Why Isn’t the US Army Moving to Occupy Western Ukraine?
Anti-Empire | March 20, 2022
The no-fly zone idea is totally insane. It means that Americans start shooting first and that war is therefore unavoidable. When you’re facing an opponent with as many fighters as Russia has you don’t wait for them to get in the air to engage, you try to destroy them on the ground which means sending missiles onto Russian airbases which means WW3.
Americans have this idea that you can use aircraft and have something that is less than a war, and it is only when you send ground troops in that things really become serious. But in this case, it’s actually the opposite. The air part is the more provocative part.
Next to the “no-fly zone”, the Polish idea of sending in NATO ground troops is actually slightly saner.
For example, the Russians are nowhere near the Carpathian mountains. NATO could theoretically move into Ukraine’s Carpathian region, dig into the mountain passes, and block off Ukraine to the west of the mountains without immediately triggering a Russian-American war.
If all went well, the US and vassals could then proceed to move into Galicia, and then again into Volhynia (and perhaps Budjak). They could conceivably tiptoe into occupying the entire Western quarter of Ukraine.
Kiev would be happy to invite them, it would serve to free up some Ukrainian troops for service elsewhere, and it would act as a guarantee that the Russians can not overrun at least this westernmost quarter of Ukraine. (And the imagery of Lviv welcoming the Americans with flowers would be just what they are suckers for.)
The US has already done a similar thing in Syria in blocking off Syrian-Russian forces from left-bank Euphrates and the area around al-Tanf. So this is not entirely unprecedented. The difference is that Ukraine is much more important to the Russians than Syria is. And that in Syria the Americans were there first so they regarded it as “theirs” and the Russians as the newbie interlopers.
Nonetheless, I think that at least for the next several months such a move is thankfully off the table for the following reasons:
1. Joe Biden was born in 1942 and was 15 when the USSR launched humanity’s first satellite into orbit. As someone who lived through the entire Cold War one thing he understands is that the one thing you don’t play around with is a global thermonuclear war. Not even a little bit.
2. The American voter wouldn’t like it and the midterms are coming up. It’s one thing to virtue signal with calls for a “no-fly zone” when you don’t even know what that means (apparently it’s a button you press that makes Russians unable to fly), but mention “US boots on the ground” and “war in Ukraine” in the same sentence and the reaction might be very different.
3. It would play into Moscow’s (not necessarily incorrect) narrative that this is a Russian struggle as much against the US as against Kiev. It could move the Russian public to support the war to a greater degree where it was willing to bear greater sacrifices for it, and tolerate greater use of firepower in Ukraine.
4. The Americans don’t necessarily want to prevent the Russians from moving into the most nationalistic parts of Ukraine. The US has been salivating over the prospect of an “insurgency” in Russian-occupied Ukraine that ultimately causes a Russian collapse the same way that in their minds Afghanistan caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is doubtful they would want to prevent the Russians from moving into regions where this hypothetical insurgency could be expected to be strongest.
5. It’s a distraction from containing China. A lot of people in Washington don’t want the US to get too involved in the sideshow of thwarting Russia in Europe if only because it would take focus away from what they see as the primary contest that is going to decide the winner of the 21st century.
6. In the long run it would take an enormous number of troops. In the immediate, you can block off the Russians from parts of Ukraine with a light tripwire force. What would keep the Russians from overrunning them isn’t their strength but that they’re American. However in the long term if you want any kind of stability you would have to match the Russian numbers. So then you’re back to a divided and heavily militarized Germany situation, except now it’s in Ukraine. And every infantry division you have in Ukraine is one less missile brigade in the Pacific.
7. There is probably no way DC could get the entire NATO behind a foray into Ukraine. So it wouldn’t be a true NATO operation, but a coalition of the willing from within NATO. That means that if 10 or 20 years later some Russian-American scuffle arises in divided Ukraine the Europeans wouldn’t necessarily be on the hook for it. That’s the last thing the Imperial Capital wants.
Aside from this big picture stuff, there are also more immediate reasons why the US would nonetheless probably be crazy to do it:
1. Even if they can’t march into it, the Russians will keep shooting cruise missiles into western Ukraine, so how does the US react? Israel and to a lesser extent the US keep shooting missiles into Syria where the Russians are present and it’s messy.
2. What happens when the Ukrainians inevitably start using the US-occupied sector as a safe zone to launch raids from and conduct artillery attacks from?
3. The Americans wouldn’t want to move in without air cover of their own. They would bring anti-aircraft systems and fighters. So you’re in a situation where US and Russians are constantly illuminating each other with radars, but now it’s in the context of a hot war and with no deconfliction. Incidents, where a jumpy US pilot destroys a radar station or is shot down himself, are inevitable and there’s a high likelihood of the situation devolving into an air war exactly as if a “no-fly zone” had been declared over entire Ukraine.
Slovakia begins deployment of NATO’s Patriot air defense system
Samizdat | March 20, 2022
Components of NATO’s Patriot air defense system began arriving in Slovakia on Sunday, and their deployment is set to continue in the coming days, Slovak Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad has said.
The US-made system is being shipped to the country as part of NATO’s efforts to boost the defenses of its Eastern European member state in response to Russia’s ongoing military operation in Ukraine. Slovakia, which is part of both NATO and the EU, has a population of 5.5 million and shares a 100km-long (62-mile-long) border with Ukraine.
“The system will be temporarily deployed at the Sliac air force base. Further deployment areas are being considered … so the security umbrella covers the largest-possible part of Slovak territory,” Nad wrote in a Facebook post.
The Patriot system was provided to Bratislava by fellow NATO members Germany and the Netherlands, and will be serviced by the troops from those countries. The bloc’s battle group in Slovakia is expected to number 2,100.
The minister said the Patriot would not replace Slovakia’s Soviet-era S-300, but rather serve as an additional element of the country’s air defenses. However, he reiterated Bratislava’s willingness to deploy another system because of the S-300’s “age, technical condition, [and] insufficient capabilities” and because the Ukrainian conflict has made military cooperation with Russia “unacceptable.”
Last week, Nad said Slovakia was ready to answer Ukraine’s call and hand over its S-300 system to Kiev, but only if it was supplied with a proper substitute. Moscow has warned the West against sending advanced air defense systems to Ukraine, saying the shipments would be targeted and destroyed.
Russia’s U.S. Biowarfare Claims in Ukraine Need Serious Answers
Strategic Culture Foundation | March 18, 2022
The United States and Russia continued this week with furious sparring over the issue of biological laboratories in Ukraine. The U.S. accuses Russia of “disinformation” about the labs, saying that they were standard sanitary facilities studying common diseases and epidemiology. For its part, Russia claims that the laboratories were conducting far more sinister and illicit research into developing biowarfare weapons.
Surely, the quickest way to discern the relative validity of concerns is the following basic fact. The research facilities numbering up to 30 locations in Kiev, Kharkov, Kherson, Lvov, Odessa and Poltava, among other cities, were being funded by the Pentagon to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The figure is estimated at $200 million and, it seems, the research has been going on for several years up until recently. If the laboratories were involved in benign disease investigations then why was the Pentagon the sponsor and liaison organization? Why not the U.S. Department of Health, or Center for Disease Control, instead of the Department of Defense? And why were the laboratories ordered to destroy their samples when Russia launched its military intervention in Ukraine – an intervention that Moscow claims is justified on the grounds of self-defense?
This week the Russian Ministry of Defense named the Pentagon’s liaison officer formerly at the U.S. embassy in Kiev who was responsible for the laboratory programs as Joanna Wintrol. It was suggested that American lawmakers should ask this person to give testimony on the purpose of the facilities.
The involvement of the Pentagon in the activities of dozens of laboratories across Ukraine is the most strident fact pointing to concerns that the research was being conducted for the nefarious purpose of developing biological weapons.
It is telling, too, that anyone who raises questions about the activity is immediately denounced as a Russian propagandist. They are vilified as trying to amplify Moscow’s justification for its military intervention into Ukraine that began on February 24. A diverse range of American public figures has called for a transparent investigation into concerns over U.S. bioweapons being developed in Ukraine. They include journalists like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald, former U.S. Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and professor of international law Frances Boyle.
Russia is endeavoring to have the matter raised at the UN Security Council despite American objections. China has also endorsed Russia’s concerns and calls for a full investigation. Given that China has previously raised questions about U.S. covert laboratory work on coronaviruses at Fort Detrick, Maryland, as possibly being responsible for releasing the Covid-19 coronavirus and the ensuing global pandemic it is understandable why Beijing is now taking a keener interest in the discovery of shadowy Pentagon laboratories in Ukraine. China has angrily rejected American attempts to smear it as the originator of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In any case, the matter of Pentagon-funded laboratories in Ukraine can’t simply be dismissed by arrogant assertions of innocence by Washington. After all the lies the U.S. has told about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that were used for justifying a war that killed over one million Iraqis, the Americans have no credibility whatsoever. The irony here is that Russia went into Ukraine and seems to have actually found evidence of WMD unlike the Americans when they invaded Iraq in 2003.
The background to the present inquiry is that Russia has long expressed fears that the United States was engaged in biological warfare research at facilities set up in former Soviet republics. This concern over clandestine facilities has been shared by independent investigative journalists such as Dilyana Gaytandzhieva who has reported on U.S. bioweapon laboratories in Georgia among other places.
Officially, the United States has sought to deny all allegations of such illicit activities which would put it in gross violation of the Biological Warfare Convention (1983). The Pentagon has claimed that laboratories in Ukraine and elsewhere have been charged with securing Soviet-era bioweapons. But decades later, surely that explanation is wearing thin, if not altogether obsolete.
The issue flared up again – unintentionally – when Victoria Nuland, the U.S. Under Secretary of State with responsibility for Ukraine (responsibility in more ways than her formal title indicates) admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 8 that there were dangerous biological research laboratories in Ukraine funded by Washington. So dangerous, indeed, that Nuland openly expressed concern that Russian forces might come into their possession. To do what? Use them as weapons? Or, more realistically, be able to prove that the Pentagon was funding the development of bioweapons in Ukraine?
Some American media have gladly quoted a few Russian biologists who are dismissive of Moscow’s claims of U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine. They assert the strains of pathogens are not particularly dangerous. How they can be so insouciant is curious. The Russian military experts on biological weapons say the samples being experimented on in Ukrainian laboratories included pathogens causing a host of deadly diseases, ranging from brucellosis, diphtheria, dysentery, and leptospirosis. Pathogens being studied included anthrax and coronaviruses. Furthermore, the research also involved investigating animal to human transmission of these diseases, such as through bird migration paths specific to Russia. There is also evidence of local outbreaks of these diseases in recent years that are atypical for seasonal conditions.
The documents demonstrating Pentagon sponsorship of the Ukrainian laboratories are original and verifiable, according to Moscow. It has published some of the documents which appear to be genuine. Of course, with Western draconian censorship against Russian news outlets, it is harder for the international public interest to avail of relevant information.
Still, however, the case for an international investigation under the auspices of neutral biowarfare experts is one that is valid and urgent.
We have already seen the worldwide impact of the Covid-19 disease that erupted in late 2019. The last thing Europe and the world needs are a chain of potentially deadly bioweapons facilities in Ukraine that the Pentagon is desperate to cover up.
Many questions need answering seriously. It is contemptible to simply brush these questions aside as “Russian propaganda”. The U.S. has a long and vile history of using bioweapons dating back to killing native American populations with smallpox and later civilian populations in Central America and Cuba. Thus, the U.S. has forfeited any benefit of the doubt owing to its well-documented practices of bioterrorism; especially considering the conspicuous involvement of the Pentagon in Ukraine’s laboratories.
The issue also opens up the bigger picture of Russia’s demands for a security treaty in Europe and the end to NATO expansionism and decades of aggressive threatening. Right now the Western media is saturated with anti-Russian smears and Russophobia. Yet, this is precisely why the questions about the U.S., NATO, Pentagon, and their connections to Ukraine need to be focused on.
Russia has insisted on Ukraine and other former Soviet republics being excluded from the U.S.-led military bloc – for good reasons. The turning of Ukraine into a platform of hostility towards Russia since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 is the essential background to why the current war has manifested in Ukraine. The apparent involvement of Pentagon biowarfare laboratories in Ukraine is one reason among several why Russia was compelled to take defensive action with its intervention in Ukraine.
If we are ever to restore peace, then we need to understand where the hostility comes from, how, and why.
Canada has ‘exhausted’ its stock of weapons
Samizdat | March 19, 2022
Canada has depleted its stock of weapons in its bid to support Ukraine amid Russia’s military operation in the country, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand has acknowledged.
“I believe that we have exhausted our inventory … to the extent that we are able to provide [more] weapons,” Anand said during a live appearance on CBC on Friday.
“There are capacity issues we need to make sure we are on top of for the purposes of ensuring the Canadian Armed Forces are well resourced,” she added.
Ottawa had been among Western capitals that have provided Kiev with so-called “lethal aid.” It has so far sent or is in the process of sending 4,500 rocket launchers, 7,500 hand grenades, 100 anti-tank launchers with 2,000 rounds, two C-130J tactical aircraft, and various other pieces of kit from Canada.
Russia sent its troops into Ukraine in late February, following a seven-year standoff over Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the breakaway Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.
Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc.
Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
AUKUS to bolster combat capabilities of nuclear submarine fleet to challenge China
By Paul Antonopoulos | March 18, 2022
Australia will become the second home for US and British nuclear submarines, meaning that the island country will effectively become a nuclear staging ground aimed at challenging China in the Asia-Pacific region. In this way, AUKUS – a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, provokes increased confrontation with China.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on March 15 that the Anglo Alliance’s nuclear ships would initially be stationed in the sparsely populated state of Western Australia. However, he added that infrastructure on the east coast is “incredibly important for how we defend our nation.” Morrison explained that a site for a new base would be decided after the upcoming federal elections to be held on or before May 21. It is noted that although the eastern states account for 37% of the country’s total land area, they are home to over 80% of the population as well as Australia’s most important cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane.
Earlier this week, in a virtual speech at the Lowy Institute, the Prime Minister announced his decision to build a new base in the east to support the deployment of Australia’s future nuclear submarine fleet under an agreement signed within the framework of the AUKUS military alliance. Three locations for the new eastern base are under consideration – Brisbane in the northeast state of Queensland, and Newcastle and Port Kembla to the north and south of Sydney respectively.
“The ability of US and UK nuclear-powered submarines to be here on the west coast, and ultimately we’d like to see them on the east coast as well, is all part of what our plan is as we continue to push forward our AUKUS partnership,” the Australian Prime Minister said.
In this way, the US and UK are using Australia as a junior partner to bolster the combat capabilities of the bloc’s nuclear submarine fleet in the Indian and South Pacific as confrontation with Russia and China escalates. With nuclear warships based in Australia, it greatly enhances the abilities of the US and British naval fleets to perform operations far off from home. However, it is likely not just about submarines, and we can maybe expect American and British aircraft carriers to also appear in Australia.
In general, for a long time, Australia banned nuclear vessels from entering its base.
For the goal of containing China in Asia-Pacific, Australia has now become critical for the US and UK. For example, a US aircraft carrier after 5-7 days of conflict with a potential enemy needs to replenish ammunition for aircraft on the carrier, while repairs and additional fuel for the aircraft are usually carried out in port. Australia can now fill this gap since quite obviously British and American ships operating in and around Southeast Asia are far from home.
This elevated importance given to Australia by Britain and the US has already resulted in greater military confrontation with China, with the East Asian country complaining that an Australian surveillance aircraft was flying in a “malicious” and “unprofessional” fashion close to its warships when the plane was targeted by a laser weapon.
Although China was accused of putting lives at risk by the Australian government in February when a laser was directed towards a RAAF P-8 Poseidon plane monitoring two People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) warships sailing through the Arafura Sea, the Chinese Ministry of National Defence released a short video clip recorded on a warship, showing the Australian aircraft flying close by in a “nuisance” manner.
“It is evident in the video taken by the Chinese naval ship that the Australian military aircraft was conducting close-in reconnaissance on Chinese naval vessels,” Senior Colonel Tan Kefei said. “The Australian military aircraft’s conduct was malicious in intention and unprofessional in operation and posed threats to the safety of ships, aircraft and personnel of both sides.”
With Chinese and Australian militaries already skirmishing in such a manner, the entry of US and British nuclear submarines into Australian ports will only further destabilize the situation. It is recalled that Australia’s decision to equip its fleet with nuclear submarines under AUKUS was met with mistrust across the region, especially from Southeast Asian partners like Malaysia and Indonesia.
Now, it has been reported that Australia is actually becoming a “second home” for US and UK nuclear submarines. In the context of growing confrontations between the US and China, including the Taiwan issue, AUKUS in fact raises tensions in the region by encouraging the increasing nuclearization of the region.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Ukraine Has First-Rate Satellite Intelligence Courtesy of Uncle Sam, Making Its Artillery Far Deadliner
Lawfully Russia would be entirely justified in shooting down US satellites
Anti-Empire | March 17, 2022
Ukrainian military publicized an artillery strike it conducted against a camp of the Russian 35th Combined Arms Army (accompanied by horribly cheezy music considering the occasion).
How does a strike like this happen?
Aside from counter-battery fire, such an installation is defenseless against enemy long-range artillery. What keeps it safe is that normally enemy wouldn’t know about it. The enemy can’t normally see tens of kilometers behind your front line.
On paper the Ukrainians have the capability to discover such camps by flying drones, either in a grid search or directing them to sources of intense radio chatter they might have detected.
But there is reason to believe their reconnaissance is far simpler than that. The New York Times reports:
In Washington and Germany, intelligence officials race to merge satellite photographs with electronic intercepts of Russian military units, strip them of hints of how they were gathered, and beam them to Ukrainian military units within an hour or two.
So the Americans are providing the Ukrainians with numerous satellite images of the battlefield and of the Russian rear.
So in fact the Ukrainians do not need to spend time and resources discovering the layout of the Russian rear. Something they would have only a limited ability to do.
Instead, the whole Russian rear is laid bare to them courtesy of American satellites.
Knowing exactly where the Russian camps are, they are easy enough to target. Whether with the help of drone surveillance for better precision or not. (Particularly by self-propelled artillery which can quickly change position after a few salvos to avoid potential Russian counter-fire.)
America is neck-deep in this war. This is yet one more aspect of its involvement.
(Or you could say that America launched a war vs Russia decades ago and Russia responded by opening a front in Ukraine. Ergo the daily Pentagon briefings on an ostensibly Russian-Ukrainian war.)
Actually, The New York Times tries to muddy the waters by saying that the US is not passing on “intelligence that would tell Ukrainian forces how to go after specific targets” but I don’t know what that is even supposed to mean.
And they say they are not passing on specific intelligence that would tell Ukrainian forces how to go after specific targets. The concern is that doing so would give Russia an excuse to say it is fighting the United States or NATO, not Ukraine.
They’re passing on images coupled with electronic intercepts within an hour but it’s not “specific intelligence” about “specific targets”. So what does that mean? That Americans will send an image of Russian forces and installations but they won’t circle them with a thick red marker? What kind of gaslighting is this? Of course, satellite images will help with targeting and long-range attacks.
Outlines of potential Ukraine peace deal as revealed by Russia
Samizdat | March 16, 2022
Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s top negotiator at the peace talks with Ukraine, says that Kiev is floating the idea of becoming a neutral nation.
“Ukraine is proposing an Austrian or a Swedish model of a neutral demilitarized state, but with its own army and navy,” Medinsky said on Wednesday, adding that “the size of Ukrainian Army” was among the issues discussed.
Moscow wants Ukraine to officially become a neutral country which will never join NATO. Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, saying that it was seeking the “demilitarization” of the country, among other demands.
Medinsky reiterated that Moscow wants Kiev to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, and the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), which broke away from Ukraine shortly after the 2014 coup in Kiev. Other key issues of concern the “denazification” of Ukraine and the rights of Russian speakers living in the country, the negotiator said.
“There was some progress on several issues, but not all of them,” Medinsky said about the talks with Kiev.
Commenting on this model of Ukrainian neutrality, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “it can be viewed as a certain compromise.”
Austria declared itself a neutral country in 1955. Its laws ban the nation from joining military alliances and hosting foreign military bases on Austrian soil.
Sweden is often described as a ‘non-aligned’ country, given its longstanding tradition of not formally joining any military bloc. It is not a NATO member and has no foreign bases on its territory.
However, in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine, NATO invited non-members Sweden and Finland to attend the US-led bloc’s meetings and decided to share intelligence with them.
The Ukrainian leadership previously said it was ready to discuss potential neutrality with Russia. At the same time, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine must receive “security guarantees” from Russia and the West.
Moscow attacked its neighbor in late February, following a seven-year standoff over Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols had been designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.
Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
Humanitarian flights for Ukraine loaded with weapons, protesting airport workers claim
Samizdat | March 15, 2022
One of Italy’s largest trade unions has called for a protest outside the Pisa airport on Saturday, after receiving a tip from some employees that Ukraine relief flights were transporting weapons and ammunition, not food and medicine.
Several workers at the Galileo Galilei airport refused to load one of the cargo flights advertised as carrying humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The crates did not contain food and medication but weapons, ammunition and explosives instead, the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) said in a statement on Monday evening.
“We strongly denounce this outright falsification, which cynically uses ‘humanitarian’ aid as cover to fuel the war in Ukraine,” the USB said.
The union said the workers refused to load the military supplies as that would lead to the deaths of their colleagues in Ukraine – namely, those working at the bases targeted by Russian missile strikes, where the weapons processed through US and NATO bases in Poland get delivered.
Francesca Donato, an Italian member of the European Parliament, commented on the union’s statement by calling on the government in Rome to “clarify” what is happening.
Meanwhile, dockworkers at the nearby port of Livorno joined the protest on Tuesday, praising their airport colleagues for standing up for their values.
“We stand alongside the Ukrainian peoples, the Donbass and Russia and we do not want to be complicit in this conflict,” the Porto Livorno chapter of USB said in a statement.
USB is calling for air traffic control of the Pisa airport to “immediately block these flights of death disguised as humanitarian aid.” A protest under the slogan “bridges of peace, not flights of war” is scheduled outside the airport for Saturday, March 19.
The union also called on all workers to refuse to load weapons and explosives, and for an immediate ceasefire and peace talks to end the conflict in Ukraine.
Is Washington Fighting Russia Down to the Last Ukrainian?
By Ron Paul | March 14, 2022
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves past its third week, there are slight hopes that negotiations between the two sides may soon produce a ceasefire. But with the shrill warmongering talk in Washington, it almost seems like the US government would hate to see that happen.
Congress and the US Administration seem determined to drag the United States into a war with Russia over Ukraine. Senator Lindsay Graham is openly calling for someone to kill the Russian president and many in the US House have demanded that the Administration establish a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine.
Are they insane? A no-fly zone means you destroy anything and everything that can prevent total US air dominance. That means an attack on Russian missile and air defense systems within Russia. In other words, World War III.
We can all feel disgust at the destruction in Ukraine, but is it really necessary for us to gamble with our own nuclear annihilation?
Sadly, a large bipartisan group in Congress seems to think so.
Much of what is happening in Ukraine can be traced back to the Obama Administration. State Department officials like Victoria Nuland and Antony Blinken planned and executed the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014. This is what set us on this path to conflict, as the government put in place after the coup began demanding NATO membership.
Blinken, Nuland, and the others responsible for this heinous act returned to government in more senior positions under President Biden and they have continued to push their Ukraine agenda.
Last week Secretary of State Blinken – our top diplomat – sought to send Soviet-era Polish fighter jets into Ukraine to shoot Russians. When the Poles said they’d be happy to ship the planes to a US base in Germany and let the Pentagon transfer them to Ukraine, the Pentagon finally stepped in to quash an extraordinarily high-risk move that even the Pentagon said would have no real effect on the outcome of the war.
The State Department is trying to get us into a war and the Pentagon is trying to keep us out. How ironic!
Back when I was on the campaign trail I would say that we have a few thousand diplomats in government, it might not be a bad idea to use them. But I certainly did not mean that we should use them to try and get us further involved in a war!
Three weeks into this terrible war, the US is not pursuing talks with Russia. As Antiwar.com recently reported, instead of supporting negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that could lead to a ceasefire and an end to the bloodshed, the US government is actually escalating the situation which can only increase the bloodshed.
The constant flow of US and allied weapons into Ukraine and talk of supporting an extended insurgency does not seem designed to give Ukraine a victory on the battlefield but rather to hand Russia what Secretary of State Blinken called “a strategic defeat.”
It sounds an awful lot like the Biden Administration intends to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. The only solution for the US is to get out. Let the Russians and Ukrainians reach an agreement. That means no NATO for Ukraine and no US missiles on Russia’s borders? So what! End the war then end NATO.
Vice President Harris says US backs Kiev ‘in defense of NATO alliance’
RT | March 13, 2022
US Vice President Kamala Harris has said that, by fighting Russia, Ukraine is defending the US-led NATO alliance in an apparent gaffe.
In a speech to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) winter meeting in Washington, DC on Saturday, Harris argued that Russia’s offensive in Ukraine “threatens not just Ukraine’s democracy” but “democracy and security across Europe,” as well as overseas.
“The ocean that separates us will not leave us untouched by this aggression,” Harris claimed, before seemingly suggesting that Ukraine is doing NATO’s bidding.
“So I will say what I know we all say, and I will say over and over again: The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance,” she said.
However, the transcript of the speech released by the White House suggested that Harris misspoke with “and” being added before “in defense of the NATO alliance.”
“The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people and in defense of the NATO Alliance,” the transcript reads.
That did not stop the VP’s critics on social media from accusing her of a foreign policy blunder. Some Republicans questioned whether Harris mistakenly believed Ukraine was a member of the alliance.
While Kiev was initially passionate about joining NATO, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated this week that he had become less interested in the idea, accusing the US-led military bloc of not doing enough to support Ukraine. NATO has previously rejected Zelensky’s appeal for the establishment of a no-fly zone over the country, arguing it would drag the whole alliance into the conflict with Russia.
“I’ve become less passionate about this issue after we understood that NATO isn’t ready to accept Ukraine,” said Zelensky on Monday, accusing NATO of being “afraid of controversial things and a confrontation with Russia.”
“I’ve never wanted Ukraine to be a country that is on its knees, begging for something. And we’re not going to be that country,” he added.
Georgia and NATO announce joint exercises
RT | March 12, 2022
Joint NATO-Georgia IT-based exercises will be conducted from March 20 to 25, the Georgian ministry of defense announced on Saturday.
The exercises, which have been planned since 2020, will take place in the Georgia-NATO Joint Training and Evaluation Center (JTEC) with representatives of 23 NATO member states set to take part.
“The exercises will help increase interoperability between the military of Georgia and NATO member and partner countries,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
It specified that the goal of the upcoming exercises would be to develop the skills necessary for planning operations by using computer simulations, as well as to share knowledge and experience.
The exercises would be the third of their type held since 2016 and are a part of the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package, which was approved at the 2014 Wales Summit.
In 2008, in the Bucharest Summit Declaration the alliance announced that NATO welcomed “Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO.” The summit participants agreed that eventually these countries would “become members of NATO.”
This decision was condemned by Moscow which consistently opposed NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders.
The possibility of Ukraine becoming a member of the bloc has been one of the reasons for Russia’s ongoing military offensive, despite numerous assurances from NATO that neither Ukraine’s and Georgia’s memberships are currently on its agenda.
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Why Pfizer Can Never Be Trusted
State of the Nation | January 16, 2022
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- No Tricks Zone
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