Who Blew Up Nord Stream Pipelines? | A Mystery!
Matt Orfalea | October 23, 2022
Russia suspends last nuclear treaty with US
RT | February 21, 2023
Moscow is suspending its participation in the last remaining nuclear treaty between Russia and the US, President Vladimir Putin has announced. During his key address to the Russian parliament on Tuesday, he noted that Moscow will not exit the New START Treaty, but is temporarily withdrawing.
Explaining the decision, Putin stated that the agreement was initially drawn up under completely different circumstances, when Russia and the US did not perceive each other as adversaries. Now, however, according to the president, not only is the US issuing ultimatums to Russia, but NATO itself has essentially made an application to become part of the treaty as well.
The bloc members are now demanding an inspection of Russia’s strategic facilities, Putin said, noting that Moscow’s requests to inspect Western nuclear facilities under the treaty are systematically denied with only formal explanations for the rejection.
Putin noted that the US has continued to insist on maintaining hegemony, while its NATO partners openly admit that they want to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.
“Russia cannot ignore this. We cannot allow ourselves to ignore this,” he said.
Before we return to discussing this agreement, we must understand for ourselves what the intentions of countries like France and the UK are and how we will consider their strategic arsenals as well, which is the cumulative striking potential of NATO.
The New START Treaty was originally signed in 2010 by then-Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, and aimed to cut in half the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers deployed around the world. Under the treaty, both countries were supposed to allow the other side a limited number of inspections per year to verify compliance with the agreement. Unless extended, the treaty was set to expire in 2026.
‘US, Not China, Pouring Weapons Into Ukraine’, Says Chinese Foreign Ministry
By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 21.02.2023
With the US accusing China of looking into selling weapons to the Russian military, China’s foreign ministry says that – having pumped tens of billions in heavy weapons to Ukrainian militants – Washington is “not qualified” to lecture Beijing about international arms trafficking.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has struck back at Washington for suggesting China is evaluating the possibility of supplying Russia with weapons, saying Monday that it’s the American government pumping weapons into the conflict zone – not China’s.
“It is the US, not China, that has been consistently pouring weapons into the battlefield,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a press briefing Monday.
Over the weekend, several high-level US officials began to suggest they had reason to believe that China was considering sending military supplies to Moscow.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused China on Saturday of “considering providing lethal support to Russia” in what he labeled Moscow’s “aggression against Ukraine.” He said that if his allegation turned out to be true, it “would have serious consequences in our relationship” with China.
Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, echoed the threat Sunday, telling CNN that China would be crossing a “red line” if it decided to provide Russia with lethal aid.
But Wang said Monday that the US is “not qualified” to issue such ultimatums. He told reporters that the rest of the world knows who’s really to blame for the hostilities in Ukraine, and called on the Biden administration to publicly admit that it’s fanned the flames of the ongoing conflict.
“The international community is fully aware who is calling for dialogue and striving for peace, and who is fanning the flames and stoking confrontation,” Wang said.
Unlike Washington, he noted that Beijing has been “supporting talks for peace” since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, adding “we urge the US side to seriously reflect on the role it has played, do something to actually help de-escalate the situation and promote peace talks, and stop deflecting the blame and spreading disinformation.”
The back-and-forth comes after Wang Yi, China’s highest ranked diplomat, defended his country’s posture towards Russian military operations before an audience of European officials during Saturday’s Munich Security Conference.
“We do not add fuel to the fire, and we’re against reaping benefits from this crisis,” Wang said.
“Some forces might not want to see peace talks materialize,” Wang noted, in what was widely viewed as a thinly-veiled jab at the US government.
“They don’t care about the life and death of Ukrainians, nor the harm on Europe,” Wang suggested, adding “they might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself.”
Munich Security Conference 2023: An Exercise in Western Self-Delusion
By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 20.02.2023
Delegates from around the world assembled in Munich, Germany on February 17, 2023, to convene an eponymously named security conference that has, since its inception in 1963, operated under the motto “Peace through Dialogue.”
For three days, world leaders participated in what has become known as “the Davos of Defense” (a reference to the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland), discussing critical security issues of the day.
This year, not surprisingly, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict dominated the agenda. What was a surprise, however, was the emphasis that western participants placed on action over discussion when it came to formulating a collective strategy for achieving some sort of conflict termination. Indeed, the dominant theme at Munich was not simply how to provide more material to Ukraine’s military, but how to do so in a manner that escalates the conflict by challenging Russia’s so-called “red lines” – regarding western support to Ukraine.
For the first time since the 1990’s, Russia was not invited to attend the conference. Instead, prominent Russian opposition figures, including exiled oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chess champion Gary Kasparov, and Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were invited. The chairman of the conference, Christoph Heusgen, explained this pointed deviation from the principle of promoting dialogue by declaring that he did not want to be seen as providing a platform for Russian propaganda.
Instead, it turned out, Heusgen turned the floor over to western propagandists.
The underlying theme in Munich went beyond an escalation of support for Ukraine, and instead embraced the outright provocation of Russia. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda served as the pace-setter for this trend when, prior to the Munich Security Conference, he urged western leaders to consider providing Ukraine with “essential military aid” such as tanks, fighter aircraft, and long-range missiles, despite long-standing concerns by the west that the provision of such aid would be seen by Russia as evidence of direct participation by the providing parties in the conflict. “These red lines,” Nauseda declared, “must be crossed.”
On cue, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky opened the conference with an appeal, delivered via video and designed to underscore a sense of urgency.
“We need to hurry up,” Zelensky declared. “We need speed—speed of our agreements, speed of our delivery, speed of decisions to limit Russian potential. There is no alternative to speed because it is the speed that the life depends on,” Zelensky said, concluding that there was “no alternative to a Ukrainian victory.”
But Zelensky’s exhortations for speed appeared to fall upon deaf ears when it came to two of Europe’s most important leaders. Both Germany’s Olaf Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron underscored that, from their perspective, the conflict in Ukraine would not be ending anytime soon. “I think it’s wise to prepare for a long war,” Scholz noted in his remarks to the conference, a sentiment Macron echoed by saying that Europe should prepare for a “prolonged conflict in Ukraine.”
Declaring that now was “not the time for dialogue,” Macron urged his fellow conference attendees to action. “We absolutely need to intensify our support and our effort to the resistance of the Ukrainian people and its army,” Macron said, and “help them to launch a counter-offensive which alone can allow credible negotiations, determined by Ukraine, its authorities and its people.”
There is a fundamental disconnect between the frenetic urgings of President Zelensky and the long-term approaches taken by Scholz and Macron that point to an overall atmosphere of self-delusion that seemed to dominate the Munich Security Conference.
While US Vice President Kamala Harris spoke of bringing Russian leaders “to justice” for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, the Ukrainian military is being systemically ground down on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, soil that Russia now claims for its own. Current NATO military commander, Lieutenant General Christopher Cavoli, has described these battles as being “out of proportion” to NATO plans and capabilities in terms of the “scope and scale” of the violence being perpetrated on the ground by both parties to the conflict.
Rather than accept the inevitability of a Ukrainian military defeat, however, Cavoli briefed US lawmakers on the sidelines of the Munich Conference that, in his opinion, Ukraine should be provided with modern jet aircraft, including F-16 fighters, and long-range missiles capable of striking targets deep inside Russian territory. These weapons, Cavoli said, would enable Ukraine to fight what he termed “the deep fight”, shifting the emphasis from the deadly fighting at the point of direct engagement to a new war where Ukraine would disrupt the Russian war effort by striking headquarters and supply lines deep behind the frontlines.
In short, Cavoli was outlining an escalatory strategy brought to life by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda’s earlier exhortations to cross all “red lines” when it came to supporting Ukraine.
But simple rhetoric cannot bridge the yawning gap that exists with reality. Words, especially in an environment like this year’s Munich Security Conference, where all pretense at dialogue has been forsaken in favor of the construction of a pro-western echo, resonate in a manner which promotes an artificial sense of substance. But unless these words are backed by concerted action, they carry no weight and will soon dissipate into nothingness.
This, in short, is the reality of the Munich Security Council—an exercise in self-delusion, similar in construct to the discussions around the conference table in the last days of the Battle of Berlin in 1945, in which Adolf Hitler moved imaginary armies around in a vain effort to seize victory from the inevitability of defeat.
The fact is, there are no tanks, no long-range missiles, no fighter aircraft available in any realistic time-frame that can help Ukraine reverse the deterioration of its military posture vis-à-vis Russia. Zelensky’s demands for urgency reflect a growing recognition on his part that, if left on the current trajectory, the war with Russia will be over soon—perhaps as early as August 2023. The inability and/or unwillingness on the part of the western military and civilian leadership to match their declarations of support with Zelensky’s timeline demonstrates an absolute divorce from reality on the part of those who were gathered in Munich, or else the cynicism of those who know the tragic fate that awaits those they claim to support only too well.
The harsh truth that the participants of the Munich Security Conference know, but cannot speak, is that there is no hope for a Ukrainian victory over Russia.
Chinese report decries US hegemony
RT | February 20, 2023
The US has been abusing its hegemonic position in the world for decades to reap benefits for itself and sow rivalry and instability in other nations, a report published on Monday on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s official website claims.
The document seeks to draw international attention “to the perils of the US practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.” It offers examples of Washington’s purported selfishness in the areas of politics, the military, the economy, technology and culture.
For a century, the US has treated Latin America as its backyard, where those who resist the US face “political interference, military intervention and regime subversion,” the text claims. Elsewhere, it creates divisive blocs under its influence, and fosters “color revolutions” against opponents. Lately Washington has posited the false dichotomy of “democracies vs. autocracies” and arbitrarily labels nations as members of one of the camps.
The use of force has been a feature of US expansionism since its independence, the document says. Since 2001 alone, wars launched by Washington “in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians.”
The Pentagon has used an array of “appalling methods” of war, from biological weapons in Korea to depleted uranium munitions in more recent times, “causing… countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution,” the piece notes.
The US government has used the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, and its influence on the international financial system, to quash competition and slap unilateral sanctions against opponents. Washington “is basically collecting ‘seigniorage’ from around the world,” and during the Covid-19 pandemic, disrupted the global economy by injecting trillions of dollars into it, the report says.
The report accuses the US of using its status as a leading technological power to conduct electronic surveillance and espionage, including against its closest allies, as well as cyberwarfare, noting that having the leverage of big tech companies allows the US government to censor speech online and push its narratives on a global scale, while silencing critics.
The document concludes that the US should do some “soul-searching” and change its approach, as “the historical trends of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit are unstoppable.”
Munich Conference signals Western isolation, advent of multipolarity
By Drago Bosnic | February 20, 2023
Although it has been only 16 years since President Putin’s historical speech at the 2007 Munich Conference, that event now seems like a distant past of a long-lost world. Back then, Russia was warning the political West that further NATO aggression would inevitably lead to the revival of the Cold War.
However, Washington DC and Brussels seem to have wanted exactly that. The political West has tried to present the 2023 Munich Security Conference as some sort of a groundbreaking global event that “sent a strong signal” and showed “just how isolated” Russia is. However, nothing could be further from the truth, given the comments of some of the most prominent participants, including NATO and EU member states.
For instance, during a Saturday meeting with US State Secretary Anthony Blinken, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that Beijing finds Washington DC’s attempts to threaten Sino-Russian relations completely unacceptable, emphasizing that the relationship between the two superpowers is their sovereign right and that it is not aimed against any third party.
“We will never accept the instructions of the United States and even threats to put pressure on Russian-Chinese relations,” Wang was quoted as saying in a statement published on Sunday by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. “The Sino-Russian relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation are based on non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting against third parties. They are within the framework of the sovereignty of two independent states,” he added.
The comments were made in response to US accusations that China will “increase its support for Russia”. Wang also warned his American counterpart against the continued melodramatic reaction to the “balloon controversy”, which the US has been (ab)using lately to ensure detente between the two countries is virtually impossible. Beijing said that American high-altitude balloons have illegally entered China’s airspace many times over the last several decades, but the government chose not to cause panic and simply used existing diplomatic channels to communicate with their US counterparts.
“If the US continues to use this as an excuse, to promote further escalation and aggravate the situation, then China will definitely go to the very end. All the consequences of this will be borne by the American side,” Wang said.
China also called on the US to stop escalating the Ukrainian crisis and start promoting a peaceful settlement. Wang said that “Washington DC should stop adding fuel to the fire”. He noted that China’s position is constructive and called for the negotiation process to continue.
“Being a great power, the United States should contribute to the political settlement of the crisis, and not add fuel to the fire and look for opportunities to extract its own benefits,” Wang was quoted as saying.
Hungary also called for the de-escalation of the crisis and insisted on maintaining economic relations with Russia. During the traditional annual address to his fellow citizens, Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated that “the only way for Hungary to live peacefully is to stay out of the conflict, as it is not our war”.
“We will maintain our economic relations with Russia, and we advise the entire Western world to do the same, because without relations there will be no ceasefire or peace talks,” Orban said.
On the other hand, the European Union is doing exactly the opposite. The bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrel called Russia “an existential threat” and urged all member states not to continue supporting the Kiev regime, but “help more”. He also insisted that “the EU should start an industrial techno-blitzkrieg to produce more weapons“, effectively nullifying the claim that the bloc was an economic union. Borrel added that member states will spend an additional €70 billion on defense by 2025.
“In the next two years, the EU countries intend to spend an additional €70 billion on defense. France will increase defense spending by 40%, while Poland will double it,” he stated.
Interestingly, India was also targeted. George Soros, a controversial oligarch infamous for providing financial backing for various groups responsible for destabilization and undermining of countries the political West sees as “uncooperative”, stated the following:
“India is an interesting case. It’s a democracy, but its leader Narendra Modi is no democrat. Inciting violence against Muslims was an important factor in his meteoric rise. Modi maintains close relations with both open and closed societies. India is a member of the Quad (which also includes Australia, the US, and Japan), but it buys a lot of Russian oil at a steep discount and makes a lot of money on it. […]
Modi and business tycoon Adani are close allies; their fate is intertwined. Adani Enterprises tried to raise funds in the stock market, but he failed. Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards. Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in parliament. This will significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government and open the door to push for much-needed institutional reforms. I may be naive, but I expect a democratic revival in India.”
In response to the accusations, India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar brushed Soros off and (quite accurately) described him as “old, rich, opinionated and dangerous”. Considering Soros has a history of Nazi collaboration, it can be argued that his attack could even be considered a compliment of sorts for Prime Minister Modi and India as a whole.
In essence, the Munich Conference not only failed to produce the desired results (Russia supposedly isolated), but it even strengthened the multipolar world, as neither India nor China proved malleable in any way, showing their sovereignty is untouched by the political West’s pressure. On the other hand, many Europeans are extremely unhappy by the EU’s militarization. According to varying estimates, the huge crowd of protesters in Munich numbered up to 50,000 people. In conclusion, while there are massive differences between Munich 2007 and Munich 2023, the latest conference is somewhat similar to the 1938 Munich Agreement between Nazi Germany and Western allies. Considering how that ended (along with any other invasion of Russia), the political West’s prospects against Moscow look rather grim, to say the least.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
China Warns US ‘Not to Add Fuel to Fire’ of Ukraine Conflict
Sputnik – 19.02.2023
Beijing has warned Washington against fueling the conflict in Ukraine, where Russia continues its special military operation.
Meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the 2023 Munich Security Conference on Saturday, head of the Communist Party of China’s Central Foreign Affairs Office Wang Yi stressed that “As a great power, the US should contribute to a political solution to the crisis, not add fuel to the fire and look for opportunities to benefit from it.”
According to Wang, China has adhered to a constructive position in relation to the crisis in Ukraine and supported the negotiating process.
Wang also made it clear that Beijing “will never tolerate US instructions or even threats to put pressure on Russian-Chinese relations.”
He earlier told the Munich Security Conference that China would draft and present a document, in which its position on the Ukraine crisis will be outlined by the end of February.
“On the Ukraine issue, China’s stance boils down to supporting talks for peace. We will put forth a paper on China’s position on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis and stay firm on the side of peace and dialogue,” he underscored.
For its part, the US State Department said in a press release that during talks with Wang, Blinken “warned about the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia or assistance with systemic sanctions evasion.”
This came after a US media outlet quoted unnamed sources as saying that Washington believes that Beijing may be providing non-lethal military assistance to Moscow for use in Ukraine and that the Biden administration is concerned China considers sending lethal aid.
The outlet added that the sources declined to elaborate on the non-lethal military assistance, only claiming that it could include gear for the Russian military’s purported spring offensive, including uniforms or even body armor.
The US and its allies slapped a number of sanction packages against Russia shortly after it launched its special military operation in Ukraine following requests from the Donbass republics to protect them from Kiev’s attacks. Apart from the sanctions, western countries ramped up their military assistance to the Zelensky regime in a move that Moscow warns will add to further prolonging the Ukraine conflict.
Iranian drone bombs Israeli oil tanker in retaliation for Isfahan explosion
The Cradle | February 18, 2023
An Israeli-linked oil tanker was attacked one week ago by Iranian forces, BBC Persia reported on Friday 17 February.
Though not initially reported, the Liberia-flagged “Campo Square” oil tanker was attacked on 10 February, and is owned by Zodiac Maritime, a shipping company led by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer.
According to US military sources, Iran used Shahed-136 suicide drones from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as well as naval vessels from the elite force in the Persian Gulf.
Senior Israeli security officials confirmed the report and suggested the Iranian attack was an attempt at revenge for attacks attributed to Israel against Iran.
Iran has accused Israel of attacking a number of sensitive military and nuclear sites in the past few years.
No casualties were reported and the damage to the tanker was allegedly not significant.
However, on 14 February, Iranian state media reported that Iran had killed two Israeli officers in retaliation for a 29 January sabotage attack in Isfahan.
According to report by Iranian state media, an Israeli spokesman confirmed that two Israeli officers had been killed in accidents. The report noted that other Israeli sources have indicated that the killing of the two officers came as part of an Iranian operation in response to the Isfahan attack.
On 29 January, a powerful explosion occurred at an Iranian Defense Ministry ammunition depot in the city of Isfahan. According to Israeli sources, this was a booby-trapped drone attack. No casualties were reported. Additionally, a large fire broke out in a major refinery in Tehran. The cause of the fire remains unclear.
Days later, Iranian officials blamed Israel for the attacks and promised retaliation. Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeed Irbani submitted a letter to the interim president of the UN Security Council claiming that the initial investigations carried out in Iran indicated that the “Zionist regime” was responsible for the “terrorist attack” at the Defense Ministry facility in Isfahan.
Irbani wrote further that “Iran has a legitimate right to defend its national security and to respond resolutely to any threat or injustice of the ‘Zionist regime’, at any time and in any place.”
The Iranian attack on the Israel-linked oil tanker came amid pledges between the US government and six Gulf states for increased cooperation against Iran. Bloomberg reported on 17 February the US and Gulf nations “voiced concern about what they said was Iran’s deeper cooperation with “state and non-state actors,” an apparent reference to Iran’s alleged support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, and called “Tehran a growing threat to regional security.”
NATO’s Unsustainable Bluff
By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 16.02.2023
On November 16, 2022, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, at the conclusion of the seventh session of the Ukraine Contact Group (UCG) tasked with identifying and fulfilling military support requirements for Ukraine in its ongoing conflict with Russia, issued a very pessimistic assessment of the situation on the ground.
Noting that, for the moment, “Russia right now is on its back,” Milley warned that the Russian decision to incorporate nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory into its own borders, combined with the then-ongoing mobilization of 300,000 reserves, meant the conflict would not end any time soon. “[T]he probability of a Ukrainian military victory, defined as kicking the Russians out of all of Ukraine, to include what they claim is Crimea… is not high, militarily,” Milley noted.
What a difference three months make.
On February 14, 2023, on the eve of a 10th meeting of the UCG, Mark Milley seemed to have a change of heart, telling reporters that Russia has “lost” in the Ukraine conflict. As it approaches the one-year mark, Joint Chiefs chairman gen. singling out Russian President Vladimir Putin, Milley declared that Putin “thought he could defeat Ukraine quickly, fracture the NATO alliance, and act with impunity. He was wrong,” Milley said, adding that Russia has paid an “enormous price on the battlefield” as a result.
The American military chief continued. “Russia is now a global pariah and the world remains inspired by Ukrainian bravery and resilience. In short, Russia has lost—they’ve lost strategically, operationally, and tactically.”
Milley might want to consult with specialists the next time he opts to opine on matters pertaining to the conflict in Ukraine. Far from a “global pariah,” Russian diplomats are being welcomed with open arms in geopolitically vital regions of the world, such as Africa. This strong diplomatic showing, when combined with a strong Russian economy, which the International Monetary Fund expects to expand 0.3% in 2023 and 2.1% in 2024, despite stringent US and European-backed economic sanctions, points to a strategic victory by Russia.
As for Milley’s assessments regarding the state of play operationally and tactically, he would do well to heed recent comments by US Army General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, to a Swedish defense conference this past January. Cavoli noted that both the scale and intensity of the combat ongoing in Ukraine made it clear that the NATO alliance was not prepared to fight a large-scale ground war in Europe.
“The magnitude of this war is incredible,” Cavoli said. “If we average out since the beginning of the war, the slow days and fast days, the Russians have expended on average well over 20,000 artillery rounds per day. The scale of this war is out of proportion with all of our recent thinking,” Cavoli noted, adding, “it is real, and we must contend with it.”
Cavoli’s emphasis on artillery is critical in parsing out Milley’s assertions that Ukraine had the upper hand operationally and tactically, given the major role played by artillery in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. While the intent of the 10th gathering of the UCG, convened on February 14, Saint Valentine’s Day, was to focus on the provision of high-value items to Ukraine, such as tanks and aircraft, the conference quickly diverted into the realm of reality, where the critical shortage of artillery ammunition arose as the primary problem facing Ukraine. While the United States had already delivered more than one million 155mm artillery shells to the Ukrainian Army, the scale of the fighting alluded to by General Cavoli means that Ukraine is firing off in a single day the total number of shells the US can produce in a month. At this rate, Ukraine is expected to run out of ammunition by the end of the summer.
Pro-hint to General Milley—if your opponent is firing many times the amount of artillery as you are, and you run out of ammunition, the operational and tactical advantage belongs to them, not you.
And while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s recognition that Ukraine and NATO were facing an existential crisis when it came to artillery ammunition, there was no ready solution on the horizon the rectify the problem, especially in a time frame that would alter the dire logistical reality that come this summer, the Ukrainian Army will lose the ability to resist the Russian Army.
Two decades of singular focus on low-intensity combat in Iraq and Afghanistan has atrophied both US and European production lines for artillery ammunition. It would take years to start up new production lines, and even then, the private defense industries involved would be loath to do so without long-term contracts which, given the moment-by-moment aspect of NATO aid to Ukraine, is not forthcoming.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defense industry is chugging along on all cylinders, not only producing ammunition in sufficient quantities to meet its prodigious expenditure rates in Ukraine, but also build stocks sufficient to supply an expanding Russian military, expected to grow to over 1.5 million in the next several years.
Russia, unlike Ukraine, isn’t running out of ammunition any time soon, a fact which, in a war defined by artillery firepower, means it holds the operational and tactical edge over their Ukrainian opponents.
The issue is larger than simply the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. As General Cavoli alluded, not only has NATO stripped away its existing stockpile of artillery ammunition, it lacks the industrial capacity to replenish these stocks in the foreseeable future. According to former NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General Jamie Shea, the trans-Atlantic alliance has “largely used up the available stocks” in supplying Ukraine, and now must focus on replenishing its own depleted stocks before the issue of meeting Ukraine’s urgent demands can be addressed.
Ukraine rolled into the Saint Valentine’s Day meeting with high expectations, dreaming of tanks and fighter aircraft. Instead, it left a jilted lover, told by its NATO allies that the well has literally run dry.
And if this situation holds for the next several months, General Milley might have to eat his words, since Russia is apparently on the course to achieve a decisive strategic, operational, and tactical military victory over Ukraine and its NATO sponsors.
Featured Video
John Mearsheimer: U.S. Expands Iran War & Divorces Europe
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
A Palantir Manifesto
By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2026
Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America’s future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the “soft” influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the country’s engineering talent to focus on national defense. Karp and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, argue that tech bros should “grow up” and start killing America’s enemies before they kill us. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- After the ceasefire illusion: Why Gaza’s “Day After” still has no buyer?
- Shifting to Guerilla Warfare, Hezbollah Delivers Massive Blows to Israel
- Wired for War: Israel’s Black Cube and the infiltration of Europe
- Monitoring group finds UK media guilty of ‘systematic’ dehumanization of Palestinians
- Al-Akhbar’s Amal Khalil assassinated by Israel, left to die under rubble
- US naval blockade disrupted but ‘not broken’ Iran’s oil exports: Kpler
- On Mass Surveillance, Will the Deep State Win Again?
- Fire breaks out aboard identity-fluid $8bn USS Zumwalt
- A Palantir Manifesto
- John Mearsheimer: U.S. Expands Iran War & Divorces Europe
- If Americans Knew
- Meet the Top “Content” Producers Linked to Canary Mission
- Lebanese Journalist Amal Khalil Bombed and Left to Die by Israel
- Israel Moves to Re-establish Ganim Colony In Jenin
- Two Iranian Women in ICE Detention Are Not, In Fact, Related to Qasem Soleimani, Documents Show
- “The shooting was not in the air”: Testimonies from the Flour Massacre
- Israel chases down, kills Lebanese journalist, massacres 5 in Gaza, all during “ceasefires” – Daily Update
- Gaza’s unseen casualties: A surge in stillbirths and birth defects
- ‘Day of Ordinary Terror’: Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child
- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
- Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
Aletho News 