers said was marred by an uneven playing field benefiting the ruling Fidesz party…
… Von der Leyen said her team informed Hungary of its decision on Tuesday after reviewing Budapest’s responses to an informal letter the Commission sent last November asking for information on its rule-of-law concerns.
“We’ve carefully assessed the result of these questions,” von der Leyen said, speaking to the European Parliament. “Our conclusion is we have to move on [to] the next step.”
There’s nothing ‘careful’ about the EU’s assessment here. Hungary and Poland were forced to accept these new rules in a major political battle with the EU in 2021 over their Green New Deal. He wasn’t in a strong enough position to stop this and it meant then we would wind up here today if he won re-election.
The EC’s formal charges against Hungary over their furry law is just like other such moves, namely against Poland for its hated Supreme Court recall law. They are forcing the ultimate choice on Hungary because all the EU really has is Article 7 censure and expulsion from the Union as a threat.
The amount of money they are holding as a carrot to Orban in COVID relief funds is just 30 pieces of silver and he knows it.
So, if you play this out to the end, this is where Orban has to go. He must force the EU to do what Mark Rutte said last month, kick them out or back down.
Today the European Commission is staring at the real threat: that Hungary has no intention of going along with the new sanctions and Orban actually welcomes Von der Leyen’s move to censure and cut off Hungary’s funds from the EU budget.
They will be a country that now pays in but gets nothing in return other than the stick.
But as long as they are a member of the European Commission they can and will veto anything else Von der Leyen cooks up to punish Russia with as a political cudgel to beat vulnerable EU members into going along with.
The EC thinks they will be making an example of Hungary but what they will really be doing is giving Orban an even stronger hand to play on the European Council. Now he can stay in Budapest and tell Hungarians that the EU no longer works for Hungarians and they would be better off free from their yoke.
Hung-exit, anyone?
Elections have consequences when you don’t control the outcome of them. This is why the neocons and war criminals like Hillary Clinton, Lindsey Graham and Joe Biden are all screaming that something or someone has to do something to stop Putin whose operation in Ukraine still has the potential to expose everything.
It’s why Bucha was so haphazardly staged and ham-fistedly packaged up to us.
The blow out results in Hungary on Sunday were a major blow to EU confidence and solidarity. Twelve years of calling Orban a Nazi while supporting real 4th generation Nazis in Ukraine landed with a whimper.
Von der Leyen is a certifiable idiot for invoking the ‘rule of law’ weapon against Orban here using the alleged events at Bucha. She’s using it as an excuse to purposefully destroy the European economy per the directive of her Davos handlers. Their calculus is simple, burn the entire global economy down to punish Putin, Xi and everyone else not down with the Comintern.
It exposes the EU’s complicity in the war on Russia as willing partners with the US and UK because if they wanted to continue virtue signaling they would propose crazy new sanctions and let Hungary veto them.
But now we can only conclude this is exactly what they wanted.
That puts things into stark relief as we look ahead to the increasingly likely probability that French President Emmanuel Macron loses to Marine LePen in France who would be in a far stronger position to break up EU solidarity, freezing it politically at a time when Europe’s financial vulnerability has never been higher.
Meanwhile Putin keeps saying “Got Gold or Rubles?” and Orban is preparing a cold dish of political revenge on the nastiest people in Europe. When this mouse roars, they may finally have to listen.
Russia willing to investigate Bucha’s tragedy
By Lucas Leiroz | April 5, 2022
The alleged massacre of civilians in Bucha is one of the most talked about topics around the world in recent hours. Russia has been repeatedly accused by Western governments and mainstream media, and there are already calls for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be prosecuted for war crimes and human rights violations. However, there is a series of controversies in the case, from possible falsifications in the images released by Ukrainian forces to incoherent information about the dates of the massacre, which demands a deep investigation.
According to the official Kremlin’s position, the Russian government categorically denies any involvement by its forces in operations that killed civilians in Bucha. Spokesperson Dmistry Peskov stated on Monday, April 4, about the case, making it clear that Moscow, in addition to denying participation in the massacre, supports the immediate launch of high-level investigations on the occurrence. The Russian authorities also committed to take the discussion forward to the UN Security Council in order conduct an international investigation in the grave tragedy.
Furthermore, Peskov made it clear that the Russian government does not trust the veracity of all the information contained in the videos and photos of dead civilians released by the Ukrainian government. There are reports from Russian experts pointing out possible forgeries and frauds in the content of the videos. Other Russian officials also commented on the case, pointing out that there is evidence that the videos were forged or performed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, for example, claimed during a meeting with UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths that the Ukrainian press had released fake videos about Russian operations in Bucha, and that there had been a staging organized by Kiev’s forces in the region days after the departure of Russian troops.
In the same vein, the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, said that the videos and photos released by the Ukrainian press and the Western statements about them appear to be a “custom-made story”. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also spoke out, claiming that the case is a production by the Kiev regime for Western media that sounds like a provocation against Russia. Finally, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, also expressed distrust about the veracity of the material released by Kiev and requested a procedural assessment on the possible massacre of civilians.
Despite the distrust, which seems justified in the face of a long history of fake news and information warfare on the part of the NATO-Kiev axis, Moscow seems open to hearing contrary opinions, which is precisely why the government seems so interested in launching an investigation, both using its official experts and international agents convoked by the UNSC. It is possible that, in addition to the obviously fake and staged videos, there is also real material, with actual images of dead people. The Kremlin’s main point is that, regardless of whether the videos and photos are real or not, there is no Russian involvement in cases of massacre of civilians.
Considering the evident victory of the Special Operation in Bucha region, there would be no strategic advantage for the Russian military to shoot civilians, which would cause unnecessary harm to the country. Now, Zelensky, Biden and other Western leaders are calling for Putin to be condemned by international courts and planning an increase in sanctions. So, it does not seem at all reasonable that Russian forces would have deliberately planned and carried out a massacre of civilians, considering that these would be the obvious consequences of such acts.
Another point that needs to be mentioned is that there is an evident time lapse in the case. The Russians withdrew from Bucha on 30 March. The Ukrainians entered Bucha on March 31, and the “retake” of the city was announced by the mayor on the same day. Azov’s paramilitaries entered the city only on April 1. So how were the “bodies in the streets” found only on April 3?
If international society is really interested in the truth, it must heed the Russian request for an investigation at the UNSC. If Western governments refuse to cooperate with the investigation, it will be possible to conclude that they have something to hide. The UN must remain neutral and commit itself to the search for the truth of the facts, even if this truth is unpleasant for the West.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Casualties feared after alleged Ukrainian chemical plant attack
Samizdat | April 5, 2022
Retreating Ukrainian forces have allegedly blown up a tank allegedly containing hydrochloric acid, at a chemical plant in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) town of Rubezhnoe, which has emerged as a flashpoint in the ongoing military conflict.
The tank explosion was aimed at a populated area, controlled by local fighters, the LPR’s militia claimed on Tuesday.
“[These] terrorist actions might lead to mass civilian casualties,” the force warned on its Telegram channel, adding that authorities are currently collecting information about any casualties resulting from the incident.
The LPR has also accused Ukrainian media of “actively spreading fakes” that Donbass fighters had blown up the tank themselves. They said Kiev has been doing this in order to cover up “the criminal terrorist actions” of its own forces.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Kiev-nominated governor of Lugansk, Sergey Gaidai, stated in his Telegram channel that a Russian projectile had hit a nitric acid tank in the area, and called on local residents to stay indoors and close all doors and windows, as well as to prepare wet face masks.
“Nitric acid is dangerous if inhaled or swallowed,” he warned. It is unclear if he was referring to the same incident or to a different one. Ukrainian authorities have not commented on the allegations leveled by the Donbass militias so far. Neither have Russian officials or the country’s military.
The incident occurred on Tuesday at the ‘Zarya’ chemical plant, once one of Ukraine’s leading chemical enterprises. Videos reportedly taken at the scene and published by the RIA news agency show thick, orange-tinged smoke billowing over the area, which has some residential buildings.
The plant has storage facilities for sulfuric and hydrochloric acid. When released into the atmosphere, strong hydrochloric acid might produce a toxic fog affecting people’s eyes and airways. If mixed with various oxidizers like potassium permanganate, it releases highly toxic chlorine gas.
In early March, Moscow warned the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) about potential false-flag attacks staged by the Ukrainian radicals that might involve the use of toxic chemical agents. “Ukrainian radical groups aided by the American security services have developed several potential scenarios of using toxic chemicals to stage various false flag attacks,” Russia’s statement to the OPCW said at that time.
Ukraine stages more ‘killings’ of civilians: Russia
Samizdat | April 5, 2022
Ukrainian security services have staged more ‘killings’ of civilians in several towns and villages to make headlines in the Western media and accuse Moscow of war crimes, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed on Tuesday.
Moscow insists that the same tactics have been used by Kiev to blame Russian forces for atrocities in the town of Bucha last week.
“The troops of the 72nd Ukrainian Main Center for Psychological Operations conducted another staged filming of civilians allegedly killed by violent actions of the Russian armed forces in order for it to be distributed through the Western media,” the ministry’s spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said during a briefing.
According to “confirmed information,” the filming took place in the village of Moschun some 23km northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Monday, he stated.
Similar false flag operations have been carried out by the Ukrainian side in the cities of Sumy, Konotop and elsewhere, Konashenkov added.
On Saturday, Ukraine distributed graphic footage of multiple corpses lying in the streets of the suburban town of Bucha northwest of Kiev, saying that they were executed by Russian troops.
Moscow, which insists that it is not targeting civilians during its operation in Ukraine, has rejected those accusations as a provocation and a false flag operation by Kiev.
It pointed out numerous inconsistencies in the Ukrainian story, including the fact that the video emerged several days after the Russian forces withdrew from Bucha, and that the local mayor didn’t mention any killings in his video address declaring the “liberation” of the city.
Despite Russian arguments and Moscow’s attempt to call a UN Security Council session, the West has immediately picked, who to blame for the purported atrocities. US President Joe Biden has demanded a “war crimes trial” for his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and the EU promised to send its experts to aid Ukrainian authorities in collecting evidence at the site.
Ukrainian Police Said They Conducted “Clearing Op” in Bucha a Day Before Dead Body Videos Emerged
Narrative fail
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 4, 2022
Ukrainian police posted on Facebook that they had conducted a “clearing op” in Bucha the day before videos emerged showing dead bodies scattered around the settlement, as the war of words over the alleged “war crime” continues.
NATO powers and pro-Ukraine commentators have seized upon the alleged atrocity in a bid to escalate the war, with MSNBC hosts and guests even asserting that it justifies directly attacking Russia and putting American boots on the ground in Ukraine.
MSNBC host Ali Velshi demanded “direct military involvement,” something that would almost inevitably kick off World War III, in response to the alleged incident.
Former Army Major John Spencer also appeared on the same show to demand American “boots on the ground” in Ukraine.
Moscow has vehemently denied involvement, claiming Ukraine shelled the city after Russian troops had already withdrawn.
The only evidence offered so far pointing to Russian responsibility is the claims of Ukrainian authorities, with are being breathlessly amplified by the mainstream media without an ounce of skepticism.
Margaret Brennan of CBS admitted that Ukrainian President Zelensky’s team had “handed” her the videos and they were broadcast, as journalist Michael Tracey wrote, with “zero independent corroboration.”
The notion that Ukrainian authorities, who have been caught staging innumerable incidents already in a bid to lobby for more NATO military involvement, would lie about this is seemingly not even a consideration.
A timeline provided from reporting by the New York Times suggests that pro-Ukrainian Azov neo-nazi militants entered Bucha after Russian troops left and after the Mayor of Bucha had announced the town’s liberation with no mention of any atrocities.
One member of Azov was reportedly heard asking if he could shoot individuals who weren’t wearing blue armbands.
Another report asserts that Ukrainian national police posted on Facebook how they had conducted a “clearing operation” in Bucha before the alleged atrocities occurred accompanied by a video of their men walking around the town.
“Today, on 2 April, in the liberated city of Bucha, Kiev region, special units of the Ukrainian National Police began clearing the area of saboteurs and accomplices of Russian troops,” the Facebook post said.
As ever, with propaganda on both sides, it is virtually impossible to know what happened in Bucha, but to claim it’s an open and shut case of “war crimes” as the western media proclaims without any independent evidence is clearly ludicrous.
Fake news in Kiev heralds cruel April
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | APRIL 4, 2022
An indignant Moscow has angrily demanded a United Nations Security Council meeting on Monday over the allegations of atrocities by Russian troops in areas around Kiev through the past month. Prima facie, this allegation is fake news but it can mould misperceptions by the time it gets exposed as disinformation.
A Tass report says: “The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that the Russian Armed Forces had left Bucha, located in the Kiev region, on March 30, while “the evidence of crimes” emerged only four days later, after Ukrainian Security Service officers had arrived in the town. The ministry stressed that on March 31, the town’s Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk had confirmed in a video address that there were no Russian troops in Bucha. However, he did not say a word about civilians shot dead on the street with their hands tied behind their backs.”
Even more surprising is that within minutes of the “breaking news”, western leaders — heads of state, foreign ministers, former politicians — popped up with statements duly kept ready and only based on the videos, seconds-long videos and a clutch of photos, ready to pour accusations. No expert opinion was sought, no forensic work was done, no opportunity given to the accused to be heard.
French President Emmanuel Macron broke his election campaign where he’s in a dead heat with Marine Le Pen for reelection in next Sunday’s poll to brand the alleged Russian atrocities as “war crime”. So did German Chancellor Olaf Scholz who is in big trouble too as Germany is posting inflation at +7.3 percent in March.
There’s nothing unusual about beleaguered politicians catching hold of bogeymen. Intelligent minds like Macron and Scholz’s must be realising by now their flawed policies leading inexorably to such a strategic defeat at the hands of Russia. But the big question is: Why such theatrics just at this point?
The fake news surfaced even as the Phase 2 of Russia’s special operation is slated to begin within the week in the eastern Donbass region. Something like 60-80000 Ukrainian troops, rated to be the best units of the armed forces, have been encircled in Donbass.
The Russian feint paid off in pinning down the Ukrainian forces in Kiev through past month. By the time the truth dawned on the Kiev set-up (and their western “advisors), the damage was done. The enormity of the resultant situation needs some explanation.

The above map reproduced from the Novosti (unfortunately, in Russian language) on the exact ground situation as of April 3 and the commentary by Ivan Andreev, an experienced war correspondent who covered the Russian operations in Syria, gives the salience of the cauldron in Donbass where the crème de la crème of the Ukrainian forces numbering several divisions are entrapped, isolated by opposing forces from their logistical base and other friendly forces.
The cauldron is fairly large, marked in blue and black stripes on the map in the upper reaches of the Donbass region in the direction of Kharkiv. The massive Russian column that retreated from the Kiev region a week ago is manoeuvring in a big arc toward that cauldron bypassing Chernihiv in the north and the cities of Sumy and Kharkiv (near the Russian border in the northeast).
The Ukrainian forces are well-armed and have fortified themselves heavily but are unable to escape from the entrapment. Nor is it feasible for Kiev to send reinforcements as the countryside to the west consists of largely open farmlands (all the way to the Dniepr River). The Russians have air supremacy and it is impossible to hide any enemy movements from their roving eyes.
The Russian forces have put out of action all nearby airports and destroyed the nearby Ukrainian oil reserves systematically through Phase 1 of the operation. As I wrote in a previous blog, three days ago, Russian forces dealt a devastating blow: “Notably, the Mirgorod military airfield in central Poltava Region, a strategically important hub, has been taken out of action and several Ukrainian combat helicopters and aircraft found in its camouflaged car parks, as well as fuel and aviation weapons depots have been destroyed.”
Equally, Kharkiv has been surrounded and “in a high-precision strike with the Iskander operational-tactical missiles on the defence headquarters in the city on Thursday, more than 100 nationalists and mercenaries from Western countries were confirmed as killed.”
Nonetheless, the Ukrainian forces are expected to put up a good fight rather than surrender — although surrounded, without air cover, and having no scope to rotate forces or enough fuel to engage in maneuver warfare and with ammunition running out.
To be sure, a major battle is approaching, the most decisive in the entire Russian special operation so far. The catch is, the cauldron also has plentiful settlements of ethnic Russian population (including Russian passport holders) and the offensive will be a long grind patiently executed to avoid civilian casualty or destruction of civilian infrastructure.
That is to say, Phase 2 may last anywhere up to a month or so to be completed. Make no mistake, the Russians have to win here (which they will) as they will also be breaking the back of the Ukrainian armed forces. Despite all the bluster by Zelensky, Kiev will realise the enormity of the defeat and his western mentors will see the writing on the wall too.
To be sure, a whole month lies ahead where the western strategy will be to incessantly manufacture fake news, intensify the information war. Even some false flag operation may be staged under the supervision of western intelligence operatives.
In a worst case scenario, Kiev may even play its last card — chemical weapons. Russia has publicised details of locations where Ukraine has kept stockpiles of chemical weapons. The US is known to have supplied as military aid special gear (gas masks, protective clothing, etc.) to cope with chemical weapons and given special training for collective protection.
The alacrity with which Macron and Scholz consumed the fake news is a harbinger of a new phase in the information war. Succinctly put, there is a sober awakening in Paris and Berlin that the Russian operation is successfully meeting the set objectives.
“April”, TS Eliot wrote in his masterpiece The Wasteland, “is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.” But the dark irony of this year’s “Aprilness” is going to be that the fecundity and renewal here will be about Russia’s regeneration in a world of both history and the myths spawned by quarantined western minds.
Russia demands UN Security Council meeting over Bucha massacre
Samizdat | April 3, 2022
Moscow will convene an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council over the incident in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, Russia’s deputy permanent representative with the organization, Dmitry Polyansky said Sunday. Ukraine has accused Russia of massacring civilians in the town, while Moscow dismissed the incident as staged by the Kiev forces.
“In light of the blatant provocation by Ukrainian radicals in Bucha, Russia has demanded a meeting of the UN Security Council to be convened on Monday, April 4. We will bring to light the presumptuous Ukrainian provocateurs and their Western patrons,” Polyansky said in a Telegram post.
Graphic footage from Bucha, a town to the northwest of Kiev, emerged over the weekend, showing multiple bodies clad in civilian clothing scattered around. Kiev was quick to blame Russian military for the incident, with Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba alleging it was a “deliberate massacre”.
“The Bucha massacre was deliberate. Russians aim to eliminate as many Ukrainians as they can. We must stop them and kick them out. I demand new, devastating G7 sanctions NOW,” Kuleba said on Twitter.
Top Western politicians were quick to back and amplify Kiev’s claims, with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg branding the incident “a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades.”
“And it’s horrific, and it’s absolutely unacceptable that civilians are targeted and killed, and it just underlines the importance of, that this war must end. And that is President Putin’s responsibility, to stop the war,” Stoltenberg told CNN.
Similar stance has been voiced by many other officials, with some explicitly pinning the blame for the ‘massacre’ on Moscow. French President Emmanuel Macron said, for instance, that “Russian authorities will have to answer for these crimes”.
Moscow, however, has firmly rejected any involvement, accusing Kiev of staging the whole affair to frame Russian troops. The country’s Defense Ministry said that Russian troops pulled out of the town on March 30, with local mayor confirming it in a video address a day after without mentioning “any local residents laying shot in the streets.” The purported “evidence” of the incident emerged only four days after the withdrawal, when Ukrainian intelligence and “representatives of Ukrainian television arrived in the town,” the military added, stressing that multiple inconsistencies show that the affair “has been staged by the Kiev regime for Western media.”
