By Lucas Leiroz | July 3, 2024
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban made a surprise visit to Kiev on July 2 and spoke with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky about the possibility of a ceasefire. The Kiev authorities rejected Orban’s proposal almost immediately, making it clear that there will be no peace and that the country plans to follow the Western directive of fighting “to the last Ukrainian.”
Orban proposed to Zelensky that he take the initiative to establish a ceasefire and then resume peace talks with Russia. In the Hungarian leader’s opinion, a ceasefire would be a fruitful gesture of goodwill for dialogue with Moscow, showing that Kiev is willing to resolve the conflict diplomatically. He believes that, with hostilities stopped, negotiations could advance more appropriately, having more chances for the sides to finally reach a deal.
This was Orban’s first visit to Kiev in more than a decade, which shows how the Hungarian politician was genuinely willing to propose a peace dialogue. However, Ukrainian authorities did not even consider Orban’s proposal, with Zelensky’s aide Igor Zhovkva almost immediately speaking out to reject the initiative.
“[Orban] voiced his opinion (…) This is not the first country that talks about such possible developments (…) [However] Ukraine’s position is quite clear, understandable and well-known (…) [For Kiev, a ceasefire] cannot be considered in isolation,” he said during an official statement.
Zhovkva is wrong when he says that Orban proposed an “isolated” ceasefire. The initiative he proposed is aimed at resuming peace negotiations. Obviously, ceasing hostilities before the talks would be seen by Moscow as a gesture of goodwill, regardless of the final outcome of the discussions. However, this Ukrainian diplomatic impoliteness was really expected.
The neo-Nazi regime has repeatedly made it clear that it is not willing to negotiate peace except on its own terms – which include precisely the regaining of territorial control over the areas liberated by Russian forces. Moscow is obviously not willing to hand over to the enemy territories that have already been reintegrated into the Russian Federation, so dialogue with the Kiev junta is impossible.
In fact, from a realistic point of view, only the Russians can really propose a peace agreement. As the victorious side in the conflict, it is Moscow that decides when to end military action. Kiev can only accept Russia’s conditions or continue fighting even without any chance of victory. For its part, Russia has already proposed a peace agreement, the main points of which are the recognition of the New Regions and Kiev’s promise not to join NATO. Ukraine continues to refuse these conditions, unnecessarily prolonging the conflict.
It is possible to say that Orban did what he could, but his plans were frustrated by the Ukrainian thirst for war. The Kiev junta is obstinate in carrying out all Western orders, with any peace initiatives being fruitless. However, it is important to emphasize how Ukraine’s harsh attitude towards Orban could have serious consequences, since tensions between Kiev and Budapest have been rising steadily in recent times.
Orban has a sovereigntist stance, being a dissident leader in the EU and NATO. He is against arms supplies to Kiev and in favor of peace between Russia and Europe. Recently, Orban accused “EU bureaucrats” of wanting war with Russia and made it clear that he does not want Hungary to be involved in such a situation.
Orban is also deeply concerned about his ethnic Hungarian compatriots under Ukrainian jurisdiction. Just as it does with Russians in Donbass, Kiev is promoting ethnic cleansing in the Hungarian-majority region of Transcarpathia. The Hungarian language has been banned from Transcarpathian schools, and local citizens have been massively sent to certain death on the front lines, being a priority in the forced conscription policy.
Hungary has repeatedly denounced the situation in Transcarpathia, but international organizations remain inactive. Zelensky did not give Orban any explanation on this issue at the recent meeting. This is highly expected to anger the Hungarian leader and encourage him to take increasingly tough measures against Kiev, perhaps by sanctioning it or encouraging the mass emigration of ethnic Hungarians from Ukraine.
In addition, Orban could pursue an even more sovereigntist policy from now on. The Hungarian prime minister has already understood that there is no future in cooperating with the EU and NATO, which is why Hungary may seek strategic partnerships with emerging powers, including Russia.
You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.
By Ron Paul | July 1, 2024
There were plenty of surprises in last week’s presidential debate. For one, Americans who rely on the mainstream media for their news learned that they had been lied to for the past three years about President Biden’s capability to do the job he was elected to do.
The realization that the media has been lying for years about Biden is a positive development, as, hopefully, thoughtful Americans might begin wondering what else the media has been lying about. For example, they will find out that the media has been lying to them for years about Russia and Ukraine and about the Middle East and elsewhere. They will find out that our hyper-interventionist foreign policy does not make us safer and more free, but the opposite.
Unfortunately for most Americans, foreign policy is something that happens “over there,” with few direct effects back home. Dumping nearly $200 billion into the lost cause called “Ukraine” may at most seem like an annoyance to many Americans, but it’s not like they are being snatched up by gangs of military recruiters and sent to the front line as is happening to Ukrainian men.
However, $200 billion is real money and the effect on our economy is also real. The bill will be paid by each American family indirectly through the inflation “tax.” Each dollar created out of thin air and spent on the Ukraine debacle devalues the rest of the dollars in circulation.
The danger posed by our foreign policy seemed to escape both candidates, who each tried to convince us they were “tougher” than the other. Despite Donald Trump’s sober and accurate warning that Joe Biden has taken us to the brink of World War III, his solution to the problem is doing more of the same. His stated foreign policy seems to be that were he in office the rest of the world would not dare do anything against his will.
He would have been so tough that Russian president Vladimir Putin would never have dared to invade Ukraine, he claimed. He would have been so tough that Hamas would never have dared attack Israel on October 7th. It’s only Joe Biden’s “weakness” that leads to these disastrous foreign policy outcomes.
But the world does not work that way. Decades of US sanctions placed on any country that fails to do what Washington demands have backfired and led to the emergence of a block of countries united in their resistance to American dictates. Being “tough” on less-powerful countries may work… until it doesn’t. That’s where we are today.
Neither candidate seems to realize that the world has changed.
I have always said that real strength in foreign policy comes from restraint. To prevent these bad outcomes everywhere, stop intervening everywhere. It is not “toughness” that would have prevented Russia from taking action against Ukraine. It is restraint. Not launching a coup in Ukraine in 2014 would have prevented the disastrous war in Ukraine. Just like not stirring up trouble in the South China Sea would prevent a war with China. Not continuing to occupy and intervene in the Middle East would prevent a major regional war which might include Iran and other big players in the region.
Restraint is the real toughness. Non-intervention is the only foreign policy that will keep us safe and free. We’ve tried it the other way and it does not work. Let’s try something different.
Why Ukraine should not have the “right” to join NATO
BY GLENN DIESEN | JULY 2, 2024
Political realism is commonly and mistakenly portrayed as immoral because the principal focus is on the inescapable security competition and it thus rejects idealist efforts to transcend power politics. However, because states cannot break with security competition, morality for the realist entails acting in accordance with the balance of power logic as the foundation for stability and peace. Idealist efforts to break with power politics can then be defined as immoral by undermining the management of security competition as the foundation of peace. As Raymond Aron expressed in 1966: “The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crimes”.[1]
Ukraine’s Sovereign Right to join NATO
The most appealing and dangerous idealist argument that destroyed Ukraine is that it has the right to join any military alliance it desires. It is a very attractive statement that can easily win support from the public as it affirms the freedom and sovereignty of Ukraine, and the alternative is seemingly that Russia should be allowed to dictate Ukraine’s policies.
However, arguing that Ukraine should be allowed to join any military alliance is an idealist argument as it appeals to how we would like the world to be, not how the world actually works. The principle that peace derives from expanding military alliances without taking into account the security interests of other great powers has never existed. States such as Ukraine that border a great power have every reason to express legitimate security concerns, but inviting a rival great power such as the US into its territory intensifies the security competition.
Is it moral to insist on how the world ought to be when war is the consequence of ignoring how the world actually works?
The alternative to expanding NATO is not to accept a Russian sphere of influence, which denotes a zone of exclusive influence. Peace derives from recognising a Russian sphere of interests, which is an area where Russian security interests must be recognised and incorporated rather than excluded. It did not use to be controversial to argue that Russian security interests must be taken into account when operating on its borders.
Mexico has plenty of freedoms in the international system, but it does not have the freedom to join a Chinese-led military alliance or host Chinese military bases. The idealist argument that Mexico can do as it pleases implies ignoring US security concerns, and the result would likely be the US destruction of Mexico. If Scotland secedes from the UK and then joins a Russian-led military alliance and hosts Russian missiles, would the English still champion the principle that it has no say? Idealists who sought to transcend power politics and create a more benign world would instead intensify the security competition and instigate wars.
The Morality of Opposing NATO Expansionism
To argue that NATO expansionism provoked Russia’s invasion is regularly condemned by idealists as immoral because it allegedly legitimises both power politics and the invasion. Is objective reality immoral if it contradicts the ideal world we would like to exist?
The former British ambassador to Russia, Roderic Lyne, warned in 2020 that it was a “massive mistake” to push for NATO membership for Ukraine: “If you want to start a war with Russia, that’s the best way of doing it”.[2] Angela Merkel acknowledged that Russia would interpret the possibility of Ukrainian NATO membership as a “declaration of war”.[3] CIA Director William Burns also warned against drawing Ukraine into NATO as Russia fears encirclement and will therefore be under enormous pressure to use military force: “Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face”.[4] The advisor to former French President Sarkozy argued that the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership in November 2021 “convinced Russia that they must attack or be attacked”.[5] None of the aforementioned people sought to legitimise an invasion, rather they sought to avoid a war.
When great powers do not have a soft institutional veto, they use a hard military veto. The idealists insisting that Russia should not have a veto on NATO expansion pushed for the policies that predictably resulted in the destruction of a nation, the loss of territory, and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Why do the idealists get to present themselves as moral and “pro-Ukrainian”? Why are the realists who for more than a decade warned against NATO expansion immoral and “anti-Ukrainian”? Are these labels premised on the theoretical assumption of the idealists?
NATO as a Third Party?
Suggesting that Ukraine has the sovereign right to join NATO presents the military bloc as a passive third party that merely supports the democratic aspiration of Ukrainians. This narrative neglects that NATO did not have an obligation to offer future membership to Ukraine. Indeed, the Western countries signed several agreements with Moscow after the Cold War, such as the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, to collectively construct a Europe without dividing lines and based on indivisible security. NATO broke these agreements by pushing for expansion and refusing to offer Russia security guarantees to mitigate the security competition. By offering future membership to Ukraine, the NATO-Russia conflict became a Russia-Ukraine conflict as Russia had to prevent Ukraine from joining the military bloc and hosting the US military on its territory.
NATO’s support for Ukraine’s right to choose its own foreign policy is also dishonest as Ukraine had to be pulled into the orbit of the military bloc against its will. The Western public is rarely informed that every opinion poll between 1991 and 2014 demonstrates that only a very small minority of Ukrainians ever wanted to join the alliance. NATO recognised the lack of interest by the Ukrainian government and people as a problem to be overcome in a report from 2011: “The greatest challenge for Ukrainian-NATO relations lies in the perception of NATO among the Ukrainian people. NATO membership is not widely supported in the country, with some polls suggesting that popular support of it is less than 20%”.[6]
The solution was to push for a “democratic revolution” in 2014 that toppled the democratically elected government of Ukraine in violation of its constitution and without majority support from Ukrainians. The leaked Nuland-Pyatt phone call revealed that the US was planning a regime change, including who should be in the post-coup government, who had to stay out, and how to legitimise the coup.[7] After the coup, the US openly asserted its intrusive influence over the new government it had installed in Kiev. The general prosecutor of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, complained that since 2014, “the most shocking thing is that all the [government] appointments were made in agreement with the United States” and Washington “believed that Ukraine was their fiefdom”.[8] A conflict with Russia could be manufactured that would create a demand for NATO.
What were the first decisions of the new government hand-picked by Washington? The first decree by the new Parliament was a call for repealing Russian as a regional language. The New York Times reports that on the first day following the coup, Ukraine’s new spy chief called the CIA and MI6 to establish a partnership for covert operations against Russia that eventually resulted in 12 secret CIA bases along the Russian border.[9] The conflict intensified as Russia responded by seizing Crimea and supporting a rebellion in Donbas, and NATO sabotaged the Minsk peace agreement that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians voted to have implemented. Preserving and intensifying the conflict gave Washington a dependent Ukrainian proxy that could be used against Russia. The same New York Times article mentioned above, also revealed that the covert war against Russia after the coup was a leading reason for Russia’s invasion:
“Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the C.I.A., together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow”.[10]
The Immorality of Peace vs Morality of War?
After Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine, the idealists insist that Ukraine must become a member of NATO as soon as the war is over. It is intended as an appealing and moral statement to ensure that Ukraine will be protected and such a tragedy will not be repeated.
Yet, what does it communicate to Russia? Whatever territory Russia does not conquer will fall into the hands of NATO, which can then be used as a frontline against Russia. The threat of NATO expansion incentivises Russia to seize as much territory as possible and ensure what remains is a deeply dysfunctional rump state. The only thing that can bring peace to Ukraine and end the carnage is to restore its neutrality, yet the idealists denounce this as deeply immoral and thus unacceptable. To repeat Raymond Aron: “The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crimes”.[11]
[1] Aron, R., 1966. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Doubleday, Garden City, p.584.
[2] R. Lyne, ‘The UC Interview Series: Sir Roderic Lyne by Nikita Gryazin’, Oxford University Consortium, 18 December 2020.
[3] A. Walsh, ‘Angela Merkel opens up on Ukraine, Putin and her legacy’, Deutsche Welle, 7 June 2022.
[4] W.J. Burns, ‘Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines’, Wikileaks, 1 February 2008.
[5] C. Caldwell, ‘The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the U.S. Deserves Much of the Blame’, The New York Times, 31 May 2022.
[6] NATO, ‘‘Post-Orange Ukraine’: Internal dynamics and foreign policy priorities’, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, October 2011, p.11.
[7] BBC, ‘Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call’, BBC, 7 February 2014.
[8] M.M. Abrahms, ‘Does Ukraine Have Kompromat on Joe Biden?’, Newsweek, 8 August 2023.
[9] A. Entous and M. Schwirtz, 2024. ‘The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin’, The New York Times, 25 February 2024.
[10] A. Entous and M. Schwirtz, 2024. ‘The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin’, The New York Times, 25 February 2024.
[11] Aron, R., 1966. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Doubleday, Garden City, p.584.
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 02.07.2024
NATO allies intend to discuss speeding up the procurement of weapons at their upcoming summit in Washington, reported Semafor.
“Critical gaps” in the alliance’s military readiness need to be addressed, it quoted three European officials as saying, as the bloc continues to funnel weapons to the Kiev regime.
As NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine grinds on, there’ve been growing reports that sending existing equipment to Kiev had “reduced” stockpiles in Europe itself. This prompted the alliance’s latest defense plan, that calls for measures to boost air and missile defense systems’ quantity and readiness, officials told the FT earlier.
Action is expected to be taken on a plan put forward by the NATO’s three Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, which have been at the forefront of anti-Russian hysteria throughout the Ukrainian crisis, along with Poland.
The Allied Capability Delivery Commitment (ACDC) was presented at a May meeting in Palanga, Lithuania, by the defense ministers of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. At the time, speaking at a press conference with Latvia’s Andris Spruds and Lithuania’s Laurynas Kasciunas, Estonia’s Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur said the initiative required extra funds, and the 2 percent minimum spending level agreed at the 2023 summit was no longer “sufficient”.
In line with the five-year plan, the alliance would boost efforts to procure “air defense, long range fires, and ammunition,” Tuuli Duneton, Undersecretary for Defense Policy at the Estonian Ministry of Defense, told the outlet.
“Delivering these [weapons] faster than originally planned would require additional resources to be invested,” one European official was quoted as acknowledging.
He added that the plan had been agreed upon in principle at a June meeting of NATO’s defense ministers in Brussels.
As far as Washington is concerned, it “supports the intent of the proposal and is working with allies on how to incorporate it in summit deliverables,” a US State Department official was cited as saying. The underlying ideas of the proposal will be “embedded” in the Defense Industrial Pledge expected to be signed at the summit, a Latvian spokesperson told the publication.
The NATO summit in Washington D.C. will take place from July 9-11. It will commemorate the landmark 75th anniversary of the alliance, which was founded in 1949. The summit’s title is “Ukraine and transatlantic security.” NATO will not extend a formal invitation to Ukraine for membership during the gathering.
More defense spending and costly procurement face NATO allies as supporting the regime in Kiev continues to bleed their own stockpiles dry. The bloc’s European allies have only a small fraction of the air defense capabilities they would need if the proxy conflict in Ukraine expanded into a direct Russia-NATO confrontation, officials were cited as saying by the Financial Times.
At the same time, the Ukraine conflict has become a great boon for America’s own leading defense contractors, sending their stocks up and boosting their profits. However, as the US and Europe keep squandering taxpayer money on arms for Ukraine, Russia continues to effectively destroy this weaponry.
Russia has persistently cautioned Western countries against furnishing weapons to the Kiev regime, stating that this sort of assistance would only serve to prolong the conflict in Ukraine.
Furthermore, Moscow has repeatedly rejected Western claims about an alleged Russian threat as unsubstantiated. Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this year that the West’s allegations about Moscow’s plans to unleash a war with NATO are “simply rubbish.” He also slammed reports about Russia planning to attack Europe after the end of a special military operation in Ukraine as “complete nonsense and intimidation of Europeans to squeeze money out of them [for defense-related] purposes.”
By William Schryver – imetatronink – July 1, 2024
I grow weary of the increasingly pervasive myth that the US/NATO has sent to Ukraine nothing but its antiquated equipment and munitions.
SOME of the equipment sent has been older generation specimens. But ALMOST EVERYTHING sent is representative of what would constitute a large proportion of any US/NATO front-line combined arms army.
– Virtually ALL the artillery tubes sent to Ukraine, whether towed or self-propelled, are the same types NATO armies could presently field.
– Virtually ALL the armored vehicles, of all types, are the same types NATO armies would field in large numbers in a war against Russia.
– ALL the precision-guided strike munitions the US/NATO have fielded in Ukraine are the best available: Javelins, NLAWS, Excalibur, GMLRS and GLSDB for HIMARS, JDAMs, Switchblade, HARMS, Storm Shadow/SCALP, ATACMS, etc.
– ALL the air-defense systems fielded in Ukraine have been top-shelf front-line stuff: IRIS-T, NASAMS, Patriot, etc.
– Most, if not all, of the electronic warfare and counter-battery radars are “best available”.
– The ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) is not only “best available”, but it has been ubiquitous and uninterrupted.
I’m sure there must be some other examples I’m neglecting to cite.
When one examines in aggregate the implements of war the US/NATO have provided to Ukraine, the overwhelming majority consists of the very stuff every military in NATO would field in a war against Russia.
A very small proportion could be reasonably characterized as “antiquated storage-depot junk”.
It must also be recognized (as is now common knowledge) that effectively ALL the precision-guided strike munitions, air-defense systems, and theater ISR assets are being operated by “NATO-affiliated volunteers” – and, not rarely, active NATO personnel.
It is a demonstrable and incontrovertible fact that, in terms of what has been delivered to Ukraine, the US and its NATO underlings have, with very few exceptions, sent their “best stuff”.
And I challenge anyone to craft a persuasive argument built around the proposition that: “If the Americans sent their best stuff, it would dominate on the battlefield against the Russians.”
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | June 29, 2024
The likely next president of the US, Donald Trump, has signaled that he has a plan for bringing the war in Ukraine to an end. Or, at least, two of his advisers have such a plan. More importantly, they have submitted it to Trump. And most importantly, they have said that he has responded positively.
As one of the plan’s authors has put it, “I’m not claiming he agreed with it or agreed with every word of it, but we were pleased to get the feedback we did.” It is true that Trump has also let it be known that he is not officially endorsing the plan. However, it is obvious that this is a trial balloon which has been launched with his approval. Otherwise, we would have either not have heard about it or it would have been disavowed.
The two Trump advisers are Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general, and Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst. Both held significant positions on national security matters during Trump’s presidency. Currently, both play important roles at the Center for American Security: Kellogg serves as co-chair and Fleitz as vice chair. Both, finally, are clear about their belief in what is perhaps Trump’s single most defining foreign policy concept: America First. Fleitz recently published an article asserting that “only America First can reverse the global chaos caused by the Biden administration.” For Kellogg, the “America First approach is key to national security.” The Center for American Security, finally, is part of the America First Policy Institute, an influential think tank founded in 2022 by key Trump administration veterans to prepare policies for his comeback.
Clearly, this is a peace plan that has not come out of nowhere. On the contrary, it has not merely been submitted to Trump to receive his – unofficial – nod, it has also emerged from within Trumpism as a resurgent political force. In addition, as Reuters has pointed out, it is also the most elaborate plan yet from the Trump camp on how to get to peace in Ukraine. In effect, this is the first time that Trump’s promise to rapidly end this war, once he is back in the White House, has been fleshed out in detail. The adoption of the plan or any similar policy would obviously mark a massive change in US policy. Hence, this is something that deserves close attention.
What does the plan foresee? In essence, it is built on a simple premise: to use Washington’s leverage over Ukraine to force the country to accept a peace that will come with concessions, territorial and otherwise. In the words of Keith Kellogg, “We tell the Ukrainians, ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up’.” Since Kiev is vitally dependent on American assistance, it is hard to see how it could resist such pressure. Perhaps to give an appearance of “balance” for the many Republicans still hawkish on Russia, the plan also includes a threat addressed to Moscow: “And you tell Putin,” again in Kellogg’s terms, “he’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field.”
Yet it is obvious that, despite the tough rhetoric about Russia, the plan will cause great anxiety in Kiev, not Moscow, for two reasons. First, the threats addressed to Russia and Ukraine are not comparable: If the US were to withdraw its support from Ukraine, Kiev’s Zelensky regime would quickly not just lose the war but collapse. If the US were to, instead, increase its support for the Zelensky regime, then Moscow would respond by mobilizing additional resources, as it has done before. It might also, in that case, receive direct military assistance from China, which would not stand by and watch a potential Russian defeat unfold, because that would leave Beijing alone with an aggressive, emboldened West. In addition, Washington would, of course, have to weigh the risk of Russia engaging in counter-escalation. In sum, the plan threatens Ukraine with certain defeat, regime, and, possibly, even state disintegration; it threatens Moscow with a harder time – a type of threat that has no record of success.
The second reason the plan is bad news for Ukraine but not for Russia is that the peace it aims at is much closer to Moscow’s war aims than to those of Kiev. While the document that has been submitted to Trump has not been made public, American commentators believe that a paper published on the site of the Center for American Security under the title “America First, Russia, & Ukraine” is similar to what he – or his staff – got to see. Also authored by Kellogg and Fleitz, this paper, too, repeatedly stresses just how “tough” Trump used to be toward Russia. Plenty of strutting there for those who like that kind of stuff.
These statements, however, are balanced by an emphasis on what used to be called diplomacy: “At the same time,” we read, “Trump was open to cooperation with Russia and dialogue with Putin. Trump expressed respect for Putin as a world leader and did not demonize him in public statements … This was a transactional approach to US-Russia relations … to find ways to coexist and lower tensions … while standing firm on American security interests.”
That already is a tone that Kiev cannot but find disconcerting. Because under Biden, US strategy – and therefore that of the collective West – has been built not merely on an extremely belligerent approach (as if that were not bad enough already) but, more importantly and more detrimentally, on the obsessive idea that there is no alternative. Everything, to its adherents, is “appeasement” except constant escalation to “win.” There is no room for genuine quid pro quos and compromise. That attitude is vital to America’s unrelenting support for Ukraine and, in particular, the fact that it has crossed one red line (meaning those previously recognized by Washington itself) after the other, with no (good) end in sight.
Hence, a Trumpist approach that is also anything but “soft” on Russia, while, however, acknowledging the possibility of de-escalation through negotiation is already a major departure from current US policy. You could even think of it as being inspired by the Reaganite foreign policy of the 1980s, which also combined pronounced “toughness” with a genuine readiness to compromise. Yet there would be one big difference: Toward the end of the Cold War, Washington was dealing with a pliable, even naïve Soviet leadership. That was a grave mistake – if made for mostly admirably idealistic reasons – that Russia’s current leaders see very clearly, are still angry about, and will not repeat.
In the case of the war in Ukraine, this means that any settlement, even with a newly “transactional” Washington “coming to the table” would involve not one but two “tough” players: Moscow will not agree to any compromise that fails to factor in that it has gained the upper hand in this war. That, in turn, means that, beyond the basic Trumpist mood of conditional conciliatoriness, details will be decisive.
Unfortunately for the Zelensky regime and fortunately for everyone else (yes, including many Ukrainians who won’t have to die in a proxy war anymore once peace comes), in that domain as well, the realm of the concrete and specific, the plan developed by Kellogg and Fleitz shows some progress. The authors, first of all, recognize important elements of reality that the current US leadership is either lying or in denial about: for instance, that this is a proxy war as well as a war of attrition, that Zelensky’s “10-point plan” (essentially a blueprint for what could only happen if Ukraine were to win the war, that is, never) “went nowhere,” and that Ukraine cannot sustain the war demographically.
They also acknowledge that Russia will refuse to take part in peace talks or agree to an initial ceasefire if the West doesn’t “put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period.” In fact, an “extended period” will not suffice; Moscow has been clear that never means never. But Kellogg and Fleitz may be formulating their ideas carefully with a view to how much their readers in America can take at this point. The plan also, again realistically, raises the option of offering a partial and, eventually, complete dropping of sanctions against Russia. Ukraine, on the other side, would not have to give up the aim of recovering all its territory, but – a crucial restriction – would have to agree to pursue it by diplomatic means only. The implication is, of course, that Kiev would have to give up de facto control over territory in the first place.
And there you have it: This is a proposal that, pared down to essentials, foresees territorial concessions and no NATO membership for Ukraine. It’s no wonder that Kellogg and Leitz conclude their paper by admitting that “the Ukrainian government,” “the Ukrainian people” (that is sure to be an over-generalization, by the way), and “their supporters” in the West will have trouble accepting this kind of negotiated peace. We could add: especially after more than two years of an avoidable (as the authors also recognize) and bloody proxy war. Yet that tragedy has already happened. We can wish it had not, but we cannot undo the past. The real question is about the future. Kellogg and Leitz, and Trump as well, if he will follow such a policy, are right that the dying must end, and that the only way to make it end – as well as avoid further escalation, perhaps to global war – is a compromise settlement built on reality.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
The way out is to transcend bilateral talks to include moves toward a new, inclusive European security architecture
BY TED SNIDER | RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT | JUNE 4, 2024
The war has escalated into a nightmare for the people of Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of their soldiers have been killed or wounded, infrastructure and environment have been devastated. Ukraine’s chances of achieving any of its hoped for goals are receding and more land is being lost every day.
Furthermore, many of the dynamics that led to the start and the continuation of the war are making it especially difficult to get out of it.
Having nourished the people of Ukraine during the war with promises of maximalist achievements, it will be very hard for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate an end to the war with less than maximalist success.
Having led Ukraine through the war, Zelensky may be unable to lead them out. To encourage both Ukrainians and Ukraine’s allies, Zelensky promised not only that Ukraine would win back territory up to its prewar borders, but that it would recapture all of its territory to 2014 borders, including the Donbas and Crimea. To negotiate an end to the war without reclaiming that territory but having lost even more would be difficult for Zelensky.
Worse, it would be difficult for Zelensky to even attempt to negotiate an end to the war having decreed that Ukraine would not negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And even if Zelensky were to regroup and rescind the ban on negotiating and preserve the best case scenario for Ukraine, he would be dissuaded by the same ultra-right nationalists who persuaded him off his campaign peace platform prior to the war.
Zelensky defeated Petro Poroshenko in a landslide victory in 2019 largely because of a promise to implement the Minsk Agreement and start to move toward peace with Russia. But he was pushed off that platform by a backlash in Ukraine and lack of support in the political West.
Ultranationalist leaders defied Zelensky and warned that a ceasefire and fulfillment of his campaign promises would lead to protests and riots. More seriously, they threatened his life. Dmytro Yarosh, the founder of the Right Sector paramilitary organization threatened that, if Zelensky fulfilled his campaign promise, “he will lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk boulevard if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War. And it is very important that he understand this.”
During a presentation announcing Zelensky’s creation of a National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity on March 12, 2020, Zelensky advisor Sergei Sivokho was thrown to the ground by a large gang from the Azov battalion.
Were Zelensky to return to his prewar platform after the death and devastation of the war, he could face the same resistance from the same groups now magnified by that devastation.
Zelensky could be replaced by a peacetime president with less baggage. But elections are prohibited by Ukrainian law during martial law, which is still in effect. Zelensky has ruled out holding them. Battlefield conditions would make it difficult, and many Ukrainians have already fled the country. Furthermore, a survey conducted in February 2024 found that 49% of Ukrainians definitely oppose elections right now and 18% rather oppose it, though the poll suffers from the methodological problem that it likely excludes those in the Eastern regions and those who have left Ukraine.
Bottom line: Zelensky isn’t going anywhere right now, but would struggle to negotiate an end to the war without help. Such assistance could come, however, from the U.S. and its partners in the West. Though Zelensky may not have the political strength to realistically reverse his maximalist promises nor to survive ultranationalist retribution, he would have a better chance of selling it if he could say that the Western powers who promised to support the pursuit of those goals for as long as it takes were pressuring him to negotiate an end of the war. Responsibility could be shifted to the United States.
But would the U.S. shoulder that responsibility? U.S. President Joe Biden, from the beginning, has framed the war in Ukraine as “the great battle for freedom: a battle between democracy and autocracy.” The U.S. has insisted on supporting the war against Russia in defense of “core principles,” including that each country has “a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships.”
It may be perceived as a blow to Biden’s credibility, to U.S. hegemony, and to NATO to concede the inability to push Russia out of Ukraine and to defend NATO’s right to expand and Ukraine’s right to join.
Negotiations to end the war would be a desirable path out of Ukraine. Diplomatic talks are possible as proven by the nearly successful negotiations in Istanbul in the early weeks of the war. The existence of the signed draft treaty that those talks produced has been confirmed by independent sources who have seen it, including The Wall Street Journal, Die Welt and Samuel Charap of RAND and Sergey Radchenko of John Hopkins University.
Those talks “almost finalized an agreement that would have ended the war,” according to Charap and Radchenko’s analysis of the text of the treaty. “Kyiv and Moscow largely agreed on conditions for an end to the war,” Die Welt reports. “Only a few points remained open.”
Oleksiy Arestovych, who was a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team in Istanbul, says the talks in Istanbul were successful and could have worked. He says that the Istanbul agreement was 90% prepared. “We opened the champagne bottle,” he said.
But it is the very success of the diplomatic talks that makes future negotiations difficult. It will be very difficult for Ukraine — and the United States — after over two years of war, death, destruction, disruption of lives, and loss of land to agree to terms that are essentially the same as the terms they had won before the war.
But there is another way that surmounts many of these obstacles by transcending them. The diplomatic negotiations could be broader than just negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
While several aspects of any diplomatic solution must address Russian-Ukrainian issues, like territory, caps on the Ukrainian armed forces and protection of ethnic minorities in both countries, significant parts could, instead, be addressed in a wider global solution. Putin has recently suggested that future talks encompass, not just a Ukraine-Russia security arrangement, but a comprehensive European security structure.
“We are open to a dialogue on Ukraine,” Putin said in May, “but such negotiations must take into account the interests of all countries involved in the conflict, including Russia’s. They must also involve a substantive discussion on global stability and security guarantees for Russia’s opponents and, naturally, for Russia itself.”
Instead, the expansion of a U.S. led military alliance hostile to Russia appears to be moving to engulf Europe right up to Russia’s doorstep. The insistence on defending that exclusive security structure contributed to the war in Ukraine. Addressing it could provide a more workable and lasting way out of it.
Instead of building a bigger NATO that expands to Russia’s borders and excludes and competes with it in conflict, the diplomatic energy could go into building a new inclusive European security structure that includes Russia in cooperation.
This new structure could eliminate the need for Ukraine to join NATO and for Ukraine and the U.S. to concede the right to join NATO. It could eliminate the need for the U.S. to commit to bilateral security guarantees that it is reluctant to sign with Ukraine because they could draw the U.S. into a war with Russia should Russia again attack Ukraine. It could, at last, bring the hope of peace to Europe and of better relations across the Atlantic.
Such global talks could relieve Zelensky of personal responsibility. They could bring sufficient force to defend against ultranationalist objections. They could truthfully be presented as a victory by the U.S. and not a surrender of “core principles.” And they could avoid competition and comparison with the earlier talks in Istanbul by transcending them.
How we get there is the hard part. But perhaps there is a way offered out of the war in Ukraine that delivers to each of Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. and Europe what it wants. Perhaps the way out is to transcend negotiations on the Russia-Ukraine war with talks that include that but expand to include an inclusive global security architecture.
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 27, 2024
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is to take over as the next secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rutte’s appointment is to ensure that a “safe pair of hands” steer the military bloc full steam ahead on an increasingly confrontational course with Russia and China.
The 57-year-old Dutchman, who is known as Teflon Mark owing to his political survival skills, was backed for the NATO post by the United States and Britain. The opinions of the other 30 members of the alliance are pretty much irrelevant, albeit with a semblance of discussion.
As Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented sardonically, there will be no change in NATO policies under Rutte “because the Americans run the show”.
Rutte takes over from Jens Stoltenberg who served as NATO secretary general for two terms over 10 years. Like Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, Rutte has no military expertise and is more suited to financial management and political horse-trading. This continues the trend of recent NATO civilian bosses being more secretaries than generals.
There have been 14 secretary generals since the NATO alliance was formed in 1949 at the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The first titleholder was British General Hastings Ismay who famously admitted NATO’s primary mission was less the defense of Europe and more to bolster Washington’s transatlantic control over European “allies” by, as Ismay candidly put it, “keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”.
Over its 75 years, NATO has had British, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish civilian heads. Rutte is the fourth leader from the Netherlands to take the job. Oddly, it may seem, there have been no American secretary generals. But that’s because the United States doesn’t need one of its nationals in the chair. The real power is with the American General who oversees the Supreme Allied Command of Europe (SACEUR). That post is always held by an American military figure, which goes to show who wears the trousers in the NATO bloc.
The civilian titular head is given to Europeans as a token of partnership. The purpose of the European secretary general (emphasis on the secretary) is public relations, to give an illusion of pluralism and mutualism instead of the reality that NATO is simply an instrument of American imperialist violence.
Rutte, who is a bland politician prone to cutting coalition deals and going to work on a bicycle, is “perfect” for the job. He projects the image of a benign, if boring, liberal. But scratch the surface and underneath the cowardly exterior is a dangerous sociopath.
The 32-nation bloc has ambitions to expand its role as a military enforcer for American geopolitical hostility towards Russia and China. That collision course becomes clearer by the day with American missiles raining down on Russia and stockpiling in Taiwan off China’s mainland.
That entails a tricky, duplicitous balancing act to keep an unwieldy coalition together as it hurtles to open confrontation with nuclear powers. There will be a lot of gyrating public relations to do to sell this warmongering adventurism as somehow necessary for a “rules-based order”.
Jens Stoltenberg, the outgoing Norwegian wooden Pinocchio figure, was an able Yes Man in that role of cohering NATO members to splurge military spending on American weapons and pumping Ukraine with arms. Stoltenberg was an ideal cipher for Washington’s imperialist aims. He also orientated the NATO bloc to take a more hostile stance towards China. So “good” was Stoltenberg as a loyal lackey, that he was given a two-year extension to his NATO post.
Rutte promises to be a very capable successor in terms of being a total minion for Washington. He brings a quaint Dutch accent, bicycle clips and an air of European reasonableness as a plausible cover for the barbaric function of imperial violence.
The Dutch premier has no qualms about indulging NATO’s dirty wars. During the NATO covert war for regime change in Syria, Rutte’s Netherlands government sponsored Islamist terror groups in Syria to overthrow the Syrian government with the full knowledge that the recipients of Dutch aid were murdering and abducting civilians. Rutte personally authorized that covert operation.
In the Ukraine proxy war against Russia, Rutte has led the way in delivering F-16 fighter jets to the NeoNazi Kiev regime, who “justify” the bombing of families on beaches in Crimea because they are “civilian occupiers” who need to be “cleansed”.
Moscow has warned that this escalation of NATO involvement will be seen as a step towards a nuclear confrontation. Rutte has no problem with such escalation.
Rutte’s ability to please his master in Washington and to further his career knows no bounds. His ability for political dancing around and negotiating skills make him an ideal secretary to keep the NATO bloc together as it aggresses recklessly against Russia and China.
Rutte is the kind of quisling that the Dutch and other Europeans were adept at being for the Third Reich against their own compatriots. One can easily imagine the ever-flexible and expedient Rutte informing and betraying others to save his skin.
His job is to bring Europe to its knees despite the obvious disaster that the U.S.-led NATO is inflicting on Europe. The likes of this sycophantic sociopath are leading the world to the abyss.
By Lucas Leiroz | June 28, 2024
There are many reasons why the West wants to continue the conflict in Ukraine. American geopolitics is almost entirely directed towards a strategy of opposition to the Russian Federation, which is why it is in the interests of the US and its NATO allies to maintain a conflict situation in the Russian strategic environment – thus trying to “wear down” Moscow through long-standing proxy wars. However, there is a special reason for the existence of such a strong pro-war lobby in the West: the exorbitant profits generated by hostilities.
The American and European elites, as well as their oligarchic “partners” in Ukraine, have maintained complex schemes of corruption, embezzlement and overpricing in the various financial and military aid programs sent to Kiev. Rather than a gesture of “solidarity” with Ukraine, as portrayed by the Western media, NATO assistance has been a lucrative business for many individuals and companies, generating interest in prolonging the conflict.
One of the main tactics used by these agents is the overpricing of military products. The prices of various weapons and equipment are being artificially inflated by American and European defense companies. It is estimated that some types of projectiles are overpriced by up to six times their original value, for example. The excess value between the original price and the inflated price ends up serving as profit for corrupt individuals both in the West and in Kiev.
Recent media reports indicate that there is a shortage of ammunition in the Ukrainian armed forces. Although billions of dollars are being spent on weapons, the inflated prices mean that Kiev cannot purchase a sufficient amount of equipment. Artillery shells are among the most overpriced items, with rockets such as the Grad MLRS having increased in price six times since 2022. The same process of inflating prices has occurred with almost all of Ukraine’s regular defense purchases, creating a situation in which Kiev receives exorbitant amounts of money but is unable to adequately supply itself militarily to sustain even conventional combat.
Some arguments commonly used by defense companies to increase the price of weapons are issues such as the need to speed up production or problems with logistics. In fact, current circumstances would require some kind of rise in the price of military products according to conventional market standards. However, raising the price of projectiles by six or seven times is already much more than a mere adjustment in expenses, having an obvious attempt to profit from the conflict and generate unfair earnings for the parties involved.
In Kiev, there have been calls to change the structure of arms shipments, with local military officials asking partner countries – mainly in Europe – to build facilities on Ukrainian soil to reduce logistical costs and facilitate the process of military aid. Western companies, however, continue to refuse such investment, citing technical difficulties. Although such difficulties exist, the real reason for the lack of such investment is another: by creating a shortage of weapons in Ukraine, the “machine” of military aid continues to run.
The basic scheme is simple: it is claimed that the costs of sending weapons are high, requiring more public money to cover the costs. Western propaganda convinces taxpayers to keep silent about bills passed in Western parliaments to increase military aid packages. Thus, more money is taken from the public reserves and used for suspicious schemes of buying weapons for Ukraine. Ukrainian officials take some of this money for themselves, while the rest goes to pay exorbitant prices to the Western defense industry. Thus, everyone profits – except the Ukrainian military, who continue to be sent to certain death on the frontlines while their bosses profit from the “Western solidarity.”
Long ago, the official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, formally accused the US of profiting from the conflict. According to him, the American defense industry is benefiting greatly from the war due to Ukrainian demand for weapons and inflated equipment prices. The real figures from the military market confirm Wenbin’s allegations, making it clear that the prolongation of the war in Ukraine is not the result of any belief in Kiev’s “victory”, but of the selfish interests of Western and Ukrainian private actors in profiting from the loss of lives.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.
By Dmitri Kovalevich | Al Mayadeen | June 27, 2024
The end of June marked one month since Ukraine adopted a new law on military conscription that significantly limits the rights of Ukrainians. During this time, Ukrainian media has been full of reports, daily and even hourly, of ‘kidnappings’, as many Ukrainians put it, by military conscription officers from the streets and neighborhoods of the country of military-age men (25 and older) deemed fit for battle. Fighting between enlistment officers and civilians resisting their work is increasing, as is the publicizing of it all in Ukraine media.
Even pro-war, Western newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post can no longer hide from their readers the story of citizen resistance to conscription in Ukraine, as they have been doing for years.
Tension in Ukraine over forced conscription is growing daily. The Ukrainian military is promoting (and enforcing through conscription) its idea that justice demands that all Ukrainian men submit to the horrors of war, just as its soldiers have done for more than two years in direct confrontation with the Russian armed forces and in direct confrontation with the self-defense forces in Donbass for eight years before that. The Kiev regime launched a civil war against the people of Donbass (today the Russian Federation republics of Donetsk and Lugansk) in the spring of 2014, seeking to crush the deep-going opposition there to the far-right paramilitary coup of February 2014 that overthrew Ukraine’s elected president and legislature.
In response to the conscription terror unfolding daily in the streets and neighborhoods of the country, Ukrainian military vehicles are now being set on fire every day in various cities. Local residents believe the targeted vehicles to be transporting military enlistment officers, not ordinary soldiers. One result is that rank-and-file military personnel are increasingly placing notices on their transport vehicles reading ‘Not military recruiters’. As they conduct their work, lone military enlistment officers are coming under attack far to the rear of the front lines, even in western Ukraine.
The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Skeptic‘ comments on the confrontations, writing, “People do not understand who, exactly, is appearing before them in uniform: is it a simple military man, or is it military enlistment officer? The forced conscription being carried out by the authorities at the hands of military recruiters leads people to take illegal actions. Along with simple efforts to avoid the conscription officers, people are increasingly fighting back with their bare hands when cornered, risking their lives or their freedom in order to do everything possible to avoid going to the war front and suffering the fate of so many before them who have lost their lives or their health.
“The number of disabled people in Ukraine now exceeds three million, and their number is growing by more than 30,000 people every month through the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU),” the Skeptic channel writes.
On June 11, Ukrainians were stirred by media broadcasting a mass brawl in the city of Odessa between ambulance drivers and the military enlistment officers who were trying to conscript one of them. Dozens of ambulance drivers from all over the city came to the aid of their colleague, at which point several civilian vigilantes joined with the recruiters in beating the ambulance drivers with baseball bats.
According to a report in the widely-read, Ukraine media outlet Strana, the vigilantes were members of voluntary police assistance squads. These have been established since 2022. Private security companies often enroll their employees in such units. In fact, these are paramilitary formations dedicated to assisting military enlistment officers and police to seize eligible conscripts. A ‘bonus’ for the members of such vigilante groups is that they are accorded protection against conscription.
The Strana report explains, “In addition, cooperation with military enlistment officers and the police gives the members of the ‘assistance detachments’ many ways for illegal earnings. For example, they often act as intermediaries in giving bribes to the enlistment officers – naturally, for a certain percentage. There are also schemes to issue, for a fee, taxi cab passes for nighttime travel [which is supposed to be forbidden]. The struggle for such financial flows periodically causes serious clashes between the ‘assistance detachments’ in Odessa.”
The terror inflicted by military recruiters against civilians is dictated not so much by the desire for ‘justice’ on the military front [equality in military service] as by common corruption. ‘Failures’ to issue conscription notices and erasing of computerized conscription data on Ukrainians liable for military service can cost several thousand dollars. Even some children of military commissars are involved in such illegal business in order to avoid service. In mid-June, for example, the son of the head of one of the military enlistment offices in the Vinnytsia region was detained after he was found to be arranging travel abroad for men seeking to escape the country at prices approaching the equivalent of US$20,000. During searches of the son’s premises, authorities found conscription notices and copies of passports of more than a dozen men of the age of military service, plus a lot of cash, including US dollars. He is now facing a possible jail sentence of eight years and the loss of his personal property. It is illegal for men of military age to leave Ukraine unless they have special permission (care of a frail elder, for example).
Ukrainians also know that military recruiters are choosing not to patrol and raid certain vacation spots or shopping locations frequented by wealthy Ukrainians. One restaurant owner told Strana on condition of anonymity, that this is happening largely due to large bribes. A restaurant owner in Odessa told the publication, “Each chain of shopping malls negotiates independently with military recruiters; not directly but through the mediation of the regional governing administration. Naturally, for large payoffs. I can’t tell you the amount of payment for the ‘security zone’, but the sums start from 5-10 thousand dollars and more, per month, depending on the size of the shopping center and its popularity.”
“Each network of shopping and entertainment centers negotiates independently with the military registration and enlistment offices, but not directly. They negotiate through mediation by the regional city administration. Naturally, for large payoffs I cannot say what is the exact fee for protection in a ‘security zone’, but the amounts start at 5,000 to 10,000 [U$] each month, depending on the size of the shopping complex and its popularity.”
Despite all the uproar taking place in Ukraine over conscription, the results on the front line are barely visible, writes a correspondent on Telegram from the ‘Kholodnyi Yar ‘unit of the AFU. “This is partly due to the fact that newly conscripted soldiers are merely replacing the dead and wounded. Corruption and fictitious servicemen who exist only on paper are partly to blame.”
The ‘First War News’ Telegram channel writes on June 18, “In Donetsk region, the accountant of one of the military units along with two other unit members organized a scheme to enter fictitious data about the participation of soldiers in combat operations in order to collect the bonuses for direct military action for all three participants in the scheme.”
A similar scheme operated in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led occupation of the country from 2001-2012. Al Jazeera reported back in 2021 why the Afghan army that was built up painstakingly for years by the occupation forces fell apart so quickly. Its report explained, “First, there was widespread corruption in Afghanistan’s defense and interior ministries, where funds, ammunition, and food deliveries were stolen before reaching the soldiers on the ground… Furthermore, some commanders embezzled money by submitting fund requests for the salaries of ‘ghost soldiers’; that is, soldiers who had never actually signed up for the military. As all this was happening, the soldiers of the Afghan comprador army were left unpaid and frequently denied for months at a time permission to visit their families on leave.
Unsurprisingly, the Afghan armed forces under Western tutelage had one of the highest desertion and casualty rates of armies in the world. One estimate placed the army’s monthly attrition rate at 5,000, while the monthly recruitment rate was 300 to 500.
The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Kartel’ describes how similar schemes are taking place in the AFU. “The simplest schemes are those involving ghost soldiers. Fictitious recruits are enrolled and sent to the frontline and the salaries and bonuses go into the commanders’ pockets. Secondly, commanders record of non-existent ‘destruction’ of enemy equipment in order to earn bonuses. Thirdly, they sell places in the rear and in reserve units, and fourthly, they sell vacations and sick leaves to soldiers”.
The underground Ukrainian Marxist organization Workers’ Front of Ukraine (WFU) wrote on Telegram on June 13 about the corruption that has permeated much of the AFU. “If you want to be dismissed, you must pay up. If you are found guilty of a crime or misdemeanor, you must pay up. If you don’t want any trouble, you must pay up. Tens of millions of hryvnias are leaking out of the state budget through payments to so-called ‘gray souls’ [ghost soldier] schemes, for which the military unit receives allowances.
“The alcohol trade is also blossoming. If you are caught drinking too much vodka sold to you by your officers, you are fined, further boosting corrupt earnings. And so on. In one of the buildings of the ‘second headquarters’ a mining farm has been organized, the electricity bills of which are covered by our taxes.”
The Ukrainian Telegram channel ‘Resident‘ writes on June 17 that, in essence, the ever-tightening law on military conscription is transforming military recruiters into a new economic elite, and a deeply corrupt elite at that. The already tense atmosphere in Ukrainian society due to conscription is being aggravated by all the reports of corruption and bribery. And despite the corruption scandals, military enlistment officers actually remain quite untouchable in Ukraine. They have become the unspoken and unassigned decision-makers of the fates of tens, hundreds of thousands of human beings in Ukraine. They are assigned the power to manage this diminishing number of potential military recruits, and they are managing this ‘resource’ in their own, personal interest.
In earlier times, Ukrainians paid bribes to officials for any old certificate or license. They would pay bribes for the right to receive medical care from doctors or even for a necessary conveyance in an ambulance. They would pay bribes to the police to avoid a fine for a traffic violation. Now they are paying bribes for the simple act of walking down the street, working, shopping, getting married, or adopting a child–all in order not to end up in a bombed-out foxhole at the frontline.
Recently, fugitive conscription evaders have begun to stage mass breakthroughs in large groups through the Transcarpathia region in western Ukraine and across the border. The region is Ukraine’s gateway westward into the European Union.
On June 9, 32 people traveling in a transport truck bearing fake military license plates broke through the border to Hungary. The truck was full of fugitives and simply drove off-road at top speed into the neighboring territory. The truck was tracked down by Hungarian border guards and soon after, the fugitives surrendered to the Hungarian authorities near the village of Barabash. Local residents claimed in comments to local media that the fugitives were various Ukraine law enforcement officers who were facing assignments to the war front.
Ukrainian soldiers and officers are also, increasingly, complaining about the ineffective military tactics of their high command. The soldiers are reduced to fighting for every house and every scrap of forested land, even in the most unfavorable situations. This is due to the extreme pressure on military authorities to demonstrate ‘effectiveness’ to the U.S. and NATO military leadership in order for Ukraine may continue receiving military funding and weapons from them.
Ukrainian battalion commander Ivan Mateyko stated in an interview with the Focus newsmagazine that military units are being severely punished for abandoning their positions. For the sake of its public relations, the AFU does not withdraw people even from the last, surrounded house in a village so that the village may still be said by superior officers to be under ‘Ukrainian’ control. “Losing a military position is punished, even when you are holding the last house in a village because as long as you are in that house, the village is considered ours. It doesn’t matter how many people die for the sake of holding that house. It doesn’t matter that that house has been surrounded for a week, cannot safely receive supplies, and cannot safely evacuate the wounded and dead,” he said.
According to Mateyko, when the situation is a stalemate and there are not enough soldiers to mount an adequate defense, commanders decide to indiscriminately send everyone into battle. He believes that commanders are sending people to their deaths in such circumstances out of fear of losing their positions or fear of being penalized.
Alexei Arestovich, a former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine (2020-2023) and a far-right ideologue, notes that the AFU is not learning anything new from its experiences in battle. He compares this to the army of the Soviet Union in Crimea during World War Two. He writes on Telegram, “They tried different methods, from mechanical to moral and psychological from 1941 onward. [Nazi Germany occupied Crimea, after bitter struggle, from late 1941 until liberation in 1944.] By 1943-1944, they had learned to fight. The difference between the Red Army of 1941 compared to the Red Army of 1944 is the difference between heaven and earth. They tried, tried, and tried again. After 30 unsuccessful attempts, the 31st attempt would succeed.”
Arestovich asks, “How does Ukraine’s army today compare? Our valiant armed forces do not want to learn, nothing happens. I am looking at this and asking myself, ‘During two and a half years of struggle against our original [sic] enemy, what changes have occurred in the armed forces? Even organizational changes, reflecting accumulated experience? This army has long been driven by inertia and is simply wearing itself out without trying to make sense of events, without trying to draw any conclusions.”
A leader of the neo-Nazi paramilitary battalion ‘Azov’, Dmytro Kukharchuk, believes that Kiev is losing its war. He believes the Russian Federation has no need at all to sue for peace as it is in a much more favorable position. “Yes, we are losing this war now. It’s obvious. We are losing territories, we are losing the best people. Many people say: ‘Everything is going fine and soon we will conclude a peace treaty with Russia.’ But the main question is, why does the Russian Federation need to negotiate peace?” According to him, the strategy of a creeping offensive (war of attrition) which the Russian army has chosen is serving it very well, while the consequences for Ukraine are not only unpleasant, they are critical.
Notwithstanding these words, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a quite specific proposal for peace in mid-June. It would require the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, renunciation by Kiev of Ukraine’s specious claim over Crimea, and renunciation by Kiev of present or future NATO membership.
The U.S. administration and then Ukraine quickly rejected this proposal, as if on cue. The key stumbling block is not so much control of the regions presently under Russia’s control, but future NATO membership for Ukraine. NATO is using Ukraine as a proxy force in this war and toward the goal of NATO membership.
Former Ukrainian journalist and today a political exile, Rostyslav Ishchenko, comments on June 18: “Russia has declared the need to create a unified security system in Eurasia, without the participation of non-Eurasian states. For the first time, albeit indirectly, Moscow has raised the issue of NATO’s liquidation, since without the U.S. military presence in Europe, the bloc loses its meaning and the USA becomes a non-Eurasian power.”
For his part, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg is promising that Ukraine will join NATO as soon as it defeats Russia, which is to say ‘never’. Despite the grim military situation facing the Ukraine regime, Western leaders are instructing Kiev to refrain from any negotiations with Russia.
Oleh Soskin, a former adviser to Leonid Kuchma (the second, post-Soviet Ukraine president from 1995 to 2004 and today a political analyst) has recently written on Telegram that the West is quite satisfied with the killing of Ukrainian citizens at the hands of the country’s capitalist elite. “They are all very satisfied with the fact that this Zelensky, A.Yermak [head of the Office of the President of Ukraine], D.Arahamiya [head of the legislature faction of Zelensky’s political machine], R.Stefanchuk [speaker of the legislature] and, naturally, D. Shmygal [prime minister since 2020] are very good at using Ukrainians as weapons and cannon fodder.”
Indeed, the Ukraine regime is acquiring yet more funding and weapons from the West and sending yet more Ukrainians to their deaths in order to please the elites of the NATO countries.
From time to time, I personally witness clashes taking place between civilians and Ukrainian military enlistment officers. I have witnessed outraged women trying to wrestle their sons and husbands out of the clutches of military conscriptors. “Let Zelensky go to the trenches!,” they shout. “Let him send his own children off to war! Let Biden himself fight the Russians!” Needless to say, this sharp, civilian erosion of support for Kiev’s and NATO’s war does not bode well for either.
By William Schryver – imetatronink – June 27, 2024
F-16s, Romanian bases, and NATO pilots
I shall return yet again to the prospect of “Made in the USA” F-16s sallying forth boldly into eastern Ukraine to “teach the cabbage heads what Airpower (capitalized) really means.”
From what information I’ve been able to glean in recent weeks, it does in fact look as though the US is aggressively setting up air ops housekeeping in Romania, very near the Black Sea coast — ostensibly to serve as the base of F-16 operations against Russia.
I submit that the preparation of this base is implicit proof that they have long-since assembled and, likely for many months, been honing the skills and teamwork of a few squadrons of “NATO-affiliated contractor pilots” — and the plan must be to use them.
You see, if the “true plan” were to put a dozen woefully undertrained Ukrainian apprentice kamikazes behind the wheel of 1980s vintage F-16s, and then wave them off on a glorious one-way mission into the wild blue yonder … well, you don’t need much of a logistical hub for that operation.
So, if they’re really working to prepare what is reputed to be the “largest NATO base in Europe”, the logical conclusion is that it is intended to house, maintain, and sustain at least a couple squadrons of NATO “volunteer” pilots flying much later F-16 models than the European boneyard relics Ukraine has long been promised.
Hey, I say field five full squadrons, and outfit at least a couple of them with the latest model F-16 Vipers.
Go big or go home.
Make it the last “all in” roll of the wunderwaffe dice.
Never mind that literally no one in the US air fleet, at any level, has any experience whatsoever in high-intensity air combat operations against an enemy that:
– can match or exceed you with high numbers of superior air frames
– will be flying from interior lines, with well-established logistical infrastructure
– backed by high numbers of the finest layered air defenses on the planet
– with far superior magazine depth
– and will significantly outrange NATO platforms in almost every plausible scenario.
Oh, yeah. And I almost forgot: anyone (including the perpetually catastrophist Russian murmurers) who believes for a moment that Russia will not act to obliterate a NATO base in Romania under such circumstances … well, that’s just silly talk.
Of course they will. They’ll hit it hard. Really hard — with a strike package that exceeds anything ever thrown at a Ukrainian target over the course of this war.
It could well become the most intensely pressure-packed moment in modern times — a situation exceptionally fraught with the possibility of catastrophic miscalculation.
Every time I stop to think about these things, I just shake my head at the obvious stupidity of it all.
If the Imperial Masters of War actually attempt such an air campaign against Russia, not only will the entire operation almost certainly end up being a logistical debacle of truly epic proportions, but the combat results will be shockingly one-sided — disastrous to the point the US will very likely feel compelled to cease operations after just a few days, and try to spin it into some sort of “bold statement” that “achieved its purposes”.
But it will be ugly. Exceedingly ugly. And everybody that is anybody of consequence in power structures around the world will know the score and understand exactly what it means.
By William Schryver – imetatronink – June 26, 2024
In addition to the already-in-progress wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Red Sea, we are now staring down the barrel of yet another — rumored to be imminent in southern Lebanon.
There is no doubt Israel (just like its great benefactor, the United States) is, in the context of a “big war”, capable of executing several damaging strikes against a potential peer or near-peer adversary.
But, throughout the imperial domain, there are fatal weaknesses that exist right now, and which cannot be turned into strengths at any point in the near- or medium-term.
The first is what military types call “magazine depth”: munitions stockpiles sufficient to offensively overwhelm, defensively defeat, and strategically outlast the enemy.
Neither the United States, nor any of its largely impotent client nations, possess “magazine depth” sufficient to prosecute anything more than a relatively brief campaign against their potential peer adversaries: Russia, China, Iran — and all or any of their lesser-power partners.
The second problem is a corollary of the first. It is what I will term “shields”: the capacity to defeat a decisive proportion of the strikes one’s enemy can launch against you.
Neither the United States, nor any of its largely impotent client nations — by their own admission — possess anything even approximating comprehensive and effective “shields” against the quantity and quality of the types of strike weapons its potential adversaries can launch against them.
NATO sources themselves recently confessed that they only have about 5% potential air defense coverage against Russian missile strikes.
Now, of course, many will reflexively argue that, for example, the US could, with a massive “shock and awe” first-strike air campaign, effectively disarm Russian counterstrike capabilities.
This is patently ridiculous wishful thinking.
No one who actually understands the parameters of the military equation believes this to be true. And one need only examine the results of the months-long campaign against the lowly Yemenis to see confirmation of this incontrovertible fact.
Earlier this year we witnessed the Iranians launch a relatively modest missile strike against Israel, whose defenses were massively reinforced by American air and naval assets.
Using maybe 300 antiquated long-range strike drones and cruise missiles as decoys, the air defense response of both the US and Israel was massively attrited. And then, with a mere dozen or so seriously capable ballistic missiles, the Iranians blew right through the interception attempts of both the multiple land-based Patriot systems and a US guided-missile destroyer positioned off the eastern Mediterranean coast.
The Patriot systems were a total bust, and the Israelis summarily retired them in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian strike.
The US destroyer is reported to have launched eight top-shelf SM-3 missile defense interceptors (quite likely its entire “magazine depth”) at the incoming Iranian strike package.
They might have damaged one of the 12-15 incoming Iranian missiles.
The others hit with precision comparable to the 5-meter CEP Iran achieved in its 2020 strikes against the US airbase at Ayn al-Asad in Iraq.
Had Iran, at that moment in time, opted to follow up with an even larger strike consisting of several hundred of its best ballistic missiles, the US and Israeli defenses would have been penetrated to an overwhelming degree. It would have put to shame the opening-night show of the Americans’ 1991 “shock and awe” cruise missile attack against Baghdad.
Fortunately the Iranians didn’t press the matter, and let their modest yet impressive demonstration of strength suffice for the time being.
In recent months, Iran’s close partner Hezbollah — which is reputed to possess at least 100,000 missiles and drones of various types — has been routinely penetrating Israel’s once-vaunted “Iron Dome” missile defense system.
Indeed, Hezbollah has almost appeared to be mocking the Israelis’ impotence at times.
In any case, the Iron Dome has been revealed to be acutely vulnerable to penetration by Hezbollah drones and missiles.
It is not known with precision how many missiles and drones of various types Iran possesses. But it is reasonable to assume that their “magazine depth” is considerably larger than that of Hezbollah.
It is also not known with precision how many missiles and drones of various types Russia possesses. But it is reasonable to assume that their “magazine depth” is considerably larger — and exceedingly more potent — than that of Hezbollah and Iran combined.
Even more importantly, the Russians have, over the course of the war in Ukraine, demonstrated an unprecedented capability to routinely shoot down the best strike missiles the US and its NATO vassals have been able to launch against them.
Lastly, it is not known with precision how many missiles and drones of various types China possesses. But it is reasonable to assume that their “magazine depth” is at least an order of magnitude larger than Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia combined.
Of course, I’ve not yet made any mention of North Korea, who has now been formally received into the Russia, China, Iran mutual-defense partnership. People love to mock Kim Jong-Un and his people, but the empire underestimates them at their peril.
The Israelis can talk tough about making war against Hezbollah and its friends, but if they actually attempt it, it will end very, very badly for them.
The Americans and their almost laughably impotent allies can talk tough about making war against Russia or China, but if they actually attempt it, it will end catastrophically for them.
Then we’ll really have a dangerous situation on our hands.
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
Aletho News 