Zelensky Says US Hegemony Will End If He Loses, But That Already Happened
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 03.06.2024
In an interview with UK media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made the claim that if former US President Trump gets reelected and cuts off aid to his country, he will become a “loser president” responsible for the US losing its spot as the World’s leader, but that has already happened and it was the US support of Ukraine that hastened it.
Since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, the United States and NATO bet hundreds of billions of dollars that they could propel the Kiev regime to victory by outfitting it with some of the best weapons in NATO’s arsenal.
Despite Russia’s larger economy, population size and military, Ukraine could win, the thinking went, by using the vastly superior NATO weaponry and training. Of course, the US and NATO didn’t hand over their very best weapons right away, but it would surely be enough to defeat the Russian army that was portrayed as ill-equipped and untrained in Western media outlets.
When that didn’t work, NATO and the US upped the stakes, giving newer and ostensibly even more invincible weapons to Ukraine, they too failed.
Now, armed with the best weapons NATO could afford to give away, and full permission to strike inside Russia despite the risk of escalation, Ukraine is still being defeated on the battlefield. The whole world has seen for itself that NATO weapons are not equipped with force fields; they can be destroyed and are being destroyed at an alarming rate.
Last year, Trump claimed that he would end the conflict in Ukraine “within 24 hours” though he did not specify how he intended to accomplish that. When asked who he wants to win, Trump would only say that he wants “everyone to stop dying.”
In his interview with the Guardian, Zelensky admitted that he had not developed a strategy to deal with Trump should he become elected, and seemingly admitted that his country would collapse without US support.
“Ukraine, barehanded, without weapons, will not be able to fight a multimillion army,” he said.
“Does he [Trump] want to become a loser President? Do you understand what can happen?” he added, then saying that if Ukraine loses, it means the US will lose its power in the world as well.
“This is not about him as a person, but about the institutions of the United States. They will become very weak. The US will not be the leader of the world anymore. Yes, it will be powerful, first of all, in the domestic economy because it has a powerful economy without a doubt. But in terms of international influence it will be equal to zero,” the Ukrainian President who has utilized Martial Law to stay in office past his term said.
Of course, the opposite is true. The longer NATO and the US remain involved in Ukraine, the more thoroughly the veneer of NATO invincibility will be shattered. If they continue to increase their involvement and escalate things against Russia, it will only expedite the fall of Western hegemony.
“This is a decisive defeat of NATO, the European Union and the United States” former UN weapon inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik’s Fault Lines last month. “It’s as decisive as you can get without them being directly involved, and they can’t become directly involved because that is a suicide pill.”
Over the last few weeks, NATO nations started giving the Kiev regime permission to strike inside Russia, culminating in the United States agreeing to it last week, but that too has failed to result in any meaningful change of the battle lines.
“But [Kremlin spokesman Dmitry] Peskov pointed out, you start using long-range missiles against Russia, we’re just going to have to take more of Ukraine [to build a bufferzone]. That’s what he said and he specifically mentioned Kiev,” international relations and security expert Mark Sleboda told Fault Lines.
Peskov also told reporters that the United States is already involved in targeting and aiming their weapons at Russia. “[The weapons] are directly controlled by military personnel of NATO countries,” adding that constituted not just military assistance but “participation in a war against us.”
While Ukraine is not the only factor eating away at Western hegemony, it has played a large role, along with the US support of Israel and general economic trends.
“The world is changing indeed, not only because of the war on Russia in Ukraine but also the war in Gaza… the development of BRICS countries [and] the increase of the Shanghai Cooperation,” explained war correspondent Elijah Magnier on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour. “All these indicators lead to one reality, the beginning of the end of US hegemony.”
While Russia has shown that NATO’s weapons are not superior, it’s the Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, who proved they are ill-equipped for modern war.
“The US and UK are failing in front of non-state actors in the Red Sea… So how can we understand that the Americans are ready to start a war against Russia and then against China?” Magnier added.
Still, with no other hopes or lifelines, Zelensky wants the US to embarrass themselves further by continuing to fund his government, saying that the US losing will encourage other countries to act aggressively. However, Russia and Ukraine were close to signing a peace deal in Istanbul at the start of the conflict. According to Ukrainian officials close to the negotiations, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was sent to Ukraine to sabotage the deal at the behest of the United States.
Ironically, Zelensky says he recently asked Johnson to speak to Trump on his behalf.
Zelensky said he wanted to bring Trump to Ukraine to “see the results of what he brought to Ukraine.” Although Zelensky was referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin “he”, it would have been more accurate if he were referring to US President Joe Biden and/or Johnson, who really brought that destruction to Ukraine and Western hegemony.
“Fifty nations gathered to defeat Russia and they failed… Ukraine has been defeated and Europe is defeated,” Magnier concluded.
Strategic developments in Ukraine – a new Cuban missile crisis?
By Patrick Poppel | June 3, 2024
Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine in 2014, there has been repeated talk of NATO’s expansion to the east and the advance of Western strategic missile systems.
At that time, the head of the Russian Institute for Strategic Research, General Leonid Reshetnikov, also mentioned this when he gave an interview for Austrian media.He spoke of the possibility that one day there could be American missiles in Kharkov. He also mentioned Ukraine’s possible accession to NATO.
We are currently seeing how Ukraine is successfully attacking several targets in Russia, which are located far behind the front, using Western weapon systems. This increases the radius of the zone that can be assessed as a conflict area. More and more new weapons with longer ranges are now being used. This development is very dangerous because Russia must respond to this situation. Russia cannot possibly accept this.
The deployment of long-range weapons in Ukraine reminds us of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the Cold War. At that time, the USA also could not accept the stationing of soviet nuclear weapons on Cuba. There are red lines in matters of national security interests and these must be observed by all participants in a conflict.
At that time, the crisis was resolved through the clear and deliberate actions of statesmen from the United States and the Soviet Union. Today, with the Biden administration, we have a completely different prerequisite. Since Obama and the Maidan coup, the flag has been pointing to escalation and President Biden is continuing this course.
It can be assumed that the West will supply all weapons to Ukraine that are requested. Now it is clear to everyone that Ukraine is being used as a battering ram against Russia. The attacks of the last few weeks have clearly shown that it is also about destroying strategic targets in Russia. The attack on the early warning system is the best example of this. Such an attack is unacceptable in the age of nuclear weapons.
Of course, the legitimate question arises as to whether this specific attack was carried out on Ukraine’s own initiative or on the orders of someone else. And if it was really Ukraine’s initiative, there should be clear consequences from the West, as this created a very dangerous situation.
It is always important to monitor the Western media, as political wishes and ideas are always discussed there. There has been repeated talk of the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, especially since 2022. The Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin also called for the delivery of nuclear weapons to Ukraine. This was, of course, an absurd request, but it was discussed for a long time in the media. So you can say that the smell of nuclear war has been in the air for at least 2 years. Since then, many reports on the topic of nuclear conflict have been produced in the German media. This is how Western societies are preparing for the possible use of these weapons.
The situation is really dangerous and, at the latest after the attack on the Russian early warning system, one should really consider ending this conflict as quickly as possible. Let’s think about what the next level of escalation is. If things continue to develop like this, we will be very quick to use tactical nuclear weapons. This point gets closer and closer with each passing week.
By continuing to support Ukraine and, above all, by supplying weapons with a longer range, it cannot be ruled out in the long term that the conflict could also affect other states in Europe.
There is currently discussion as to whether Russian military targets in Belarus should be attacked. This would of course also clearly drag Belarus into this conflict.
Particularly due to the threat to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, an extension of the conflict to the Baltics can no longer be ruled out. But then there would be a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.
The greatest danger at the moment is that there is less and less inhibition to use larger and more far-reaching weapons. This spiral of escalation must be stopped by the West, otherwise the nuclear component of this conflict will become increasingly likely.
This development and the fact that we have already reached such a point also shows the inability of European politicians, who have not been able to freeze this conflict or find another solution since 2014.
It started with an uprising in Kiev and now we are on the brink of nuclear war.
Patrick Poppel, Center for Geostrategic Studies, Belgrade.
Scott Ritter: Georgian ‘Foreign Agents’ Law Exposes Western Influence and Protects Sovereignty
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 31.05.2024
The new “foreign agents” law will help Georgians tell right from wrong and real friends from fake ones, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik, arguing that the legislation should be called the “transparency law.”
Georgia’s “foreign agents bill,” which designates non-governmental organizations (NGOs) receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power,” became law on May 28. The US immediately announced sanctions against Georgian politicians backing the legislation, while the EU threatened to freeze the country’s candidate status.
One might wonder as to why the law, which resembles the US’ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), has been received with such animosity in the West. The crux of the matter is that the legislation is aimed at exposing the West’s deep disrespect of Georgia’s sovereignty, according to former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter.
“In Georgia today, as we speak, there are 27,000 Western-funded NGOs. What are these non-governmental organizations doing? It’s about buying a generation of Georgian citizens, a young generation, a generation that has lost touch with who they are and what they are as Georgians, a generation that is out of touch with the reality of what happened to Georgia in the 1990s,” Ritter told Sputnik.
Over the past several decades, Georgians have experienced what the “European choice” really entails, Ritter continued, referring to US-backed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s aggression against South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers in August 2008, which was quickly repelled by Moscow. Following Saakashvili’s botched invasion, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which had declared their independence from Tbilisi in the early 1990s.
Putting Georgia First
Currently, the Western-backed Georgian opposition wants to create a “second front” against Russia, something that would be nothing short of suicidal, according to Ritter. This policy of confronting Russia is part and parcel of an overall package that includes Georgia becoming a member of the European Union and member of NATO, which would also mean ceding Georgia’s sovereignty to the West, the military expert warned.
“Georgian Dream has the best interests of Georgia in mind,” said Ritter. “The EU wants Georgia to participate in the economic sanctioning of Russia. The Georgian Dream Party so far has said no. Look what happened to Europe when they sanctioned Russia, it boomeranged, backfired. What about Georgia? By not participating in the economic sanction of Russia, the Georgian economy has grown more than 10% over the course of the last two years and is on pace to continue this level of growth. That’s called looking out for Georgia first.”
When it comes to Georgian NATO membership, many of the nation’s seasoned military officers, who participated in NATO’s Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo campaigns and brought home the dead bodies of Georgian soldiers, are no longer enthusiastic about joining the alliance, the expert remarked.
Ritter explained that territorial disputes with South Ossetia and Abkhazia will not allow Georgia to join NATO any time soon, adding that the irony is that the two breakaway republics will not start settling their disagreements with Tbilisi until the latter gives up its NATO aspirations.
New Law to Prevent West From Meddling in Georgia’s Elections
Unlike Georgia’s former pro-Western leaders and opposition, the Georgian Dream Party has taken a middle path of steering the nation away from economic and political crises, according to the pundit. In light of this, the upcoming October elections will become a litmus test for Georgians, and the governing party doesn’t want the West to decide the nation’s fate by meddling in the vote via thousands of US and EU-funded non-governmental organizations. Hence, the adoption of the law, which will help separate the wheat from the chaff, he said.
“One of the goals in passing this legislation was to prevent the EU and the US from taking control of the political opposition, directly and indirectly, by pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars through these 27,000 non-governmental organizations. By stopping this, by exposing this foreign money, the reality of this foreign money, the Georgian Dream Party is betting that the Georgian people will be shocked by the depths to which ostensible friends, the US, the EU, have gone to buy Georgia, not respecting Georgia as a sovereign state, not respecting the Georgian people as a sovereign people.”
Georgian Dream lawmakers want to prevent external forces from dragging the nation into another debacle, according to the expert. They want Georgians to choose their own way on the world arena, not as “Europeans,” but as “Georgians.”
“The Georgian Dream Party is betting that the Georgian people at the end of the day will recognize that they are not European – that they are Georgian. They are Eurasian. They are unique. That they don’t belong in a continent that doesn’t want them. They belong in the homeland, in the South Caucasus, from which they come. And that their closest big neighbor, Russia, has been the best friend of Georgia over time than any other nation on the planet. This is the Georgian dream. This is the dream of the Georgian people. And this should be the dream of anybody who claims to be a friend of the Georgian nation,” Ritter concluded.
US behind two failed ‘color revolutions’ – Georgian PM
RT | May 31, 2024
Tbilisi needs to “reconsider” its relationship with Washington, given that American-funded NGOs were behind at least two attempts at overthrowing the government, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said.
The US has threatened sanctions against senior Georgian officials after the former Soviet republic passed a ‘foreign agents’ law which was denounced by the West as a threat to democracy.
“I don’t know why there were two attempts at revolution in 2020-2021, and then in 2022. I don’t know why there were these attempts, but the fact is that the previous [US] ambassador spoiled a lot of things, a lot of things were ruined in those years, and this needs to be corrected,” Kobakhidze told reporters on Friday.
“This includes American-funded NGOs that stood on the revolutionary stage, calling for the resignation of the government, and the formation of a government with their participation. Therefore, Georgian-American relations need to be reconsidered,” the prime minister added.
Georgia will do everything it can to improve relations with the US, Kobakhidze said, as this is in the interests of both countries.
The government in Tbilisi has been under intense pressure from the US and EU to drop the proposed Transparency of Foreign Influence Act, to the point that Washington and Brussels have threatened sanctions and a halt to Georgia’s EU and NATO integration.
The law would require NGOs, media outlets, and individuals receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as entities “promoting the interests of a foreign power” and to disclose their donors, or be fined up to $9,500 for noncompliance. The law sparked protests, during which activists clashed with police and tried to storm the country’s parliament building last month.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Washington would introduce visa restrictions on “individuals who are responsible for or complicit in undermining democracy in Georgia, as well as their family members.”
Meanwhile, EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi suggested to Kobakhidze that he could meet the same fate as Slovak PM Robert Fico, who narrowly survived an assassination attempt last month. Varhelyi later said his warning about the dangers of “polarization in society” was misunderstood.
Georgian NGOs, which are primarily funded by the West, have denounced the proposed law as “Russian” and attempted to replicate their 2023 success in forcing the government to back down. This time, however, the parliament passed the law and overrode President Salome Zourabichvili’s veto earlier this week. The government has denied that the law will be used to crack down on the opposition and insisted that the legislation is compatible with EU norms.
Robert Fico’s failed assassination raises specter of Western plotting
BY KIT KLARENBERG · THE GRAYZONE · MAY 31, 2024
Slovak PM Robert Fico’s independent stance earned him the wrath of NATO and the EU. Did a Western-directed plot to remove his troublesome government from office trigger his assassination attempt?
On May 15, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was almost murdered in broad daylight. While shaking hands with supporters during a public appearance, a gunman shot him twice in the abdomen and once in the shoulder. The attack left him fighting for his life while authorities raced for clues, and many observers at home and abroad puzzled about the would-be assassin’s motives and whether foreign actors were in some way responsible for the attack. And despite the shooter’s instantaneous arrest, those questions still linger weeks later.
Fico, a veteran Slovak political figure, was re-elected in September 2023 amid a wave of public resentment over the proxy war in Ukraine, pledging to end arms supplies to Kiev and anti-Russian sanctions. On the campaign trail, Western leaders, journalists and pundits aggressively stoked fears of the “pro-Putin,” “populist” candidate returning to office. Ukraine’s Western-backed “Center for Countering Disinformation” publicly accused him of spreading “infoterror” back in April 2022.
But many Slovakians see it differently. They say Fico is merely committed to defending Slovakia’s sovereignty, and governing in his nation’s interests, not those of Brussels, Kiev, London, and Washington. For Western politicians, his victory came at a highly inopportune time, with public and political consensus on the proxy war in Ukraine rapidly fraying across Europe.
Since Fico’s election, media outlets like Germany’s state broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, have branded him a “threat” to the EU and NATO. His declaration that Kiev must cede territory to Russia to end the war was not well-received in Western capitals. In April, the premier seemingly predicted his own shooting, warning that the virulent political climate in Bratislava could result in politicians getting killed.
Domestically, a number of foreign-funded media assets and NGOs have relentlessly targeted Fico for pursuing neutrality in the conflict. But over two years after Russia’s intervention, local polling indicates just 40% of the population blame Moscow for the proxy war, and 50% consider the US to be a threat to national security. Meanwhile, 69% of Slovakians believe by continuing to arm Ukraine, the West is “provoking Russia and bringing itself closer to the war” and 66% agreed that “the US is dragging [their] country into a war with Russia because it is profiting from it.”
When Fico was re-elected in September 2023, this journalist speculated that a color revolution could soon be impending in Slovakia. We are now left to ponder whether the Prime Minister’s attempted assassination was a Western-directed plot to remove his troublesome government from office. Even though he is finally on the road to recovery, the threat of an overseas-orchestrated coup remains. A vast US-sponsored opposition political and media infrastructure is causing havoc in Bratislava, and this could easily escalate further.
Slovakia has since the end of the Cold War stood apart from its neighbors. Folding the country into the EU and NATO and neutralizing its rebellious politics and population has required an enormous investment in time and money by Brussels and Washington, and relentless meddling in the country’s internal affairs by foreign-funded organizations and actors. Fico’s return to power threatened to not only derail that project, but create a regional contagion effect. Disinfecting the country therefore became of the utmost urgency for the West.
Facebook purge suggests shooter was no ‘lone wolf’
Fico’s shooter, 71-year-old Juraj Cintula, is among the Slovaks who do not support Fico’s positions. A discrepant picture of the man has emerged since his arrest. Some acquaintances describe him as “weird and angry,” and “against everything.” Others report he was meek and mild-mannered, a far from obvious candidate to attempt a high-level political assassination. Cintula, an avowed Kiev ultra, claims he acted alone, his actions motivated by a desire to replace Fico’s government with a pro-Ukrainian administration. Slovakian court documents state that Cintula “wants military aid to be provided to Ukraine and considers the current government to be Judas towards the European Union,” and say this perception is why the would-be assassin “decided to act.”
The mainstream media has made much of Cintula’s background as a dissident poet and writer, in a seeming effort to humanize the would-be killer. By contrast, Aaron Bushnell, who in February self-immolated in protest of Washington’s facilitation of the Gaza genocide, was widely tarred by journalists as a maladjusted, mentally unwell outcast. Unmentioned by any Western outlet is that during the 1980s, Cintula was under surveillance by Czechoslovak security services.
The reason for the Czechs’ interest is unclear, although it may have been due to anti-Communist actions, or foreign contacts. Whether Cintula had seditious confederates within or without Slovakia is a key line of inquiry for police. That all traces of the shooter’s Facebook profile were comprehensively scrubbed from the internet two hours after the shooting, before investigators could access the information, is also source of intense suspicion.
While it is customary for the social network to purge the profiles of “dangerous individuals” – a fate this journalist has suffered for investigative reporting – following such incidents, in Bratislava Facebook relies on cooperating local individuals and organizations to police content. Apparently, Cintula’s profile was wiped before his identity had been reported in local media. Slovak authorities must now rely on the FBI to secure and provide the deleted information. Whether whatever is turned over will be unexpurgated is an open question.
Another disturbing feature of mainstream reporting on the shooting is ubiquitous, persistent reference to Slovakia’s unstable politics. According to this narrative, Fico’s anti-Western policies have fueled the chaotic state of affairs, provoking the assassination attempt and making him ultimately responsible for the attempt on his life. In the days following the shooting, the BBC, Financial Times, New York Times and Germany’s esteemed Der Spiegel pinned the blame on Slovakia’s alleged “toxic” political culture. The latter revised its wording after significant public backlash.
One could be forgiven for concluding Western journalists take it as self-evident that defying EU/US will provide legitimate grounds for getting shot. Western politicians clearly do. On May 23rd, Georgian prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze revealed that EU commissioner Oliver Varhelyi warned him he could suffer the same fate as Fico, if his government didn’t drop a highly controversial “foreign influence transparency” law, which would compel local NGOs to disclose their sources of income.
After listing the various ways the EU could retaliate against Georgia in a phone call with Kobakhidze, Varhelyi allegedly stated: “Look what happened to Fico, you should be very careful.”
Varhelyi has since confirmed that he cited Fico’s fate in private conversations with Kobakhidze, but claimed he was merely concerned with “dissuading the Georgian political leadership” from adopting restrictions on foreign-funded NGOs. Varhelyi insisted in a written statement that he simply “felt the need” to caution the Prime Minister “not to enflame [sic] further the already fragile situation,” arguing that he only mentioned “the latest tragic event in Slovakia… as an example and as a reference to where such high levels of polarisation can lead in a society.”
Public records show the US government regime change specialists at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have pumped millions into NGOs and media outlets in Slovakia under the aegis of mundane-sounding initiatives such as “strengthening civil society” and “promoting democratic values among youth.” Similar language is used to describe the purpose of Endowment grants in Georgia, financing groups at the forefront of recent violent unrest on the streets of Tbilisi, as The Grayzone has documented. Perhaps unsurprisingly, NED grantees are unanimous in their opposition to Fico.
Anyone searching for the source of Slovakia’s “toxic” politics need not look further than these US-backed organizations. Washington has stirred this cauldron for almost three decades, and with all sides of the Slovakian political class blaming one another the rising tide of hatred, it is hoping the pot will finally boil over.
Regime change blueprint honed in Slovakia
The NED-organized overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia in 2000 established an insurrectionary blueprint which was subsequently exported in the form of color revolutions. But throughout the 1990s, Slovakian activists honed the tactics which would eventually be deployed by US regime change operatives across the Soviet sphere.
At the time, Bratislava was one of the only post-Communist countries that neither adopted ruinous neoliberal political and economic reforms, nor pursued EU or NATO membership. Slovakia’s then-Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar paid a harsh price for his independent stance. Relentlessly slandered by US and European leaders as a Russian pawn, he quickly became a target for regime change.
In 1997, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly described Slovakia as “a black hole in the heart of Europe,” formally marking him for removal. So it was that NED funded the creation of Civic Campaign 98 (OK’98), a coalition of 11 anti-government NGOs.
Explicitly modeled on an earlier NED-funded effort in Bulgaria, concerned with “creating chaos” after the Socialist Party won the 1990 election, many of the individuals involved had been part of Cold War-era Czechoslovak anti-Communist dissident groups. OK’98 was publicly framed as a non-partisan get-out-the-vote campaign, but its vast resources were explicitly deployed for anti-government purposes. Its activities included rock concerts, short films, and TV infomercials in which Slovak celebrities urged young people to vote.
Meciar emerged with the most votes in the 1998 election, but the opposition gained enough seats to form a government. The NED assets who powered them to victory went on to give practical training to NED-supported pro-Western agitators like Pora, which ignited Kiev’s 2004 “Orange Revolution.” The insurrectionist youth group successfully overturned the re-election of President Viktor Yanukovych that year, installing the US-backed neoliberal Viktor Yushchenko in his place.
The return of Robert Fico represented a significant broadside against ongoing US “democratization” of the former Soviet sphere. It opened up the prospect of further anti-NATO candidates and governments gaining office elsewhere in Europe, at the most inconvenient juncture imaginable for Brussels and Washington.
Not coincidentally, it was at this time that polling for Germany’s upstart Alternative für Deutschland became turbocharged. The Euroskeptic party’s standing has soared in recent months, eliciting mainstream calls to ban it outright. And in North Macedonia just one week prior to Fico’s shooting, the anti-establishment VMRO-DPMNE party returned to power, overturning a NATO-fuelled color revolution that removed the party from office almost a decade earlier.
As the anti-Western backlash gained steam, a decision may have been made to draw a bloody red line in Slovakia.
Senior German Lawmaker Demands Activation of 900,000 Reservists Amid Anti-Russia Hysteria
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 01.06.2024
Germany went from doing its best to avoid getting dragged into the Ukraine quagmire to one of the NATO proxy war’s biggest cheerleaders, committing over 10 billion euros in military and economic support to Kiev, and suffering major economic losses due to spiking energy costs after cutting itself off from cheap and plentiful Russian pipeline gas.
Bundestag Defense Committee Chairwoman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann has urged the government and armed forces to activate 900,000 reservists in light of the so-called Russian threat.
“Putin is preparing his people for war and positioning them against the West. We must therefore become capable of defending ourselves as quickly as possible,” Strack-Zimmermann told the Funke Media Group on Saturday.
“Russia produces only weapons. School books are being printed that portray Germany as an aggressor,” the lawmaker claimed.
Therefore, she recommended, Germany needs to “activate the approximately 900,000 reservists,” first by making them register with the state. “If we could get half [of those with military experience] as reservists, that would be an incredible pool.”
Strack-Zimmermann, whose Free Democratic Party is part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Traffic Light Coalition alongside the Social Democrats and the Greens, has been an avid proponent of a military solution to the Ukraine crisis from its outset, actively promoting the delivery of German heavy armor to Kiev.
Her remarks come just days after Defense Minister Boris Pistorius apparently dropped plans to reintroduce conscription under his campaign to make Germany a “war-ready” nation, and promised a new, “largely voluntary” recruitment scheme after months of internal debate in the government over the severely unpopular proposal ahead of upcoming elections for the European Parliament later this month.
The new government proposal does not mention “compulsory military service,” but could force Germans over 18 years old to fill out a physical fitness assessment questionnaire for reference. Other proposals include the waiver of administrative fees for driver’s licenses, discounts on student loan repayments, and other enticements.
The Bundeswehr has experienced a years-long slump in its recruitment numbers, with troop numbers shrinking (by 1,500 personnel to 181,500 total in 2023) despite plans to grow its ranks to at least 203,000 personnel by the early 2030s.
Germany indefinitely suspended conscription in 2011.
To deal with the dearth in recruitment and the political unpopularity of conscription, German Reservist Association Chairman Patrick Sensburg recently called on the military to systematically record the health status and availability of all former military personnel in order to create plans for their deployment for homeland security and national and alliance defense in case of a crisis. Germany counts “reservists” as all former military service members of the Bundeswehr, but does not count troops from the defunct National People’s Army of the German Democratic Republic – the pro-Soviet East Germany annexed by the Federal Republic in 1990 with Mikhail Gorbachev’s blessing on the condition that NATO does not expand the alliance to the east. Veterans of the defunct National People’s Army number in the hundreds of thousands, and faced widespread dismissal in the 1990s, miserly pension benefits, and difficulties finding work in the new Germany.
Berlin has allocated some 10 billion euros ($10.85 billion US) in military aid to Ukraine over the past two years, more than any other country in NATO besides the United States. This support has included an array of heavy weapons – from tanks and armored vehicles to air defense batteries and artillery, with Leopard 1s and 2s making up the backbone of Ukraine’s NATO main battle tanks, and destroyed by the dozens by Russia during last year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Berlin joined lockstep with Washington on Friday by formally greenlighting Ukrainian strikes against targets deep inside Russia using long-range NATO strike systems, but has yet to deliver its Taurus missiles, which have a range of up to 500 km.
At home, German generals and politicians have complained of major problems with the Bundeswehr’s capabilities, including the inability to scrape together even a single 20,000-troop-strong combat-ready division after sending billions in equipment to Ukraine, and controversial plans to send “panzer battalions without panzers” to guard NATO’s eastern flanks in light of the Russian threat.”
Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin have said repeatedly that Moscow has no interest – “neither geopolitical, nor economic, nor political, nor military” – in getting into a conflict with NATO, while warning of the dangers of the Ukraine proxy war’s potential for escalation.
At the same time as Germany has ramped up defense spending and sought to increase the size and strength of its military, the country has suffered major economic difficulties throughout the course of the Ukraine crisis. Hundreds of major companies have relocated industrial production overseas amid unbearably high energy prices after the German government unilaterally rejected pipeline gas deliveries from Russia, and after US Navy divers allegedly destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline network. The traditional European industrial powerhouse’s recession has dipped in and out of recession, with Economy Minister Robert Habeck admitting in February that the country’s economy was in “troubled waters” and performing “dramatically bad.”
Still time to prevent NATO-Russia war – Hungary
RT | May 31, 2024
NATO is preparing for a protracted war with Russia but there is still a chance to prevent it, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said at a ministerial meeting of the military bloc in Prague on Friday.
NATO member states have been granting approval for Kiev to use Western-supplied weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia. Earlier in the day, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine had the right to defend itself, which includes the right to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia.
These steps are being taken in preparation “for a long, many-year war,” Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet quoted Szijjarto as saying.
“The express train of war has departed from the penultimate station,” and the question is whether there is still a chance to stop it, he added.
The Hungarian foreign minister said there was “only one emergency brake left,” referring to the European Parliament elections in June. The European people “can make it clear to their governments that they do not want to live with war in Europe for a long time,” Szijjarto added.
Hungary had previously called for a ceasefire and peace talks to resolve the Ukraine conflict. Budapest has refused to send military aid to Kiev and has repeatedly delayed EU sanctions on Moscow.
The Hungarian foreign minister has been a vocal critic of NATO’s position on the conflict. Before the meeting in Prague, he said anti-Russia “war hysteria” was making Western leaders adopt increasingly “crazy ideas” that could lead to grave consequences.
Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned that Brussels and Washington could be warming up for a direct military conflict with Russia. Budapest was working to “redefine” its NATO membership status to allow it to opt-out of the military alliance’s “activities outside the bloc’s territory,” Orban stated.
A number of other NATO member states such as Norway, Finland, Latvia, Poland, and reportedly Germany have spoken in favor of Kiev using long-range missiles against targets on Russian territory.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden was reported to have secretly given Ukraine the green light to use American-provided weapons to strike targets in the part of Russia that borders Kharkov Region.
NATO member states, especially the US, have “deliberately” launched a new round of escalation around Ukraine to prolong the “senseless war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. He also warned that such actions would have consequences and damage the interests of the countries that opted for an escalation.
NATO Chief Asks Allies to Commit $44 Billion in Military Aid to Ukraine Annually
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | May 30, 2024
The secretary-general of NATO is asking its 32 members to commit $44 billion in military aid to Ukraine every year. The request is two times larger than an earlier proposal of $108 billion over five years, and the military aid would also be funneled through NATO rather than the allies independently.
Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper reported that Jens Stoltenberg will make his pitch for sending $43 billion to Ukraine per year during a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Prague. “We need to sustain that current level of support as a minimum to provide the predictability Ukraine needs for as long as necessary,” the NATO source said. The official added that members of the bloc contributed about $40 billion per year through the first two years of the war.
Under the $100 billion proposal, counties would contribute aid equal to their financial commitment to the alliance. The US pays for about a quarter of NATO’s annual budget. If Stoltenberg seeks to lock in member states at their current commitment, the US will contribute over half of all aid, about $25 billion annually.
NATO has been seeking a multi-year pledge from its members to supply arms to Ukraine. The commitment is meant to lock in assistance for Kiev even if a nation would later decide to alter course. The initial proposal from Stoltenberg was for NATO to commit $108 billion over five years.
The secretary-general is also seeking increased control over the aid. Stoltenberg hopes the alliance members will agree to allow all aid to be coordinated through Brussels. Russia responded to the report by saying that NATO is pushing Ukraine to continue a “senseless war.”
The proposal was floated as NATO members are significantly stepping up their support for Ukraine. Several members of the alliance, now including the US, have green-lit Ukrainian forces using their missiles for attacks inside Russia. Additionally, several countries, including France, are preparing to send their troops into Ukraine to support Kiev.
Macron wants France to ‘go to war with Russia’ – Le Pen
RT | May 31, 2024
French politician Marine Le Pen has accused President Emmanuel Macron of wanting to “go to war with Russia” in an interview with France Info that aired on Thursday. The three-time presidential candidate said that Macron’s recent remarks on sending NATO trainers to Ukraine and allowing Kiev to use Western-supplied weapons to strike certain targets in Russia risk turning the current conflict into the next “world war.”
Le Pen’s comments come amid intense discussions in the West on how far into Russia Kiev should be allowed to strike using Western long-range weapons. Several NATO governments have said they are in favor of strikes on Russian territory, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has urged member-states to “lift some of” their restrictions on the use of Western arms.
Macron weighed into the discussion on Tuesday, opining that NATO should allow Ukraine to “neutralize military sites” inside Russia “from which Ukraine is being attacked,” even if they are far behind the front line. Le Pen slammed the idea, arguing that it “creates the risk of a global conflict.”
Le Pen said that the French leader’s views led her to “conclud[e] that Emmanuel Macron wants France to dive head first into war with Russia.” The right-wing politician said that she “extremely firmly opposes” his positions, which could “create an absolutely staggering danger” for France.
Le Pen previously accused Macron of “playing politics with war” and “hijacking” the Ukraine conflict for his electoral agenda. She has consistently opposed plans to admit Ukraine into NATO and the EU, place economic sanctions on Russia and to deliver heavy weapons to Kiev.
On Friday, NATO’s Stoltenberg announced that “several” of the bloc’s nations had never placed any restrictions on Kiev’s use of Western weapons. Reports also emerged that the US, which had previously not allowed Ukraine to deploy American arms outside of what Washington recognizes as Ukrainian territory, had granted permission to use its systems to target certain parts of Russia.
The reports were confirmed by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s office, which said that limited strikes are now allowed against direct threats to Kharkov Region, where Russian troops have recently made significant gains.
Moscow has repeatedly insisted that Western arms supplies to Kiev will only prolong the war, and accused Ukraine of using the weapons to attack civilian infrastructure within Russia. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Friday slammed the Western discussions about “allowing” Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia as “a classic NATO-style manipulation.”
Scott Ritter: Ukraine’s NATO Allies Dragging World Into Nuclear Armageddon
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – May 31, 2024
The West has misinterpreted Russia’s openness to dialogue on Ukraine as a sign of weakness and is now pushing the world to the edge of a disastrous all-out nuclear exchange, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik.
US President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia with US-made weapons, bringing the conflict to a new level. White House officials claim that Washington’s new policy pertains only to what they call as “acts of self-defense” by the Ukrainian military that is continuing to retreat.
Previously, other NATO member states, including the UK, France and Sweden, gave a nod to the Zelensky regime to use their weapons systems to attack Russia.
The Kiev regime and its Western allies believe they can gain an advantage over Russia by confining its special military operation to Ukrainian territory, ex-US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik. This situation allows Ukraine to train its troops in neighboring NATO states and receive arms and other equipment from the alliance’s hubs, not making them Russia’s legitimate targets.
However, things could drastically change once NATO-grade missiles start flying into Russia’s territory with the approval of Western countries, according to the military expert.
“France is now giving Ukraine permission to use the SCALP air launched cruise missile against targets inside Russia,” Ritter said. “Now [French President Emmanuel Macron] claims it’s just military targets, there won’t be hitting any civilian infrastructure, but it doesn’t matter. The fact is, if the French Scalp missile is used to attack targets inside Russia, this isn’t Ukraine defending itself, it’s France attacking Russia,” he stated.
The military expert indicated that it is a widely accepted fact that Ukrainians lack the ability to pre-program long-range SCALP missiles armed with conventional warheads. Therefore, it would be necessary for French technicians to carry out this task. The question arises: where would they obtain the targeting data? According to Ritter, the French military relies on a network of Syracuse satellites to transmit the essential information required for SCALP missiles.
“The bottom line is it is French space reconnaissance that’s gathering information and transmitting the information to the people who program the SCALP. The French operators, using French communication systems that transmit data collected by French intelligence satellites. This is France attacking. Who picks the target? Ukraine. France? It doesn’t matter. It’s the French.”
Ritter spotlighted the fact that Moscow has recently signaled that it is well aware of who operates NATO-grade long-range missiles and who provides reconnaissance and communications.
“[Russian President Vladimir Putin] knows that it’s not Ukrainian space reconnaissance, it’s not Ukrainian communications, it’s not Ukrainian technicians that are doing the targeting. It is the French, it is the Germans. It is the British. It is the Americans. And therefore, if these missiles, these weapons systems that are now being greenlit by the respective Western nations, to be used by Ukraine to attack targets inside Russia, if this happens, this is no longer about Ukraine defending itself. It’s about NATO attacking Russia.”
The question then arises as to how Russia will respond to these attacks, continued the military expert. According to NATO member states, they authorize Ukraine to use their weapons against Russia as sovereign nations, not as a military bloc. According to Ritter, this apparently means that they invite Russia’s retaliation strikes inside their respective territories and will not invoke Article 5, stipulating collective defense of NATO member states. “Because if they do that, then it’s clear that this is a NATO confrontation against Russia,” he stressed.
“If NATO chooses then to respond by launching additional attacks against Russia (remember, these are retaliation attacks – Russia is retaliating against NATO attacks against its territory) this would be an all-out assault by NATO against Russia. And former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made it clear that the Russian response would be nuclear. And this would lead to a general nuclear exchange and the end of the world. That’s where we’re at right now. This isn’t about helping Ukraine. This isn’t about Ukraine defending itself. This is about a larger plan by the collective West, by NATO, by the United States to strategically defeat Russia.”
The West’s major problem is that it has completely misread Russia since the outset of the conflict and considered Moscow’s calls for dialogue and negotiated settlement as a sign of weakness, according to the military analyst.
“Therefore the collective determination of the West is that they just continue to pressure Russia, ratchet up the pressure that Russia will fold like a house of cards, and run to the peace table and bring an end to this conflict. That’s not going to happen. This is a misreading of the situation by the West,” warned Ritter.
“And so the West now will attack Russia, trying to pressure Russia to the peace table. But all it will do is guarantee a Russian response that if the West doesn’t respond properly to that, if the West thinks that it therefore has the right to strike, Russian return will lead to Armageddon, the end of the world. That’s where we’re at today. This isn’t a game. This isn’t a joke. This is the end of all humanity,” the military expert cautioned.
Ukraine: Russia won’t escalate, US will
The aftermath of a Ukrainian attack on Belgorod, Russia, in May
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MAY 31, 2024
The United States’ proxy war with Russia is at another inflection point. The battleground is shifting dramatically to Russian territory — something without precedent even in the Cold War. How this pans out will be a momentous event in 21st century politics.
There are three defining issues here. One, the NATO strategy going forward, given the realisation in the West that there is no question of Russia being defeated in Ukraine; two, the constitutional crisis in Kiev with the presidential term of Vladimir Zelensky having run out on May 21; and, three, germane to all this, Russia’s intentions.
To be sure, the NATO and the EU are revamping their strategy while Russia hopes to remain “one foot ahead” of the West, as President Vladimir Putin put it.
Russia is not interested in an escalation as it is doing well in the war of attrition with Ukraine. Russia has effectively countered the US’ Mission Creep so far to push through all of its self-imposed limitations on aid to Ukraine and eventually breach those limits.
The big question today is how one could take the Biden Administration’s affirmation — stated by the White House National Security Council, the state department and the Pentagon — that it disfavours the use of western weaponry by Kiev to attack pre-war Russian territory.
An established pattern has set in whereby when Washington says some advanced weapon system is off limits for Ukraine, it actually turns out that Kiev just has to sit out for a few months so that Biden can cross the self-imposed red line.
Therefore, Russia will not take this as Washington’s final word. Curiously, the ground is being prepared to jettison the taboo, with both congressional Republicans and Secretary of State Blinken urging the White House to give the green light and both New York Times and Washington Post reporting that it is only a matter of time before the administration yields to formal American blessing to accelerate strikes on prewar Russia. (here and here)
The New York Times and Guardian reported on Thursday, in fact, a shift already in the US position that now allows Ukrainian US-supplied artillery to fire back at Russian batteries over the Russian border from Kharkov region and also to target concentrations of Russian forces massing on the border in Russia’s Belgorod region.
Meanwhile, a new phase is about to begin to conclude the Battle of Donbass, which, even after two years remains unfinished business. The entrenched Ukrainian military hubs in the region — Pokrovsk, Kramatorsk and Slovyansk — still threaten southern Donetsk Oblast.
Similarly, Volchansk on the Russian border facing Belgorod city and Kupyansk, also an important logistical point and railway node (almost 20 rail lines intersect in the town with about half track straight into Russia) are a thorn in the flesh for Russia’s border region.
Russians have openly stated that repeated raids into Belgorod city and its environs from the Kharkov Region needed to be countered with the creation of a “security zone”. Putin himself had spoken about this as early as in March.
From present indications, Russian operations are directed on two Ukrainian towns close to the border — Volchansk and Lypsti. Russia may stretch the front with a foray into Sumy oblast but any serious effort to capture either Sumy or Kharkov seems unlikely at this stage.
In an incisive analysis, the well-known Russia watcher Big Serge wrote last week, “The main purpose of these fronts will be to fix Ukrainian reserves in place and denude Ukraine’s ability to react on other fronts. This war will not be won or lost in Kharkov, but in the Donbas, which remains the decisive theatre.
“We currently appear to be solidly in the preparatory/shaping phase of a Russian summer offensive in the Donbas, which (likely among other things) will feature a Russian drive on the city of Konstyantinivka. This is the last major urban area shielding the advance towards Kramatorsk-Slovyansk from the south (remembering that these twin cities form the ultimate objective of Russia’s campaign in the Donbas.)”
Expected Russian summer offensive
Putin has strongly reacted to the recent proxy attacks on Russia’s strategic assets with western weaponry inside its territory. Putin warned that “this unending escalation can lead to serious consequences.”
As he put it, “long-range precision weapons cannot be used without space-based reconnaissance… the final target selection and what is known as launch mission can only be made by highly skilled specialists who rely on this reconnaissance data, technical reconnaissance data.
“For some attack systems, such as Storm Shadow, these launch missions can be put in automatically, without the need to use Ukrainian military… Launching other systems, such as ATACMS, for example, also relies on space reconnaissance data, targets are identified and automatically communicated to the relevant crews that may not even realise what exactly they are putting in. A crew, maybe even a Ukrainian crew, then puts in the corresponding launch mission. However, the mission is put together by representatives of NATO countries, not the Ukrainian military.
“So, these officials from NATO countries, especially the ones based in Europe, particularly in small European countries, should… keep in mind that theirs are small and densely populated countries, which is a factor to reckon with before they start talking about striking deep into the Russian territory. It is a serious matter and, without a doubt, we are watching this very carefully.”
Importantly, Putin underscored, “If Europe were to face those serious consequences, what will the United States do, considering our strategic arms parity? It is hard to tell. Are they looking for a global conflict? I think they wanted to agree upon strategic arms…We will wait and see what happens next.”
However, there are growing signs that the Biden administration may have simply mothballed the idea of western long-range weaponry being used to destroy Russia’s strategic assets deep inside its territory until the NATO summit gets over in Washington (9-11 July) so as to keep the flock together.
Equally, Biden may calculate that it is expedient to drum up tensions with Russia rather than leave the foreign policy turf to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who may land in DC to address the lawmakers. The Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel’s Kan public broadcaster on Wednesday, “we are expecting another seven months of fighting” in Gaza. The Republicans are already flagging Middle East as the single biggest foreign policy goof-up by Biden. This is where the real risk lies.
There is a remarkable consistency in the Russian words that the depth of its proposed buffer security zone along the western borders will entirely depend on security considerations. The deputy chairman of Russia’s security council Dmitry Medvedev had explicitly stated recently that the security zone may not only include Kiev but also extend as far as the Polish border if the West sends Kiev long-range weapons. Significantly, on Tuesday, Putin called into question the legitimacy of Zelensky remaining in power in Kiev after his presidential term ended on May 21.
The ball is in Biden’s court. But the signs are not good. Germany, which is the US’s closest European ally, is apparently switching tack and now says that Ukraine’s “defensive action is not limited to one’s own territory, but [can] also be expanded to the territory of the aggressor.”
The chancellor’s spokesman said Berlin’s previous stance that Ukraine wouldn’t use German weapons on Russian soil had been “a statement of facts” that was true at that moment but did not necessarily apply to the future. He refused to reveal Berlin’s precise agreements with Kiev on using German weapons.
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Villains of Judea
Abe Foxman
Foxman left a legacy of surveillance scandals, political vendettas, and selective outrage.
José Niño Unfiltered | May 24, 2026
When Abraham Foxman died on May 10, 2026, tributes poured in from presidents, prime ministers, and Jewish leaders worldwide, yet his legacy remains defined as much by controversy as by accomplishment.
Foxman described himself as “a passionate supporter of the State of Israel” and spent his career building the ADL into a roughly $60 million per year organization that defined mainstream American Jewish advocacy on antisemitism, civil rights, and the Jewish state. … continue
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