EU to use Russian assets to buy arms for Ukraine – Scholz
RT | March 16, 2024
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said that interest accrued from Russian assets frozen in the EU will be used to purchase weapons for Ukraine.
Soon after Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine in February 2022, Western countries froze approximately $300 billion of funds belonging to the Russian Central Bank. Of that sum, the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear holds around €191 billion ($205 billion), which has accrued nearly €4.4 billion in interest over the past year.
Speaking at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Berlin on Friday, Chancellor Scholz said: “We will use windfall profits from Russian assets frozen in Europe to financially support the purchase of weapons for Ukraine.”
The German leader also announced plans to establish a “new capability coalition for long-range rocket artillery,” with procurement to take place “on the overall world market.”
The German chancellor did not provide specifics, and it remains unclear whether he was referring to an entirely new initiative, or to a “long-range” scheme announced by President Macron in February.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last month suggested using the interest from frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine. However, Politico, citing an anonymous EU official, reported on Thursday that Malta, Luxembourg and Hungary had “expressed reservations” about the plan earlier this week.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that any actions taken against its assets would amount to “theft.” It has stressed that seizing the funds or any similar move would violate international law and undermine Western currencies, the global financial system, and the world economy.
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.
Austrian supermarket giant Spar turns to EU concerning Hungary’s ‘unfair’ taxes
MANDINER | MARCH 14, 2024
Austrian supermarket chain Spar has accused the Hungarian government of breaking EU law to cut food prices and called on Brussels to mitigate the devastating impact of the government’s measures, the Financial Times reported.
The supermarket chain claims that the Hungarian government’s 2022 special tax is discriminatory and breaches a number of EU laws, including on the free movement of goods. In its complaint to the EU, Spar wrote that the special tax and other measures aimed at reducing food prices are clearly incompatible with EU law because they “violate the principle of free movement of goods, freedom of establishment and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.”
According to the complaint, the government’s interference has increased Spar’s costs by around €90 million (3.5 billion forints) and will cause a loss of nearly €50 million (1.9 billion forints) for its Hungarian business in 2023. Spar is the second-largest retail chain in Hungary by turnover.
In 2022, to bridge a growing budget gap, the Hungarian government slapped a windfall tax on large food retailers, which in practice meant foreign-owned supermarket chains, and in 2023, in order to halt rapidly rising inflation, it introduced mandatory discounts on staple foods.
According to the company, the government’s measures “upset the supply and demand balance in the agricultural and food markets; they discriminate in a way that allows small independent retailers and members of the franchise network to avoid losses by buying from large integrated retailers at a discount or reduced prices.”
Of the other major retail chains operating in Hungary, Lidl declined to comment, and Tesco referred questions to the Hungarian Retailers’ Association, which declined to comment.
The European Commission declined to comment to the Financial Times, and the Hungarian government has so far not responded to the paper’s request for comment.
EU joins IMF, Gulf states funneling billions into Egypt as Gaza refugee crisis looms
The Cradle | March 14, 2024
The EU is preparing a €7.4 billion ($8 billion) aid package for Egypt, citing “concerns” that the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the ballooning crisis in Sudan could “risk exacerbating financial troubles in the North African nation and raising immigration pressure on Europe,” according to a report by the Financial Times (FT).
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is set to visit Cairo on 17 March alongside the Greek, Italian, and Belgian prime ministers to “finalize and announce the agreement.”
Completion of the deal accelerated following the start of Israel’s campaign of genocide in the Gaza Strip. The terms of the agreement reportedly include support for Egypt’s energy sector, assistance to deal with the rising number of refugees entering the country, and help to fortify the country’s border with Libya.
An estimated €1bn in emergency financial assistance could be paid immediately to Cairo, while another €4 billion in “macro-financial assistance” hinges on implementing reforms under an expanded loan program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Officials told FT the rest of the funds would be drawn from various EU funding streams.
The funds from Brussels is the latest in a recent string of investment packages coming from the west and Gulf states for cash-strapped Egypt.
“With respect to the question on the potential impact pressures from refugees from Gaza, what we do see in Egypt is that there is a need to have a very comprehensive support package for Egypt. And we’re working … to ensure that Egypt does not have any residual financing needs,” IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack said on 22 February.
The IMF agreed just days later to expand its financial rescue program for Egypt to $8 billion after the Egyptian central bank let loose its currency to help stabilize the economy. Egypt is the second most indebted country to the IMF, behind only Argentina, with an international debt that grew from $37 billion in 2010 to $164 billion in 2023.
In late February, UK oil giant BP announced plans to develop gas projects and drilling in Egypt over the next three to four years at a cost of $1.5 billion. This came just after the North African nation sealed a massive $35 billion real estate development deal with the UAE, which will see Emirati investment vehicle ADQ build a 170 km tourism and financial center in the Ras al-Hekma area.
In recent weeks, Cairo has also been in discussions to sell prime Red Sea coastal land near Sharm al-Sheikh to Saudi investors.
The unprecedented windfall comes as Egypt is putting the finishing touches on a kilometers-wide buffer zone and wall along its border with southern Gaza, allegedly in preparation to take in hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians once the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza’s southernmost city begins.
Amnesty International and other NGOs have also accused Cairo of “harassing” the director of the UK-based Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, which revealed the construction of the buffer zone last month.
Geopolitical analysts, including The Cradle’s Mohamad Hassan Sweidan, have speculated that Egypt may be willing to accept refugees from Gaza in exchange for a significant offset of its staggering debt.
Theft of Frozen Russian Assets May Lead to Financial Crisis in the West
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 13.03.2024
While US policymakers are seeking to grab Russia’s sovereign assets altogether, EU officials are planning to find legal ways to seize the profits generated by the assets. Russia has signaled it will retaliate against any form of theft.
An EU official told Reuters that Russian assets frozen in the EU could generate up to €20 billion in after-tax profits through 2027, adding that only part of these profits, as well as a tax on the gross amount, could be sent to the Kiev regime. It was noted the remaining funds, however, would have to stay in the West to create a buffer against Moscow’s retaliation measures.
Of the roughly $282 billion in Russian assets immobilized in Japan and the West, around $207 billion (€191 billion) are held at Euroclear, a clearinghouse based in Belgium.
The official anticipates Euroclear may face a flurry of legal claims from Moscow if Russian money is transferred to Ukraine. The claims are due to come from the Russian Central Bank, which can seize €33 billion in Euroclear funds held in the national securities depository in Moscow as a tit-for-tat move, according to the official.
Russia may also take legal action to seize Euroclear assets held in Hong Kong and Dubai.
Western banks that have lost investment funds in Russia could also sue the clearinghouse, potentially leading to Euroclear’s bankruptcy and triggering a domino effect, given Euroclear’s key role in global financial transactions. The EU official warned that, ultimately, the trail of counterclaims could lead to nothing short of an economic crisis.
Speaking to the Financial Times in mid-February, Lieve Mostrey, chief executive of Euroclear, warned that a G7 plan to use Russia’s frozen assets as a backstop to issue debt for Ukraine, or seize the immobilized assets altogether, could pose serious financial risks to Europe.
“When we come to a logic of seizing of assets (…) then you see the trust in the Euroclear system, the trust in the European capital markets, the trust in euro as a currency substantially affected,” she told FT.
Mostrey remarked that “the risk is a bit lower” if the West grabs profits generated by the frozen sovereign assets.
Russia has underscored it will take retaliatory measures in response to any manipulations with its financial resources illegally immobilized by the West, and that it would perceive any form of grab as “theft”. Euroclear is already facing between 50 and 100 lawsuits in Russian courts over the sanctioned assets.
Any actions with Russian frozen assets will trigger a symmetrical response, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told Sputnik in late February, adding that a similar quantity of foreign assets have been frozen in Russia.
The Russian finance minister suggested last December that in the event of confiscation of Russian assets in Europe, Russia may tap foreign funds frozen in so-called Type “C” accounts, a special type of accounts for non-residents introduced by Russia in March 2022. One cannot withdraw money from these accounts as funds can only be used for a limited range of purposes, such as paying taxes or purchasing federal loan bonds.
According to some estimates, by mid-March 2023, up to 1 trillion rubles (€10 billion) could have been accumulated in type “C” accounts in the form of dividends and coupons paid to investors from unfriendly countries at Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NSD).
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov made it clear in early February that Russia is prepared for a decade-long legal battle over the potential seizure of its assets.
“If such decisions are made, they will be deeply illegal. They will have decades-long judicial consequences for those who make these decisions and for those who implement these decisions,” Peskov emphasized.
Trump has plan to end Ukraine conflict – Orban
RT | March 11, 2024
Donald Trump intends to end the Ukraine conflict, if reelected as US president, and has a “detailed plan” to do so, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told local media, after meeting the presumed Republican nominee.
The former US leader repeatedly claimed on his campaign trail that, if he had remained in the White House for a second term, there would be no hostilities between Moscow and Kiev. If voted back in, he promises to end the conflict “in 24 hours” by applying pressure on stakeholders.
Orban, who spoke with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Friday, did not explain how exactly the American would do that, but said that cutting the flow of US aid was a crucial part of the plan.
”If the US will not provide the money, Europeans on their own will not be able to finance this war, and then the war will end,” Orban said in an interview with M1 broadcaster on Sunday.
During his presidency, Trump had shown himself to be “a man of peace,” the Hungarian leader claimed. That stance puts him in alignment with Hungary, unlike the administration of US President Joe Biden and many members of the EU, he added.
”The American Democratic government and the leadership of the EU, as well as the leadership of the largest EU member states are pro-war governments. Donald Trump is pro-peace, Hungary is pro-peace. At the bottom of everything lies this difference,” Orban declared.
The Kremlin declined to weigh in on the remarks, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying on Monday that Orban’s account of Trump’s intentions was too vague for any specific commentary.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky previously expressed skepticism about Trump’s ability to deliver on the promise. He said if the plan was feasible, the American politician should share it with the public, or at least with Kiev. The Ukrainian government claims that a “just peace” requires a military victory over Russia and that it would agree to nothing short of that.
Moscow has said that its strategic goals in the military operation against Kiev will be achieved one way or another. The US and its allies, who continue to arm Ukraine, cannot change that outcome and are only prolonging the suffering of the country’s people, Russian officials have stated.
Syrian FM: ‘Western leaders are little puppets of the Zionist enemy’
Al Mayadeen | March 10, 2024
Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Faisal Mekdad, emphasized that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide perpetrated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has killed over 12,000 children and 8,000 women, and completely destroyed the Gaza Strip.
In a statement on the ministry’s X account, Mikdad said “What European Union strategists say about building a world based on rules and regulations has faded. The murderer Netanyahu has not left any rule unbroken: International law, international humanitarian law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Charter, children’s rights, women’s rights, democracy, disarmament, and peace.”
He continued to say what is more dangerous than Netanyahu and his ruling “gang’s” crimes, is the support he received from many EU leaders and the blind trust Washington has given him.
“Everyone knows that much of what the European Union leaders did before and after was a form of clowning, hypocrisy, and lies, and their defense of Netanyahu’s crimes led to pulling the rug from under all of their feet and showed them as they really are, little puppets in the hands of Zionism and enemies of peoples’ rights and aspirations,” he said, slamming the West.
The special military operation, Avdeyevka, and Gaza
By Yuriy Zinin – New Eastern Outlook – 09.03.2024
The name Avdeyevka, which is known to few in the Arab world, has featured prominently in the Middle Eastern media in recent weeks. Media commentators have examined the battle to liberate this city, its significance, and discussed the opinions of political analysts and observers on the future course of military operations in the conflict, including its international impact.
A number of military observers quoted in the media have referred to this event as “a turning point in the course of the war,” similar in significance to the conquest of Bakhmut by Russian forces last year, with both cities being of similar strategic and symbolic value.
For example, Rizk Al-Hawalda, a retired brigadier general and military expert from Jordan, believes that the capture of Avdeyevka will allow Russian forces to further strengthen their position in Ukraine, and increase their combat capability to defend the territories under their control. For the Ukrainian forces, however, the capture means that their ability to retake what they have lost has been thwarted, leaving them to face the fact that this land has now become Russian territory, and that this loss is irreversible.
Other authors believe that the capture of this city will allow Russian forces to control the space around Donetsk and create logistical corridors to expand the scope of their operations.
The Egyptian Al Qahera News edition sees the capture of Avdeyevka as an “important victory” achieved by Russian troops just before the second anniversary of the start of the special military operation. They outnumber the enemy on the battlefield, both in terms of troop numbers and equipment, giving them an advantage when attacking Ukrainian formations, which are short on weapons and soldiers amid cracks in the West’s military support for Kiev.
These changes are also evident in the range of media responses from the Middle East. In general, they adopt a balanced tone when discussing the results of fighting after two years of the special military operation, and the political and economic consequences of the combat.
For example, the influential Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat opines that Washington and its allies have miscalculated. It is referring to the West’s imposition of anti-Russian sanctions, its attempts to undermine Russia’s economy, deprive it of revenues from hydrocarbon exports, and isolate it in the international arena, etc.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculations, it suggests, are based on common sense and are absolutely correct. He has carefully avoided the traps laid out for him and been able, with skill and step by step, to dismantle the economic blockade declared against his country, and the authors also admire the undeniable victories of Russian troops on the military frontlines.
A number of other Arab publications take a similar line. A review of the events in Ukraine, as they see it, teaches a number of lessons. One is that a state’s policy should not be based on promises of support from outside, and should be founded first and foremost on its own interests. Now, the West’s promises of support have failed. The former media rhetoric that Ukraine is bulwark for Europe is on the wane.
Europeans are suffering from interruptions to the supply of Russian gas, supply chain disruption, inflation and interest rate hikes, etc. The European countries see resolving their own economic crises as their priority, and do not wish to suffer because of Ukraine. In short, the credibility of the Western coalition supporting Ukraine has fallen, and, as the present author notes, it looks as if Ukraine will have to go into the third year of the war alone.
Significantly, such assessments are increasingly being reflected in public opinion in the Middle East. Recently, Akhbar Al Aan, a leading news platform in Dubai (UAE) conducted a poll among its readers about Western military aid for Ukraine. To the question: would this help rescue Kiev, 85% of respondents answered “no” and just 15% answered “yes”.
Today, a number of political observers in the Middle East are drawing parallels between the conflict in Ukraine and the war in Gaza and reaching their own conclusions. In particular, they note the similarity of behavior styles of the leaders of the two countries: Volodymyr Zelensky and Benjamin Netanyahu. They conclude that both are characterized by a pathological desire to deny reality and are stubbornly following their chosen courses, despite the obvious failures of their strategies….
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showed no sympathy for the Palestinian victims of the war in Gaza. He did not hesitate for a second, but supported the Israeli war machine, Akhbar Al Aan claims.
Other authors criticize the “blindness” of those countries that oppose Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine but are unable to see what Israel has been doing in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
In their view, one of the lessons of the Gaza conflict involves the issue of trust in the West. It promotes and continues to proclaim its values and principles as universal, applying to all people regardless of religion, race or nationality. But these trumpeted values have not been applied in Gaza.
Many political observers share this view. The disillusionment with Western values that has emerged in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip has left a deep wound in the hearts and minds of Arab elites who had placed their hopes in an engagement with Western civilization. This will push the Arab nations’ Islamic civilization, and the civilization of the Global South in general, further away from the West, Arab media commentators predict.
Yuri Zinin, senior researcher at the Center for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
Peaceful times are over – Tusk
RT | March 9, 2024
The peaceful times in Europe are long gone, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, painting a grim picture of the future of the continent amid the continuing tensions with Russia.
“The times of peace are over. The post-war era is over,” Tusk said at a meeting of the European People’s Party (EPP) in Bucharest, Romania on Thursday. “We are living through new times – the pre-war era.”
“The fight against totalitarian trends, corruption, and lies is taking place on many fronts. The most dramatic illustration of this is, of course, what is happening in the war in Ukraine,” the prime minister continued.
“We are facing a simple choice: either we fight to protect our borders, territory and values, and defend our citizens and future generations, or [accept] the alternative that is defeat.”
Tusk made his comments as the Russia-Ukraine conflict entered its third year last month, with many EU heads of state renewing their pledges to continue military and financial aid to Kiev.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in February that the US-led alliance should brace for “a confrontation that could last decades.” US President Joe Biden vowed during his State of the Union address on Thursday to continue backing Ukraine and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “sowing chaos around Europe and beyond.”
Moscow has blamed the West for instigating current tensions, arguing that NATO’s expansion eastward is one of the key causes of Russia’s ongoing military operation in the neighboring state. Putin stated last year that the West’s true goal is “the breakup” of Russia.
The Russian leader, however, stressed that Moscow has no intention of attacking NATO member states unless it will be attacked first.
Zelensky critic claims Spain ignoring ‘assassination attempt’
RT | March 7, 2024
YouTuber Anatoly Shariy has accused the police in Catalonia of trying to ignore Wednesday’s drive-by shooting, which he alleges targeted him and his wife. Ukraine had banned his political party in mid-2022.
Shariy and his wife Olga were driving towards their home in Roda de Bera near Tarragona – southwest of Barcelona – on Wednesday morning when a masked man pointed a “machine gun” at their car.
“They tried to kill us in broad daylight, in the middle of the street,” Olga told the outlet El Diario on Wednesday evening. Since then, however, Shariy has lambasted the police for dragging their feet.
“Day concluded. The police did not question witnesses who saw the [would-be] murderer escape from the crime scene,” Shariy posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday evening, in Spanish. “They want me to be killed. There are no more doubts.”
He continued to criticize the police on Thursday, pointing out that they had failed to question the postman who witnessed the shooting. “No action was taken to search for the killer,” Shariy added in another post.
According to El Diario, the Shariys have faced “threats and harassment” ever since “neo-Nazi groups” from Ukraine discovered their location. Last October, someone threw Molotov cocktails at their home.
Earlier this week, Olga told the outlet, the Shariys received a tip – which included recordings of phone conversations – that someone had offered money for Anatoly’s death and asked organized crime groups for his exact location. They reported this to the police, she said, but nothing was done.
Shariy was detained by the Spanish authorities in May 2022 on Ukrainian charges of “treason”, but was released soon thereafter. Spain eventually rejected Ukraine’s extradition request.
A frequent critic of the Ukrainian government, Shariy runs a popular YouTube channel with almost 2.9 million subscribers. He founded a libertarian-leaning party in 2019, the same year Vladimir Zelensky became president, and while it fell short of getting into the Ukrainian parliament, it won several seats on regional councils. Zelensky’s government banned it in early 2022 and rejected all its appeals in October that year.
Europe is Fearful and Desperate
By Alastair Crooke | Al Mayadeen English | March 4, 2024
A leading Establishment newspaper in Europe says that “what is driving European politics at present – is fear”. The headlines ring out with apprehension: “Germany’s élites run scared, as Putin rains down death on Ukraine”. The British Prime Minister calls an emergency press conference to warns of ‘democracy at risk’ from ‘extremism’ on the eve of a by-election win by George Galloway, an articulate, if somewhat unruly, ‘thorn’ in the side of conventional politics (but hardly any ‘extremist’).
In the US too the liberal sphere is in meltdown over the publication of a just-released book: White Rural Rage: The Threat To American Democracy, in which “rural whites are [described as] the most racist; xenophobic; anti-immigrant; anti-gay; and conspiracy-minded, anti-democratic” demography in America. They “don’t believe in an independent press or free speech”, and are “most likely to accept or excuse violence”.
Of course, the fear is being — in the first instance — diverted outwards towards the claim that this is somehow Russia’s ‘doing’ — a looming ‘menace’ further stoked by claims of President Putin’s ‘imperial aspirations’, way beyond Ukraine. There is however (to invert the usual MSM meme), absolutely no evidence for these claims (from anything Putin has said over the years).
What is spooking the West more immediately is the cascading defeats inflicted on Ukrainian forces, after the Avdeevka rout. The new Ukrainian commander, General Syrski, in the wake of the flight, announced a retreat to new defence lines, but as some had predicted, it turned out that the ‘more favourable lines’ Syrski promoted did not exist.
Ukrainian photographers Konstantin and Vlada Liberov who document the war from the ground demanded from Syrski: “So what is the next “fortetsia” – Pokrovsk? Or just Konstantinovka?”
“Where is this second line of defence?” Yuri Butusov, editor-in-chief of Censor— following his trip to this area – asks: “There are no words. Gap: here in Kiev – the supreme commander-in-chief says one thing, but at the front something completely different is happening. I want to say that no field lines of fortifications have been built beyond Avdeevka so far. I saw Russian drones attacking our soldiers in their burrows – in the middle of a field”.
There are no constructed defence lines – only hurried improvisations – whilst Ukraine resorts to simply throwing its reserves at the deficiency – so to prop up the incremental retreat. Did NATO leaders not spot this defence-line lacuna? Apparently not …
And so one leg to the current panic is just this: The EU has heavily over-invested in its Ukraine project, and now sees it fast crumbling. Hence President Macron’s hasty summons of EU states (at 24 hours’ notice) to the Elysée Palace to hear him warn that the situation on the ground in Ukraine was so critical, and the stakes for Europe so high, that: “We’re at a critical point in the conflict where we need to take the initiative: We’re determined to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes”.
What Macron in fact proposed however, shocked the gathered leaders. He advocated committing detachments of European special forces to Ukraine, not so much directly to fight the Russian forces, but to act as vulnerable strategic ‘tripwire’ deterrents to Russia – which, were they attacked, would ‘trip’ a full-throated NATO retaliation down onto the head of Russia.
These tripwire forces, Macron claimed, would form strategic deterrents to Moscow’s military room for manoeuvre — oases of ‘untouchable’ NATO, scattered through Ukraine. His colleagues, horrified, demurred; they saw the emplaced tripwires as the conveyor belt leading to WWIII: ‘Madness’, and ‘no thank you’.
The ‘other leg’ to European desperation was given away by PM Sunak’s rush to the microphone in the wake of the Rochdale by-election outcome to warn that democracy is in peril from extremism.
One commentator opined: ‘Rishi Sunak was right’: “This is not politics, not even of the radical kind … It is inchoate, incoherent rage which is ready to make common cause with anyone else, who is enraged even on contradictory grounds”.
If this reaction sounds a bit over the top – just because George Galloway overwhelmingly won in Rochdale – let us ‘join up the dots’ for you:
The same commentator (Janet Daley in the Telegraph ) avers: “To bring this right up to date, we now have an entity called the Workers Party – a name that summons up traditional Left-wing dedication to the interests of working class people – winning a by-election in Rochdale by somehow conflating the Palestinian cause in Gaza with local working class needs”.
Ouch! That is what hurts. Echoes here from the Michigan primary in the US, where a coalition of pro-Palestinian groups who had set a modest target of 10,000 ‘uncommitted’ votes — Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan in 2016 — to send a message to President Biden that voter frustration over the Gaza war could cost him dearly in the November election. In the event, however, the pro-Palestinian support blew past the 10,000 target and clocked in at nearly 101,400 votes.
Message sent — and as the electoral desperation in Democratic circles, indicates, ‘message received’.
Just to be plain: Events in Gaza and in Ukraine are unravelling long-standing political power control structures in the EU, in Europe and in the US. This is why there is panic and double-down.
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The Geopolitics behind the War in Yemen (I)
By Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 30.03.2015
The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis.
The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he had made and return Yemen to authoritarian rule. The ousting of President Al-Hadi by the Houthis and their political allies was an unexpected reaction to the takeover Al-Hadi was planning with Washington and the House of Saudi. … continue
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