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Necessary Illusions – Even the narrative of the EU as a geo-strategic player has now burst

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 5, 2022

Something odd is afoot in Europe. Britain recently has been ‘regime washed’, with a strongly pro-EU Finance Minister (Hunt) paving the passage to an election-free premiership by ‘globalist’ Rishi Sunak. Why so? Well, to impose swingeing cuts to public services, to normalise immigration running at 500,000 per annum and to raise taxes to the highest levels since the 1940s. And to open channels about a new relationship deal with Brussels.

A British Tory Party is content to do that? Slash social support and hike taxes into an already existent worldwide recession? On the face of it, it doesn’t seem to make sense. Shades of Greece 2008? Greek austerity for Britain — are we missing something? Is this setting the scene for the Remainer Establishment to point to an economy in crisis (blamed on Brexit failure), and to say there is no alternative (TINA) but a return to the EU in some form, (British ‘cap in hand’, and with head bowed)?

Simply put, forces behind the scenes seem to want the UK to resume its former role as US plenipotentiary inside Brussels — pushing the US primacy agenda (as Europe sinks into self-doubt).

Likewise odd — and significant – was that on 15 September, former German Chancellor Schroeder entered unannounced into Scholtz’s office where only the Chancellor, and Vice-Chancellor, Robert Habeck, were present. Schroeder slapped down a long-term gas supply proposal by Gazprom on the desk, directly under Scholtz’s eyes.

The Chancellor and his predecessor held each other’s gaze for a minute – without a word passing. Then Schroeder reached out, took back the unread document, turned his back and exited the office. Nothing was said.

On 26 September (11 days later), the Nordstream pipeline was sabotaged. Surprise (yes, or no)?

Many unanswered questions. The upshot: No gas for Germany. One Nordstream train (2B) however, survived the sabotage and remains pressurised and functional. Yet still no gas arrives in Germany (other than high price liquified gas). There are presently no EU sanctions on gas from Russia. Landing the Nordstream gas requires only a Regulatory go-ahead.

So then: Europe is to have austerity, loss of competitiveness, price and tax hikes? Yes — yet Scholtz did not even glance at the gas offer.

The Green Party of Habeck and Baerbock (and the EU Commission) is in close alignment with those in the Biden team insisting to maintain US hegemony, at all costs. This Euro-coalition is explicitly and viscerally malefic towards Russia; and in contrast, is as viscerally indulgent towards Ukraine.

The big picture? German Foreign Minister Baerbock in a speech in New York on 2 August 2022 sketched out a vision of a world dominated by the US and Germany. In 1989, George Bush famously had offered Germany a “partnership in leadership”, Baerbock claimed. “Now the moment has come when we have to create it: A joint partnership in leadership”. A German bid for explicit EU primacy, snaring US support. (The Anglos will not like that!)

Ensuring no backsliding on Russia sanctions and continuing EU financial support for the Ukraine war is a clear ‘Red Line’ for precisely those in the Biden team likely to be attentive to Baerbock’s Atlanticist bid — and who understand that Ukraine is the spider at the centre of a web. The Greens explicitly are playing this.

Why? Because Ukraine is still the global ‘pivot’: Geopolitics; geo-economics; commodity and energy supply chains — all revolve around where this Ukraine pivot finally settles. A Russian success in Ukraine would bring a new political bloc and monetary system into being, through its allies in the BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union.

Is this European austerity binge then just about the German Green Party nailing down EU Russophobia? Or are Washington and its Atlanticist allies now prepping for something more? Prepping for China to get the ‘Russia treatment’ from Europe?

Earlier this week at Mansion House, PM Sunak changed gear. He ‘hat-tipped’ to Washington with the promise to stand by Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’, yet his primary foreign policy focus was firmly on China. The old ‘golden’ era of Sino-British relations ‘is over’: “The authoritarian regime [of China] poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests”, he said — citing the suppression of anti-zero-COVID protests and the arrest and beating of a BBC journalist on Sunday.

Over in the EU — belatedly panicking over unfolding widespread de-industrialisation — President Macron has been signalling that the EU might take a more hard-line China stance, though only were the US were to back-down on the subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, which entice EU companies to up-anchor, and sail off to America.

Yet, Macron’s ‘play’ is likely to meet a dead end, or at best, a cosmetic gesture — for the Act has already been legislated in the US. And the Brussels political class unsurprisingly already is waving the white flag: Europe has lost Russian energy and now stands to lose China’s tech, finance and market. It’s a ‘triple whammy’ — when taken together with European de-industrialisation.

There you have it — austerity is always the first tool in the US toolbox for exerting political pressure on US proxies: Washington is prepping the EU ruling élites to sever from China as fundamentally Europe has already done from Russia. Europe’s largest economies already are taking a harder line on Beijing. Washington will squeeze the UK and EU ‘til the pips squeak to get full compliance on a China cut-off.

The protests in China over Covid regulations could not have arrived at a more serendipitous time from the US’ ‘China hawks’ perspective: Washington whipped the EU into full propaganda mode on Iranian ‘demonstrations’ — and now the China protests offer the opportunity for Washington to go full court on China demonisation:

The ‘line’ used against Russia (Putin makes mistake after mistake; the system bumbles; the Russian economy is precariously perched on a knife edge and popular disaffection is soaring) – will be ‘cut and pasted’ to Xi and China.

Only, the inevitable EU moral lecturing will antagonise China even further: Hopes to keep a trade foothold in China will vanish, and effectively it will be China ‘washing its hands’ of Europe, rather than vice versa. European leaders have this blind spot — quite some Chinese may deplore the Covid lockdown practice, yet still will remain deeply Chinese and nationalist in sentiment. They will hate EU lecturing: ‘European values speak only for themselves — we have our own’.

Obviously, Europe has dug itself into a deep hole. Its adversaries grow bitter at EU moralising. But what exactly is going on?

Well, firstly, the EU is hugely over-invested in its Ukraine narrative. It seems incapable of reading the direction of travel that events in the war zone are taking. Or, if it does read it correctly (of which there is little sign), it appears incapable of being able to affect a course correction.

Recall that the war at the outset was never seen by Washington as likely ‘being decisive’. The military aspect was viewed as an adjunct — a pressure multiplier — to the political crisis in Moscow that sanctions were expected to unleash. The early concept was that financial war represented the front line — and the military conflict, the secondary front of attack.

It was only with the unexpected shock of sanctions not achieving ‘shock and awe’ in Moscow that priority switched from the financial to the military arena. The reason the ‘military’ was not firstly seen as ‘front-line’ was because Russia clearly had the potential for escalatory dominance (a factor which is now so evident).

So, here we are: The West has been humiliated in the financial war, and unless something changes (ie. dramatic escalation by the US) – it will lose militarily too — with the distinct possibility that Ukraine at some point, simply implodes as a state.

The actual situation on the battlefield today is almost completely at odds with the narrative. Yet, so heavily has the EU invested in its Ukraine narrative that it just doubles-down, rather than draw back, to re-assess the true situation.

And so doing — by doubling-down narratively, (standing by Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’) — the strategic content to the ‘Ukraine’ pivot rotates 180 degrees: Rump ‘Ukraine’ will not be ‘Russia’s Afghan quagmire’. Rather, its’ rump is morphing into Europe’s long-term financial and military ‘quagmire’.

‘As long as it takes’ gives the conflict an indeterminate horizon — yet leaves Russia in control of the timetable. And ‘as long as it takes’ implies ever more exposure to NATO blind spots. The rest-of-world intelligence services will have observed NATO’s air defence and military-industrial lacunae. The pivot will show who is the true ‘paper tiger’.

‘As long as it takes’ — has the EU thought this through?

If Brussels imagines too, that such dogged adherence to narrative will impress the rest-of-the-world and bind these other states closer to the EU ‘ideal’, they will be wrong. Already there is a wide hostility to the notion that Europe’s ‘values’ or squabbles have any wider pertinence, beyond Europe’s borders. ‘Others’ will see the inflexibility as some bizarre compulsion by Europe to self-suicide – at the very moment that the end of ‘everything bubble’ already threatens a major downturn.

Why would Europe double-down on its ‘Ukraine’ project, at the expense of losing its standing abroad?

Perhaps, because the EU political class fears even more losing its domestic narrative. It needs to distract from that — it is a tactic called ‘survival’.

The EU, as with NATO, was always a US political project for the subjugation of Europe. It still is that.

Yet, the meta-EU narrative — for internal EU purposes — posits something diametrically different: that Europe is a strategic player; a political power in its own right; a market colossus, a monopsony with the power to impose its will over whomsoever trades with it.

Simply put, the EU narrative is that it has meaningful political agency. But Washington has just demonstrated it has none. It has trashed that narrative. So, Europe is destined to become an economic backwater. It has ‘lost’ Russia — and soon China. And is finding it has lost its standing in the world, too.

Again, the actual situation on the geo-political ‘battlefield’ is almost completely at odds with the EU narrative of itself as a geo-strategic player.

Its ‘friend’, the Biden Administration, is gone — whilst powerful enemies elsewhere accumulate. The EU political class never had a good grasp of its limitations — it was ‘heresy’ even to suggest there were limitations to EU power. Consequently, the EU has hugely overinvested in this narrative of its agency too.

Hanging EU flags from every official building will not cast a fig leaf over the nakedness, nor hide the disconnect between the Brussels ‘bubble’ and its deprecated European proletariat. French politicians now openly ask what can save Europe from complete vassalage. Good question. What does one do when a hyper-inflated power narrative bursts, at the same time as a financialised one?

December 6, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

OSCE nothing more than a branch of NATO

By Ahmed Adel | December 2, 2022

The West is attempting to turn the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) into a subsidiary organisation of NATO, which is paradoxical because it is meant to be concentrated on peacebuilding, unlike the Atlantic Alliance which fosters tensions to justify its existence in a post-Soviet world. It is for this reason, among others, why Poland refused to grant a visa to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, thus barring him from attending the OSCE meeting held on December 1 and 2 in Lodz.

Poland claims it refused to grant Lavrov a visa because he is on the list of people who have been sanctioned. However, this does not explain why many from the Russian delegation were also denied visas despite not being on a sanctions list.

This weak excuse is to justify Warsaw’s consistent policy of provocation against Moscow, especially in the context of the current war in Ukraine. Poland and the West are hoping that by humiliating Russia, the country will withdraw from the OSCE. The West are desperate for Russia to withdraw so as to be able to implement and impose whatever it wants on the OSCE.

It is recalled that Moscow very effectively blocked the 2022 OSCE budget. Without a Russian withdrawal, the West will not be able to put the OSCE under its complete control, something that should be avoided as it would undermine the very foundation of the organisation – serving as a platform where Western and Eastern Europe could discuss and resolve issues.

Rather, the OSCE today has turned into a political tool of the West and effectively has no meaning or role anymore. With the OSCE descending into childlike behaviour by barring Russian delegates and top diplomats, it does seem that the organisation has become redundant as it is appearing more like a Euro-focussed political wing of NATO.

The OSCE meeting in Poland was essentially a two-day event for speakers to bash Russia.

None-the-less, Moscow is unlikely to be deterred by these provocations and will remain committed to its responsibilities as an OSCE member. This is likely to ensure that paths of reconciliation are always open despite Western attempts to close them.

The Kremlin might also believe that the OSCE’s uptick in provocations is because Poland is the current chairman. Russian policymakers might also believe that tensions will relax when North Macedonia takes over the chairmanship in 2023. It could be for this reason that Lavrov called out Poland by highlighting that its “anti-chairmanship” was taking the OSCE to its “most miserable place ever in this organisation’s history.”

It can be argued though that the OSCE has always been geopolitically against Moscow. It is recalled that the American establishment boasted that they had inserted a Trojan horse into the Eastern Bloc with the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975, the roots of today’s OSCE.

The Helsinki Accords stresses the respect for human rights and equal rights, a result of Western insistence because the Soviets were instead mostly interested in finalising Germany’s borders. The West is not interested in human rights though, and rather their main interest is ideological, economic and military hegemony all over the world, with human rights only being weaponised as one vehicle of achieving this goal.

Effectively, it can be argued that the OSCE was born as a trap for Moscow. When “security”, “cooperation” and “Europe” are in the name of the OSCE but it turns into an organisation completely dominated by promoting US interests, the argument is made that the organisation now resembles something like a branch of NATO.

Playing its own role in serving Western interests, Ukraine continues to call for Russia to be kicked out of the OSCE entirely, with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba claiming in a tweet that the “OSCE is on a highway to hell because Russia abuses its rules and principles.”

“Everything has been tried in regards to Russia: to please, to appease, to be nice, to be neutral, to engage, not to call a spade a spade. The bottom line: It would be better for OSCE to carry on without Russia,” he added.

However, this is once again an example of Kiev’s classic projection of portraying their own illiberal values as that of Russia. In fact, it is Europe’s own unwillingness to “call a spade a spade,” such as whitewashing Ukraine’s fascistic policies and pretending it was a Western-styled liberal country, which ultimately led to war.

Proving that the OSCE is now nothing more than a branch of NATO, US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said, when speaking in Lodz, that Russia had “failed demonstrably to break the OSCE.”

If the OSCE is anything other than a branch of NATO, it must be questioned why the US Under Secretary of State was an honoured guest at a Europe-focussed and Europe-based organisation, which was initially established to connect Western and Eastern Europe together, while Russia’s top diplomat and other officials were barred.

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

December 2, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

US troops are combat ready on Russian border – Lithuanian commander

RT | December 2, 2022

The US forces stationed in Lithuania have switched their stance from deterrence of Russia to combat readiness, Lithuanian Chief of Defense Lieutenant General Valdemaras Rupsys has said. The country shares a border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea, as well as with Belarus and Latvia.

“The main factor used to be deterrence, the demonstration that they were here and could increase our forces at any time,” Rupsys told radio LRT on Friday.

“And now the situation has changed: those units are being deployed so that they can fight immediately. It’s a seamless … transition from one mode to another.”

“At least until 2025, we will have rotating US units that will carry out military training and serve as a factor of deterrence, but also will be ready to carry out defensive actions together with us and other allies,” he added.

The chief of defense said on Wednesday that he had been assured by the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley that American troops would have “a persistent presence in Lithuania.”

Battalion-sized US units with around 500 troops, Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles have been stationed on a rotation basis in the eastern Lithuanian city of Pabrade since 2019. NATO also maintains a German-led multinational unit in the country.

The US-led bloc announced the enhancement of its military capabilities in response to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, which began in February. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in June that the alliance’s rapid-response force would grow from around 40,000 to over 300,000.

Moscow has repeatedly stated that it considers NATO troops near its borders a national security threat. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that the bloc’s actions signify its return to “conceptual priorities” adopted during the Cold War.

December 2, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Attacks in Spain: another anti-Russian false flag?

By Lucas Leiroz | December 2, 2022

In Spain, attacks are taking place with explosives placed in postal service’s packages. On December 1st, the Spanish Ministry of Defense reported an incident of this type at its facilities. The Prime Minister of Spain also received a package containing a bomb, as did an air force base and some other locations. Previously, the same situation had already happened at the Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid. On the internet, pro-Kiev netizens baselessly accuse Russia of being behind the acts. However, it seems more likely that the cases are just another false flag operation against Moscow.

The office of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the headquarters of the country’s Ministry of Defense and the Torrejón de Ardoz air base in Madrid received via postal service packages with bombs on the first day of December. All bombs were detected before they were opened, and there were no injuries or damage, according to spokespersons for the Spanish government. But the Spanish national police activated the anti-terrorist protocol across the country in light of the attacks. This alert authorizes police and bomb squads to carry out special operations to block roads and airports in order to search explosives and arrest suspicious people.

Another place of strategic importance that was targeted with an explosive envelope on December 1st was the headquarters of an arms company in Zaragoza, in the west of the country. Instalaza is a Spanish military company involved in the manufacture of equipment for the Spanish armed forces and NATO allied countries. The company is therefore currently involved in the process of sending weapons to Ukraine.

Interestingly, the incidents took place a day after another box also containing explosives was sent to the Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid. An employee of the Embassy was injured when opening the pack and is now hospitalized – according to the Ukrainian ambassador in Madrid, Serhii Pohoreltsev, he had his fingers burned by the explosion but is recovering well and is not at risk.

There appears to be a common pattern to all the situations, with targets aimed at departments of military and political relevance in Spain, as well as specifically regarding ties between Madrid and Kiev. To analyze the case, it is necessary to remember that Spain has played a significant role in NATO’s anti-Russian diplomacy since the beginning of the special military operation, having hosted the alliance’s July summit, where many decisions to support Kiev were taken. The country has played a more active role than it normally does in international military topics. In addition, internally there are reports from local citizens of strong censorship of pro-Russian journalists, which makes the Spanish government’s position of absolute support for Kiev even clearer.

However, the case cannot be reduced to Spain. It is important to consider the European context as a whole, particularly the most recent anti-Russian maneuvers. Days before the occurrences began in Spain, the European Union declared Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. The attitude was absolutely unjustified, being criticized by experts worldwide. Not even the US, which leads the global pro-Kiev coalition, has taken such a solid and dangerous position as this – on the contrary, American President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that he will not consider Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.

In fact, the EU’s measure put an end to any hope of improvement in relations between the bloc and Russia, with no longer any expectation of good ties in the near future. The worst aspect of this is that it was an absolutely unfair decision, as there is no proven case of terrorism with Russian involvement – while, on the other hand, Ukrainian terrorists, in complicity with NATO intelligence, have already operated several criminal assaults without any condemnation by the EU.

It is interesting that this EU measure is followed by such bombs sent to political, military and diplomatic facilities in Spain. The Spanish government, when declaring an anti-terrorist alert, simply authorizes exceptional measures against any target considered “suspect”, which will allow the reinforcing of the persecution against pro-Russian activists, even if there is no evidence of their involvement in these events.

But, more significantly than that, the incidents will certainly be reported by the mainstream media and official departments as an example of the so-called “Russian terrorism”, thus justifying the EU’s shameful move to consider Russia a sponsor of terror. In fact, on the internet several pro-Kiev websites and activists have already started to spread this narrative – which may soon become official in the big media outlets.

In addition to there being no evidence of Russian involvement, it is impossible to identify what would be Moscow’s real interest in supporting attitudes like these, which would only harm itself. Most likely this is just another false flag maneuver to move public opinion against the Russians and justify sanctions.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

December 2, 2022 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

“Russia has Lost the War”

By Eugenio de Dobrynne | The Postil Magazine | December 1, 2022 

So says Western media… And if all we do is listen to what is published in the West and listen to what the various “strategists” say on all the talk-shows, we would come to the following conclusions:

  • Russia has lost the war, with the capture of Kherson by the Ukrainian army and its offensives in the north of the Donbass.
  • The casualties among the ranks of the Russian army are very considerable and it is demoralized, its generals are incompetent and are dying at the front, if they are not dismissed and arrested.
  • The Russian army has practically no more ammunition left to continue the war and its missiles are unable to reach their targets, thanks to the excellent Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense that intercepts them. And Russia is also running out of missiles.
  • The Ukrainian army has reconquered territory in the Kherson region and its offensives in the north of Donbass, as well as its resistance on the Donetsk front, augur a clear victory of its army which will lead them to reconquer all the territory annexed by Russia, including, of course, Crimea, forcing Russia to sign a peace which will lead its current president, Vladimir Putin, to be tried and sentenced and make recompense for all the expenses undertaken because of the conflict.
  • As for the Russian people, they do not want this war and hope for a quick replacement of their president by one of the opposition leaders, who will be much more liberal and supported by the United States and Europe.
  • Faced with this disaster, Putin and his generals have resorted to wild, indiscriminate shelling of the Ukrainian population, leaving these people without electricity, water and supplies. The Russians do not rule out the use of nuclear weapons, if things get even worse.

Such is the picture painted by the European and Anglo-American mass media, although it must be acknowledged that the latter are making an effort to provide other, more objective analyses in view of the latest developments in the conflict. The intellectual laziness of many information professionals, who limit themselves to reproducing the propaganda reports of Zelensky’s government, if not submitting to the doxa dictated by the media management bodies, as well as the censorship imposed by the authorities and pressure groups, prevent a more impartial knowledge of the real situation of the conflict.

To begin with, Russia cannot lose this war, nor can it give up the territories that since the referendums have been incorporated into the Russian Federation. First of all, it is a question of survival in the face of the Anglo-American world’s determination to put an end to the existence of a Russia that opposes its hegemonic domination and that, on the contrary, is committed to a multipolar world where a balance of forces coexists. Secondly, the Russian society, and even more so the recently annexed populations, and in particular the Donbass regions which have suffered a war for eight years, would never accept to stop being part of Russia.

As for the situation on the ground, if we look at the development of events from the information provided by objective military specialists and analysts, some even coming from armies committed to Ukrainian interests, since the appointment of General Surovikin as Commander-in-Chief of the Armies in the Ukrainian campaign, things have changed quite a lot. His appointment has meant a single command, subordinating the rest of the generals who earlier directed the operations in each of the territories where they acted independently and without coordination with the rest. Since his appointment, a reorganization of the troops assigned to the operation has been carried out, rotating them after the attrition suffered during these nine months of war and reinforcing their material, in particular with artillery pieces and armored vehicles, and massively incorporating observation and destruction drones.

From the tactical point of view, Russia has no need, as Surovikin himself stated, to expose its soldiers uselessly, when it has other means at its disposal to win this war. Russia, because of its demographic situation, cannot afford to send hundreds of thousands of young men to the front, as the Soviets did in World War II, with the result that that entailed. The use of tactical missiles directed against military installations and recently against strategic infrastructures, whose effectiveness is difficult to refute in view of the express acknowledgement by the Ukrainian authorities themselves, is bringing about a substantial change in the course of this conflict.

What some media have considered as a defeat and a withdrawal of the Russian army in Kherson, has been in reality a tactical withdrawal to avoid exposing a significant part of its troops who could have been surrounded in a compromising situation, and thus to better defend themselves. It has been sold that the Ukrainians had defeated the Russians and that this meant that they had practically won the war. The reality is that the Russians have temporarily ceded ground to regroup and organize themselves. They have abandoned the city, transforming it into a ghost town without electricity or water and with a population, albeit a very small one, which the Ukrainian troops will have to feed. At the same time, they have moved, in a successful operation, to the other bank of the Dnieper, turning the river into a natural line of defense very difficult to cross, since at this time, its width is about two kilometers.

So much so that in spite of the fact that the operation had been announced in advance by Surovikin himself, something surprising for a military commander, the Ukrainian forces did not give him credit and delayed their entry into the city until they were certain that it had been abandoned by the Russians, as they believed that it was all a trap. The withdrawal was made without loss of material or men and in an orderly manner, despite the fact that more than 20,000 men were mobilized. Previously, more than 150,000 civilians had been evacuated from the city to the other side, under Ukrainian artillery shelling. They even moved the remains of the founder of the city and mythical person in the history of Russia, Marshal Potemkin, so that his remains would not be desecrated by the Ukrainian troops. Clear proof of this is that we have not seen those images of casualties or destroyed materials that the Ukrainian propaganda media lavished so much on when, at the beginning, they confronted the Russian forces. What has been seen, on the contrary, is a deserted city whose population is trying to survive in hardship and which has been announced that it will be evacuated because of the impossibility of supplying it, while the repressive rearguard forces are engaged in arresting the Russians’ collaborators. In their military history, the Russians have a long experience of strategic retreats that have been successful.

Located on the other bank of the river, with the natural barrier of its width and the difficulty of crossing it under artillery fire, the Russian troops have a considerable advantage. So much so that part of the troops assigned at the time to this front have been transferred to the Donbass front to reinforce the offensive which is being carried out there and which, little by little, is gaining ground despite the difficulty of overcoming the lines of fortifications built by the Ukrainians more than eight years ago and which they have been defending with extraordinary courage and tenacity.

The mobilization of reservists decreed last September and the enlistment of volunteers means the incorporation of 318,000 soldiers and commanders directly on the front line. Unlike the mobilized Ukrainians, who are already in their seventh or eighth mobilization with hardly any training, these troops are undergoing intense military training by veterans of the operation, so that their incorporation will be carried out when they have completed their training and proven their operational capacity. As of today, about 80,000 of them have already joined the front lines, integrating into already hardened units. The rest will do so by mid-December. There has been no haste, and their training is being prioritized to avoid casualties and strengthen their effectiveness.

Meanwhile, on other fronts, Donetsk and Lugansk, Russian troops are advancing slowly, favoring artillery fire both when advancing and retreating, avoiding unnecessary exposure of men and material. The use of observation drones for the localization of enemy forces is being abundantly employed, with excellent results, as this allows for accurate and effective artillery fire. There is abundant filming that proves their use and effectiveness. The practical non-existence of Ukrainian aviation, because it was cancelled at the beginning, and the little effectiveness of its anti-aircraft defenses, in spite of receiving new Western materials, makes Russian aviation have control of the skies and intervene more and more in support of the troops on the ground. Although the equipment provided is not always of the latest generation, the technological complexity also requires trained servants when it comes to more modern systems, which is why the Russians are suspicious of the involvement of NATO troops who covertly handle such equipment.

The Russians are expected to carry out a major offensive when weather conditions permit, i.e., when the ground freezes, because now, with the heavy rains, it is impracticable. The Ukrainians are suffering to a greater extent, because much of the material sent by the Ottoman allies, replacing the Soviet material they had and have been losing, is wheeled, unlike the Russian material, in which tracks predominate. The priority will undoubtedly be focused on recovering the territories of the Donbass up to its territorial limits and, perhaps, on descending from above along the right bank of the Dnieper to recover the territories of Zaporiyia and Kherson. Who knows if they will not go on to Odessa. Nor can the Russians afford to delay their offensive too long, because the longer they delay, the more time the Ukrainian army will have to mobilize and train its levies.

On the other hand, the destruction, by means of tactical missiles, of energy infrastructures, especially power plants and sub-power plants, by the Russian forces, is having considerable effects on the deterioration of the supply on the material fronts, since it prevents their transfer from the borders, slowing down their offensives and weakening their defenses. Although its effects are being felt to a greater extent on the living conditions of civilians, depriving them of electricity and water, the destruction of these infrastructures was something that Russian military officials had been demanding for some time in view of the increase in military aid received by the Ukrainian army from its NATO allies.

Finally, as far as casualties are concerned, the number of deaths in the ranks of the Ukrainian army is staggering. According to American officials, there are about 100,000 dead, to which must be added the wounded in the proportion of three for every one dead. This means that, between the dead and the wounded, they are losing between 300 and 400 men a day on the various fronts. Russian losses are around 48,000 wounded and 16,000 dead, 8,000 of which belong to the Russian army and the rest to the territorial units, Chechen forces and the Wagner group. It should be borne in mind that the brunt of the war has so far been carried out by the territorial units of the Donbass and the special forces on their respective fronts. Initially, the Russian army have started the conflict with between 125,000 and 150,000 troops, to which were added about 60,000 mobilized between the territorial troops of the Donbass and the Chechen special forces and the Wagner Group, with 10,000 troops each. For its part, the Ukrainian army numbered about 600,000 men at the beginning of the conflict. According to UN data, more than 10,000 civilians were killed between the two sides during the eight months of the conflict.

We will probably soon witness a change in the situation, both on the ground and politically, although the media and talk show hosts with careers in the offices of Brussels or NATO headquarters tell us that the Ukrainian army is going to win this war and that they will force Russia to return the annexed territories. American officials have already suggested to Zelensky that he should reconsider negotiating with Russia, and we know that he who pays the piper calls the tune, and American governments have never been known for their unswerving loyalty to the leader of the day. Rather, they have been dedicated to defending their own interests.

Eugenio de Dobrynne writes for El Manifesto, through whose courtesy this article appears.

© 2017-2022 The Postil. All rights reserved.

December 1, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Lavrov rubbishes ‘lies’ about Ukraine peace talks

RT | December 1, 2022

Allegations that Russia is seeking peace talks with Ukraine as a ploy for a military build-up are false, Russia’s foreign minister has said. Sergey Lavrov was responding to statements to that effect from top officials in Kiev, including President Vladimir Zelensky.

The accusations are “ridiculous and unpleasant, because [those who make them] blatantly lie,” the minister told journalists on Thursday during a press conference.

“We never asked for any negotiations. But we always stated that if somebody has an interest in a negotiated settlement, we are ready to listen,” he stressed.

In October, President Zelensky said during a virtual speech to the European Council that Russia was “manipulating the negotiations issue” due to Kiev’s battlefield successes. He went on to claim that Moscow was calling for dialogue, “which it rejected itself by starting a war against Ukraine and all of you, the entire Europe,” while rejecting “dozens of our proposals” for peace.

Lavrov noted that Ukraine and Russia were on the verge of striking a peace deal after talks in Istanbul in late March. At that time they inked a proposed agreement, which would have given Ukraine international security guarantees in exchange for neutral status.

Kiev pulled out of the talks soon afterwards, with Zelensky claiming that fresh evidence of war crimes allegedly committed by Russian troops had left him no other option. Moscow rejected the accusations, calling the evidence falsified.

“Not only did we listen, but we were prepared to make a deal on the terms that [the Ukrainians] proposed themselves,” Lavrov explained. “They were not allowed to do that because the war had not made enough profit for those who supervise and direct it.”

The Russian diplomat pointed to the US, and to a lesser degree the UK, as parties who are allegedly directing Ukraine’s actions. Washington pursues its goals of weakening Russia and benefiting from arms sales at the expense of the Ukrainian people, he said.

Lavrov added that the US and its allies have a pattern of rejecting ways to reduce tensions with Russia. Hostilities in Ukraine started after they refused to heed Russian warnings that the expansion of NATO was crossing a red line, he insisted. The military bloc brushed aside a proposed security deal, which in Russia’s view would have addressed the issue.

December 1, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Vladimir Putin’s Vision of a Multipolar World An end to US hegemony?

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 29, 2022

In history books as well as in politics every story is shaped by where one chooses to begin the tale. The current fighting in Ukraine, which many observers believe to already be what might be considered the opening phase of World War 3, is just such a development. Did the seeds of conflict arise subsequent to Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s consent to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 after having received a commitment from the United States and its allies not to advance the West’s military alliance NATO into Eastern Europe? That was a pledge that was quickly ignored by President Bill Clinton, who intervened militarily in the former Yugoslavia before adding new NATO members from amidst the ruins of the Warsaw Pact.

Since that time NATO has continued its expansion at the expense of Russian national security interests. Ukraine, as one of the largest of the former Soviet republics, soon became the focal point for potential conflict. The US interfered openly in Ukrainian politics, featuring frequent visits by relentlessly hawkish Senator John McCain and State Department monster Victoria Nuland as well as the investment of a reported $5 billion to destabilize the situation, bringing about regime change to remove the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovich and replace it with a regime friendly to America and its European allies. When this occurred it inevitably led to a proposed invitation to Ukraine to join NATO, a move which Moscow repeatedly warned would constitute an existential threat to Russia itself.

Finally, Moscow tried assiduously to negotiate a solution to the developing Ukraine crisis in 2020-2021 but the US and its allies were not interested, allowing the corrupt Ukrainian government of Volodymyr Zelensky to refuse any accommodation. So Russia itself has perceived that it has been misled or even lied to repeatedly by the US and its allies. It has been particularly vexed by the looting of its natural resources by mostly Western oligarchs operating under protection afforded by the feckless President Boris Yeltsin between 1991 and 1999, a puppet installed and sustained through US and European interference in the Russian elections. Just when Russia was on its knees, perhaps intentionally, there arrived on the scene in 1999 former KGB officer Vladimir Putin who, as Prime Minister and later president, proceeded to clean house. Ever since that time, Putin has very carefully explained himself and what he has been doing, making clear that he is no enemy of the West but rather a partner in a relationship that respects the interests and cultures of all players in a global economy that maximizes freedom and individuality.

Given the danger of dramatic escalation of the current situation in Ukraine, with talk coming from both sides about the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons, an October 27th speech made by President Vladimir Putin at the 19th meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, held near Moscow, should be required reading for the Joe Bidens and Jens Stoltenbergs of this world. The theme of the meeting was A Post-Hegemonic World: Justice and Security for Everyone. The four day-long session included 111 academics, politicians, diplomats and economists from Russia and 40 foreign countries, including Afghanistan, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Turkey, Uzbekistan and the United States. In his speech, Putin laid out his vision of a multipolar world in which there is no concept of a politically hegemonic “rules based world order” which substitutes “rules for international law.” And, he observed, the rules have themselves been regularly dictated by one country or group of countries. Putin instead urged a transition into a willingness to accept that all countries have interests and rights that should be respected.

Interestingly enough, Putin, since assuming leadership of his country, has been unwavering in his demand that all countries in the world be granted respect, by which he means that local interests and cultures must be considered legitimate and worthy of acceptance by all as long as they permit individual freedom and are similarly respectful of the interests and national traits of others.

A relaxed and jocular Putin spoke for over an hour in his opening remarks and then fielded questions for another two and a half hours from the audience. In response to a question, he assessed the sanity of White House advisers who would “spoil relations with China at the same time they are supplying billions-worth of weapons to Ukraine in a fight against Russia… Frankly, I do not know why they are doing this… Are they sane? It seems that this runs completely counter to common sense and logic… This is simply crazy!”

The Russian president emphasized several points which elaborated his views. First, he observed that US/Western hegemony “denies the sovereignty of countries and peoples, their identity and uniqueness, and disregards any interests of other states… [The] rules-based world order” only empowers those making the “rules.” Everyone else must obey or face the consequences.

Putin also decried the West’s tendency to make rules and then ignore them when circumstances change. He noted how economic sanctions and “cancel culture” are being used cynically to weaken local economies while also demeaning the cultures and national traits of foreign adversaries. He observed, for example, how Russian writers and composers are being banned purely to send a political message and punish Moscow for its foreign policy.

Putin explained that Russia is an “independent, original civilization” which “has never considered itself an enemy of the West.” Moscow “simply defends its right to exist and develop freely. At the same time, we ourselves are not seeking to become some kind of new hegemon.” He then provided his analysis of what it developing, saying that the world is confronting a global storm which no one can ignore. “We are standing at a historic milestone, ahead of what is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and at the same time important decade since the end of World War II. The West is not able to single-handedly manage humanity, but is desperately trying to do it, and most of the peoples of the world no longer want to put up with it.” We can decide “either to continue to accumulate a burden of problems that will inevitably crush us all, or to try together to find solutions, albeit imperfect, but working, capable of making our world safer and more stable.”

So, Vladimir Putin is issuing a call to arms for a transition to a multipolar world, which will inevitably change the playing field both in international relations and in the global economy. No longer will the United States and its allies be able to claim “rule of law” when using coercive force to punish competitors. The drift away from using dollars as the world’s reserve currency, mostly for energy transactions, is already taking place as major trading partners like India, China and NATO member Turkey have ignored restrictions while continuing to buy up Russian energy exports, negating to a certain extent the sanctions put in place by Washington and Europe. The death of dollars as the reserve currency will make it more difficult for the US Treasury to print money without any backing as many nations will no longer be willing to accept what will be increasingly seen as a fiat currency produced by a government that is actually drowning in debt.

Putin might, of course, be proven wrong and the current global system might well be able to limp along for the foreseeable future. But if he is right, those developments transitioning into a multipolar world would mean a de facto decline and fall of the United States as the world hegemon while anything even remotely like a dollar collapse would have catastrophic effect on the US import driven economy as well as on ordinary Americans. Some kind of partial default on US Treasury debt is not unimaginable. And Putin might well be right in his prediction that the change is coming and there is nothing that the United States and its friends can do to stop it.

In any event, the political and economic adjustments that are certainly coming in one way or another will certainly play out as the Ukraine conflict continues to simmer. The tragedy is that what is developing is self-inflicted, completely avoidable and unresponsive to any actual United States interest, but that is another story. If Ukraine turns to open warfare with more direct US involvement and economic dislocation, international pressure to dismantle the post-World War 2 status quo will inevitably increase. No matter how it develops, what is occurring right now will force the perennially tone-deaf politicians in and around the White House to begin to rethink America’s place in the world and its options as a major power. No one can predict how that will go and the process will make compelling theater as America’s two major political parties take up positions to make the case that the other party is solely at fault. It is impossible to foresee how far that bloodletting will go.

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.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Who Called For the United States to Withdraw From NATO?

Samizdat – 29.11.2022

Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Russia struck against NATO members’ “collective security” as he attempted to blame an incident involving a Ukrainian missile striking Poland on Moscow.

Foreign ministers of NATO member states are convening at a summit in Bucharest to discuss various matters concerning the alliance, including the ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine.

While the United States and its NATO allies have so far been fairly eager to provide a steady flow of money and weapons to Kiev, effectively fanning the flames of the conflict, quite a few people have expressed concerns that this situation may develop into a global war between Russia and NATO.

While some critics of the Biden administration do not seem fond of the role the US plays in this conflict, there are also people who wonder aloud whether remaining a part of NATO – an alliance created decades ago solely to oppose the Soviet Union – is such a good idea.

Bruce Fein

Prominent US lawyer Bruce Fein, who served as associate deputy attorney general under the Reagan administration, has suggested that the United States could put an end to the conflict in Ukraine simply by withdrawing from NATO.

By remaining in NATO, which lost its purpose since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, and by spearheading the military alliance’s expansion, the US essentially is helping to create an existential threat to Russia greater than “the existential threat the Cuban missile crisis posed to the United States,” Fein argued in an op-ed published in a US media outlet last week.

Therefore, the lawyer suggested, US withdrawal from NATO could end this threat that “occasioned” Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, as well as “extinguish the executive branch’s ambition for regime change or weakening Russia.”

He also outlined a potential mechanism for this hypothetical withdrawal, noting how US Congress annulled a defense treaty with France in 1798.

Marjorie Taylor Greene

US politician and former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene voiced similar concerns a few months earlier when she slammed the Biden administration for the military support it provides to Ukraine.

Arguing that the US leadership and NATO are basically dragging the United States into a war with Russia, Greene tweeted in June that there would be no winners in such a confrontation.

“Escalation over Ukraine, a non-member nation, risking nuclear war is a power play endangering the entire world,” she wrote. “We should pull out of NATO.”

Donald Trump

While the 45th president had been a vocal critic of the way other NATO members allegedly shirk their responsibilities, demanding that they pay their alliance dues in full, he also apparently questioned the US presence in that organization.

In June, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told media she has no doubt that the US would have left NATO if Trump were reelected in 2020.

In a book Trump penned in 2000, long before he became president, the then-real estate mogul argued that conflicts between warring factions in Europe simply aren’t worth US lives.

“Pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually. The cost of stationing NATO troops in Europe is enormous. And these are clearly funds that can be put to better use,” he wrote.

Collective Defense Issue

The concerns voiced by the proponents of US withdrawal from NATO got thrust into the limelight this month when an errant Ukrainian missile struck Poland, a NATO member.

While the NATO leadership and Poland concurred that the missile came from Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was quick to blame this incident on Russia, describing it as an attack on NATO members’ “collective security”.

If Zelensky’s accusations were true, this incident could have devolved into a full-blown direct conflict between the military alliance and Russia due to NATO’s collective defense mechanism that obliges all members to treat an attack against one of them as an attack against them all.

Members Only

The situation where at least some people advocate for the US leaving NATO can perhaps be considered somewhat ironic in light of the fact that, in the years following the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia proposed joining the military alliance on several occasions.

Though relations between Russia and NATO cooled following NATO’s attack on Serbia in 1999, Vladimir Putin, who became the president of Russia the following year, brought up the prospects of Moscow becoming a part of the alliance during the early years of his presidency.

Yet even as these initiatives ended being torpedoes by the NATO leadership, that did not deter the current NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg from claiming during his opening speech at the Aspen – GMF Bucharest Forum on Tuesday that it was Russia who “walked away” from constructive dialogue with NATO.

“There is no way we can continue the meaningful dialogue we tried to establish for many years with the behavior and the aggressive actions by Russia against Ukraine as we see now,” he said.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

NATO running out of weapons for Kiev regime

By Drago Bosnic | November 29, 2022

Months before Russia launched its counteroffensive against NATO’s crawling encroachment on its western borders, the political West started sending massive amounts of weapons and munitions to the Kiev regime. Initially, the deliveries primarily included tens of thousands of man-portable missiles for various purposes, including ATGM (anti-tank guided missiles) and MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) weapons. Even then, it already became clear that NATO’s stocks couldn’t provide enough weapons for a long-term conflict, while it would take years to ramp up deliveries by expanding production lines. This was further exacerbated when the Kiev regime started asking for more advanced weapons and systems amid mounting battlefield losses.

Many NATO member states were (and still are) forced to send weapons and munitions which were already in short supply for their own militaries. This is particularly true when it comes to former Warsaw Pact member states of the belligerent alliance, many of whom were forced to give up their Soviet-era weapons. Old NATO powers promised to send their weapons to replace these older arsenals of the alliance’s Eastern European members, although this process proved to be quite slow. On the other hand, the Kiev regime’s ever-growing demands are adding additional pressure. As NATO’s current production capacity simply cannot meet these requests, the Neo-Nazi junta’s battlefield prospects look grimmer by the day. “If this does not happen, we won’t be able to win — as simple as that,” Dmytro Kuleba, the Kiev regime chief diplomat warned during a recent meeting.

On November 26, the New York Times reported that approximately two-thirds of NATO members have effectively run out of weapons by sending them to the Kiev regime. Even the more prominent alliance members with big MICs (Military Industrial Complexes) are having major issues keeping up with the Kiev regime’s demands. According to an unnamed NATO official, 20 out of 30 member states are “pretty tapped out” in terms of additional weapon and munition supplies to the Neo-Nazi junta. While members such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy still have the ability to arm the Kiev regime with basic weapons, even they are refraining from sending specific weapons systems requested by the junta.

The demands include various types of strategically impactful weapons, including surface-to-surface guided missiles such as ATACMS, a weapon with a 300 km engagement range. The US officially rejected such demands, supposedly “out of concern” the missiles could be used to attack targets deep within Russia. However, the more likely reason is that the Pentagon is fully aware of the fact that it would take years to replace its current stocks of such missiles and it’s not very keen on expending them all without certain replacement. The same is true for many other types of weapons and systems which are equally needed to maintain optimal military power.

Artillery is especially important in this regard. As soon as the Kiev regime started burning through its Soviet-made stocks, many of which were also destroyed in Russia’s long-range strikes, NATO was forced to provide both artillery pieces and shells. As the alliance’s post-(First) Cold War doctrine shifted toward a more interventionist style of warfare, artillery became less important, resulting in ever-shrinking stocks.

According to various reports, the enormous demand for artillery munitions is putting tremendous pressure on NATO members trying to meet the Kiev regime’s requests. At present, the Neo-Nazi junta forces are firing at least five thousand shells per day, but the US, by far the most heavily armed NATO member state, can only produce 15,000 shells per month. Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the New York Times that “[a] day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan.”

On the other hand, the soaring demand is extremely profitable for the Military Industrial Complexes of the political West. “Taking into account the realities of the ongoing war in Ukraine and the visible attitude of many countries aimed at increased spending in the field of defense budgets, there is a real chance to enter new markets and increase export revenues in the coming years,” according to Sebastian Chwalek, CEO of Poland’s PGZ, a corporation that owns a number of weapons manufacturers. However, the US MIC has been experiencing by far the largest windfall in this regard. Arms industry giants such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon already made billions in the opening months of the Ukrainian crisis.

Back in May, during a visit to a Lockheed Martin plant, US President Joe Biden stated that the US would ramp up weapons production, but that “this would not come cheap.” However, most US officials and experts agree that this is not only a question of funding, as it will take years to increase production in order to meet the current demand, which is expected to grow exponentially in the foreseeable future. “If you want to increase the production capability of 155 mm shells. It’s going to be probably four to five years before you start seeing them come out the other end,” according to Mark F. Cancian, a former White House weapons strategist and current senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The US and NATO have already stated that they’re committed to fighting a long proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. In October, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin openly admitted this is the plan that Washington DC and its satellites have. He said that the US and NATO would “boost Ukraine’s defensive capabilities for pressing urgent needs and for the long term.” However, as the US is profiteering from the crisis, especially at the EU’s expense, the bloc is becoming increasingly frustrated, a feeling even the most senior officials in Brussels are now ready to express more freely than ever before.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

US-Turkiye brinkmanship won’t reach a point of no return

Conflict between Ankara and Washington over Syria will likely see the two drift apart, with Turkiye aligning more closely with Eurasian powers.

By MK Bhadrakumar | The Cradle | November 28, 2022

The series of airstrikes against Kurdish militants in northern Syria by Turkish jets in the past week come amid heightened concerns over Ankara’s threat to launch a ground operation. Such actions are not without precedent, yet have thus far achieved little in terms of eradicating the security challenges posed by US-backed Kurdish fighters.

Turkiye is today addressing an existential challenge to its national security and sovereignty, stemming from the United States’ quasi-alliance with Kurdish groups in Syria over the past decade – with whom Ankara has been battling for far longer.

However, this issue is playing out within a much broader regional backdrop today. Russia now has a permanent presence in Syria and is itself locked in an existential struggle with the US in Ukraine and the Black Sea. Iran-US tensions are also acute and President Joe Biden has openly called for the overthrow of the Iranian government.

Opposing the US occupation of Syria

Suffice to say, the Syrian government, which has demanded the removal of illegal US troops from one-third of its territory for years, enjoys a congruence of interests with Turkiye like never before, particularly in opposing the American military presence in Syria.

For the US, on the other hand, continued occupation of Syria is crucial in geopolitical terms, given that country’s geography on the northern tier of the West Asian region which borders Iran and the Caucasus to the north and east, Turkiye and the Black Sea to the north, Israel to the south, and the Eastern Mediterranean to the west.

All of that would have a great bearing on the outcome of the epochal struggle for the control of the Eurasian landmass – the Heartland and the Geographical Pivot of history as Sir Halford J. Mackinder once described it in evocative terms – by Washington and NATO to counter Russia’s resurgence and China’s rise.

China’s involvement in the Astana process

A curious detail at this point assumes larger-than-life significance in the period ahead: Beijing is messaging its interest in joining the Astana process on Syria. Moscow’s presidential envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, stated recently that Russia is convinced that China’s involvement as an observer in the Astana format would be valuable.

Interestingly, Lavrentiev was speaking after the 19th international meeting on Syria in the Astana format with his counterparts from Turkiye and Iran on November 15.

“We believe that China’s participation in the Astana format would be very useful. Of course, we proposed this option. The Iranians agreed with this, while the Turkish side is considering it and has taken a pause before making a decision,” he explained.

Lavrentiev noted that Beijing could provide “some assistance as part of the Syrian settlement, improve the lives of Syrian citizens, and in reconstruction.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry promptly responded to the Russian invitation, confirming that Beijing “attaches great importance to this format and is ready to work with all its participants to restore peace and stability in Syria.”

Lavrentiev didn’t miss the opportunity to taunt Washington, saying: “Of course, I believe that if the Americans returned to the Astana format, that would also be very useful. If two countries like the United States and China were present as observers in the Astana format, that would be a very good step, a good signal for the international community, and in general in the direction of the Syrian settlement.”

However, there is no question of the Biden Administration working with Russia, Turkiye, Iran, and China on a Syrian settlement at the present time. Reports keep appearing that the US has been transferring ISIS fighters from Syria to Ukraine to fight Russian forces, and to Afghanistan to stir up the pot in Central Asia.

The Astana troika are in unison, demanding the departure of US  occupation forces from Syria. Moscow knows fully well too that the US hopes to work toward shuttering Russian bases in Syria.

Turkiye’s pursuit of the US’s Kurdish allies

In fact, the aerial operations in Syria that Ankara ordered last Sunday followed a terrorist strike in Istanbul a week ago by Kurdish separatists, killing at least six people and injuring more than 80 others. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the air strikes were “just the beginning” and that his Armed Forces “will topple the terrorists by land at the most convenient time.”

Turkish security agencies have nabbed the bomber – a Syrian woman named Ahlam Albashir who was allegedly trained by the US military. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre hurriedly issued a statement to calm that storm: “The United States strongly condemns the act of violence that took place today in Istanbul, Turkiye.”

But Turkiye’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu reacted caustically to the American missive, saying that Washington’s condolence message was like “a killer being the first to show up at a crime scene.”

Conceivably, with Erdogan facing a crucial election in the coming months, the Biden Administration is pulling out all the stops to prevent the ruling AKP party from winning another mandate to rule Turkiye.

The Turkish “swing state” is crucial for US plans

The US feels exasperated with Erdogan for pushing ahead with independent foreign policies that could see Turkiye joining the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and deepening his strategic ties with Russia and China – and most important, steadily mark distance from Washington and NATO’s containment strategies against Russia and China.

Turkiye has become a critically important “swing state” at this stage in the post-cold war era. Erdogan’s effort to bolster the country’s strategic autonomy lethally undermines the western strategy to impose its global hegemony.

While Erdogan keep’s Washington guessing about his next move, his airstrikes in northern Syria hit targets very close to US bases there. The Pentagon has warned that the strikes threaten the safety of American military personnel. The Pentagon statement represents the strongest condemnation by the US of its NATO ally in recent times.

Russian diplomacy forestalls Syria ground incursion 

Unsurprisingly, Russia is acting as a moderating influence on Turkiye. Lavrentyev said last Wednesday that Moscow has tried to convince Ankara to “refrain from conducting full-scale ground operations” inside Syria. The Russian interest lies in encouraging Erdogan to engage with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and pool their efforts to curb the activities of Kurdish terrorists.

Indeed, the probability is low that Erdogan will order ground incursions into Syria. This also seems to be the assessment of local Kurdish groups.

US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Commander Mazloum Kobane Abdi, who is the Pentagon’s key interlocutor in northern Syria, has been quoted as saying that while he has received intelligence that Turkiye has alerted its local proxies to prepare for a ground offensive, the Biden administration could still convince Erdogan to back off.

That said, Erdogan can make things difficult for the US and eventually even force the evacuation of its estimated 900 military troops, shutting down the Pentagon’s lucrative oil smuggling operation in Syria and abandoning its training camps for ex-ISIS fighters in northern and eastern Syria.

But the US is unlikely to take matters to a point of no return. A retrenchment in Syria at the present juncture will weaken the US regional strategies, not only in West Asia, but also in the adjoining Black Sea region and the Caucasus, in the southern periphery of the Eurasian landmass.

From Erdogan’s perspective too, it is not in his interest to burn bridges with the west. A bridge in disrepair remains a bridge nonetheless, which would have its selective uses for Erdogan in the times of multipolarity that lie ahead.

November 28, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

German Statesman Slams EU Leaders’ Spinelessness, Demands NATO’s Dismemberment, Closure of US Bases

By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 28.11.2022

Germany has found itself reaping the consequences of the crisis in Ukraine, facing skyrocketing energy and food costs, recession and the danger of permanent deindustrialization as Washington and Brussels continue to call for more and more sanctions against Russian energy to try to “punish” Moscow for its military operation in Ukraine.

The United States and its allies have spent the entire period since 2014 preparing for a confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, Oskar Lafontaine, a veteran German statesman with over forty years of political experience under his belt, has said.

“Of course, I also mean the conflict in Ukraine, which began with the Maidan putsch in Kiev in 2014. Since then, the US and its Western vassals have been arming Ukraine and systematically preparing it for confrontation with Russia. Ukraine thus became a de facto, if not de jure, member of NATO. This backstory has been studiously ignored by Western politicians and the mainstream media,” Lafontaine told Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten in an interview published Sunday.

“For more than 100 years, it has been the declared aim of US policy to prevent German business and technology from merging with Russian raw materials at all cost. It is perfectly clear that, if you take this history into account, we are dealing with a US proxy war against Russia which has been prepared for a long time,” Lafontaine said.

Crop of Spineless Leaders

Lafontaine, who has worked under Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroder, and served as president of the Bundesrat, minister president of Saarland, minister of finance, and leader of Die Linke and the SPD, blasted the current crop of German and European leaders for going along with policies which have brought Berlin to the brink of disaster.

“It is unforgivable that the SPD in particular betrayed the legacy of Willy Brandt and his policy of détente, and did not even seriously insist on compliance with the Minsk Agreements,” the politician said, referring to the 2015 peace agreements meant to restore peace to the Donbass.

Lafontaine slammed the German government over its limp-wristed response to the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, which he characterized as a “declaration of war on Germany.” It was “pathetic and cowardly” of the federal government to try to “sweep incident under the carpet,” despite evidence that “the USA either carried out the attack directly or greenlit it,” the politician said.

“It was a hostile act against the Federal Republic, and not only against us, and once again makes clear that we must free ourselves from American tutelage,” Lafontaine stressed. The politician pressed his country’s leaders to force the removal of all US military bases and nuclear weapons from German soil, and called for the creation of a European security architecture with France, separate from NATO, which he called an “obsolete” alliance that acts as a “tool to enforce the US’s claim to remain the sole power in the world.”

Lafontaine admitted that freeing Germany from Washington’s grip wouldn’t be easy, but stressed that he can’t see “any alternative” to such a radical step. “If we and other European countries continue to remain under US tutelage, they will push us over a cliff to protect their own interests,” he said.

“To use a hackneyed expression: We are experiencing the birth pangs of the transitional phase from a unipolar to a multipolar world order. And the question arises whether we will have a place of our own in this new world order, or be drawn into Washington’s conflicts with Moscow and Beijing as American vassals,” the politician emphasized.

Recalling his decades of experience in politics, Lafontaine lamented in decades past, German leaders, “at least in some conflicts, had German interests in mind, and did not throw them overboard in anticipatory obedience” to Washington. “You need to have a backbone when you are the head of a country. The image of Chancellor Scholz standing like a schoolboy next to President Biden when he announced that nothing would come of Nord Stream 2 was humiliating.”

Ukraine Disaster

Asked whether he believed Washington has achieved its aims in Ukraine, Lafontaine said that the answer was both “yes and no,” with the principle successes being the ruined relations between Russia and the European Union, and the “sidelining” of Berlin and Brussels “as the US’s potential geostrategic and economic rivals, for the time being.”

“They are setting the policies of EU states even more than before the Ukraine conflict (thanks also to compliant politicians in Berlin and Brussels). They can also sell their dirty fracking-derived gas, and the US defense industry is doing great business,” the politician said.

“On the other hand, they have not succeeded in ‘ruining Russia’, as [German Foreign Minister Annalena] Baerbock put it… overthrowing [Vladimir] Putin and installing a puppet government in Moscow to get better access to Russian raw materials, as was the case in [Boris] Yeltsin’s time,” Lafontaine said.

“And I have the impression that Washington has now realized that they are biting on granite here. Despite massive arms deliveries to Ukraine and the dispatch of numerous ‘military advisors’, Russia, which is a nuclear power, cannot be defeated militarily. In addition, Western sanctions are proving to be a boomerang: they hurt Western states more than Russia and will cause deindustrialization, unemployment and poverty. Working people in Europe are paying the price for the world power ambitions of a mad elite in Washington and the cowardice of European leaders,” Lafontaine concluded.

November 28, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russian Region Bordering Baltics Has Been Repeatedly Probed by NATO Drones, Governor Reveals

© Photo : HFw Christian Timmig – HQ AIRCOM – NATO
By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 27.11.2022

Tensions between Moscow and its Baltic neighbors Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania jumped dramatically after Russia began its military operation in Ukraine, but have been at a heightened state ever since the 2014 coup d’état in Kiev.

NATO drones have been trying to violate the Russian state border in the Pskov region for years, Governor Mikhail Vedernikov has revealed.

“The Pskov region borders on three states, two of them part of the NATO bloc… Today they like talking about how the alliance has sought ‘peaceful coexistence’ with us… Pskov has also been repeatedly subjected to this ‘good neighborliness’ policy of NATO’s,” Vedernikov said at a media forum on Saturday.

“We have never spoken extensively about this, but there have even been attempts to illegally cross our border with military drones and other aircraft. Such ‘peaceful engagement’ was in full bloom even before the start of the special military operation, and clearly the situation has become even more aggravated,” the governor said.

Vedernikov did not elaborate on NATO’s drone operations along the border area, or measures taken by the Russian side to neutralize the intruding UAVs.

The governor also listed off other acts of “good neighborliness” by the Baltic countries’ governments, including Latvian and Estonian authorities’ “empty statements about territorial claims” against Russia, and the “massive and targeted” issuance of EU passports to residents of areas of the Pskov region near the border.

Situated on the border with Estonia, Latvia, and Belarus, Pskov has been on the front line of the standoff between Russia and NATO since long before Russia kicked off its military operation in Ukraine in February. The Russian military has regularly reported on the tracking and intercept of dozens of NATO surveillance aircraft, bombers, and large spy drones in the region’s vicinity going back to the mid-2010s.

The area comprising the Pskov and Leningrad regions near Russia’s borders in the Baltic Sea is one of four major approaches by NATO and US air power along which the bloc has sought to ramp up its surveillance and drilling activities near Russia, with the others including Crimea and the Black Sea, Murmansk, and the Russian Far East. The Russian MoD has reported on the detection and interception of thousands of alliance aircraft along these approaches over the past eight years.

The escalation of tensions between Moscow and NATO has seen a dramatic increase in the size of the NATO deployments along Russia’s borders in recent months. Earlier this month, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported that the NATO grouping near Russia has grown by 250 percent since February, and now constitutes more than 30,000 troops.

November 27, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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