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Latvia urging UK to ‘prepare for war’ with Russia

By Lucas Leiroz | March 18, 2024

The Baltic countries continue their “preparation for war with Russia.” Now, as if it were not enough to engage in a suicidal militarization campaign, Latvia is also demanding that the main NATO countries, such as the UK, also begin adopting radical measures to prepare for the “inevitable” confrontation with Moscow. The main Latvian criticism of the British concerns the military service, with the Baltic country asking the UK to immediately resume conscription policies to increase the size of its forces.

Latvia’s foreign minister, Krisjanis Karins, stated that all NATO countries should follow the Latvian example when it comes to military preparation. According to him, it is necessary to implement special militarization measures and improve defense capacity in the face of the supposed “Russian threat”, which is why Western countries should unite in a common military policy. Karins believes that not all NATO states are efficiently engaged in this military preparation process. In this regard, he criticizes even the stance of key countries in the bloc, such as the UK.

Karins was asked by a journalist from The Telegraph about whether London should adopt mandatory military service for its citizens. He resolutely responded that Latvia “strongly recommends” such an attitude. According to Karins, Latvia is developing a system called “total defense”, in which all the country’s efforts are directed towards expanding military capacity. Efforts include all sectors of civil society, thus requiring a system of total mobilization within which mandatory military service is vital.

“We would strongly recommend this. We are developing and fleshing out a system of what we call a total defense involving all parts of civil society,” he said.

Recently, advancing its militarization policies, Latvia reintroduced military conscription. The measure was justified by the supposed need to expand the “active and ready reserve”, given the apparent “imminence” of an armed conflict. Under current Latvian law, all male citizens between 18 and 27 must complete at least one year of military service – including Latvians living abroad. Karins praises this model and calls on the entire West to adopt it, jointly engaging in “total defense”.

Furthermore, Karins also stated that a growth in defense spending is “inevitable”, thus asking London to reach the minimum target of 3% of GDP with military affairs. The top Latvian diplomat also praised the Finnish recruitment system. According to him, Finland has a small active army, but an extremely strong and “well-trained” reserve, making it possible to immediately enlist citizens for war, if necessary. Karins states that Latvia was inspired by the Finnish model and that all countries should do the same.

In fact, discussions about increasing militarization in the UK are already growing rapidly. Recently, British defense minister Grant Shapps called on the country to prepare for a situation of conflict on multiple fronts in the next five years. According to Shapps, tensions will worsen in the near future, and the UK needs to be prepared to face countries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

“In five years’ time we could be looking at multiple theaters [of conflict] including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea (..) Ask yourself, looking at today’s conflicts across the world, is it more likely that that number grows or reduces? I suspect we all know the answer. It’s likely to grow, so 2024 must mark an inflection point,” he said at the time.

In the same vein, the UK’s Chief of the General Staff, Patrick Sanders, has constantly made controversial statements praising anti-Russian warmongering mentality and encouraging his country towards militarization. According to him, the conflict in Ukraine creates an “imperative” for the reconstruction of the British army. Sanders believes that London needs to be able to fight a protracted war on European soil.

“There is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle (…) We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again,” Sanders said. He also recently called on the UK to adopt a system of broad militarization, training “citizen soldiers“. The aim would be to create a strong reserve army among the common people of the country. Indeed, what Sanders calls a “citizen army” is in practice just a disguised model of total mobilization.

As we can see, Latvia’s bellicose ideas may receive broad domestic support in the UK. Currently, the British army has only 75,983 soldiers. Jointly, the army, navy and air force have 184,865 active-duty personnel. The numbers are the lowest in the country since the Napoleonic Wars, which has “worried” pro-war militants. In practice, Western officials and decision-makers have been constantly deceived by their own propaganda, which is why many people actually believe in the “necessity” of fighting Russia.

The main problem is that these measures confront the reality of Western countries. In the UK, there is currently a serious economic crisis, with the country falling into recession and criticism of the government increasing sharply. Engaging in a process of militarization would be, in addition to dangerous and unnecessary, a truly “suicidal” measure for the national economy. It remains to be seen whether this reality will be admitted by the local government or whether irrational pro-war tendencies will prevail in the country.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

March 18, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

The Anglo-American War on Russia – Part Fourteen (Biden Blocks Peace)

Tales of the American Empire | March 14, 2024

In 2023, hard proof emerged that American neocons provoked Russian intervention in Ukraine and blocked efforts at a peaceful settlement. This had occurred several times in the past decade after peace agreements were signed, at Minsk in 2014, Minsk 2 in 2015, Paris in 2019, and Istanbul in 2022. None of these agreements were implemented by Ukraine because they were sabotaged by American neocons via the CIA. As previous parts of this series have explained, their goal is to weaken and destroy Russia by using Ukraine to fight a proxy war.

________________________________

“Beloveza Accords”; Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belovez…

“Bennett speaks out”; former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett; YouTube; Feb 3, 2023;    • בנט מדבר  

“HOW THE United States and Its NATO Allies Sabotaged Peace Between Russia and Ukraine”; Larry Johnson; November 14, 2023; https://sonar21.com/how-the-chance-wa…

“How Zelensky was Prevented From Making Peace in the Donbas”; Felix Abt; Covert Action Magazine, March 24, 2023; https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023…

Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”;    • The Anglo-American War on Russia  

March 16, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

The big lie behind the Western narrative on Russia is leading us to World War III

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | March 15, 2024

The current situation in the conflict between Ukraine – serving (while being demolished) as a proxy for the West – and Russia, can be sketched in three broad strokes.

First, Russia now clearly has the upper hand on the battlefield and could potentially accelerate its recent advances to achieve an overall military victory soon. The West is being compelled to recognize this fact: as Foreign Affairs put it, in an article titled “Time is Running Out in Ukraine,” Kiev and its Western supporters “are at a critical decision point and face a fundamental question: How can further Russian advances… be stopped, and then reversed?” Just disregard the bit of wishful thinking thrown in at the end to sweeten the bitter pill of reality. The key point is the acknowledgment that it is crunch time for the West and Ukraine – in a bad way.

Second, notwithstanding the above, Ukraine is not yet ready to ask for negotiations to end the war on terms acceptable to Russia, which would be less than easy for Kiev. (Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, reiterated in an important recent interview that Moscow remains principally open to talks, not on the basis of “wishful thinking” but, instead, proceeding from the realities “on the ground.”)

The Kiev regime’s inflexibility is little wonder. Since he jettisoned a virtually complete – and favorable – peace deal in the spring of 2022, President Vladimir Zelensky has gambled everything on an always improbable victory. For him personally, as well as his core team (at least), there is no way to survive – politically or physically – the catastrophic defeat they have brought on their country by leasing it out as a pawn to the Washington neocon strategy.

The Pope, despite the phony brouhaha he triggered in Kiev and the West, was right: a responsible Ukrainian leadership ought to negotiate. But that’s not the leadership Ukraine has. Not yet at least.

Third, the West’s strategy is getting harder to decipher because, in essence, the West cannot figure out how to adjust to the failure of its initial plans for this war. Russia has not been isolated; its military has become stronger, not weaker – and the same is true of its economy, including its arms industry.

And last but not least, the Russian political system’s popular legitimacy and effective control has neither collapsed nor even frayed. As, again, even Foreign Affairs admits, “Putin would likely win a fair election in 2024.” That’s more than could be said for, say, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Olaf Scholz, or Emmanuel Macron (as for Zelensky, he has simply canceled the election).

In other words, the West is facing not only Ukraine’s probable defeat, but also its own strategic failure. The situation, while not a direct military rout (as in Afghanistan in 2021) amounts to a severe political setback.

In fact, this looming Western failure is a historic debacle in the making. Unlike with Afghanistan, the West will not be able to simply walk away from the mess it has made in Ukraine. This time, the geopolitical blowback will be fierce and the costs very high. Instead of isolating Russia, the West has isolated itself, and by losing, it will show itself weakened.

It is one thing to have to finally, belatedly accepted that the deceptive “unipolar” moment of the 1990s has been over for a long time. It is much worse to gratuitously enter the new multipolar order with a stunning, avoidable self-demotion. Yet that is what the EU/NATO-West has managed to fabricate from its needless over-extension in Ukraine. Hubris there has been galore, the fall now is only a matter of time – and not much time at that.

Regarding EU-Europe in particular, on one thing French President Emmanuel Macron is half right. Russia’s victory “would reduce Europe’s credibility to zero.” Except, of course, a mind of greater Cartesian precision would have detected that Moscow’s victory will merely be the last stage in a longer process.

The deeper causes of EU/NATO-Europe’s loss of global standing are threefold. First, its own wanton decision to seek confrontation instead of a clearly feasible compromise and cooperation with Russia (why exactly is a neutral Ukraine impossible to live with again?) Second, the American strategy of systematically diminishing EU/NATO-Europe with a short-sighted policy of late-imperial client cannibalization which takes the shape of aggressive deindustrialization and a “Europeanization” of the war in Ukraine. And third, the European clients’ grotesque acquiescence to the above.

That is the background to a recent wave of mystifying signals coming out of Western, especially EU/NATO elites: First, we have had a wave of scare propaganda to accompany the biggest NATO maneuvers since the end of the Cold War. Next Macron publicly declared and has kept reiterating that the open – not in covert-but-obvious mode, as now – deployment of Western ground troops in Ukraine is an option. He added a cheap demagogic note by calling on Europeans not to be “cowards,” by which he means that they should be ready to follow, in effect, his orders and fight Russia, clearly including inside and on behalf of Ukraine. Never mind that the latter is a not an official member of either NATO or the EU as well as a highly corrupt and anything but democratic state.

In response, a divergence has surfaced inside EU/NATO Europe: The German government has been most outspoken in contradicting Macron. Not only Chancellor Scholz rushed to distance himself. A clearly outraged Boris Pistorius – Berlin’s hapless minister of defense, recently tripped up by his own generals’ stupendously careless indiscretion over the Taurus missiles – has grumbled that there is no need for “talk about boots on the ground or having more courage or less courage.” Perhaps more surprisingly, Poland, the Czech Republic as well as NATO figurehead Jens Stoltenberg (i.e., the US) have been quick to state that they are, in effect, not ready to support Macron’s initiative. The French public, by the way, is not showing any enthusiasm for a Napoleonic escalation either. A Le Figaro poll shows 68 percent against openly sending ground troops to Ukraine.

On the other side, Macron has found some support. He is not entirely isolated, which helps explain why he has dug in his heels: Zelensky does not count in this respect. His bias is obvious, and his usual delusions notwithstanding he is not calling the shots on the matter. The Baltic states, however, while military micro-dwarfs, are, unfortunately, in a position to exert some influence inside the EU and NATO. And true to form, they have sided with the French president, with Estonia and Lithuania taking the lead.

It remains impossible to be certain what we are looking at. To get the most far-fetched hypothesis out of the way first: is this a coordinated bluff with a twist? A complicated Western attempt at playing good-cop bad-cop against Russia, with Macron launching the threats and others signaling that Moscow could find them less extreme, at a diplomatic price, of course? Hardly. For one thing, that scheme would be so hare-brained, even the current West is unlikely to try. No, the crack opening up in Western unity is real.

Regarding Macron himself, too-clever-by-half, counter-productive cunning is his style. We cannot know what exactly he is trying to do; and he may not know himself. In essence, there are two possibilities. Either the French president now is a hard-core escalationist determined to widen the war into an open clash between Russia and NATO, or he is a high-risk gambler who is engaged in a bluff to achieve three purposes. Frighten Moscow into abstaining from pushing its military advantage in Ukraine (a hopeless idea); score nationalist “grandeur” points domestically in France (which is failing already); and increase his weight inside EU/NATO-Europe by “merely” posturing as, once again, a new “Churchill” – whom Macron himself has made sure to allude to, in all his modesty. (And some of his fans, including Zelensky, a grizzled veteran of Churchill live action role play, have already made that de rigueur if stale comparison.)

While we cannot entirely unriddle the moody sphinx of the Elysée or, for that matter, the murky dealings of EU/NATO-European elites, we can say two things. First, whatever Macron thinks he is doing, it is extremely dangerous. Russia would treat EU/NATO-state troops in Ukraine as targets – and it won’t matter one wit if they turn up labeled “NATO” or under national flags “only.” Russia has also reiterated that it considers its vital interests affected in Ukraine and that if its leadership perceives a vital threat to Russia, nuclear weapons are an option. The warning could not be clearer.

Second, here is the core Western problem that is now – due to Russia undeniably winning the war – becoming acute: Western elites are split between “pragmatists” and “extremists.” The pragmatists are as Russophobic and strategically misguided as the extremists, but they do shy away from World War Three. Yet these pragmatists, who seek to resist hard-core escalationists and rein in at least high-risk gamblers, are brought up short against a crippling contradiction in their own position and messaging: As of now, they still share the same delusional narrative with the extremists. Both groupings keep reiterating that Russia plans to attack all of EU/NATO-Europe once it defeats Ukraine and that, therefore, stopping Russia in Ukraine is, literally, vital (or in Macron’s somewhat Sartrean terms “existential”) to the West.

That narrative is absurd. Reality works exactly the other way around: The most certain way to get into a war with Russia is to send troops to Ukraine openly. And what is existential for EU/NATO-Europe is to finally liberate itself from American “leadership.” During the Cold War, a case could be made that (then Western) Europe needed the US. After the Cold War, though, that was no longer the case. In response, Washington has implemented a consistent, multi-administration, bipartisan, if often crude, strategy of avoiding what should have been inevitable: the emancipation of Europe from American dominance.

Both the eastward expansion of NATO, programmed – and predicted – to cause a massive conflict with Russia and the current proxy war in Ukraine, obstinately provoked by Washington over decades, are part of that strategy to – to paraphrase a famous saying about NATO – “keep Europe down.” And the European elites have played along as if there’s no tomorrow, which, for them, there really may not be.

We are at a potential breaking-point, a crisis of that long-term trajectory. If the pragmatists in EU/NATO-Europe really want to contain the extremists, who play with triggering an open war between Russia and NATO that would devastate at least Europe, then they must now come clean and, finally, abandon the common, ideological, and entirely unrealistic narrative about an existential threat from Moscow.

As long as the pragmatists dare not challenge the escalationists on how to principally understand the causes of the current catastrophe, the extremists will always have the advantage of consistency: Their policies are foolish, wastefully unnecessary, and extremely risky. And yet, they follow from what the West has made itself believe. It is high time to break that spell of self-hypnosis, and face facts.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US issues veiled threat to Hungary

RT | March 15, 2024

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is isolating his country from the Western “community of democracies,” US Ambassador David Pressman claimed on Thursday in wide-reaching rebuke.

Ties between the two nations should not depend on “temporary” leaders, the diplomat argued, as he delivered a list of grievances against Budapest.

“While the Orban government may want to wait out the United States government, the United States will certainly not wait out the Orban administration. While Hungry waits, we will act,” Pressman warned.

The ambassador was referring to Orban’s expressed hope that Donald Trump will defeat President Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election.

Pressman’s speech was delivered at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, for an event dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Hungary’s accession to NATO. The private institution, founded in the early 1990s by George Soros, has faced a crackdown in Budapest, since Orban accused the Hungarian-born US billionaire of using NGOs to apply political pressure.

The fact that the CEU has relocated its main campus to Vienna, and “moved further to the west as Hungary opened eastward” is significant and “epitomizes the sacrifice of something great in exchange for… talking points,” the American diplomat claimed.

Budapest’s relatively cordial relations with Moscow and its refusal to follow the US lead on the Ukraine conflict were identified by Pressman as major points of contention. Hungary is ignoring the “legitimate security concerns” of the other 31 members of NATO and is “standing with Russia” by advocating a negotiated peace, he claimed, describing the latter as a call for Ukraine’s “surrender and subjugation.”

“This is not the approach of the Transatlantic alliance,” he insisted.

Pressman also blasted Hungarian politicians who use nationalist sentiment in domestic campaigning, and depict the US as a meddling foreign power. He called such remarks “wild rhetoric” and “dangerously unhinged anti-American messaging”, by Orban and his allies.

“We’re not really asking for much: transparency, dialogue, nonpartisanship, and a commitment to democracy would suffice,” the ambassador described what course correction was expected from the host nation. Washington requires NATO members to follow its lead on “big things” and is not objecting, even if they disagree on “most” other issues, he said.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Latvia threatening Russian citizens for participating in voting

By Lucas Leiroz | March 13, 2024

The persecution of ethnic Russian civilians in the Baltics appears to be increasing. Now, Latvian authorities say that Russian citizens could be deported from the country if they vote in the Russian Federation’s upcoming presidential elections. The case clearly shows how the Baltic countries are in an advanced process of Russophobia and Nazi rehabilitation, reaching alarming levels of state violence against ordinary people.

On March 11, the head of the Latvian State Police, Armands Ruks, informed the local press that the country’s authorities will be monitoring Russian citizens who visit the Russian Federation’s embassy to vote in the presidential elections. According to him, some of these citizens could be selected for deportation, if the Latvian government deems it necessary.

Ruks stated that access routes to the Russian embassy will be controlled by the police, as well as that migration checkpoints will be inspecting Russian citizens who allegedly “fail to comply with residence rules”. According to Ruks, support for the special military operation in Ukraine (called an “unjustified invasion” in Latvia and throughout the West) is a violation of the rules to stay in Latvian territory for Russian citizens.

Previously, the Latvian Ministry of Justice had already reported that the mere act of voting in the presidential elections is a gesture of “support for the invasion”, which is why ethnic Russians on Latvian soil are actually being coerced into not participating in electoral process – otherwise, their visas will be canceled and they will be deported.

As is well known, a quarter of the Latvian population is ethnic Russian. More than 25 thousand Russian citizens live in the country and many of them are expected to vote to choose the Russian president in the coming days. However, the high levels of anti-Russian paranoia and racism in Latvia are making the country truly dangerous for these thousands of Russian citizens. With the threat of deportation, many Russians on Latvian soil will certainly be prevented from participating in the political life of their own country – having their citizenship rights violated by the Latvian government’s anti-Russian guidelines.

It must be remembered that this is not the first hostile policy towards Russian citizens adopted by the Latvian government. Since the beginning of the special military operation, ethnic Russians have been the target of segregation and persecution measures. Latvia simply began a process of eradicating the Russian language, forcing thousands of ethnic Russians to pass a Latvian language proficiency exam. Russians who fail or refuse to take the test have been deported.

In practice, thousands of elderly Russians who have lived in Latvia since Soviet times have been forced to suddenly learn a language they never spoke, if they do not want to lose their home. This type of policy is similar to apartheid and racial segregation regimes, but the Collective West does not seem interested in criticizing such an authoritarian aspect of the Latvian government, as the country is absolutely subservient to NATO.

This submission to the West has led the Baltic state to spend around 1% of its entire GDP on weapons for the Kiev regime. Like the other Baltic countries, in addition to Poland, Latvia is heavily involved in financing the war, being one of the countries most willing to escalate the conflict, given the high levels of anti-Russian sentiment among local elites.

In fact, the mistreatment of Russian citizens in Latvia appears increasingly close to a red line. Trying to prevent Russians from voting in presidential elections is absolutely intolerable, since, in practice, the Latvian government is simply forcing Russians to stop exercising their own political rights.

Obviously, the Latvian argument about “war support” is fallacious. There is no “support” expressed in the mere act of voting in an election. By voting, Russian citizens are simply choosing who should govern the country, which obviously does not make them co-participants in any military action. So, the Latvian government’s narrative has no validity: what is happening in the country is just a policy of real ethnic persecution, having nothing to do with any initiative to prevent “support” for Russian military actions.

Moscow has always made clear that protecting its citizens, even abroad, is a Russian priority. With Russian citizens having their rights violated in Latvia, relations between Russia and the Baltic countries will further deteriorate, potentially reaching a point of no return very soon. If Latvia continues to escalate its measures and reaches the point of launching direct violence and physical coercion against Russians, Moscow will certainly take very serious measures to prevent its citizens from being attacked.

To avoid this deterioration in diplomacy, international society must mobilize to condemn Latvia until it reverses its apartheid-like policies. However, unfortunately it is unlikely that Western countries will agree to participate in any such initiative, as they remain subservient to NATO.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

March 13, 2024 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

US Intel Debunks Biden, Admits Russia ‘Doesn’t Want Direct Military Conflict’ With NATO

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 12.03.2024

US and NATO officials have spent months claiming that Russia has plans to attack bloc countries and calling on the West to prepare for a costly, decades-long confrontation with Moscow. President Putin squashed these allegations in December, calling them “complete nonsense.”

Russia “almost certainly” doesn’t want to go to war with the US or NATO. That’s the view of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in its Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community report.

“Russia almost certainly does not want a direct military conflict with US and NATO forces and will continue asymmetric activity below what it calculates to be the threshold of military conflict globally. President Vladimir Putin probably believes that Russia has blunted Ukrainian efforts to retake significant territory, that his approach to winning the war is paying off, and that Western and US support to Ukraine is finite, particularly in light of the Israel-HAMAS war,” the assessment, presented to US officials in early February but released publicly only on Monday, indicated.

The ODNI listed off all its usual claims about the tools the US expects Russia to use to advance its global interests, ranging “from using energy to try to coerce cooperation and weaken Western unity on Ukraine” (it’s worth recalling here that it was the US, not Russia, which blew up the Nord Stream pipeline network) “to military and security intimidation, malign influence, cyber operations, espionage, and subterfuge,” tools Washington itself has used repeatedly throughout its unipolar moment since 1991.

The report admitted that despite “enormous damage at home and abroad” resulting from the proxy war with NATO in Ukraine, Russia “remains a resilient and capable adversary across a wide range of domains and seeks to project and defend its interests globally and to undermine the United States and the West.”

Kissinger’s Nightmare

The report highlighted deep US concerns about the prospects of enhanced Russian-Chinese cooperation – an eventuality which gurus of US foreign policy like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski spent their careers warning about and seeking to avoid by dividing the Eurasian mega powers.

“Moscow’s deep economic engagement with Beijing provides Russia with a major market for its energy and commodities, greater protection from future sanctions, and a stronger partner in opposing the United States. China is by far Russia’s most important trading partner with bilateral trade reaching more than $220 billion in 2023, already surpassing their total 2022 volume by 15 percent,” the document indicated.

On the economic front, the ODNI expects Russia’s GDP to record “modest growth” this year (the IMF expects a 2.6 percent bump in Russia’s GDP – up from 1.5 percent projected last fall), and says the country’s economic ties with non-Western countries will continue to strengthen.

“Moscow has successfully diverted most of its seaborne oil exports and probably is selling significant volumes above the G7-led crude oil and refined product price caps, which came into effect in December 2022 and February 2023, respectively – in part because Russia is increasing its use of non-Western options to facilitate diversion of most of its seaborne oil exports and because global oil prices increased last year,” the report said.

On top of that, US intelligence expects Moscow to maintain “significant energy leverage,” even in Europe, where it remained the second-largest supplier of liquefied natural gas through the first half of 2023 despite Brussels’ self-defeating restrictions.

Assuring that the NATO proxy war in Ukraine has “incurred major, lasting costs for Russia,” the ODNI nonetheless admitted that the defensive strategy Moscow took in the face of Kiev’s summer counteroffensive “plays to Russia’s strategic military advantages and is increasingly shifting the momentum in Moscow’s favor.” Russia’s defense sector is engaged in “significantly ramping up production of a panoply of long-range strike weapons, artillery munitions, and other capabilities that will allow it to sustain a long high-intensity war if necessary. Meanwhile, Moscow has made continual incremental battlefield gains since late 2023, and is benefitting from uncertainties about the future of Western military assistance,” the report said.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are listed as the four major state actors “engaging in competitive behavior that directly threatens US national security,” with China specifically listed as a power which “vies to surpass the United States in comprehensive national power and secure deference to its preferences from its neighbors and from countries around the world, while Russia directly threatens the United States in an attempt to assert leverage regionally and globally.”

Iran is listed as a threat to “US interests, allies, and influence in the Middle East” and a nation which “intends to entrench its emergent status as a regional power while minimizing threats… and the risk of direct military conflict.” As for the DPRK, the ODNI expects North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to “continue to pursue nuclear and conventional military capabilities that threaten the United States and its allies,” with strengthening economic, diplomatic and defense ties with China and Russia expected to help Pyongyang achieve “international acceptance” of the DPRK’s status as a nuclear power.

The ODNI report’s section on Russia, and specifically the passage admitting Moscow’s lack of desire to wage a shooting war against US and NATO runs contrary to months of claims by officials ranging from President Biden to NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg to a host of US and European media that if Russia is “allowed to win in Ukraine,” its next target will be bloc countries.

“We can’t let Putin win,” Biden warned in December 2023, while urging Congress to approve his $61 billion in proposed new aid for Ukraine. “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there… He’s going to keep going. He’s made that pretty clear. If Putin attacks a NATO ally – well, we’ve committed as a NATO member that we’d defend every inch of NATO territory. Then we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops,” Biden claimed.

“It’s complete nonsense – and I think that President Biden understands that,” Putin retorted. “Russia has no reason, no interest – no geopolitical interest, neither economic, political nor military – to fight with NATO countries,” he said.

But even after the ODNI assessment was published for internal use in February, US and NATO officials continued with the “aggressive Russia” narrative.

Last month, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg urged the West to “prepare ourselves for a confrontation that could last decades,” and claimed that “if Putin wins in Ukraine, there is no guarantee that Russian aggression will not spread to other countries.”

In his interview with Tucker Carlson last month, Putin said it was “absolutely out of the question” for Russia to attack NATO members unless they began aggression first. “We have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest,” Putin said.

The ODNI report finally admits what Russia has been saying all along. The question is: why now?

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

NATO should oblige all members to spend 3% of GDP on defense, says Polish President Duda

WPOLITYCE.PL | March 12, 2024

President Andrzej Duda has revealed he will propose that NATO allies increase their defense spending to 3 percent of GDP to bolster the alliance’s strength in response to the war in Ukraine.

Duda was speaking ahead of a trip to Washington D.C. on Tuesday alongside Prime Minister Donald Tusk, where they are expected to hold talks with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House.

Duda views the alliance with the United States as the cornerstone of Polish security, noting that the U.S. invited both him and the Polish prime minister to come to Washington on the 25th anniversary of Poland joining NATO.

Duda will also have meetings with both Democratic Party and Republican Party politicians in the U.S. Congress, as well as the U.S. military. He will be present at a demonstration of the most modern M1 Abrams tank and the AH-64 Apache helicopter, both of which have been ordered by the Polish military.

On his way back from Washington, Duda will visit NATO’s HQ in Brussels, where he will discuss his proposal for NATO states to spend 3 percent of GDP on defense and the security situation on the eastern flank of the alliance.

“I want to propose in the near future, and I will be discussing this with all our allies, including with the NATO secretary general at NATO headquarters, that member countries jointly decide to spend not 2 percent, but 3 percent of their GDP on defense,” Duda said during a meeting of Poland’s National Security Council on Monday.

He emphasized the need for a strategic push for enhanced military capabilities within NATO, reflecting a broader response to geopolitical tensions, claiming “a robust NATO is less likely to be challenged.”

“No one will dare to attack a strong NATO, no one will dare to attack strong countries, no one will dare to attack countries that know how to defend themselves efficiently, countries that will be ready to stand up to defend their borders and land,” Duda added.

Reflecting on Poland’s commitment to defense and security, Duda credited the previous conservative (PiS) government for its efforts to strengthen the nation’s deterrence capabilities.

“There must be a clear and bold response to Russian aggression. That response will be to increase the military potential of the North Atlantic alliance,” he said.

The Polish president also stressed the strategic importance of NATO’s latest round of enlargement to include Finland and Sweden, saying it was a testament to the alliance’s growing strength and a message to Russia.

“In the near future, NATO should be able to make the bold decision to admit Ukraine,” Duda added.

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Poland: the Biggest Army in the EU And the Biggest Risks in the Making

By Dmitry Babich – Sputnik – 11.03.2024

The Polish ministers love surprises. This week, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski stunned the public when he said “several NATO countries already have their troops in Ukraine.”

Sikorski represents the pro-EU “liberal” party Civic Platform, which recently replaced the “anti-European” nationalists from the Law and Justice (PiS) party. By voicing the shocking remark, Sikorski was effectively attempting to outdo the media star of the previous cabinet formed by the PiS.

That media star was Mariusz Blaszczak, the former minister of defense who promised Poland would have “the strongest army in Europe” in two years.

In fact, Sikorski’s statement about NATO troops in Ukraine was not much of a secret for Russia. Even Sikorski’s attempt to create intrigue by saying he would not reveal the troops’ countries of origin was a failure.

Maria Zakharova, the official representative of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, acknowledged that Russia knew about the presence of Western servicemen and which countries they came from. She said: “It does not make sense for NATO to deny it’s sending soldiers to Ukraine any more.”

However, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius again denied the presence of NATO troops in Ukraine recently, in this way one more time exposing himself or Sikorski as a liar.

Sikorski made his revelation about NATO troops at a celebration devoted to the 25th anniversary of Poland joining the NATO alliance alongside Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999.

In his speech, Sikorski also said that sending Western troops to Ukraine was a “creative” move, and that “the West should pursue the policy of asymmetrical escalation” in Ukraine.

Through the official’s commentary and by ignoring Russia’s warnings of the inevitable retaliation for the escalation, Sikorski is – again – following in Blaszczak’s footsteps. It was under him that Poland, indeed, became Europe’s fastest growing military power, and the Civic Platform does not show any willingness to stop the project.

According to official data from Blaszczak’s defense ministry, in 2023 alone, Poland bought 1,000 K2 tanks from South Korea and 673 K9 howitzers from the same supplier. From the United States, Poland purchased 366 Abrams tanks and 32 F-35A fighter jets.

“If Blaszczak’s plans are fulfilled, by 2030 Poland will have more tanks than the combined forces of the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands and Belgium,” the Wall Street Journal reported in an article headlined, “Poland Hardens Its Defenses Against Russia.”

In 2023, Poland spent $ 23 billion on defense purposes, a sum that makes up 4% of the country’s GDP against the NATO-required 2%.

But is spending tens of billions of dollars from a poor country’s budget for preparations of war against the historically and ethnically close eastern neighbor a wise policy?

Not so, say cooler heads.

“NATO is acting like a fireman, who sets on fire more and more buildings in order to show the community how much it needs him,” Mateusz Piskorski, a well known journalist and former leader of Zmiana party, told Sputnik.

In Piskorski’s opinion, NATO and Polish aggressive elite bear at least a part of the responsibility for the fire which is now devouring Ukraine. Ironically, these same elites point to Ukraine as the proof of Russia’s belligerence.

These same Polish elites try to talk Poles into spending more money on arms for Ukraine and on increasing the power of the native Polish army. Blaszczak’s plan was to increase the staff of the Polish army from the current 172,000 men to 300,000. The timeframe for the reform is intended to proceed between two and three years, and this is one of the few initiatives of the outgoing PiS party, which the new “liberal” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk promises to continue.

So, the dangerous military machine is set in motion, and the new foreign minister, Sikorski, is acting in a way that makes risky confrontations inevitable. In his speech before the US’ Atlantic Council in February, Sikorski claimed that “negotiations with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin are impossible.”

“And if you ask me whether we are going to war with Russia, my answer will be – not yet,” Sikorski added in his address before a panel of experts at the Atlantic Council.

In their comments, some of those present pointed out that Sikorski spoke “flirtatiously.” However, ‘irresponsibly’ would be an even more appropriate word.

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Polish embassy in US calls warning by Polish-US communities not to engage in ‘unwinnable’ Ukraine war the ‘Kremlin’s rhetoric’

POLSATNEWS | March 11, 2024

Representatives from several Polish-American communities in the United States have sent a letter to the president and prime minister of Poland ahead of their joint visit to the White House, in which they opposed the “deeper involvement of Poland in the war” in Ukraine.

The letter to Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Andrzej Duda expressed communities’ “firm opposition” to Poland’s further involvement in the conflict and urged Warsaw not to engage in an unwinnable war.

The authors appealed for NATO to remain a defensive alliance, not a “tool for fulfilling the geopolitical ambitions of its dominant members.” They argued that “Poland should not be drawn into or forced into military engagement beyond its borders unless it is first attacked.”

The strong stance against Polish involvement in Ukraine prompted a significant response from the Polish embassy in Washington.

“We are concerned about the content and tone of statements reflecting the Kremlin’s rhetoric,” stated Poland’s Ambassador to the U.S. Marek Magierowski.

The embassy emphasized that “the only way to ensure a peaceful future for Europe and the transatlantic community is by ensuring Russia’s strategic defeat in its war.”

Furthermore, the Polish diaspora was urged to “advocate for our interests, which include further assistance for Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression.” The embassy also expressed gratitude for the contributions of millions of Poles towards Poland’s integration with NATO.

Andrzej Duda and Donald Tusk are due to visit Washington on March 12.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

What the Western Press Didn’t Say About the Leaked Luftwaffe Conversation

By Eduardo Vasco | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 8, 2024

On March 1, the editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya group, journalist Margarita Simonyan, revealed, on her Telegram channel, a 38-minute audio in which officers from the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) discussed the possibility of sending missiles long-range Taurus to Ukraine and whether they would be able to reach the Crimean bridge in the Kerch Strait, which connects the peninsula to the mainland and is Russian territory.

The Russian press, naturally, made much of the revelation. This forced the mainstream Western media – especially German ones – to report the leak. But whoever thought that a miracle would happen, that is, that the Western press would finally raise the issue of NATO’s military threats against Russia… well, those people are simply very naive.

The Western mass media, as always, tried to manipulate the news and hide the main issue.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, The Guardian, Die Welt and Der Spiegel published 39 articles on the topic on their respective websites between the time the news was revealed and the evening of March 6th (when I write these lines).

The two North American newspapers did not want to highlight the matter. The Post published two reports and the Times only one. The three expressed concern about the fragility of German intelligence security systems in the face of Russian espionage.

The Europeans, as has been the case for some time, carried much more propaganda against Russia. The BBC published four articles, all referring to the failure to protect Luftwaffe communications. The Guardian published five articles. The majority warns of the Germans’ failure and treats the Russians as great, threatening villains. However, it is necessary to make an honorable mention of Simon Jenkins’ column, the only one who was allowed to say that the leaked conversations demonstrate that NATO is threatening Russia with an escalation in the conflict.

As we all know, this drop of water in the middle of the ocean has no chance of counterbalancing the flood of war propaganda and fake news from the British press against Russia. Newspaper owners only allow freedom of expression when it is harmless – and try to isolate minimally independent opinions.

Now let’s talk about German newspaper coverage. Die Welt published 18 pieces about the leak scandal, and treated it as such. Of course, the main reason for the scandal was – for German war propagandists – the interception and dissemination of the conversation, not its content.

The entire reportage of Die Welt revolves around failures in the security system of the German armed forces and Russian espionage. The possibility of Olaf Scholz sending the Taurus to Zelensky is briefly discussed and it is even stated that Germany is putting its Western allies in danger by allowing the interception of conversations that may mention confidential and compromising information – such as the participation of British soldiers in Ukraine, as mentioned in the conversation in question.

A single Die Welt report presents a “dissident” opinion, which is not “Russian propaganda”: the brief speech of a member of the AfD – who, however, is branded a Russian agent by the German state and its agents, such as the press.

The article signed by Pavel Lokshin has the following title: “Kremlin is using Taurus leaks to threaten war against Germany”. Of course, it was the Russians who considered blowing up a bridge in German territory, right?

In turn, Der Spiegel, in its nine articles on the case, reproduces the same speech as Die Welt about the failures in German security and the danger of Russian espionage. It also disqualifies the Kremlin’s claims that the conversation is clear proof of NATO’s direct involvement in the war in Ukraine and how much this threatens Russian national security.

Christina Hebel’s analysis is the only piece in these two German outlets that takes the accusations of the Russian government and German involvement in the war more seriously, but it would be an exaggeration to say that this publication would be in the sphere of journalism.

In short, the coverage of these newspapers – and the coverage of other mass media outlets in the West is no different – is absolutely biased and manipulated. In fact, as always happens, they reverse roles: Germany, which threatened to blow up a bridge in Russia, is the victim, while Russia is the villain!

If at least one of these newspapers really were a journalistic tool, and not a propaganda tool, it should publish an article with a title like “German officers considered blowing up bridge in Russia” or “Audios reveal discussion of attack on Russia with German weapons”.

After all, which is more serious: the leak of the audio by Russian intelligence or the discussion among senior German officials about a military attack on Russia? No honest person would choose the first option. But we are not dealing with honest people when we talk about “journalism” in Europe and the United States.

I can’t help but wonder: what if it were the other way around? What if a conversation between Russian officials discussing the explosion of a bridge in Germany had been revealed? Would Western press coverage also treat the leak as something more serious than threats of military attack?

Of course not! If it were Russia considering attacking Germany, there would not be 39 articles in these vehicles, but rather 3,900. Russia would be portrayed as a threat to human civilization (more so than it is portrayed today), chaos would be wreaked in German and Western society, and the drums of war against Russia would be beaten at the top of their lungs. Meetings would be urgently called at the UN Security Council, unilateral sanctions would increase absurdly, all the lackey governments of the USA and the European Union would speak out publicly condemning Vladimir Putin’s madness.

They are real hypocrites. Against Russia, anything goes.

And, although the majority of these media outlets are private, they all act as government bodies, under the strict control of their respective States, as true spokespeople for those in power. But Russia is the one who controls the press, Russia is the one spreading propaganda and Russia is the one disinforming, right?

The leaked audio proves that the war in Ukraine is not a war between Russia and Ukraine, but rather a war between Russia and NATO. The Western press strengthens this claim by propagandizing war against Russia and encouraging attacks against Russia.

The press, according to Western discourse, would be a protector of the public interest against the discretion of those in power. That’s idle talk. The press, in fact, even private companies, are tools of these same rulers to control and oppress the governed.

A growing number of Germans oppose the shipment of weapons to Ukraine and Germany’s participation in a war against Russia, but they are systematically deceived and betrayed by their government and the mass media.

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

New NATO airbase in Albania shows its members are effectively satellite states

By Drago Bosnic | March 9, 2024

NATO is the single most dangerous threat to global security. The belligerent alliance is anything but what it claims to be. Although formed as a supposedly “defensive alliance”, NATO never actually defended anyone or anything in the 75 years of its most unfortunate existence. Quite the contrary, the belligerent alliance attacked dozens of countries, particularly in the aftermath of the (First) Cold War, with its first victim being Yugoslavia/Serbia. The political West fabricated the narrative that Serbs were allegedly “war criminals” in order to justify its direct invasion of the country it previously carved up by backing various separatist movements, particularly the narco-terrorists in Serbia’s southern province of Kosovo and Metohia, radical Islamists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the Neo-Nazi/Ustashe regime in Croatia.

In the last over two decades, the United States made sure to “legitimize” this conquest by imposing its narrative on everyone in the region and the rest of the world. An important segment of that was pushing the newly established countries (in reality mere satellite states) into joining NATO, regardless of the will of the people. Just how “sovereign” these new entities are is perhaps best illustrated by their infinitely servile relationship with the belligerent alliance, with Albania being perhaps the most extreme example. Namely, on March 4, Tirana officially re-opened the Kucova Airbase. The site was built in the early 1950s, but was largely abandoned in the 1990s, when the Albanian Air Force effectively stopped existing after it retired all of its fixed-wing aircraft, leaving only a handful of helicopters.

Over the last several years, NATO invested in reviving this (First) Cold War relic “into a modern hub for NATO future air operations”, according to its own announcement. Kucova Airbase is located approximately 85 km south of Tirana and its new official purpose will be to serve as a logistics, air operations, training and exercises hub for the Albanian Air Force (FASh) and other NATO air forces. However, in reality, as previously mentioned, the Albanian military doesn’t really have a functioning air arm, as FASh is quite small and doesn’t really need an airbase such as the one at Kucova. On the other hand, NATO does, which is why it invested around €50 million (nearly $55 million) in the renovation and modernization of the airbase. NATO insists that it’s of strategic importance.

“The airbase will serve as an important NATO air hub,” said Acting Spokesperson Dylan White, adding: “The makeover of Kucova Airbase is a strategic investment and shows that NATO continues to strengthen its presence in the Western Balkans, an area of strategic importance to the Alliance.”

The opening ceremony certainly suggests that it’s considered extremely important, as it was attended by the Albanian President Bajram Begaj, Prime Minister Edi Rama, President of the Assembly Lindita Nikolla, Defense Minister Niko Peleshi and the Chief of Defense Major General Arben Kingji. In addition, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, Turkish Lieutenant General Göksel Kahya and several other high-ranking officials and military officers were present and also spoke at the ceremony. NATO also sent the Commander of the Combined Air Operations Center Torrejón, Lieutenant General Juan Pablo Sanchez De Lara and the General Manager of the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), Stacy Cummings. This suggests that the airbase will be a major logistics hub for NATO.

According to their own assessment, Kucova is the belligerent alliance’s biggest project in Albania in the last decade. Renovation work began with a ground-breaking ceremony in 2019 and includes upgrades and modernization of the control tower, runways, hangars and storage facilities. The renovation was officially funded by NATO’s Security Investment Program (NSIP), the purpose of which is to cover major construction projects in various vassals and satellite states. Albania is certainly among the least sovereign ones, as evidenced by what will effectively be full exterritoriality rights for the Kucova Airbase. As previously mentioned, FASh lacks any fixed-wing aircraft, so it doesn’t really need an airbase with modern runways, hangars, control towers and storage facilities.

This probably makes it the first such airbase in the area, suggesting that NATO is moving its major logistics hubs eastward, making it a part of the political West’s general “Drang nach Osten”. The mainstream propaganda machine is already making laughable claims that the airbase is there to “ease growing fears in the Balkans over creeping Russian influence”. Obviously, the only growing fears that the region should have is finding itself in an even firmer grip of NATO’s warmongering claws. Unfortunately, that’s precisely what’s happening now, as evidenced by the presence of USAF F-16s and F-35s. According to Defense News, the project “gained urgency as Moscow foments anti-Western sentiment in the Balkans”. Once again, such ludicrous claims are based on nothing but Neo-McCarthyism.

“This is a base that (will add) another element of security for our Western Balkans region which we all know is endangered from the threat and neo-imperialist ambitions of the Russian Federation,” Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said during the opening ceremony.

Truly horrific that “poor Albania” is jeopardized by the “big bad Russian Bear“. However, in all seriousness, Tirana should be the last to speak of someone else’s “neo-imperialist ambitions” given the fact that, with US/NATO help, it established political power and influence in at least three states and entities of former Yugoslavia ever since NATO invaded the region and sent its occupation forces. This includes Albanian elements in Montenegro, North Macedonia and the NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia. Albanian radicals usually project power through their narco-terrorist operations that are affecting not just Europe, but much of the world, which has become a major issue for the Albanian people too, as they’re leaving en masse wherever the narco-terrorists take over.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The ICC: A Tool of Western Aggression

By Christopher Black – New Eastern Outlook – 09.03.2024 

The new charges made by the International Criminal Court against two Russian military officers, Sergey Kobylash, commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces’ Long-Range Aviation, and Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Viktor Sokolov, reinforces the role of the ICC as a tool of Western propaganda and aggression and makes a mockery of its claimed role as an international court.

Mr. Khan, the latest iteration of ICC prosecutor, is a British lawyer who apparently never learned about the role of justice when he attended law school. His March 5th statement claims that the ICC has jurisdiction over Ukraine and Russia and that the officers charged directed attacks on civilian infrastructure, all of which is false. His political bias is established with the following statement,

“In our application for these warrants, my Office again underlined that these acts were carried out in the context of the acts of aggression committed by Russian military forces against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, which began in 2014.”

That statement is a bald-faced lie. It was not Russia that committed aggression against Ukraine in 2014. It was the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany, France and the other NATO allies who committed aggression against Ukraine and its people by staging a coup d’état in 2014; overthrowing the elected government and installing in its place a NATO puppet regime riddled with Nazis. That alone should shock the world. Yet in the West, nothing is said about it.  Many do not even know it took place. The facts have been suppressed and distorted by the propaganda they concocted to cover their crime of aggression, so they have labelled the brave resistance to the NATO-Nazi coup by the citizens of Ukraine located in the eastern provinces, as “Russian” aggression. Only a charlatan, having regard of all the facts, could come to that conclusion. It is the war begun by the Kiev regime against the Ukrainian people that Russia was finally forced to step in order to stop it.

But Mr. Khan seems undismayed that he will be labelled a charlatan, since this is the second set of charges he has filed against Russians, the first set being against President Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russian Ombudswoman for Children’s Rights, some months ago.

The rapidity with which Mr. Khan has acted against Russia stands in stark contrast to the complete refusal by the ICC to lay charges against Israeli leaders and military officers for the genocide they are committing against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, despite the fact on November 17, 2023 Mr. Khan, on receipt of referrals from South Africa and other states that Israel was committing war crimes, and crimes against humanity in the Occupied territories, as far back as 2006, stated that his office was investigating the matter. Yet, despite the International Court of Justice ruling that there is plausible evidence that Israel is committing genocide, despite the referrals from other nation states since then, as well as many individual complaints by world citizens and groups demanding charges be laid, he has done absolutely nothing. In effect, by his refusal to charge Israel leaders and officials, he aids and abets their actions by granting them immunity from prosecution.

Yet, in the case of Russia, over which the ICC has no jurisdiction, he acts with the utmost speed, ever ready to please his masters in the West, who need something, anything to pull the wool over the eyes of their citizens in the face of the great defeat they are suffering in their war against Russia in Ukraine. He is always ready to oblige them.

The fundamental problem of the ICC is that it is not a world court. It only claims to be, while representing the interests of the nations that promoted it, even the USA, which refuses to subject its citizens to its jurisdiction. It is a “court” to be used for western interests, no other. It was not created by a world government. It was created by a treaty drafted by representatives of a group of nations referred to as the Assembly of States Parties. The process of drafting the treaty was long and complex; however, it is necessary to point out that it is recognised that no single nation could purport to create such a court claiming to have international jurisdiction, and what a single nation cannot do, no group of nations, however composed, has the authority to create such an entity either.

The claim of the ICC to universal jurisdiction is a consequence of its ability to assume jurisdiction even in matters concerning individuals who are citizens of nation states that are not parties to the treaty. We have seen this with the charges laid against Russians for crimes allegedly committed in Ukraine. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is a Party to the Treaty of Rome, and therefore the ICC has no jurisdiction over the citizens of either state. However, the Ukrainian government, established by the NATO coup-d’état of 2014, invoked the Acceptance of Jurisdiction clause in the ICC Statute to afford the ICC with jurisdiction over Russia. Article 12 of the Statute states,

“Article 12

Preconditions to the exercise of jurisdiction

3. If the acceptance of a State, which is not a Party to this Statute, is required under paragraph 2, that State may, by declaration lodged with the Registrar, accept the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court with respect to the crime in question. The accepting State shall cooperate with the Court without any delay or exception in accordance with Part 9.”

This has two effects. Firstly, the phrase “crime in question” means that, in the case of Ukraine, for example, the ICC accepted a letter from the regime installed by the coup-d’état, granting the ICC limited jurisdiction-only over the alleged crime that was referred to the ICC by Ukraine. The crimes of Ukraine in the conflict, committed for ten years against the peoples of the Donbass and against civilians in Russia, are conveniently ignored. The Kiev regime states the ICC has no jurisdiction to consider them, and the ICC accepts this farce.

The result of accepting a letter of limited jurisdiction, that is a letter purporting to grant jurisdiction to the ICC over Russian “crimes,” while refusing to grant the ICC jurisdiction over Ukrainian crimes, is the selective prosecution of citizens of one state while granting immunity from prosecution of the other state. This is a legal and moral absurdity. The very idea of justice, in the sense of equality before the law, is negated, but more, it affords the Ukrainian regime an immunity from prosecution which provides encouragement to commit further crimes of its own on its claimed territories and in Russia. Once again, as in the Israeli case, we see that the ICC is acting as an enabler of war crimes instead of bringing to justice those committing them.

On May 21, 2023, the Russians charged the prosecutor and judges of the ICC for crimes involved in the issuance of the ICC warrants against Russians. The Russian Investigative Committee stated that,

“The ICC prosecutor is charged under part 2 of article 299, part 1 of article 30, and part of article 360 of the Russian Criminal Court (criminal prosecution of a person known to be innocent, as well as preparation for an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international protection in order to complicate international relations). The judge is charged under part 2 of article 301, part 1 of article 30, and part 2 of article 360 of the Russian Criminal Court (knowingly illegal detention and preparation for an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international protection in order to complicate international relations).”

“Both have been put on a wanted list.”

We can expect further charges to be laid against Mr. Khan and the judges concerned.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events.

March 9, 2024 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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