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Mass demo in Munich against war

Free West Media | February 21, 2023

While Annalena Baerbock and US VP Kamala Harris discussed the further escalation of the war in Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference convened in the Bayerischer Hof, thousands demonstrated peacefully against war on the Königsplatz.

Several demonstrations took place in Munich on Saturday on the fringes of the Security Conference directed against the meeting itself. The organizers of one group, Munich Stand Up! counted between 20,000 to 25,000 of their participants.

Protesters followed the call by the Munich AfD on Saturday morning to the Old Botanical Garden, where they could be seen with peace signs and Russian flags.

According to the police, there was a scuffle and verbal confrontations with a small group of left-wing counter-demonstrators. They shouted “Fascist pack” and “Nazi plague”. Around noon, many participants in the AfD demo joined the protest on the Königsplatz, the largest gathering.

Right and left come together

Regardless of whether they were right-wing or left-wing: in terms of symbolism, both groups held flags displaying peace signs and Russian colours.

Slogans criticized NATO and the press as “warmongers” or drew parallels with the Corona pandemic, which many believe had been staged for nefarious purposes. The speakers included the left-wing politician Dieter Dehm and the former CDU politician Jürgen Todenhöfer.

Dehm spoke of “Ukrainian killer gangs and Nazi fascists” while Todenhöfer said in his speech: “The West wanted this war.” He accused the federal government of “madness”.

The final rally of the big “Anti-SiKo-Demo” took place on Marienplatz. As every year, the Munich “Action Alliance against the NATO Security Conference” had called for the demonstration. The opponents, who came mainly from the left-wing spectrum, had gathered at the Stachus shortly after noon.

The demonstrators called to “Create peace without weapons” on posters. Rainbow flags with the words “Pace” (Italian for peace) were displayed next to the dove of peace.

Confronting Ukraine supporters

As in previous years, peace demonstrators walked through the city center, where they passed a gathering at Odeonsplatz  – a small band of supporters of Ukraine.

On the stage in front of the Feldherrnhalle, the members of the Bundestag Anton Hofreiter (Greens) and Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP) spoke, and again called for the escalation of the war in Ukraine. Jamila Schäfer (Greens) expressed her satisfaction that the government had now initiated the delivery of battle tanks.

When the two protest camps met, it remained peaceful. However, it got a bit loud because both sides started chanting their slogans.

Some Ukrainian supporters burst into tears when they saw the peace posters: “Negotiate instead of shooting” was written on them.

Nazis for Ukraine

At the Feldherrnhalle, the site of Hitler’s putsch in 1923, the war supporters demonstrated for the Zelensky regime.

President Zelensky has banned all opposition media and parties in Ukraine and is openly cooperating with neo-Nazi militias and, according to recent photographs taken by die Associated Press, also with ISIS commanders.

Before the conference, he had even demanded the delivery of banned cluster bombs.

Thousands of police officers

According to the police, around 4,500 officers from Bavaria and other federal states as well as 300 federal police officers were on duty around the conference. At the international meeting of experts from Friday to Sunday, the main focus was on arming Ukraine. In addition, there were also debates about other conflicts such as in the Middle East, Yemen or Iran.

In support of the conference therefore, a few people demonstrated loudly for regime change in Iran in the morning on Odeonsplatz. The country’s green, white and red flag flew over the heads of people who want a pro-US regime and called on the European Union to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization. The “National Council of Resistance of Iran” had called for the protest.

February 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia issues warning about future of Ukraine conflict

RT | February 21, 2023

Western elites “intend” to transform the conflict in Ukraine from a regional to a global one, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Moscow perceives this as an existential threat and will react accordingly, he said.

The goal of those in power in the US and other Western nations is to “end us once and for all,” the Russian leader stated during a keynote speech on Tuesday. They are using Ukraine as a “battering ram” against Russia and don’t care how many people will die as a result, he said.

“They intend to turn a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation. That is how we understand things and will react accordingly. Because the issue here is the existence of our state,” Putin said.

The Ukraine conflict was unleashed by the West when it supported an armed coup in Kiev in 2014, the Russian president noted. Western powers then poured resources into the new regime, even as it used the military against its own population and became increasingly nationalist and extreme.

Western elites “don’t care who they are betting on in their fight against us, their fight against Russia. They just want them to go to war,” Putin observed. The current Ukrainian government is “alien” to the people it governs and serves Western interests, he believes.

“Nobody among them counts the loss of human lives and tragedies, because trillions of dollars are at stake, an opportunity to keep robbing everyone under the cover of rhetoric of democracy and freedoms,” the Russian leader warned.

He said that ultimately Russia’s opponents must realize that the country cannot be defeated on the battlefield. That is why they target it in different ways, trying to undermine its unity via historical revisionism and attacks on Russian traditional values, Putin explained.

The remarks were part of the president’s address to the Federal Assembly, as both chambers of the Russian parliament are called, as well to as senior Russian officials and public figures.

February 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

America the Feckless

Lies and hypocrisy are at the heart of the Biden foreign policy

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 21, 2023

One would think that the United States military staging an unprovoked “plausibly deniable” covert attack on a nation with which it is not at war would be at least considered newsworthy. That the attack did grave damage to a country with which the US is closely allied would seem to make the aggression even more unthinkable. And, perhaps worst of all, that the attack was set up by the nation’s chief executive using a political bypass that avoided congressional oversight and adherence to the war powers act which might be most reprehensible of all as it cuts to the heart of the nation’s constitutional balance of powers. It is clearly an impeachable offense. And “Yes,” for those who are still wondering, Joe Biden and his team of terrorist emulators have done all that and more, and have capped their performance with a series of flat out lies and evasions to make it appear that they had done nothing wrong.

And the mainstream America media, in its worst performance since the invasion of Iraq, has served as an echo chamber for everything the White House chooses to leak to it. Given all of that, it was perhaps completely predictable that the government-subservient press and TV news would almost completely ignore the devastating report released by top investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on February 8th. Hersh’s article was entitled “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline” with a secondary headline reading “The New York Times called it a ‘mystery,’ but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now.” The article, which Hersh self-published on the internet, describes in considerable detail the preparations and execution by the US Navy Diving and Salvage Center and Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Maritime Branch, coordinated and directed by the White House, to sabotage and destroy Russia’s four Baltic Sea Nord Stream gas pipelines, a war crime and terroristic action that moves the United States much closer to direct armed conflict with Russia.

Given its potential political blowback, the Hersh story might very well be the most important expose to appear since fighting began in Ukraine over a year ago, but it is being ignored by the White House, which is denying the report, with a spokesman only commenting that “This is false and complete fiction.” The CIA’s spokesman Tammy Thorp likewise replied to Hersh that “This claim is completely and utterly false.” The US Navy was also asked for comments but did not respond. The media, clearly evident by its inaction, has religiously adhered to that government line, possibly due to some mistaken notion that our national security forces have to be supported when they are going “toe to toe with the Russkies” over Ukraine. On the contrary, it is precisely when the government is behaving recklessly not to mention criminally to bring about an unnecessary war that the press should be in hot pursuit of the story and what it means. That is particularly so as the Ukraine conflict is now escalating and threatening to go nuclear as both sides dig in to incompatible positions.

I have known Sy Hersh for a number of years and spent time together with him and other former CIA colleagues helping to confirm details of some of his earlier exposes on US government abuses and outright lies in its somewhat not completely credible role as “guardian” of national security. Hersh is a meticulous investigator who never, in my experience, accepted uncorroborated claims in support of his narratives. I have some understanding of who his sources in the intelligence agencies and Department of Defense might be in this case and it should be accepted that what he has written is completely verifiable and derived from individuals who were actual participants in the activities described. That is not to say that there will not be failures to recall accurately certainly details including aspects of the possible Norwegian involvement, something critics are already pointing to, but the main thrust of “whodunit” and “how” is pretty definitively demonstrated.

The report is long and includes a great deal of information on both the planning and the political decision-making that went into the willingness to destroy the pipeline, which I will briefly describe. Sy claims the following: It has not exactly been a secret that many in the United States government have long regarded the Nord Stream pipelines to be a security threat as the supply of relatively cheap natural gas to Germany as a gateway into Europe by Russia would enable Moscow to create a dependency on it for energy which could be manipulated to produce political and strategic advantage.

As the crisis over Ukraine deepened in 2021, the Biden White House set up a secret task force that worked on possible scenarios that focused on using military and intelligence resources to physically destroy the pipelines with some measure of plausible denial of the US hand in the process in order to avoid political blowback from America’s European allies or escalation of the conflict. The secrecy was needed to protect Biden from charges of hypocrisy since he had repeatedly pledged that the US would not be directly involved in any armed conflict with Russia over Ukraine.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan headed the interagency task force, which convened throughout late 2021 and included key players from the Agency’s Maritime Branch and the Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center, both located in Panama City Florida, as well as the State Department, Treasury and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The operation was originally treated as a covert action that would have required congressional oversight, but that fig leaf was abandoned and it became a “highly classified intelligence operation” when Biden and others in the administration stated publicly and clearly their intentions to stop the pipeline, making what eventually took place an openly declared policy, perhaps intended to send a warning to the Russians. A number of options to destroy the pipelines were discussed. According to Hersh, the participants in the meeting, many of whom were hawks who had cut their teeth under the Obama Administration, clearly understood that they were proposing an “act of war” that was being considered in spite of potential blowback because the president had ordered it.

There was plenty of warning of what might be coming. In early February 2022, shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Biden publicly pledged during a joint news conference accompanied by a silent and frowning German chancellor Olav Scholz that “If Russia invades … there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2” and, when pressed on how he would carry that out, he responded, “We will — I promise you — we will be able to do it.” Later, after the destruction of the pipeline, Secretary of State Blinken stated that) the sabotage offered a “tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy… That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come.” Not that any more confirmation was needed, but on January 22nd 2023 Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland gloated while testifying to a US Senate committee that “the administration is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now … a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

The Biden Administration, in its arrogance has more-or-less been admitting that it was behind the sabotage, which it certainly had the motive and means to carry out, though it was carefully avoiding leaving any actual evidence behind that it had carried out the destruction. As observed above, it has also been deliberately avoiding any congressional involvement, presumably to avoid any discussion of war powers or even due to concerns over possible media leaks.

The mechanics of the placing explosives followed by the actual destruction of the pipelines was reportedly as follows: Under cover of a NATO Baltic Sea exercise called BALTOPS-22 in June 2022 US Navy and possibly also CIA Special Activities and Norwegian deep sea divers descended 260 feet to a spot off the Danish Island of Bornholm, which was considered to be a location where the pipelines converged in relatively shallow tide-free water and were particularly vulnerable. They attached C-4 explosives both to Nord Stream 1, which was operational, and Nord Stream 2, which was completed but was waiting for German safety and security regulators’ approval to become active. The explosives were designed to be remotely detonatable.

The explosives were on a timer that created an escape window for those initiating the detonation and were reported to be activated by a secure signal sent by a sonar buoy that was dropped onto the prepared site by a Norwegian navy helicopter. The Norwegians were essential in that role due to their own military presence close to the targeted part of the Baltic as well as their considerable experience in deep-sea cold-water operations. A Norwegian Navy helicopter in the area would presumably arouse no particular concern, even from the ever-watchful Russians.

Under orders to “Go!” from Washington, on September 26, 2022 the Norwegians dropped the sonar buoy and a few hours later the C-4 explosives were detonated, immediately knocking out three of the four pipelines. In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, the US and its allies in the media made every effort to blame the Russians who were repeatedly cited as a likely culprit. Leaks from the White House and from the British government never established a clear explanation of why Moscow would be into self-sabotage of a lucrative business arrangement. A few months later, when it was revealed that Russian authorities had been quietly getting estimates for the cost to repair the Nord Streams, in the neighborhood of $10 billion, the New York Times seemingly cluelessly described the development as “complicating theories about who was behind” the sabotage.

Indeed, it was never clear why Russia would seek to destroy its own valuable pipeline which was intended to be a major income source for many years to come, a proposition that former British diplomat Craig Murray describes as “deranged.” But a more telling rationale for the President’s action came from Secretary of State Blinken. Asked at a press conference in September about the consequences of the worsening global energy crisis, most felt in Western Europe, a delusional Blinken described the development in positive terms, enthusing how the destruction would “take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”

The tale told by Sy Hersh is yet another great betrayal by the country’s so-called leadership, an egregious example of the United States government aided by its lap-dog media again lying to its own citizens and the world to cover-up a criminal act that in no way made Americans safer or more prosperous. In the US, the gadfly Tucker Carlson, among prominent journalists, has up to this point dared to present the investigative account developed by Hersh in a five-minute segment of his program. Newsweek has also run a piece examining the issues raised featuring Constitutional lawyer John Yoo. More interesting perhaps, a half hour interview of Hersh by Amy Goodman on PBS television’s Democracy Now! aired last week but then was partially blocked because YouTube considered it to be “inappropriate or offensive.” The full availability of the Seymour Hersh interview video has since that time been restored with the Democracy Now! channel providing the following explanatory message: “UPDATE: We have blurred some imagery about 30 seconds into the video in response to a content warning from YouTube that severely limited the reach of this interview. What you see now is an edited version. For the uncensored version of this interview that aired on our show, visit democracynow.org.”

Beyond that exposure, there remain, nevertheless, a lot of questions about the destruction of Nord Stream, which was unambiguously an act of war or even terrorism, that continue to be unanswered. Consider, for example, how NATO countries, the US and Norway, de facto attacked fellow NATO country Germany, which was both the intended recipient and an economic partner in the pipelines. Though some British involvement in the operation, also detected by Russian intelligence, was quickly revealed publicly by then-British Prime Minister Elizabeth Truss’s “It’s done” text to Secretary of State Antony Blinken sixty seconds after the detonation. Berlin apparently was not trusted enough to have a voice in the planning and execution of the bombing even though it was gravely damaged by it. Also, Article 5 of the NATO charter says an attack on one nation requires all other alliance members to aid the country that was targeted and it is intriguing to consider whether the rest of NATO ought to go to war with the United States and Norway. Alternatively, can “friends” in the defensive alliance attack each other without consequences or ought the US and Norway now be considered rogue nations? Will the alliance itself be able to stay together if several member states take steps unilaterally that can severely damage the economy of another member? And how are the Germans actually responding to their sinking economy and standards of living, with closing factories and cold houses as a consequence of the US/Norwegian action?

Americans, for their part, should also be thinking deeply about the government we have and the lack of restraint with which it behaves. The framers of the Constitution gave only to Congress the power to declare war, perhaps imagining that at some future date the president might stoop to using the military and naval forces of the United States globally to punish and coerce other nations, seize their territory, and kill their people. And it is all justified by something called “exceptionalism” empowering a massive sustained deception that waging continuous war is actually keeping the peace in a “rules based international order.”

But the final, and biggest, question remains: How will Russia retaliate to Nord Stream? Will it be one step closer to possible nuclear war initiated by Joe Biden’s reckless move or will the Kremlin persist with its request to have the United Nations Security Council investigate the incident? Moscow will certainly be careful to pick the right time and place, but the last act in this play surely remains to be written.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

February 21, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Putin Announces Suspension of New START Treaty, Orders New Strategic Systems Be Put on Combat Duty

Sputnik – 21.02.2023

Russia will be suspending its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction (New START) Treaty, President Vladimir Putin has announced.

The Russian president made the announcement during the course of a major annual address to lawmakers on Tuesday that focused on the security crisis in Ukraine and the broader global tensions between the West and Russia.

“They [the West] seek to inflict a strategic defeat on us and to creep onto our nuclear sites. In connection with this, I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the New START Treaty. I repeat – not exiting from the treaty, but suspending its participation,” Putin said, speaking to gathered lawmakers in Moscow during his speech to the Federal Assembly.

Putin explained that “at the start of February, the North Atlantic Alliance made a statement factually demanding that Russia ‘return to the implementation of the strategic offensive arms treaty,’ including the admission of inspections to our nuclear and defense facilities.”

“I don’t even know what to call this – some kind of theater of the absurd. We know that the West is involved directly in attempts of the Kiev regime to strike the bases of our strategic aviation,” Putin said, pointing to recent Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s Engels Air Base, home to part of the airborne contingent of Russia’s nuclear triad.

The drones used in these attacks were “equipped and modernized with the assistance of NATO specialists,” Putin said. “And now they want to inspect our defense facilities. In the current conditions and today’s confrontation, this simply sounds like some kind of nonsense.”

“A week ago, I signed a decree putting new ground-based strategic weapons systems on combat duty. Are they going to stick their nose in there too?” Putin asked.

The Russian president suggested that NATO’s collective statement essentially amounted to an application to join the New START Treaty, and said Moscow would only welcome such a move.

“We agree, please go ahead. Furthermore, we think that such a formulation of the issue is long overdue. After all, NATO contains not just one nuclear power – the USA. Britain and France also have nuclear arsenals, which are being developed and improved, and which are also directed against us, against Russia,” Putin said.

Slamming the US and NATO over the “hypocrisy” of their demands, Putin recalled how the Western bloc has attempted to assure Moscow that “there is no connection between issues related to strategic offensive arms and, say, the conflict in Ukraine, or other hostile actions against our country,” while at the same time seeking to “defeat” Russia militarily.

“This is either the height of hypocrisy and cynicism, or the height of stupidity. You can’t call them idiots, they are not stupid people: they want to inflict a strategic defeat on us,” the president said.

What is New START and Why Is It Important?

The New START Treaty is the last major strategic arms limitation agreement between the nuclear superpowers – Russia and the United States. The agreement, drafted in 2009 and signed by then-Russian and US Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama in Prague, Czech Republic in 2010, limits the two countries’ deployed arsenals of strategic weapons and nuke stockpiles, and features a series of measures aimed at increased transparency and trust, including the broadcast of telemetry data, limits to missile testing activities, and the exchange of other information.

The Trump administration threatened to let the clock run out on New START in late 2020 after withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty – a late Cold War-era pact which eliminated Soviet and US ground-based nuclear missiles in the 500-5,500 km range, in 2019. The Biden administration agreed to renew New START for five years in early 2021. Pentagon planners have repeatedly criticized the strategic treaty for its failure to account for the nuclear arsenal of China. Beijing has said that it would be happy to sign a nuclear agreement with Washington if the US reduced the size of its nuclear arsenal to China’s level.

The post-Cold War strategic security order began to be dismantled in late 2001, when the George W. Bush administration announced that it would scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty – a landmark 1972 agreement designed to limit anti-missile defenses and thus reduce the danger of a global nuclear war. Washington quit the treaty despite proposals by Moscow at the time to establish a joint missile defense system in the Caucasus to eliminate any threats posed to the US or Europe.

February 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia suspends last nuclear treaty with US

RT | February 21, 2023

Moscow is suspending its participation in the last remaining nuclear treaty between Russia and the US, President Vladimir Putin has announced. During his key address to the Russian parliament on Tuesday, he noted that Moscow will not exit the New START Treaty, but is temporarily withdrawing.

Explaining the decision, Putin stated that the agreement was initially drawn up under completely different circumstances, when Russia and the US did not perceive each other as adversaries. Now, however, according to the president, not only is the US issuing ultimatums to Russia, but NATO itself has essentially made an application to become part of the treaty as well.

The bloc members are now demanding an inspection of Russia’s strategic facilities, Putin said, noting that Moscow’s requests to inspect Western nuclear facilities under the treaty are systematically denied with only formal explanations for the rejection.

Putin noted that the US has continued to insist on maintaining hegemony, while its NATO partners openly admit that they want to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.

“Russia cannot ignore this. We cannot allow ourselves to ignore this,” he said.

Before we return to discussing this agreement, we must understand for ourselves what the intentions of countries like France and the UK are and how we will consider their strategic arsenals as well, which is the cumulative striking potential of NATO.

The New START Treaty was originally signed in 2010 by then-Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, and aimed to cut in half the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers deployed around the world. Under the treaty, both countries were supposed to allow the other side a limited number of inspections per year to verify compliance with the agreement. Unless extended, the treaty was set to expire in 2026.

February 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Visit To Kiev Is “Copium” To Distract The West From Disadvantageous Developments

By Andrew Korybko | February 20, 2023

The whole reason why the Mainstream Media and allied accounts on social media are overdosing on this cheap “copium” is because they know very well that tougher days are ahead for their side considering NATO’s military-industrial crisis, the sanctions’ failure, and Russia’s likely capture of Artyomovsk/“Bakhmut”. Kiev’s supporters urgently need a proverbial shot in the arm to keep their morale alive amidst the series of impending setbacks that are poised to afflict the Golden Billion’s proxies in the coming future.

The term “copium” refers to an artificially manufactured narrative aimed at distracting a targeted audience from a disadvantageous development by convincing them that “everything is going according to plan”, which is why it’s a fitting description of the purpose behind Biden’s surprise visit to Kiev. His trip occurred against the context of the NATO chief finally admitting his bloc’s military-industrial crisis that risks depriving its Ukrainian vassals of the armed support they need to continue this proxy war.

Just the day before Biden arrived, Zelensky disclosed in an interview with Italian media that his forces might abandon Artyomovsk/“Bakhmut” if their casualties continue to climb, which represents a decisive reversal of the “official narrative” hitherto claiming that they’ll cling to it no matter the cost. On the topic of decisive narrative shifts, American and Polish officials spent the past month informing everyone that Kiev’s victory is no longer “inevitable”, which was meant to prepare them for impending setbacks.

Between the initiation of that newfound narrative trend and Biden’s trip, the New York Times reported that the West’s anti-Russian sanctions failed, after which Bloomberg proved that India had been working as the middleman for indirectly facilitating Russia’s oil exports to the West. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s two practically back-to-back trips to Africa in recent weeks also confirmed that his country is far from isolated since it enjoys that geostrategic continent’s support.

The sequence of events that began at the start of this year were obviously disadvantageous for the US-led West’s Golden Billion since they discredited everything that this de facto New Cold War bloc’s perception managers had claimed up until that point. Russia continues gradually gaining ground in Donbass, neither its economy nor military collapsed under sanctions, and the global systemic transition to multipolarity has only accelerated since the start of its special operation a year ago.

It therefore makes perfect sense why the US was so desperate for a distraction, hence Biden’s visit to Kiev, which is being spun by the Mainstream Media (MSM) as supposedly representing one of the most symbolic moments since Russia was forced to initiate the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict. Nothing of tangible significance was achieved during his trip, though, and the comparatively miniscule armed aid that he announced on Monday obviously didn’t require him to be there in person.

The whole reason why the MSM and allied accounts on social media are overdosing on this cheap “copium” is because they know very well that tougher days are ahead for their side considering NATO’s military-industrial crisis, the sanctions’ failure, and Russia’s likely capture of Artyomovsk/“Bakhmut”. Kiev’s supporters urgently need a proverbial shot in the arm to keep their morale alive amidst the series of impending setbacks that are poised to afflict the Golden Billion’s proxies in the coming future.

The last thing that this de facto New Cold War bloc’s liberal-globalist elite needs is the masses losing hope in this post-modern crusade lest public pressure build to the point of complicating some NATO countries’ further dispatch of armed assistance to Kiev at the expense of their minimum security needs. The chain reaction of disadvantageous developments that was described in the present analysis and everything else that might thus follow if that unfolds could end up being a game-changer in this conflict.

The military-strategic dynamics are trending in Russia’s favor at this pivotal moment in the conflict, and even the economic ones too after the New York Times reported that the West’s sanctions failed, so there’s never been a more urgent time for a “copium” binge than now. Biden’s visit to Kiev won’t change the aforesaid, but it might very well succeed in temporarily distracting the Western masses from all this long enough for their elites to weaponize a new set of infowar narratives against them.

February 20, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Munich Conference signals Western isolation, advent of multipolarity

By Drago Bosnic | February 20, 2023

Although it has been only 16 years since President Putin’s historical speech at the 2007 Munich Conference, that event now seems like a distant past of a long-lost world. Back then, Russia was warning the political West that further NATO aggression would inevitably lead to the revival of the Cold War.

However, Washington DC and Brussels seem to have wanted exactly that. The political West has tried to present the 2023 Munich Security Conference as some sort of a groundbreaking global event that “sent a strong signal” and showed “just how isolated” Russia is. However, nothing could be further from the truth, given the comments of some of the most prominent participants, including NATO and EU member states.

For instance, during a Saturday meeting with US State Secretary Anthony Blinken, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that Beijing finds Washington DC’s attempts to threaten Sino-Russian relations completely unacceptable, emphasizing that the relationship between the two superpowers is their sovereign right and that it is not aimed against any third party.

“We will never accept the instructions of the United States and even threats to put pressure on Russian-Chinese relations,” Wang was quoted as saying in a statement published on Sunday by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. “The Sino-Russian relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation are based on non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting against third parties. They are within the framework of the sovereignty of two independent states,” he added.

The comments were made in response to US accusations that China will “increase its support for Russia”. Wang also warned his American counterpart against the continued melodramatic reaction to the “balloon controversy”, which the US has been (ab)using lately to ensure detente between the two countries is virtually impossible. Beijing said that American high-altitude balloons have illegally entered China’s airspace many times over the last several decades, but the government chose not to cause panic and simply used existing diplomatic channels to communicate with their US counterparts.

“If the US continues to use this as an excuse, to promote further escalation and aggravate the situation, then China will definitely go to the very end. All the consequences of this will be borne by the American side,” Wang said.

China also called on the US to stop escalating the Ukrainian crisis and start promoting a peaceful settlement. Wang said that “Washington DC should stop adding fuel to the fire”. He noted that China’s position is constructive and called for the negotiation process to continue.

“Being a great power, the United States should contribute to the political settlement of the crisis, and not add fuel to the fire and look for opportunities to extract its own benefits,” Wang was quoted as saying.

Hungary also called for the de-escalation of the crisis and insisted on maintaining economic relations with Russia. During the traditional annual address to his fellow citizens, Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated that “the only way for Hungary to live peacefully is to stay out of the conflict, as it is not our war”.

“We will maintain our economic relations with Russia, and we advise the entire Western world to do the same, because without relations there will be no ceasefire or peace talks,” Orban said.

On the other hand, the European Union is doing exactly the opposite. The bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrel called Russia “an existential threat” and urged all member states not to continue supporting the Kiev regime, but “help more”. He also insisted that “the EU should start an industrial techno-blitzkrieg to produce more weapons“, effectively nullifying the claim that the bloc was an economic union. Borrel added that member states will spend an additional €70 billion on defense by 2025.

“In the next two years, the EU countries intend to spend an additional €70 billion on defense. France will increase defense spending by 40%, while Poland will double it,” he stated.

Interestingly, India was also targeted. George Soros, a controversial oligarch infamous for providing financial backing for various groups responsible for destabilization and undermining of countries the political West sees as “uncooperative”, stated the following:

“India is an interesting case. It’s a democracy, but its leader Narendra Modi is no democrat. Inciting violence against Muslims was an important factor in his meteoric rise. Modi maintains close relations with both open and closed societies. India is a member of the Quad (which also includes Australia, the US, and Japan), but it buys a lot of Russian oil at a steep discount and makes a lot of money on it. […]

Modi and business tycoon Adani are close allies; their fate is intertwined. Adani Enterprises tried to raise funds in the stock market, but he failed. Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards. Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in parliament. This will significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government and open the door to push for much-needed institutional reforms. I may be naive, but I expect a democratic revival in India.”

In response to the accusations, India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar brushed Soros off and (quite accurately) described him as “old, rich, opinionated and dangerous”. Considering Soros has a history of Nazi collaboration, it can be argued that his attack could even be considered a compliment of sorts for Prime Minister Modi and India as a whole.

In essence, the Munich Conference not only failed to produce the desired results (Russia supposedly isolated), but it even strengthened the multipolar world, as neither India nor China proved malleable in any way, showing their sovereignty is untouched by the political West’s pressure. On the other hand, many Europeans are extremely unhappy by the EU’s militarization. According to varying estimates, the huge crowd of protesters in Munich numbered up to 50,000 people. In conclusion, while there are massive differences between Munich 2007 and Munich 2023, the latest conference is somewhat similar to the 1938 Munich Agreement between Nazi Germany and Western allies. Considering how that ended (along with any other invasion of Russia), the political West’s prospects against Moscow look rather grim, to say the least.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

February 20, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia UN envoy: West hell-bent on destroying Russia, inciting deep Russophobia

Press TV – February 19, 2023

Russian ambassador to the UN has accused the West of instigating “deep Russophobia” and having a determination to destroy his country, saying that, “We had no choice other than to defend our country — defend it from you, to defend our identity and our future.”

Vassily Nebenzia made the remarks at a meeting of the UN Security Council, saying that Russia had no other choice than war. “We had no choice other than to defend our country — defend it from you, to defend our identity and our future.”

Friday’s meeting in the council — the only international venue where Russia regularly faces Ukraine and its Western supporters — put a spotlight on the deep chasm between the warring parties as the conflict is moving into its second year with no end in sight.

In the meeting, US deputy ambassador, Richard Mills, accused Russia of failing to implement “a single commitment it made” in the Minsk agreements while the other signatories — France, Germany, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — “sought to implement them in good faith.”

France ambassador, De Riviere, claimed his country and Germany have worked “tirelessly” since 2015 to promote dialogue between parties, adding that the “difficulties encountered in implementing these agreements can never serve as justification or mitigating circumstances for Russia’s choice to end the dialogue with violence.”

In response, Nebenzia accused the Western nations, including France and Germany, of “holding back” on implementing the Minsk agreements brokered by the two countries to end the conflict between Ukraine and the separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk in the Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking industrial east that flared in April 2014 after Crimea joined Russia.

“You knew very well that the Minsk process for you is just a smoke screen, so as to rearm the Kiev regime and to prepare it for war against Russia in the name of your geopolitical interest,” Nebenzia said.

He further accused the West of “deep Russophobia,” and a “determination to destroy my country, using others if possible.”

The envoy added that the West has no desire to “build a European and Euro-Atlantic security system together with Russia [because] for you such a system can only be aimed against Russia.”

“We have no trust left in you and we are not capable of believing any promises you make – not as regards a non-expansion of NATO in the east, or your desire not to interfere in our internal affairs, or your determination to live in peace,” Nebenzia said.

“You have shown that it’s impossible to negotiate with you,” he said. “You’ve shown how treacherous you are by creating on our borders a neo-Nazi, neo-nationalist beehive and then stirring it up.”

The Minsk agreements were a complex series of measures negotiated by Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine in 2014-2015 in a bid to put an end to the armed conflict between the Kiev authorities and the breakaway region of Donbas.

Moscow repeatedly stated that Kiev was not fulfilling the deal by not granting self-government to the Russian-speaking region of Donbas. In February 2022, Russia began the “military operation” to defend the territory from Ukrainian troops.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted he never intended to implement the Minsk agreements. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel also recently acknowledged that Minsk deal was simply “an attempt to give Ukraine time” so that its army could get stronger.

The revelation was confirmed by former French President Francois Hollande, and Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who said the Minsk agreement had been nothing but a “diplomatic imitation.”

February 19, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Scott Ritter calls Hersh’s Nord Stream article “his most important work ever”

By Scott Ritter | February 17, 2023

In the Christian faith, God comes in the form of three persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Together, these three beings form the Trinity.

In a recent interview with the German writer Fabian Scheidler, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh discussed his bombshell article that appeared in his inaugural posting on Substack, “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline”.

When Scheidler thanked Hersh for his courageous reporting, the veteran reporter shot back, “What’s so courageous about telling the truth? We’re supposed to tell the truth!”

I’ve known Sy Hersh for coming on a quarter century. While I was too young to experience first-hand the impact of his reporting on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, I had a front row seat to the masterful job he did in bringing to light the horrible facts about what the United States was doing in the Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq.

Legendary status isn’t given—it is earned. And Sy Hersh has earned the absolute right to be called the GOAT when it comes to investigative journalism. He is, simply put, the best.

I’ve read nearly everything Sy Hersh has written, and am able to put his considerable journalistic output in its proper historical perspective. It is therefore that I feel very comfortable in concluding that, in terms of its potential for bringing about tectonic geopolitical change, Sy’s Nord Stream reporting is his most important work ever.

The GOAT has produced what I call the Trinity of Truth.

Truth One: The President of the United States, Joe Biden, by conspiring with members of his national security team to deliberately bypass constitutionally-mandated reporting requirements to Congress regarding acts of war undertaken by the United States, has committed an impeachable offense unmatched by any other president in the history of the United States.

Truth Two: The blow-back that will occur inside Germany to the revelations put forward by Seymour Hersh that the United States carried out an economic Pearl Harbor by destroying energy infrastructure critical to the well-being of the German nation has the potential of breaking up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), upending more than eighty years of post-war European security and stability, and resulting in the diminishment of the United States on the world stage as it becomes isolated from long-time European allies that served as the foundation of the global acceptance of the so-called “rules based international order” that has served as the means by which the United States exerted global hegemony.

Truth Three: The decision to attack the Nord Stream pipeline puts a lie to the US contention that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an unprovoked act of aggression, instead underscoring the harsh truth that the United States had a strategic plan which hinged on provoking a conflict with Russia in Ukraine to provide the geopolitical cover for ending Europe’s reliance upon cheap Russian natural gas by demonstrating that every time Russia sought a negotiated end to the crisis, whether before the invasion through implementation of the Minsk Accords, or after in the Istanbul round of talks scheduled for April 1, the United States sabotaged the effort, keeping the conflict alive long enough to implement its major objective—the destruction of Nord Stream.

In short, Sy Hersh, through his reporting, has exposed truths which have the potential of bringing down a presidency, destroying NATO, and proving Russia right in the eyes of the world.

Name one other piece of journalism in the past half-century that packs such a punch.

You can’t.

Sy Hersh is a national—no, an international—treasure, something this Trinity of Truth underscores.

Be sure to treat him as such.

February 18, 2023 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

After 15 years of ‘independence’, it is clear that Kosovo was a stepping stone for NATO’s imperial goals

Serbia’s breakaway province is an exercise in the ‘rules-based order’, where rules are made up for the convenience of Western powers

By Aleksandar Pavic | RT | February 17, 2023

On February 17, 2008, a group of US-backed “democratic leaders” headed by a former Western-sponsored terrorist declared the independence of Serbia’s breakaway province of Kosovo and Metohija (its full legal name under Serbia’s constitution).

It seemed oh so simple and straightforward at the zenith of the “unipolar moment,” and Kosovo Albanians were “confidently awaiting Western recognition for their state despite the anger its secession provoked in Serbia and Russia’s warnings of fresh Balkan unrest,” as a Reuters report drily noted.

Their confidence was more than justified, as 22 of 27 EU and 26 of 30 NATO member states eventually recognized this unilateral act of secession, pulling along many other smaller, mostly Western-dependent countries to follow suit. UN Security Council Resolution 1244, according to which the province is to remain an autonomous province of Serbia pending a mutually agreed final settlement, was ignored, just as the UN and international law were ignored in the spring of 1999, when NATO unilaterally engaged in a 78-day bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, under the familiar pretext of protecting “democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” This resulted in NATO’s military occupation of the province that lasts to this day.

The case of “independent Kosovo” is in many ways the perfect embodiment of the post-Cold War West’s “rules-based order.” In contrast to international law, which derives from the UN Charter and numerous universally accepted post-WWII treaties and agreements, the “rules-based order” is pretty much anything its propagators deem it to be in accordance with their political interests du jour. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov put it, these “rules” are “created from scratch for each particular case. They are written within a narrow circle of Western countries and palmed off as the ultimate truth.”

In the case of Kosovo and Metohija, the “rules” were to be tailored to the ambitions of the unipolar hegemon and its vassals. This formed the base of the collective West’s failed attempt to declare this instance sui generis, i.e., unique and incomparable to any other case, in order to prevent others from referring to it as a precedent – South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea, the Donbass, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, among others, begged to differ. And, no, the original goal of this unique “rule-setting” was not to protect “democracy, human rights and the rule of law” in Serbia’s historic province, which hosts not only the site of the legendary Battle of Kosovo of 1389, the only battle in which an Ottoman sultan was killed, but also hundreds of Serbian Orthodox medieval churches and monasteries. The true US interest was much bigger and less benevolent. And it was revealed in a document memory-holed by Western mainstream media, a May 2000 letter to then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder by Willy Wimmer, a member of the German Bundestag and vice president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE.

Wimmer’s letter contains a description of a security conference that he had attended in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava that was co-organized by the US State Department and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington-based think tank. A list of participants and the agenda could at one time be found on the AEI website but are no longer available at the time of writing. Almost all of the information available nowadays about it comes from Wimmer’s account. According to him, the conference not only exposed the true causes of NATO’s brutal attack on Yugoslavia and subsequent occupation of Kosovo and Metohija, but also the purpose behind NATO’s further enlargement toward the borders of Russia, and, most importantly from the aspect of global security, the US aim of undermining the international legal order as part of its drive for global domination. In essence, Wimmer’s report revealed the criminal plan that has brought the world to the brink of global, possibly nuclear, conflict.

According to senior US officials at the conference as cited by Wimmer, Yugoslavia was bombed “in order to rectify General Eisenhower’s erroneous decision during World War II,” when he failed to station US troops there. Naturally, as Wimmer recorded, no one at the conference disputed the claim that, having engaged in the bombing of a sovereign country, “NATO violated all international rules, and especially all the relevant provisions of international law.” Furthermore, NATO’s unilateral intervention outside its legal domain represented a deliberate “precedent, to be invoked by anyone at any time,” and “many others” in the future.

The ultimate imperial goals were clearly stated: “To restore the territorial situation in the area between the Baltic Sea and Anatolia such as existed during the Roman Empire, at the time of its greatest power and greatest territorial expansion. For this reason, Poland must be flanked to the north and to the south with democratic neighbor states, while Romania and Bulgaria are to secure a land connection with Turkey. Serbia (probably for the purposes of securing an unhindered US military presence) must be permanently excluded from European development. North of Poland, total control over St. Petersburg’s access to the Baltic Sea must be established. In all processes, peoples’ rights to self-determination should be favored over all other provisions or rules of international law.”

In short, the tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine today can be clearly traced back to NATO’s trampling of international law in the case of Kosovo and the “victorious” West’s building of a new (“rules-based”) order by expanding its military alliance all the way to Russia’s borders. If we were to apply the Nuremberg Principles of International Law formulated under UN General Assembly Resolution 177 on the basis of the post-WW II Nazi war crimes trials, NATO’s decision-makers would stand a very good chance of being found guilty of crimes against peace: “(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances,” and “(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).”

In other words, international law is inconvenient for today’s collective West not just for practical but for legal and moral reasons. Not to speak of the obvious historical parallels with a previous militaristic attempt at forming a “new order” that ended in a Berlin bunker after tens of millions of lives were extinguished. Wimmer’s (almost) forgotten correspondence is an indictment far deeper than the collective West’s current marriage of convenience with Kiev’s neo-Nazi element.

However, even as the Ukraine crisis continues to escalate, the new Battle of Kosovo is far from over. Because, 15 years on, the collective West still hasn’t been able to find a political accomplice in Belgrade ready to grant it retroactive amnesty by recognizing “independent Kosovo” and/or agreeing to its UN membership. That is why, even as they stubbornly press on with the latest Drang nach Osten on the military field, Western powers are also doubling down on their diplomatic pressure on Serbia, which not only refuses to formally recognize its own dismemberment but also to join the illegal sanctions against Russia. The latest ploy, informally called the Franco-German plan, is to try to force Serbia to recognize its province’s statehood in all but name, in return for foggy promises of financial aid and (distant) future EU membership. As a result, the current onslaught of Western diplomats on Belgrade is only slightly less intense than the parallel inflow of Western mercenaries to Kiev.

The problem for the collective West is that, despite its intense, decades-long pressure, substantial investment in the Serbian media and NGO sector, and threats of renewed international isolation, Serbian popular opinion remains stubbornly independent-minded. According to a recent report by the uber hawkish, London-based Henry Jackson Society, 53.3% of Serbian citizens wish their country to remain neutral in the Ukraine conflict (with a further 35.8% supporting an overtly pro-Russian stance), while 78.7% oppose sanctions against Russia and 54.1% think that Serbia should rely on Russia first when it comes to foreign policy (as opposed to 22.6% opting for reliance on the EU). Furthermore, the EU has definitely lost its luster, with 44.3% saying they would “definitely” or “probably” vote against EU membership (as opposed to 38.1% ready to vote for) if a referendum were to be held tomorrow. Finally, according to a recently released independent Serbian poll, 79.2% oppose EU membership as a “reward” for recognizing independence for Kosovo.

It can thus be argued that, much as Hitler’s march into the Rhineland broke the post-WW I world order, NATO’s unprovoked attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 was a deliberate move to destroy the post-Cold War order, while the Western-inspired declaration of Kosovo’s independence 15 years ago was an attempt to legitimize a new, “rules-based” order, which is now reaching its ugly culmination in Ukraine. And, taking the parallels a bit further, just as the attempted new order may meet its military Stalingrad in Ukraine, it might meet its diplomatic Stalingrad in Kosovo, well before the 20th anniversary of that occupied territory’s purported independence.

February 17, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Moldova’s “football plot” highlights ridiculousness of anti-Russia hysteria

By Ahmed Adel | February 17, 2023

By accusing Moscow of planning a coup d’état in Moldova, President Maia Sandu is trying to divert public attention from the economic crisis in the country whilst also ingratiating herself with the anti-Russia West. In fact, her accusations reached such ridiculous levels that supporters of football club Partizan Belgrade were implicated in the supposed plot to overthrow the current government and install a pro-Russian regime.

Sandu said that Russia is allegedly planning to use foreign saboteurs to topple her country’s leadership, stop its accession to the European Union and use it in the conflict against Ukraine.

“The plan included sabotage and militarily trained people disguised as civilians to carry out violent actions, attacks on government buildings and taking hostages,” she told reporters on February 13.

She added, without providing the evidence, that citizens of Russia, Montenegro, Belarus and Serbia would be among those entering Moldova to try to spark protests in an attempt to “change the legitimate government to an illegitimate government, controlled by the Russian Federation to stop the EU integration process.”

Fans of Serbian football club Partizan Belgrade were banned from travelling to watch their team play Sheriff Tiraspol on February 16 in the first leg of their Europa Conference League knockout play-off tie. In fact, the game was played behind closed doors due to the supposed fears of the coup.

The match had been relocated to the Moldovan capital of Chisinau from Tiraspol, the capital of the self-declared independent country of Transnistria, which is internationally recognised as part of Moldova but is overwhelmingly Russian and Ukrainian in its ethnic makeup. It is more than likely that Sandu reached ridiculous levels of accusations, even to the point of banning football fans, because the supporters of Partizan Belgrade and Sheriff Tiraspol were likely to make pro-Russian statements – something she did not want to be broadcasted to international audiences.

Sandu’s statement is also connected with the economic crisis in Moldova. The country is not experiencing economic growth and is not receiving cheap gas and oil from Russia. Effectively, Sandu is scaring the Moldovan people by making them believe that war is on their doorstep. This serves to distract them from their economic hardships.

It is recalled that at the beginning of her political career, Sandu talked about economic growth, fighting crime, and reducing corruption. However, the level of corruption has increased, inflation is hovering at about 30% and the country is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Rather than deal with these issues, the Moldovan president is trying to please the West by implicating Russia in another scheme. This will not only further deteriorate Chisinau’s relations with Russia, but justify a tightening of domestic and foreign policy against dissidents. Sandu in this way demonstrates that she is useful for Washington and Brussels as she is stamping out pro-Russian sentiment in an authoritarian manner.

Moldova has long lost its constitutionally “ensured” neutral status and now depends on the Americans and Europeans as she sees the future of her country in NATO. Moldova’s parliament approved pro-Western Prime Minister Dorin Recean and his proposed Cabinet in a confidence vote on February 16.

Sixty-two MPs, all from the Sandu-founded Action and Solidarity Party (PAS), voted in favour of appointing the new Cabinet. PAS holds 63 out of 101 seats in the Moldovan parliament, and therefore comfortably passed the new cabinet, especially as the parliamentary opposition did not vote. In this way, Moldova is now firmly in the Western bloc despite constitutionally being neutral and not even being a member of NATO or the EU.

It is recalled that Sandu previously stated that attacks are being prepared in Moldova with the aim of overthrowing the constitutional order of the country. At the time, she called on the parliament to expand the powers of the security services.

Previously, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when addressing the European Council, said that the Ukrainian intelligence services had intercepted Russia’s plan to overthrow the democratic order in Moldova and that the Ukrainian side informed the Moldovan leadership about it. In this light, Sandu asked Moldova’s parliament to adopt draconian draft laws to equip its Intelligence and Security Service, and the prosecutor’s office, “with the necessary tools to combat more effectively the risks” to the country’s security.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed Sandu’s claims on February 14 as “absolutely unfounded and unsubstantiated.”

“They are built in the spirit of classical techniques that are often used by the United States, other Western countries and Ukraine,” Zakharova said. “First, accusations are made with reference to purportedly classified intelligence information that cannot be verified, and then they are used to justify their own illegal actions.”

In this way, Sandu is making extremely desperate, but also humiliating justifications to introduce authoritarian laws to stamp out Russophilia in Moldova. To achieve this, she is also bulldozing Moldova’s neutral status, and it is all coming at a major economic cost.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

February 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

NATO’s Unsustainable Bluff

By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 16.02.2023

On November 16, 2022, the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, at the conclusion of the seventh session of the Ukraine Contact Group (UCG) tasked with identifying and fulfilling military support requirements for Ukraine in its ongoing conflict with Russia, issued a very pessimistic assessment of the situation on the ground.

Noting that, for the moment, “Russia right now is on its back,” Milley warned that the Russian decision to incorporate nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory into its own borders, combined with the then-ongoing mobilization of 300,000 reserves, meant the conflict would not end any time soon. “[T]he probability of a Ukrainian military victory, defined as kicking the Russians out of all of Ukraine, to include what they claim is Crimea… is not high, militarily,” Milley noted.

What a difference three months make.

On February 14, 2023, on the eve of a 10th meeting of the UCG, Mark Milley seemed to have a change of heart, telling reporters that Russia has “lost” in the Ukraine conflict. As it approaches the one-year mark, Joint Chiefs chairman gen. singling out Russian President Vladimir Putin, Milley declared that Putin “thought he could defeat Ukraine quickly, fracture the NATO alliance, and act with impunity. He was wrong,” Milley said, adding that Russia has paid an “enormous price on the battlefield” as a result.

The American military chief continued. “Russia is now a global pariah and the world remains inspired by Ukrainian bravery and resilience. In short, Russia has lost—they’ve lost strategically, operationally, and tactically.”

Milley might want to consult with specialists the next time he opts to opine on matters pertaining to the conflict in Ukraine. Far from a “global pariah,” Russian diplomats are being welcomed with open arms in geopolitically vital regions of the world, such as Africa. This strong diplomatic showing, when combined with a strong Russian economy, which the International Monetary Fund expects to expand 0.3% in 2023 and 2.1% in 2024, despite stringent US and European-backed economic sanctions, points to a strategic victory by Russia.

As for Milley’s assessments regarding the state of play operationally and tactically, he would do well to heed recent comments by US Army General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, to a Swedish defense conference this past January. Cavoli noted that both the scale and intensity of the combat ongoing in Ukraine made it clear that the NATO alliance was not prepared to fight a large-scale ground war in Europe.

“The magnitude of this war is incredible,” Cavoli said. “If we average out since the beginning of the war, the slow days and fast days, the Russians have expended on average well over 20,000 artillery rounds per day. The scale of this war is out of proportion with all of our recent thinking,” Cavoli noted, adding, “it is real, and we must contend with it.”

Cavoli’s emphasis on artillery is critical in parsing out Milley’s assertions that Ukraine had the upper hand operationally and tactically, given the major role played by artillery in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. While the intent of the 10th gathering of the UCG, convened on February 14, Saint Valentine’s Day, was to focus on the provision of high-value items to Ukraine, such as tanks and aircraft, the conference quickly diverted into the realm of reality, where the critical shortage of artillery ammunition arose as the primary problem facing Ukraine. While the United States had already delivered more than one million 155mm artillery shells to the Ukrainian Army, the scale of the fighting alluded to by General Cavoli means that Ukraine is firing off in a single day the total number of shells the US can produce in a month. At this rate, Ukraine is expected to run out of ammunition by the end of the summer.

Pro-hint to General Milley—if your opponent is firing many times the amount of artillery as you are, and you run out of ammunition, the operational and tactical advantage belongs to them, not you.

And while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s recognition that Ukraine and NATO were facing an existential crisis when it came to artillery ammunition, there was no ready solution on the horizon the rectify the problem, especially in a time frame that would alter the dire logistical reality that come this summer, the Ukrainian Army will lose the ability to resist the Russian Army.

Two decades of singular focus on low-intensity combat in Iraq and Afghanistan has atrophied both US and European production lines for artillery ammunition. It would take years to start up new production lines, and even then, the private defense industries involved would be loath to do so without long-term contracts which, given the moment-by-moment aspect of NATO aid to Ukraine, is not forthcoming.

Meanwhile, Russia’s defense industry is chugging along on all cylinders, not only producing ammunition in sufficient quantities to meet its prodigious expenditure rates in Ukraine, but also build stocks sufficient to supply an expanding Russian military, expected to grow to over 1.5 million in the next several years.

Russia, unlike Ukraine, isn’t running out of ammunition any time soon, a fact which, in a war defined by artillery firepower, means it holds the operational and tactical edge over their Ukrainian opponents.

The issue is larger than simply the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. As General Cavoli alluded, not only has NATO stripped away its existing stockpile of artillery ammunition, it lacks the industrial capacity to replenish these stocks in the foreseeable future. According to former NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General Jamie Shea, the trans-Atlantic alliance has “largely used up the available stocks” in supplying Ukraine, and now must focus on replenishing its own depleted stocks before the issue of meeting Ukraine’s urgent demands can be addressed.

Ukraine rolled into the Saint Valentine’s Day meeting with high expectations, dreaming of tanks and fighter aircraft. Instead, it left a jilted lover, told by its NATO allies that the well has literally run dry.

And if this situation holds for the next several months, General Milley might have to eat his words, since Russia is apparently on the course to achieve a decisive strategic, operational, and tactical military victory over Ukraine and its NATO sponsors.

February 16, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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