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Shutting Down Russia Bashing, Western Financed NGOs in Moscow

By Stephen Lendman | April 9, 2022

On Friday, Russia’s Justice Ministry ordered the closure of hostile Western NGOs in the country.

To date, 15 organizations were removed from its registry of international groups for “violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation” — with no further elaboration.

They include offices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Institute for International Education, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation, and the Wspolnota Polska Association.

On Friday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) were added to Russia’s persona non grata list.

Both organizations publish defamatory reports on invented US/Western enemies.

They operate as mouthpieces for their interests.

They’re imperial tools.

HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth is a former US federal prosecutor.

His predecessor Aryeh Neier left to become president of George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Other past and present HRW staffers are former US officials or have ties to sources and groups representing Washington’s geopolitical interests — including the infamous undemocratic National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Like HRW, AI fronts for powerful US/Western interests.

Both organizations are more concerned about serving their funding sources and publicity to attract more of the same than human rights.

Russia shut down HRW for fake news rubbish like the following, saying:

“Today, Russia is more repressive than it has ever been in the post-Soviet era (sic).”

“(A)uthorities crack down on critical media, harass peaceful protesters, engage in smear campaigns against independent groups, and stifle them with fines (sic).”

In early April, HRW defied reality by falsely accusing Russian forces in Ukraine of “rape… summary execution(s), (along with) committing laws-of-war violations against civilians (sic), (and) looting civilian property (sic).”

HRW provided no verifiable evidence to support what it falsely claimed to document — because none exists.

It falsely claimed that Russian forces “rounded up” men in Ukraine and “executed them (sic).”

Ignoring generous humanitarian aid provided by Russian forces to Ukrainians, HRW falsely accused them of forcibly “taking food, firewood, clothing, and other items” in areas of the country where they’ve operated.

In response to shutting down its office and de-registering the group, HRW’s Roth said the following:

“This new iron curtain (sic) will not stop our ongoing efforts to defend the rights of all Russians and to protect civilians in Ukraine (sic).”

He lied accusing Moscow of “criminalizing” independent war reporting.

There’s nothing remotely “independent” about US/Western NGOs, notably not imperial tools like HRW, AI and other groups that are bribed with big bucks to serve their interests.

Ignoring democracy as it should be in Russia compared to US/Western fantasy versions, Roth falsely accused the country of “turn(ing) toward authoritarianism (sic).”

The above Big Lies were followed by an appeal for donations to continue its bashing of invented US/Western enemies.

Russia shut down AI for falsely accusing its authorities of “violat(ing) the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly…torture…disappearances…deportation of refugees and asylum seekers (along with) failure to address domestic violence (sic).”

It lied accusing Russia of “aggression in Ukraine (sic).”

It lied claiming that Russian forces “extrajudicially executed civilians in” the country (sic).

It lied saying that they’re responsible for “horrifying violence (and) widespread intimidation (sic).”

AI’s head Agnes Callamard turned truth on its head, falsely claiming that Russian forces are “kill(ing) unarmed civilians…in their homes and streets in acts of unspeakable cruelty and shocking brutality (sic),” adding:

“We gathered (so-called) evidence that Russian forces have committed extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings (sic).”

“People in Ukraine are facing a catastrophic human rights crisis.”

“People are dying, including children, and many thousands of lives are at risk.”

“Take action to demand that the Russian authorities stop this act of aggression and protect civilians now (sic).”

All of the above and lots more of the same apply to Nazified Ukrainian forces — clearly not Russia.

Yet HRW and AI falsely accused Moscow of their war crimes and related atrocities — in deference to their US/Western donors.

AI lied accusing Russian authorities of “an unprecedented, nationwide crackdown on independent journalism, anti-war protests and dissenting voices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (sic).”

“The Kremlin remains hellbent on hiding the human cost of its war and has blocked independent news sites and social media (sic).”

The above applies to how US/Western regimes operate, not Russia.

In response to Russia’s shutdown of its office, AI’s Callamard falsely said the following:

“Amnesty’s closing down in Russia is only the latest in a long list of organizations that have been punished for defending human rights (sic) and speaking the truth to the Russian authorities (sic).”

“In a country where scores of activists and dissidents have been imprisoned, killed or exiled (sic), where independent media has been smeared, blocked or forced to self-censor (sic), and where civil society organizations have been outlawed or liquidated (sic), you must be doing something right if the Kremlin tries to shut you up (sic).”

Russia should have shut down imperial tools HRW and AI long ago.

Pretending support for human rights belies how they, in fact, operate.

The rights and interests of US/Western donors alone are served — at the expense of what both organizations falsely claim to stand for.

April 9, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine War Frenzy Proves: It’s Still John McCain’s GOP

By Michael Tracey | April 7, 2022

“The senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin,” fumed John McCain back in March 2017. His target: Rand Paul, who had committed the unforgivable offense of momentarily delaying the latest round of NATO expansion. Montenegro, a tiny country in southeastern Europe that most Americans have never heard of, was about to join the sprawling military alliance — and McCain was determined to see the final ratification ritual proceed with as little debate as possible. So he hurled the time-honored “working for Putin” accusation, and sure enough, Paul quickly withdrew his minor procedural objection. The glorious ascension of Montenegro to NATO membership status was thereby assured.

Since that episode, a lot has transpired regarding the public perception of McCain. He delighted liberals by feuding regularly with Donald Trump — even going so far as to denounce Trump for engaging in “disgraceful” and “pathetic” flattery of Putin. “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant,” McCain raged. He undermined Congressional Republicans’ legislative agenda during the brief window in Trump’s presidency when the party had unified control of government — famously delivering a dramatic thumbs-down gesture to derail GOP hopes of repealing Obamacare, as a chagrined Mitch McConnell watched powerlessly on.

McCain had returned to his most natural state. After annoying Democrats by running against Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and being surly about his defeat for some time afterwards, he had once again resumed playing the “maverick” role he so relished — reviled by “his own side,” and loved by the “other side.” His death in 2018 brought forth the most effusive display of state-sanctioned grief that any US political figure had received since Ronald Reagan died in 2004, with all the universal media adulation that entails. Trump’s exclusion from the funeral proceedings, at McCain’s posthumous direction, was just the icing on the cake.

But nowadays, if you bring up McCain in certain GOP circles, it will often be claimed that his influence has mercifully dissipated. The Republican Party experienced a bonafide ideological upheaval under Trump, they’ll say, and the McCain worldview — defined mainly by his unwavering commitment to a hyper-interventionist US foreign policy — has since fallen starkly out of favor. (Back when opposing interventionist foreign policy was still considered something of a “progressive” virtue, Mother Jones would routinely mock McCain by merely counting up the comically large number of countries he’d expressed a desire to attack. Did you know McCain once wanted to impose a No Fly Zone in Sudan?)

By “conservative opinion elites,” I refer roughly to the kind of people who write for obscure magazines with obscure funding sources, earnestly enjoy Think Tank social hours, and incessantly convene panels to discuss “the future of conservatism.” These types have a particular incentive to believe that McCain’s foreign policy paradigm has really been purged from the party. They’re deeply invested in the idea that the GOP underwent a genuine transformation in the past decade or so — discarding the outmoded “neocon” dogmas associated with the reign of George W. Bush, and embracing the hardened, nationalist realism associated with Donald Trump.

For a particular kind of ambitious professional conservative, this is a very flattering theory. Because if true, it means the GOP old guard is being slowly but surely displaced, and all kinds of new, innovative ideas are in the offing. Ideally with lots of ambiguous sinecures, TV gigs, and consultant opportunities attached. There’s just one problem though: when it comes to the issue area that always animated McCain the most — which was without a doubt foreign policy — recent events demonstrate that his influence is far from buried. On the contrary, it couldn’t be more alive and well. The year might be 2022, and he might have been physically dead for a while. But it’s still John McCain’s GOP.

A common fallacy heard among conservative opinion-makers who might wish to disassociate from McCain goes something like this: yes, there’s a contingent of the Republican Party that stubbornly hews to McCain-like foreign policy dogma, but it’s really only a limited handful of wackadoodles like Lindsey Graham. In other words, “the neocons” are a small, dwindling faction of the party, and aren’t representative of the typical Republican elected official or rank-and-file voter, who tend to be increasingly skeptical of US interventionism.

That’s a clever little exercise in self-rationalization, but also a bunch of baloney. On the one hand, it’s true that Graham is a… unique figure in various respects. He’s the person currently in elected office who had the closest political and personal association with McCain. Alongside their former cherished colleague, Joe Lieberman, these “three amigos” bonded over a shared, impassioned commitment to omni-directional foreign policy belligerence. (Right on cue, Lieberman was rolled out of semi-retirement last month to demand a “No Fly Zone.”)

But while Graham occasionally blurts out something uniquely insane, such as his tweeted call for the assassination of Putin — he’s far from some kind of wild outlier. In fact, his foreign policy views are comfortably ensconced in the mainstream of the GOP, notwithstanding the popular conceit that “MAGA” has supplanted “neocon” as the party’s dominant sensibility. Because if Graham is the closest living incarnation of the traditional McCain worldview, then perhaps that worldview isn’t nearly as incompatible with “MAGA” as some may want to think.

Recall: even as McCain and Trump brawled over what was essentially a clash of personalities, Graham successfully insinuated himself as one of Trump’s most trusted confidants — regularly hitting the golf links with him, and advising him on key policy matters. This has continued even into Trump’s post-presidency, with Graham operating as one of the most ardent advocates of another Trump run in 2024. “I think he’s the best person in the Republican Party to take up the cause in 2024,” Graham exuberantly told Fox News in January. “I expect him to run… I’ll take bets if anybody wants to bet. I’ll give odds.”

Do you really think Graham would be staking out this position if he viewed Trump’s foreign policy outlook as antithetical to his own?

If there’s some kind of enormous ideological conflict between Trump and Graham — who, remember, proudly carries on the McCain mantle — it has not been at all evident for a long time. It would also be weird to characterize Graham as some kind of aberrational nuisance within the GOP, considering that Graham raked in a record-shattering amount of donations for a GOP Senate candidate during his 2020 re-election campaign in South Carolina. And he accomplished this mostly by utilizing conservative media and direct-mailing lists to hammer home the pledge that he would serve in office as an unflinchingly loyal backer of Trump.

For a vivid illustration of persistent McCain/Graham influence as it relates to current events, take a look at this video that recently resurfaced from December 2016, featuring the esteemed Senatorial pals on a trip to Ukraine. Joined in wonderfully “bipartisan” fashion by Amy Klobuchar, the trio delivered a searing address to a unit of Ukrainian soldiers. If you haven’t seen the video, please do watch, because it confirms the extent to which a vocal faction of the US establishment — with McCain and Graham at the forefront — had invested ideologically and militarily in the cause of Ukraine, and by extension the cause of defeating Russia. Graham proclaims to the assembled soldiers: “Your fight is our fight. 2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington, and we will push the case against Russia.” McCain similarly declared, “I am convinced you will win. And we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win.”

While in 2016 the cause of arming Ukraine to defeat Russia on the battlefield was a somewhat more marginal preoccupation, today it’s been sanctified as virtually unshakable consensus in both parties. Funneling weapons to Ukraine was once seen as cranky McCain’s pet cause, a fixation that stemmed from his peculiarly hyper-interventionist worldview. Now, whether the US should be waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is barely even considered a debatable proposition: just another McCain priority eventually consecrated as mainstream orthodoxy. “It’s bringing Congress together in a way, frankly, I haven’t seen in my 12 years,” Chris Coons, the Democratic senator from Delaware and Biden advisor, reverentially told the New York Times. “You’d have to go back to 9/11 to see such a unified commitment.” McCain is no doubt smiling down from the heavens at this great outbreak of “unification.” Because it’s proof of his enduring legacy; with his worldview and geopolitical objectives having arguably become more widely adopted than ever before.

But the coalescence of McCain-like consensus didn’t start with Russia’s invasion in February 2022. For one thing, Graham was proven right when he prophesied that 2017 would be the “year of offense” — because that was the year he, McCain, and other hawks successfully lobbied Trump to sign off on transfers of lethal weapons to Ukraine. Whatever personality conflict existed between McCain and Trump, the actual policy portfolio enacted by Trump vis-a-vis Russia wasn’t all that different from what McCain’s might’ve been. Indeed, when Trump announced the weapons transfers, McCain showered him with praise. And when Trump abrogated the INF Treaty, he was fulfilling another longtime McCain goal.

Listening to Republican politicians comment on Ukraine policy today, you can almost close your eyes and hear McCain’s irascible voice. For an example of how the McCain worldview is far from limited to so-called “neocons,” but instead a feature of entirely mainstream GOP thinking, consider the recent activities of Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL). If there’s any apt descriptor for Scott, it’s that he’s basically a conventional Republican. Not some kind of overly-ideological “neocon,” but rather a business guy who made a huge fortune defrauding Medicare, somehow leveraged that into becoming Governor of Florida, and is now in the US Senate. He also appears to have higher ambitions, as evidenced by his position running the National Republican Senatorial Committee — the campaign wing of the Senate GOP caucus. Scott isn’t especially bright, but he’s more or less able to articulate the standard bromides aimed squarely at the median Republican, and is thus capable of formulating strategy on behalf of the party for the upcoming midterm elections. He also released a manifesto outlining his bold vision for conservatism, which among other things includes that all Americans be made to pay income tax regardless of their income bracket.

The point is, Scott is situating himself at the center of the party in service of some future gambit, may be to challenge Mitch McConnell for GOP Leader (which Trump has encouraged) or maybe even to launch his own presidential campaign at some point, which I’m sure would be a barrel of laughs.

So what is Rick Scott’s big proposal on the Ukraine issue? You guessed it: demanding a No Fly Zone, or short of that, demanding the US send fighter jets into Ukraine. This is apparently the position that Scott calculates will resonate most potently with the prototypical GOP donor and voter. Again, Scott isn’t intrinsically some sort of deeply ideological McCain-Graham foreign policy fanatic. Yet, he’s espousing views that could have been directly pilfered from the McCain-Graham school of thought — just because that school of thought is so thoroughly mainstream within the GOP, whatever superficial animosities some party members may still harbor against McCain.

Part of this owes to standard partisan reflex. Desperately seeking some angle of attack against Biden in relation to Ukraine, Republicans have settled on denouncing him for not escalating the US proxy war aggressively enough. It’s incredibly easy to imagine the ghost of McCain making the exact same criticisms as, say, Ted Cruz is making at the moment. Days after Biden committed the threshold-crossing act of calling for regime change in Russia — thereby announcing that the policy of the US is to depose Putin — Cruz went on Newsmax and complained that Biden’s “approach to every enemy of America is weakness and appeasement.” Only in a McCain-inflected universe does it make even the faintest sense for a president orchestrating a giant weapons-funneling operation, and waging a proxy war of unprecedented scale — which continues intensifying by the day — to be accused of “appeasement.” But it’s clearly still McCain’s world that the GOP is living in. That was always McCain’s tack: his problem with any given US intervention was of course never the intervention itself, but rather that it wasn’t going far enough, and if you weren’t willing to go as far as he wanted, you were some sort of abject appeaser.

On the subject of Ukraine, this pattern gets repeated over and over by GOP chieftains. Biden proposes the biggest Pentagon budget in US history, and right on cue, Mitch McConnell denounces it as somehow “soft” on Russia and “far-left.” Biden announces yet another massive tranche of missiles, grenades, and heavy artillery being dispatched to Ukraine, and Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, immediately ridicules him for not giving Ukraine fighter jets. “Provide them the planes where they can create a No Fly Zone,” McCarthy demanded in a March 16 press conference. (It’s unclear whether McCarthy is satisfied with Biden’s latest decision to send tanks.)

Though it is now common to characterize Russia as committing “genocide” since footage emerged in the past several days purporting to show Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians, Steve Scalise, the House Republican Whip, led the charge in making that designation weeks ago. “There’s nothing less than genocide going on in Ukraine,” he alleged during that same March 16 press conference, alongside McCarthy. Scalise had been so profoundly moved by Zelensky’s expertly-crafted Zoom address to Congress earlier in the day that he was compelled to issue the “genocide” allegation immediately thereafter. (No word on what independent investigative mission Scalise carried out in order to ascertain the relevant facts.)

Biden may have caused a stir when he condemned Putin as a “war criminal” — thus confirming a complete lack of interest in facilitating any kind of negotiated settlement to the conflict — but first out of the gate in making this accusation was Elise Stefanik, the New York GOP Congresswoman who serves as the chair of the House Republican Conference. Initially viewed as a “moderate,” Stefanik gamely generated big attention in recent years as a bombastic defender of Trump, raising a ton of money in the process. “As a new mom, it is heart-wrenching to watch the video that President Zelensky just played in terms of the bombing of maternity wards,” Stefanik weepily inveighed, also during the March 16 press conference with McCarthy and Scalise. “Make no mistake, there will be consequences on the global stage for Vladimir Putin, who is a war criminal and a thug,” she cried. The pattern is clear: all throughout the run-up to the invasion and ever since, it’s generally been the GOP which employs the most extreme rhetoric and makes the most extreme policy demands, with Biden eventually coming around not long afterwards. In taking this tack, Republicans could hardly pay a more fitting tribute to McCain.

Joni Ernst, the GOP Senator from Iowa, recently debuted a new criticism: apparently, the Biden Administration hasn’t been forthcoming enough about the weapons it’s transferring to Ukraine. But don’t be silly: seeking actual transparency on behalf of the American public is the farthest thing from Ernst’s mind. She totally supports the Biden Administration’s secrecy — she just wants to make sure that the US is dumping what she regards as a sufficient quantity of weapons. “Certainly, we do need to keep it secret, what is being transferred,” Ernst clarified during an appearance on Fox. “And that’s why we’ve asked to have those numbers provided to us in a classified setting.” Explaining the ultimate objective for these efforts, Ernst might as well have been paying direct homage to McCain: “We want to make sure that [Ukrainians] win this war, and they can win this war,” she roared.

But the biggest blow dealt to those conservative opinion elites — the guys who cling to the conceit that the GOP has really and truly changed its foreign policy orientation — comes in the form of Josh Hawley, one of their great hopes for a supposed convention-defying thinker willing to buck party consensus. Because when push comes to shove, it turns out Hawley is just another McCain mini-me.

A central venue for the recurring attempt to “re-imagine conservatism,” or something to that effect, is currently this outfit called “National Conservatism” (NatCon for short) which hosts occasional conferences. I actually attended one in Orlando last October out of morbid curiosity, and the big tell that maybe soaring intellectual heights would not be achieved there was the organizers’ decision to anoint Dave Rubin as a featured speaker. In all honesty, I have never once heard Dave Rubin utter anything resembling an original thought — but there he was, at the podium, sharing his keen insights on behalf of this exciting new GOP faction.

The three GOP elected officials chosen by NatCon to exemplify a re-invigorated “national conservatism” — presumably one which departed from the legacy of old fogies like McCain — were Hawley, Cruz, and Marco Rubio. Few would be surprised that Rubio soon thereafter turned around and started beating the standard war drums. And Cruz will just do whatever best positions him to win the GOP presidential nomination at some point. But Hawley in particular is often touted as a sort of tribune for the emerging “heterodox” wing of the GOP, alienated from the tired ideological construct that weds together military intervention and free markets. Yet, all three NatCon speakers joined the majority of their Senate GOP colleagues in signing a letter last month to demand that Joe Biden send fighter jets into Ukraine — exactly the kind of escalation you’d think these enlightened “NatCons” would be eager to reject. (Surprise! The letter was organized by Lindsey Graham.)

While there are some NatCon types who really do go against the grain, ultimately the larger enterprise functions as an attempt by the same old GOP establishment forces to perpetually re-brand themselves. Kind of like the Tea Party in the early 2010s, which was initially painted as some sort of revolutionary force, but immediately got subsumed into the Republican National Committee and conservative infotainment complex. The NatCon movement’s three elected standard-bearers behaving exactly as McCain would have wanted them to is good evidence that there really has not been any profound break from the past.

Just look at the latest super-serious “Policy Brief” issued by the Heritage Foundation — still the in-house “Think Tank” of official Washington, DC movement conservatism. It’s basically a litany of generic interventionist prescriptions for how the US can “do much more” to ensure Ukraine’s battlefield victory. Suggestions include facilitating “the free and unrestricted transfer of weapons, munitions, and other supplies to the Ukrainians, including a continuous flow of intelligence” — which just translates to an endorsement of the Biden Administration’s status quo, except a degree or two more aggressive. If there really is this wave of insidious anti-interventionism that we’re always being warned is on the brink of taking over the GOP, nowhere is it evident at the GOP’s most influential Think Tank, the place dopey members of Congress — most of whom barely ever thought about the concept of Ukraine before February 2022 — go to receive their talking points.

Then there’s conservative media, which has returned triumphantly to its 2003 heyday as a reliable organ for pro-war agitprop. Republican “id” Sean Hannity is predictably leading the charge. One day he’s calling on NATO to bomb a Russian convoy in Ukraine; the next he’s having a friendly on-air chat with Sean Penn of all people, discussing their mutual support for sending in fighter jets. Meanwhile, in order to keep up the facade that the GOP is somehow nefariously pro-Putin, the non-conservative media continuously seeks out the handful of marginal exceptions who ultimately have no real influence at all on the priorities of the party. (Yes, I’m aware that Tucker Carlson exists, as I appear on his show occasionally. But to whatever extent he’s skeptical of US intervention in Ukraine, this is not reflected in the behavior of the mainline GOP.)

Which brings us to Donald Trump himself. To the degree that Trump appears to have any criticisms of Biden Administration policy in relation to Ukraine, it consists of the retrospective counter-factual whereby Trump claims Putin never would’ve invaded on his watch. Which is possible, but unprovable. With the invasion having happened, though, Trump now assails Biden for “allowing” Putin “to get away with this travesty and assault on humanity.” In a speech shortly after the invasion, Trump insinuated that the US should be threatening to “blow him to pieces” — i.e., threatening nuclear retaliation.

“No president was ever as tough on Russia as I was,” Trump declared on February 28. Those convinced he was compromised by Putin in some sort of extravagant collusion plot never seem to have noticed, but many of the key US actions which precipitated the invasion were committed under Trump: the most obvious being the successful McCain-Graham lobbying effort to get him to start sending Ukraine lethal weaponry. Trump still brags about the decision to this day, stating, “We also gave a lot of the javelins that you’re hearing so much about, we gave those javelins when President Obama was giving sheets and pillows and I guess blankets. That didn’t help too much. But we gave javelins, and a lot of them too, and I guess that’s helping a lot.”

Well, maybe it would’ve been a smarter idea to stick with the blankets. At least if the goal was to avert war. Because for years, Putin warned that these kinds of US weapons shipments were going to drastically heighten tensions. In his speech announcing the invasion, Putin couldn’t have been more explicit about one of his primary motivations to launch the war: “Any further expansion of the North Atlantic alliance’s infrastructure or the ongoing efforts to gain a military foothold of the Ukrainian territory are unacceptable for us.”

It was under Trump that Ukraine was elevated to “Enhanced Opportunities Partner” status within NATO — exactly the sort of military-infrastructural encroachment that Putin denounced. Trump also happens to be the one who formally effectuated the accession of Montenegro into NATO, which McCain had fulminated against Rand Paul for temporarily impeding, as well as the subsequent accession of North Macedonia — thereby continuing the process of NATO expansion which Putin also angrily cites as a central reason for the invasion. When Putin reproaches the US/NATO “military machine” for expanding so much that it is now “approaching our very border” — that’s a process which culminated under Trump!

Even as Democrats screamed that Trump was somehow surreptitiously governing on Putin’s behalf, what he was really doing was enacting a McCain-like policy agenda that cratered US-Russia relations — a trend which proceeded apace under Biden. While the media obsessed over their delusional theory that Trump was collusively enabling Putin, the real issue was always that his Administration did everything in its policy capacity to fray the US-Russia relationship. Hence the diplomatic impasse on bitter display right now.

Oh and by the way, half of the hawks that are constantly on TV demanding more confrontational action against Russia — including Mike Pompeo, H.R. McMaster, Fiona Hill, Kurt Volker, and of course uber-hawk John Bolton — were all hired by Trump.

Unsurprisingly, this McCain-inspired frenzy engulfing Republican elected officials and conservative media is also reflected in the sentiments of rank-and-file GOP voters. During the Trump years, it was Democrats who led the way in declaring Russia a top “enemy,” convinced as they were that Putin had “interfered” in the 2016 election to malevolently install Trump in power. Today, according to recent polling, Republicans now match or surpass Democrats in their antipathy for Russia.

“Crises” such as the one currently underway are always clarifying. One thing they can do is peel back a veneer. And in the case of the GOP, when that veneer is peeled back — beneath all the bogus rhetorical conceits and phony re-branding exercises — what’s revealed is the smiling, satisfied visage of John McCain. Still getting his way in the afterlife.

April 8, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Serbia says it was blackmailed over UN vote

Samizdat | April 8, 2022

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said that his country has been pressured under the threat of sanctions to back Russia’s suspension from the UN Human Rights Council.

Belgrade has close historical ties with Moscow but joined other Western nations this week in a vote against Russia in response to its ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. “Our initial decision was to abstain, but then we were subjected to countless and difficult pressure,” Vucic told RTS TV on Thursday.

“They said – do you know that a decision is being made whether Serbia will be exempted from the package of sanctions on [Russian] oil, and whether it will be able to import oil after May 15?” the president said. He compared the possible effect of sanctions on Serbia to “a nuclear strike.”

Unlike the EU, Serbia has not imposed any sanctions on Moscow. “The Republic of Serbia believes that it’s not in its vital political and economic interests to impose sanctions on any country,” Vucic said, while stressing that he wants to maintain good relations with the European bloc, as well as with Russia.

Belgrade previously said that getting cut off from Russian energy would damage its economy. On Friday, Serbian media outlets quoted its sources in Brussels as saying that Serbia will be exempt from possible sanctions on Russian oil and gas.

At the same time, Blic newspaper quoted EU spokesman Peter Stano as saying that the bloc expects Belgrade to follow its restrictions on Russia or impose its own sanctions on Moscow.

On Thursday, the UN General Assembly voted to suspend Russia from the organization’s human rights panel. Serbia was among the 93 member states that backed the suspension.

The EU banned the imports of Russian coal, but has so far stopped short of banning the imports of oil and gas. European Council President Charles Michel, however, said on Wednesday that the bloc will need sanctions on Russian oil and gas “sooner or later.”

April 8, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

UN suspends Russia from Human Rights Council

Samizdat | April 7, 2022

The United Nations’ General Assembly voted on Thursday to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. The US-proposed resolution received 93 votes, with 24 countries opposed and 58 abstaining.

China, a fellow permanent Security Council member, was a prominent “no” vote. Among the abstentions, the most prominent were India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield had called for Russia to be expelled from the 47-nation body on Monday, calling its participation a “farce,” after videos and photos from the town near Kiev showed dead bodies of what appeared to be civilians. Ukraine and the US accused Russia of a massacre, which Moscow has vehemently denied.

“We believe that the members of the Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine, and we believe that Russia needs to be held accountable,” Thomas-Greenfield said Monday.

When Moscow called for an emergency Security Council session on the investigation of the alleged atrocities, the UK – currently presiding – refused. The US and its allies instead chose to ratchet up sanctions against Russia, based entirely on Ukrainian allegations as the presumption of Russian guilt.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba cheered Thursday’s vote. “War criminals have no place in UN bodies aimed at protecting human rights. Grateful to all member states which supported the relevant UNGA resolution and chose the right side of history,” he tweeted.

Moscow has said that attempts to expel Russia from the Human Rights Council are political and undertaken by countries who seek to continue “the politics of neo-colonialism of human rights” in international relations.

Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s ambassador to the UN mission in Geneva, called the US resolution “unfounded and purely emotional bravado that looks good on camera — just how the US likes it,” and accused Washington of “exploiting” the Ukrainian crisis for its own benefit.

April 7, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Viral ‘Russian Mobile Crematorium’ Tweet is From an 8-Year-Old YouTube Video

Fact checkers strangely AWOL

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 7, 2022

A viral tweet that remains unchecked by “fact checkers” claims to show a Russian-operated ‘mobile crematorium’ in Mariupol, but the image is taken from an 8-year-old YouTube video.

Whoops.

The tweet was posted by news outlet NEXTA, which boasts nearly a million followers on Twitter. The tweet has received over 7,000 retweets and almost 11,000 likes.

“Mobile crematoria in #Mariupol,” states the tweet.

“Mayor of Mariupol Vadim Boychenko said today that #Russian mobile crematoria have started operating in the city.”

“According to him, tens of thousands of people could have died in Mariupol and the cremation, “covering up the traces of crimes”.

Except a simple reverse image search reveals the ‘mobile crematorium’ to be a screenshot from an 8-year-old YouTube video.

Much vaunted “fact checkers” are yet to comment on the issue, and Twitter hasn’t placed a ‘warning label’ on the tweet letting users know it is fake news.

Twitter users pointed out that this is recycled propaganda, since the same debunked claim about “mobile crematoriums” was made at the start of the war.

The tweet emerged at the same time Ukrainian authorities in Mariupol started claiming that Russian troops are “burning the bodies of tens of thousands of civilians” as part of a “new Auschwitz.”

Seizing on the outrage sparked by alleged war crimes in Bucha, Mariupol City Council said, “Russian mobile crematoriums have been launched” in the city.

“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the existence of Nazis concentration camps,” claimed Mayor of Mariupol Vadim Boychenko.

There have been innumerable fake news incidents either staged entirely or fabricated by Ukrainian officials which have gone unchecked by “fact checkers” since the start of the war.

They include the ‘Ghost of Kiev’ farce, the supposed ‘slaughter’ of Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island and the ‘attack’ on a Holocaust memorial in Kiev that never happened.

April 7, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Russia responds to Human Rights council expulsion threat

Samizdat | April 7, 2022

The possible suspension of Russia from the UN Human Rights Council threatens to destroy “the basement of current multilateral system,” First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy said ahead of Thursday’s vote by the organisation’s General Assembly (UNGA) on the matter.

Polyanskiy wrote on Telegram that this is a “premeditated tactical move” which, in his opinion, has nothing to do either Russia’s attack on Ukraine nor with alleged human rights violations by Moscow, as these claims “are far from being verified and proven.” However, he warned, the motion, if accepted, “risks devastating consequences for the UN System.”

“Russia plays an important ballancing role, its removal from HRC will deprive developing countries of a vocal and powerful defender. That’s why Western countries are keen to do it and strike the ballance [sic] in their favor,” the official explained.

In Polyanskiy’s words, the West is trying “to undermine UN institutions behind the smokescreen of punishing Russia.” “By doing so they risk to destroy the basement of current multilateral system which emerged after WW2 and has been saving the world from WW3,” he underlined.

He also pointed out to the fact that in 2018, during Donald Trump’s presidency, the US withdrew from the council and “consistently belittled its role.”

Therefore, Polyanskiy argues, Washington “can’t be considered a champion of the body.

“And knowing the bleak US human rights record and the shameful practice [of] blackmailing [the] ICC (International Criminal Court ) for trying to make US soldiers accountable for their heinous crimes abroad, Washington is the last one to be moralizing others on Human Rights,” he wrote.

Moscow’s diplomat expressed hope that during the upcoming “extremely hypocritical” show Russia’s colleagues from, what he called, the “remaining independent countries” would remember about all these facts.

The move to expel Russia from the council came shortly after Kiev published images of dead bodies in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, northwest of the capital and called them evidence of genocide perpetrated by Russian troops. Moscow denied the allegations and said the Ukrainian government was manipulating public opinion with staged scenes.

The resolution which was endorsed by Western nations before any independent investigation could take place, expresses “grave concern at the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, particularly at the reports of violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law by the Russian Federation, including gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights.”

To suspend a state from the UN Human Rights Council a two-thirds majority vote by the 193-member General Assembly is needed. Russia’s envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia during a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday called the suggestion to kick Russia out from the council “unbelievable” and expressed hope that “UN colleagues will not allow themselves to be manipulated and will not play along with Washington in its extremely dangerous undertaking.”

The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, in his turn, said that the work of the council and UN institutions is “unthinkable without the participation of Russia.”

Moscow attacked its neighbor in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of 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 has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

April 7, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

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.

April 6, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

US warns India over Russian weapons

Samizdat | April 6, 2022

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday that India’s continued purchase of Russian weapons systems is “not in their best interest,” and that there will be a “requirement” that leaders in New Delhi swap some of these systems for US and allied armaments. India is the world’s largest military importer, and counts on Russia for nearly half of its external supply of weaponry.

Austin was responding to a question from Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina), who described India as a “treasured ally” of the US and “the world’s largest democracy.” What, Wilson asked Austin, could the US do to convince “Indian leaders to reject Putin and align with its natural allies of democracy?”

Austin responded that the US has “the finest weapons systems in the world,” and would offer them to New Delhi.

“We continue to work with [India] to ensure that they understand that it’s not in their … best interest to continue to invest in Russian equipment,” Austin told the members of the House Armed Services Committee. “And our requirement going forward is that they downscale the types of equipment that they’re investing in and look to invest more in the types of things that will make us continue to be compatible,” he added.

Austin is not the first US official to talk of boosting arms sales to India. Former President Donald Trump inked a $3 billion arms deal with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2020, selling India Apache helicopters and Hellfire missiles, in an apparent bid to counter China in South Asia.

Despite this boost in sales, the US remains India’s third-largest arms supplier, providing just 12% of New Delhi’s lethal imports between 2017 and 2021. France provides 27% of India’s imported weapons, while Russia provides a whopping 46%, with all figures supplied by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

This partnership dates back to the Cold War, when India, as a founding member of the Non-Aligned movement, bought weapons from the Soviets without ever entering into a formal alliance with the USSR. According to some analysts, 85% of major Indian weapons systems to this day are of Russian or Soviet origin.

These include the Indian Air Force’s Su-30, MiG-21 and MiG-29 fighter aircraft, the Indian Army’s T90MS main battle tank, and the Indian Navy’s sole aircraft carrier, the Russian-built INS Vikramaditya. Furthermore, despite intense pressure from Washington, including veiled threats of sanctions, New Delhi has pressed ahead with acquiring the Russian S-400 air defense system.

It is unclear which weapons systems Austin wants India to “downscale” its investment in, but allied purchases of the S-400 in particular have irked Washington in the past. Turkey bought the Russian system despite repeated warnings from the US, and was sanctioned and booted from the F-35 fighter program in 2019 in response.

Austin’s call to divest comes as the US pressures other world powers to back its attempts to isolate Russia following the latter’s military offensive on Ukraine. While European nations have heeded the call and sanctioned Russia – even to the detriment of their own economies – India has refused to abandon its neutral stance and has continued to trade with Russia, despite the White House’s protestations.

April 6, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

‘US can’t replace Russian coal supplies to Europe’ proposed sanctions fail to pass

Samizdat | April 6, 2022

The US coal mining industry is unable to expand production to replace Russian coal on the European market, the country’s biggest exporter said on Tuesday.

The comment follows a proposal by the European Commission to impose a ban on coal imports from Russia as part of a wider package of sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.

“I don’t see any ability for the industry to expand production. It’s like looking at a sweet dessert that you just can’t reach,” Ernie Thrasher, chief executive officer of Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC., the US’ biggest exporter, told Bloomberg.

The US is among the world’s top five coal exporters, and sells most of its coal to India, Brazil and South Korea.

According to Thrasher, most of the US coal output has already been sold under long-term contracts and there are few spare tons to deliver to Europe. With coal being the dirtiest fossil fuel, there has been little investment in new capacity, he explained, adding that tight labor markets and supply-chain bottlenecks caused by the coronavirus pandemic would also make it difficult to deliver extra tons for export.

According to media reports, potential buyers from some EU countries have already approached Indonesia and Australia, the world’s largest thermal coal exporters. But those countries have limited capacity as well. The EU wants to move away from Russian supplies, which meet 70% of Europe’s demand for thermal coal.

Shares of US coal miners surged after the European Union announced its sanctions plan against Russia on Tuesday. Coal prices in the US have been on the rise, surpassing $100 a ton last week for the first time since 2008.

‘EU fails to agree new Russia sanctions’

EU policy makers failed to agree Wednesday on a new package of sanctions against Moscow, including a ban on Russian coal imports, Reuters reports, citing its sources. The latest round of economic restrictions was proposed by the European Commission earlier this week.

Persons familiar with the matter explained the fiasco citing “technical issues” that needed to be resolved, including on whether a coal import ban would affect existing contracts.

The sources noted that it was not clear yet how the issues will be resolved, but the EU hopes to reach a compromise at a meeting on Thursday.

April 6, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

NATO and Asian nations plot response to China’s ‘systemic challenge to security’

Samizdat | April 5, 2022

NATO plans to deepen its cooperation with partners in Asia as a response to a rising “security challenge” coming from China, which refuses to condemn Russia’s ongoing military operation in Ukraine, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during a press conference on Tuesday.

He announced that the bloc will host foreign ministers from member states as well as Finland, Sweden, Georgia, and the EU. However, he also noted that NATO’s Asia-Pacific partners such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea have been invited as well, stating that the current security crisis has “global implications.”

The ministers will discuss new strategic concepts which will account for the military conflict in Ukraine, but will also include for the first time the issue of China’s “growing influence and coercive policies on the global stage which pose a systemic challenge to our security and to our democracies.”

“We see that China has been unwilling to condemn Russia’s aggression and has joined Moscow in questioning the right of nations to choose their own path,” said Stoltenberg, urging that democracies must stand up for their values against “authoritarian powers.”

He expressed hope that NATO would be able to deepen its cooperation with its Asia-Pacific partners in areas such as “arms control, cyber, hybrid and technology.”

Since the start of Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine, Beijing has held off on taking a particular stance on the issue, calling for a peaceful resolution to the conflict but refusing to condemn Moscow’s actions or join the sweeping economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the likes of the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, Japan, Australia, and other nations.

For the last few weeks, the US has increasingly been putting more pressure on China to “pick a side,” with Joe Biden warning Beijing of potential “consequences” and “costs” should China choose to back Russia in the Ukraine conflict, either militarily or by helping circumvent international sanctions.

April 5, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Germany seizes Russian gas company

Samizdat | April 5, 2022

Germany has taken ownership of a local branch of Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom. Berlin’s energy regulator will temporarily control the company despite Moscow’s previous insistence that such a move would be illegal.

Gazprom Germania, a subsidiary of the Saint Petersburg-based firm, operates some of the country’s largest natural gas storage facilities.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck announced the decision on Monday, arguing it would mean that Germany’s energy infrastructure is not “subject to arbitrary decisions by the Kremlin.”

“The arrangement of the trust administration serves to protect public safety and order and to maintain the security of supply,” Habeck told reporters, adding that the step “is urgently necessary” to ensure the “security of supply in Germany.”

The minister said the Gazprom branch would come under the trusteeship of the Federal Network Agency, Germany’s main energy regulator, until September 30. He did not elaborate on what would happen after that date, however, leaving it unclear how the government plans to proceed with the company.

While Gazprom announced last Friday that it would end its participation in the Gazprom Germania subsidiary, divesting all assets from the firm, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov nevertheless stated that any nationalization of Russian companies by Berlin would “seriously violate international law,” deeming it “unacceptable.”

“The nationalization in Germany of the subsidiaries of Gazprom and Rosneft would seriously violate international law… it will violate all imaginable and unimaginable laws,” Peskov told reporters on Friday.

April 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Washington nudges Moscow toward default

Samizdat | April 5, 2022

The US authorities have stopped the Russian government from paying holders of its sovereign debt more than $600 million from reserves frozen in American bank accounts.

“Russia must choose between draining remaining valuable dollar reserves or new revenue coming in, or default,” a US Treasury spokesperson said on Monday as the largest of the payments came due, including a $552.4 million principal payment on a maturing bond.

An $84 million coupon payment was due on the same day on a 2042 sovereign dollar bond.

JPMorgan, which had been processing payments as a correspondent bank heretofore, was stopped by the US regulator, according to a source familiar with the issue, as cited by Reuters. Now Russia has a 30-day grace period to make the payment.

Russia’s foreign currency reserves held by the country’s central bank at US financial institutions had been previously frozen as part of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine.

However, the country was allowed to use the funds to make coupon payments on dollar-denominated sovereign debt on a case-by-case basis. Since February 24, when the operation was launched, Russia managed to make as many as five bond payments, having averted the default that was predicted by international rating agencies.

Moscow was last allowed to make a $447 million coupon payment on a 2030 sovereign dollar bond on March 31.

The sanctions-hit country has a total of 15 international bonds outstanding with a face value of around $40 billion.

April 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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