By Paul Robinson | Canadian Dimension | May 3, 2024
The Republic of Georgia has not enjoyed a stable life in the 30 years or so since it gained independence from the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, it was wracked by civil war and ethnic conflict, at the end of which it lost control of the autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In 2003, the so-called Rose Revolution overthrew the government of President Edvard Shevardnadze, after which Georgia experienced the rather erratic reign of Mikheil Saakashvili, who promised to turn the country permanently towards the West, including membership of NATO and the EU.
Saakashvili, however, overplayed his hand, and in August 2008 launched an attack on South Ossetia in an effort to recapture it by force. The Russian army immediately responded, drove the Georgians out and advanced to within a few kilometers of the Georgian capital Tbilisi before agreeing to a ceasefire and heading home. Saakashvili left Georgia in 2013, discredited both by the 2008 war and revelations of rape and torture in the country’s prisons.
Since Saakashvili’s departure, the ruling party in the country has been Georgian Dream, an organization considered somewhat left-of-centre economically but also quite conservative socially, favouring traditional Christian family values. In terms of foreign policy, it remains committed to joining NATO and the EU, and has signed an association agreement with the latter. But it has resisted sending military aid to Ukraine or imposing sanctions on the Russian Federation lest this provoke Russian retaliation that might harm the Georgian economy. This has led critics to denounce it as ‘pro-Russian.’
The rather paranoid perception that Georgian Dream is a tool of Moscow lies at the heart of protests now rocking Tbilisi and threatening Georgia with yet another ‘colour revolution.’ The cause of this is legislation introduced by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze that would oblige organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funds from foreign sources to register as ‘foreign agents’ and submit details of their finances to the government. Organizations that fail to do so would be fined.
Kobakhidze says the law is necessary to increase transparency, an argument much used by advocates of similar laws in Western countries. The obvious target of the legislation is the large number of Georgian NGOs who receive money from Western countries for the purported aim of promoting European integration, ‘Western values,’ and so on, and also to carry out tasks such as election monitoring. Kobakhidze complains that such NGOs have promoted revolution (as in 2003), propagated ‘gay propaganda’ and attacked the Georgian Orthodox Church. It would appear that he wishes to rein them in. It is this that riles the thousands of people who have come out on the streets of Tbilisi this past week to protest against the proposed legislation. Wrapping themselves in EU flags, they claim that Georgian Dream is acting under orders from Moscow with the intent of destroying pro-Western forces in the country. “Everything shows that this government is controlled by Putin,” one protestor told the New York Times, while others shouted “No to the Russian law!”
According to Eto Buziashvili, a former advisor to the National Security Council of Georgia, the law is a method of “political repression,” whose aim is “to exhaust civil society and media, … leaving them with no capacity to defend the elections in October.” She continues: “those of us who desire an independent and free Georgia with a liberal democracy and a Euro-Atlantic future will be faced with the choice of either submitting to Russia-dictated rule or leaving the country. If we do neither, they will imprison us.”
Georgian Dream, however, is standing firm. Its leaders see the protestors as ideological zealots bent on revolution and on provoking conflict with Russia. In a speech on Monday, the party’s founder, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, accused the ‘Global War Party’ of being behind the protests. According to Ivanishvili, the Global War Party “wields influence over NATO and the EU, stirring conflicts between Georgia and Russia, and exacerbating Ukraine’s situation.” “Foreign agents still aim to restore a cruel dictatorship in Georgia, but Georgian Dream will prevent this, advocating for governance elected by the people, not appointed from outside,” he says.
The ‘outside’ Ivanishvili mentioned is quite obviously the West, whose leaders have been outspoken in their criticism of Georgia’s foreign agent legislation. The EU’s diplomatic service, for instance, declared that, “This is a very concerning development and the final adoption of this legislation would negatively impact Georgia’s progress on its EU path. The law is not in line with EU core norms and values.” Meanwhile, a group of 14 US Senators signed a letter to Prime Minister Kobakhidze, arguing that the law “would be used to silence civil society and media that play a significant role in advancing Georgia’s democratic institutions.” They urged him to abandon his “destructive path” as a result of which “Georgia’s transatlantic aspirations are being undermined.”
The hostile reaction of the West once again raises questions of hypocrisy and double standards. After all, not only does the United States itself have a foreign agent law, but the concept is becoming increasingly popular elsewhere in the West, with an ever growing number of countries, including Canada, either adopting such a law or considering it. It would appear that requiring foreign-funded organizations to register with the government is acceptable as long as it is Western states doing the requiring. But when the tables are turned, and it is Western-funded institutions that are being obliged to register, suddenly foreign agent laws turn out to be threats to democracy that are incompatible with fundamental values.
No doubt, those leading the charge against Georgia’s law would argue that the comparison is a false one—that Western-funded NGOs are promoting human rights, democracy, and other universal values and institutions that are for the good of all, whereas foreign agent laws elsewhere are used to do the opposite. But what is a good objective is all in the eye of the observer. In countries like Georgia, Western-funded organizations openly seek to fundamentally alter the political, economic, and social institutions of their host countries to bring them in line with those of the West, and also to turn those countries into the West’s political and military allies. If you live in such a country and happen to disagree with such a fundamental alteration of your homeland, then indeed you could view this process as threatening.
It’s also not as democratic as we might like to think. Integration with the EU, for instance, requires one to bring one’s country in line with a host of demands from Brussels. Those overseeing the process are often more concerned with doing what the EU says they must do than with doing what their own people want. Moreover, what are nowadays referred to as ‘Western values’ are not universally popular, and the fact that those promoting those values are the beneficiaries of substantial foreign funding while those opposing them have very few resources of their own can be seen as not just unfair but deeply undemocratic.
In short, if Western states have their reasons for being cagey of foreign influences, so too do those in other countries. Moreover, while the push towards Western integration may work in countries that are relatively united in favour, elsewhere it can prove deeply divisive and, as shown by Ukraine, eventually extremely destructive. This is particularly so in cases such as Georgia, where the issue is wrapped up in geopolitical rhetoric that casts it as a struggle of good (the West) against evil (Russia). Contrary to the protestors’ claims, there is no evidence that Moscow is pulling the strings in Tbilisi, but their insistence that it is risks turning a domestic pursuit into something much wider and consequently much more dangerous.
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | May 3, 2024
In Macedonia – or North Macedonia, or FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) – a counter-revolution impends. On April 24th, citizens went to the polls to choose their next President. Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova of Russophilic, pro-Serbian VMRO-DPMNE trounced Western-backed incumbent Stevo Pendarovski, albeit not by an absolute majority. The second round will be held May 8th, although opinion polls point to the challenger’s crushing victory. As we shall see, this development is a devastating blow to NATO, which could have far-reaching consequences regionally.
Pendarovski is a darling of EU and US officials. His upset win in 2019 was widely hailed in the mainstream media as illustrative of Macedonians’ yearning to at last become fully-fledged members of the transatlantic community, and rejection of VMRO-DPMNE’s “anti-Western” politics, which prominently included resisting NATO membership. His success also removed the last remaining barrier to Skopje joining the military alliance – a bitter, fraught, and protracted process, opposed by a significant proportion of the local population.
How Macedonia reached that point is largely unknown outside the country. It is a sordid tale of election meddling, subverted democracy, brazen swindles, high crimes and misdemeanours, and expansive American and British skullduggery, the full dimensions of which may never publicly surface. Now, Siljanovska-Davkova’s seemingly inevitable victory threatens to not only overturn those malign machinations, but reverse the US Empire’s ongoing effort to forcibly enmesh the entire Former Yugoslavia within NATO.
As with the election of Robert Fico in Slovakia, VMRO-DPMNE’s triumph comes at a very bad time for Washington. Across the West, public and state support for the proxy war in Ukraine is rapidly deteriorating, while Kiev faces total frontline collapse, and its forces are retreating everywhere. The prospect of Skopje’s withdrawal from NATO risks kickstarting another destabilising domino effect. The question of how, and whether, the alliance would be able to prevent this is an open one. Although it’ll undoubtedly try.
Dropping ‘Bombs’
NATO’s oft-repeated official mantra is that countries are free to choose their own security arrangements. As residents of the Balkans know only too well, in practice this simply isn’t true. For example, The Grayzone has previously exposed how alliance membership was violently imposed upon Montenegro in 2017, against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the population. Macedonians were slightly more amenable to joining, although there was for many years a seemingly insurmountable hurdle preventing accession – their country’s name.
Following Yugoslavia’s breakup, Macedonia applied to join a welter of international organisations and institutions. Athens, worried Skopje’s nationalist leaders might use their newfound independence to make irredentist claims on its own territory, successfully lobbied the United Nations et al for Macedonia to be forever referred to as FYROM in international fora. Officials charged there was no connection between the modern state, populated by ethnic Slavs, and the Greek land of antiquity.
In 2008 however, Greece blocked Skopje’s bid to begin NATO’s accession process under the FYROM moniker, explicitly due to its official name. Athens proposed the country rebrand itself New or Upper Macedonia, before trying again. Three years later, the International Court of Justice judged this was improper and discriminatory, although did nothing to prevent a subsequent repeat. Both the alliance and EU remained steadfast that the issue needed to be resolved, before membership negotiations for either body could begin.
Contemporary polls showed 82.5% of Macedonians opposed changing the country’s name, a position wholeheartedly shared by the government. VMRO-DPMNE was in office at this time, led by hardline nationalist Nikola Gruevski. Pledging that Macedonia would always be called Macedonia, as if to specifically spite Athens, he thereafter launched an ambitious construction project, “Skopje 2014”. Swaths of the capital’s brutalist architecture were razed to make way for faux neoclassical buildings, and a giant statue of Alexander the Great was constructed in the city centre.
From NATO’s perspective, however, Macedonia’s alliance “aspirations” were “set in stone” when Skopje inked a “Membership Action Plan” in 1999. VMRO-DPMNE’s popularity, and Gruevski’s leadership, were therefore highly problematic for Washington. In the year following Russia’s March 2014 reunification with Crimea, NATO’s efforts to expand into Moscow’s “near abroad” became turbocharged. As if on cue, opposition party SDSM’s leader Zoran Zaev began regularly dropping what he and domestic media dubbed “bombs”.
These were highly incriminating audio recordings and wiretaps of private conversations between prominent local government officials, businesspeople, journalists, and judges. Purportedly captured illegally by Skopje’s intelligence agencies, and provided to Zaev by whistleblowers, they appeared to implicate Gruevski and his ministers in gross wrongdoing, and abuses of power. For his part, the Macedonian premier claimed SDSM was attempting to blackmail him into holding a snap general election, and had threatened to publicise damaging intelligence “gathered with the help of a foreign spy service.”
‘Only Consultative’
A political crisis duly erupted in Macedonia. The EU and US stepped in, mediating a deal whereby SDSM would appoint ministers to government departments in an interim administration, Gruevski would resign by January 2016, and new elections would be held in June that year. USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), a component of the intelligence cutout concerned with “political transition” – in other words, regime change – subsequently set up shop in Skopje.
OTI went on to funnel tens of millions of dollars to anti-government, pro-NATO groups, political parties, and NGOs. In all, $16.2 million was allocated for ensuring Macedonia’s untroubled entry to NATO alone. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations was also handed vast sums to cause chaos. A final report on these efforts produced by USAID bragged that its “Macedonia Support Initiative” had “reinforced the US Government’s foreign policy goal of strengthening Macedonia’s democratic reform processes leading to greater Euro-Atlantic integration.”
Yet, in the resultant election, SDSM fell short of victory, and was forced to scrape together a fragile coalition government. Incongruously, around 70,000 Albanians in Macedonia – one third of the country’s total population – supported Zaev, when they would normally vote for ethnic Albanian parties. They hadn’t backed SDSM before in significant numbers, and haven’t since. Local sources suspect Skopje’s US and British embassies “worked with village elders, imams, and local mafia elements, to get Albanians to switch their vote this one time.”
Despite its vulnerability, the coalition administration was the breakthrough necessary to end Skopje’s name dispute once and for all. So it was in June 2018, the Greek and Macedonian foreign ministers met by Lake Prespa to sign a historic agreement. North Macedonia was born, and its NATO membership was imminent. Or so the alliance thought. While parliament rubberstamped the move, President Gjorge Ivanov of VMRO–DPMNE refused, pointing out the agreement contravened Skopje’s constitution.
Panicking, the Macedonian government opted to hold a referendum on the name change that September. In the intervening three months, authorities – backed and financed by the EU and US – bombarded citizens with slick advertising and propaganda, intended to sell the public on the benefits of joining NATO. Simultaneously, vast protests raged throughout the country, under the banner of “Never North, Always Macedonia”. Ivanov, and countless posters in major cities, urged voters to boycott the plebiscite. As a constitutional scholar explained:
“The name of a country is a name that comes from and is created by the people who created this country and live in it. The state created by the Macedonian people is called the Republic of Macedonia. The Macedonian people will never refer to their country with [another] name… We can never accept to change something that we’ve used for centuries, a name that has been carried by this state for more than 50 years.”
When the referendum’s results trickled in, Western leaders and Zaev hailed how a staggering 94% voted in favour of renaming Macedonia. They neglected to mention turnout was just 37%, therefore nullifying the result. Under Skopje’s constitution, 50% of the public must vote for the government to honour a referendum’s outcome. No matter – Zaev simply shifted goalposts, claiming the plebiscite was “only consultative”. The name change could and would go ahead regardless.
In January 2019, parliament approved dubious and highly controversial constitutional “reforms”, allowing the country to be renamed without a public vote, or even the President’s blessing. This required corralling two thirds of lawmakers to back the changes. The SDSM-led coalition achieved this feat by bribing, intimidating, and blackmailing MPs, pardoning MPs facing prosecution for serious crimes, and other cynical connivances. Subsequent investigations uncovered “serious breaches” of domestic laws and international standards perpetrated by authorities during the referendum campaign.
The next month, NATO’s 29 members accepted North Macedonia’s accession. The alliance welcomed its newest inductee on March 27th 2020. How extraordinary it would be, if the country was the last one in, and first one out. Although, long before the latest Presidential election, there were unambiguous indications Skopje sensed geopolitical breezes have begun to blow in new directions. In November 2023, Macedonian officials announced their airspace would open to Russia, allowing Sergei Lavrov to visit a local OSCE ministerial summit.
Strategic Culture Foundation | May 3, 2024
Ten years ago this week, a shocking and brutal massacre was perpetrated by supporters of the NATO-backed Kiev regime in Odessa.
At least 42 men and women were murdered on May 2, 2014, when the Trade Unions House in the historic port city was set ablaze by a fascist mob.
Last year to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the atrocity, our weekly editorial provided a rationale for Western silence. We commented:
“In all, 42 people were murdered in the Trade Unions building massacre. Not one attacker was ever prosecuted. The Kiev regime refused to carry out any adequate investigation.
However, the horror of that day was a turning point for many Ukrainians and Russians. It revealed the hideous nature of the regime that had seized power over the country and its vile fascist hostility toward Russia.
This is the regime that was brought to power by Washington and its NATO partners. Since 2014, it has been armed and built up to be a war machine to aggress Russia and obliterate all cultural connections with Russia.
The massacre in Odessa should be remembered for the sake of the victims that day. But also remembered because it helps explain the background of how the present U.S.-led NATO proxy conflict in Ukraine with Russia has come about.
For that reason, Western news media and their governments chose to studiously ignore the Odessa massacre. Their shameful silence is necessary in order to conceal the criminal complicity of the West in Ukraine’s deadly turmoil.”
Now 10 years on, the Western media do not even make any mention of the atrocity. In earlier years, the Western media sought to distort the incident by claiming that it was a confused melee and the tragic result of a clash between unknown rival factions. There were even deplorable attempts by Western media to make out that claims of an atrocity were “Russian disinformation”.
The cover-up has given way to total silence as if the horrific event was consigned to an Orwellian “memory hole”.
Russia continues to call for an international independent investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Kiev regime persists in rebuffing any serious investigation for the simple reason that a thorough probe would probably show that the atrocity was carried out by the leadership of the Kiev regime in collusion with Western intelligence agencies.
What happened in Odessa on May 2, 2014, was not some random event of chaotic violence that got out of control. This is what the Western media initially reported.
No, it seems quite clear now that the massacre was a well-planned, deliberate act of mass murder to terrorize the Ukrainian opposition into complying with the NATO regime. It was an act of state terrorism.
The victims were all from Odessa who had been participating in a peaceful protest outside the landmark building in the city center. The building was closed due to the May Day holiday. As in several other southern and eastern regions of Ukraine at the time, there were many protests against the NATO-sponsored coup in Kiev that had taken place only weeks earlier in February of that year.
Many Ukrainians were not happy – indeed were appalled – that the so-called EuroMaidan coup in Kiev had brought to power ultranationalists and fascists who glorified NeoNazi figures and paramilitaries. Cities like Odessa suffered terribly under Nazi occupation during the Great Patriotic War (WWII). Now they were seeing a regime exulting in those Nazi memories and wanting to banish all Russian cultural connections.
In those pivotal months of 2014, the CIA’s plan to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russian bulwark was not a foregone conclusion due to the formidable opposition to the new regime in cities like Odessa, Kherson and Kharkov – as well as of course the Crimea Peninsula and the Donbass.
Former Odessa lawmaker Vasily Polishchuk who witnessed the violence that day testifies that senior figures in the Kiev regime were present in Odessa in the days before May 2. One of those was Andriy Parubiy who had been appointed head of national security. Parubiy is also implicated in the sniper shootings in Kiev on February 20 – a false flag provocation killing dozens of protesters and police officers – that precipitated the coup against the elected pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Two weeks before the Odessa massacre, the then CIA director John Brennan was in Kiev on an unannounced visit. Even some U.S. lawmakers complained at the time that it was not a good look for the United States to be seen collaborating with the Kiev regime. Brennan was not only giving the green light to the “anti-terror operation” (civil war) that the Kiev regime was about to launch against the Donbass. It seems plausible that the United States was also helping to formulate a scorched-earth policy of terror to quell any dissent across Ukraine.
The mass killings in Odessa on May 2 were the selected terror demonstration.
Eyewitnesses tell of how thousands of Kiev regime paramilitaries who had been instrumental in the coup in the capital weeks earlier were bussed into Odessa and put up in camps. Andriy Parubiy was seen inspecting their ranks and overseeing the supply of body armor.
When the anti-Maidan protesters were attacked on May 2, they were herded by baseball-bat-wielding thugs into the Trade Union House. The building was then assailed with incendiary devices.
People who jumped from the blazing building were bludgeoned to death by NeoNazi gangs shouting “Death to all Russians”.
The dereliction of duty by the police that day to protect the peaceful protesters and the subsequent quashing of any crime investigation is proof that the security forces were complicit. That could only have been enabled by senior orders most likely issued by those in Kiev.
This is essential background to understand the current conflict in Ukraine and why Russia decided to intervene on February 24, 2022. Moscow maintains that Ukraine is a proxy war orchestrated by the United States and its NATO allies as a geo-strategic confrontation to subjugate Russia. Western regimes and their propaganda media make out that Ukraine is a democracy under aggression from Russia.
Understanding how the Kiev regime was installed with CIA and NATO engineering and how it rapidly used its fascist violence to turn Ukraine into a terror state corroborates the analysis of the current conflict being a Western imperialist proxy war.
The Western-lionized “democracy” has repressed all opposition parties and media.
The United States and its NATO accomplices do not want the Western public to understand the truth about their criminal machinations in Ukraine. These powers want the bloodshed to continue to the last Ukrainian because the war racket is so damn lucrative.
Thus the Western powers must shove episodes like the Odessa massacre down the memory hole and keep a lid on it. It is imperative to keep the fiction going of a democracy under attack otherwise the West’s collusion with a NeoNazi regime would reveal the Western powers’ inherent fascism.
Several events and developments around the world – brutal police repression of peaceful protests in the U.S. and Europe, the enabling of genocide by a fascist Israeli regime, the unprovoked aggression toward China, and the nefarious involvement in Ukraine – all point to Western states degenerating into full-fledged fascism.
Sputnik – 04.05.2024
MOSCOW – NATO’s large-scale Steadfast Defender drills indicate that the alliance is preparing for a “potential conflict” with Russia, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday.
NATO kicked off Steadfast Defender 24 in January. The war games are running through May and include over 90,000 troops from all 32 member states. During the drills, the allies plan to test out a conflict scenario against a “near-peer adversary” in accordance with Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on one ally is considered an attack against the entire NATO and allows for the provision of appropriate assistance.
“Right now, NATO is conducting its largest drills since the Cold War, Steadfast Defender, near the Russian border. According to their scenario, using all the tools, including the hybrid ones and conventional weapons, they are exercising coalition actions against Russia. We have to admit that the NATO states are seriously preparing for a ‘potential conflict’ with us, about which, by the way, high-ranking NATO representatives are openly talking about,” Zakharova said in a statement published by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Speaking about NATO’s accusations against Russia of hybrid attacks on the alliance Zakharova said Moscow considers them as disinformation, which increases the degree of anti-Russian hysteria.
On May 2, the North Atlantic Council adopted a statement, accusing Russia of hybrid attacks against the alliance’s member states.
“The North Atlantic alliance and the leadership of some individual member states are doing what they are the best at – spreading disinformation, increasing the degree of anti-Russian hysteria in order to justify unprecedented levels of militarization in Europe,” Zakharova said.
RT | May 2, 2024
Budapest is opposing a potential €100-billion ($107 billion), five-year NATO plan to fund Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said. The draft plan on the military aid fund was presented to member states of the US-led bloc by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg earlier this week, Szijjarto revealed.
The minister made the remarks on Thursday to Hungarian broadcaster M1 before heading for a ministerial meeting of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in Paris.
“On Tuesday, the NATO member states received the secretary-general’s proposal to raise 100 billion that NATO plans to spend on the war,” the diplomat said, adding that since the money is to be collected over five years, this means NATO “expects the hostilities to continue for this period.”
Budapest will oppose the initiative and is not planning to participate in arming Kiev or training its soldiers, Szijjarto stressed. The draft plan was presented to the bloc’s member states in its “first reading” and is still subject to negotiations, the senior diplomat noted.
In the coming weeks during negotiations we will fight for Hungary’s right to stay away from this madness, from collecting these 100 billion and siphoning them out of Europe.
Budapest prioritizes the security of its own people before anything else and will do its best to “stay out of war,” Szijjarto explained, adding Hungary’s opinion remains that the conflict can only be resolved through negotiations. Nonetheless, Budapest acknowledges mounting global security issues and wants to be ready to face them, he said.
“We cannot ignore the threat of a new world war and the preparations for a nuclear war. This madness here in Europe must be stopped,” Szijjarto urged.
Hungary has consistently expressed its opposition to the ever-growing involvement of the US-led NATO bloc – and of the EU – in the Ukrainian conflict, refusing to send arms to prop up Kiev or to train its troops, and forbidding use of its territory to funnel such shipments from third countries.
Budapest has also publicly spoken out against the potential accession of Ukraine into NATO, which has long been one of the key goals of Ukrainian leadership.
Remix News | May 2, 2024
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is warning that only electing conservative candidates to the European Parliament and replacing the EU’s current leadership will lead to peace in Ukraine.
“The whole European community is on a razor’s edge. We are standing on the dividing line between war and peace,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wrote on social media.
“The most important thing to do in politics today, even if Brussels seems far away, is to create peace. Peace can be created beyond the warring parties, those who finance the war. And this war is financed by the West, by Brussels’ budget money and by American money.
“But our vote will determine whether there is a pro-war or a pro-peace majority in the European Parliament, in the European Commission, in the European Council. Now we have a pro-war majority. We must change that, and we must change it on June 9! Only peace! Only Fidesz!”
Some of the most pro-war parties in Europe now belong to the left. For instance, the Green party in Germany, which was founded on pro-peace priorities and opposition to NATO, is now arguably the most pro-war party in Germany. The Greens have pushed for more weapons shipments for Ukraine, aligned themselves with war hawks in the United States, and have a membership overwhelmingly in favor of war.
In fact, the Green party’s supporters are the most in favor of additional weapons shipments to Ukraine of all German parties, but also the most likely to say they would not defend Germany if the country were invaded.
Meanwhile, independent polling agency Medián’s latest research showed that Orbán’s party, the conservative Fidesz, which has been in power since 2010, remains the most popular party in Hungary, with 46 percent of decided voters supporting it.
The newcomer centrist Tisza party, led by Fidesz renegade Péter Magyar, estranged husband of former Justice Minister Judit Varga, is second with 24 percent. The party’s sudden surge has completely rearranged the political landscape in Hungary, with the opposition’s previously largest force, the Socialist Democratic Coalition, now polling at 9 percent, followed by the satire party Two-Tailed Dog at 6 percent and Momentum at 5 percent.
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 01.05.2024
NATO countries sent tens of billions of dollars’ worth of some of their best military hardware to Ukraine in an attempt to “weaken” Russia in a grueling proxy war. Destroying the equipment by the hundreds, Russia added insult to injury by putting trophy NATO weapons on display before its main memorial dedicated to the victory over Nazi Germany.
The open-air exhibition of foreign weapons and military equipment at Moscow’s Victory Park is shaping up to become perhaps Russia’s greatest psychological and public relations coup in the Ukrainian proxy war with NATO so far.
Dozens of captured vehicles and pieces of weaponry from twelve countries (most of them – members of the bloc) have been put on display, from a Leopard-2 tank, Marder and Bradley IFVs to Humvee, Husky and MRAP vehicles, an M777 towed howitzer, and more exotic equipment, like a French AMX-10RC wheeled tank.
Where possible, equipment has been restored to working or semi-working condition, and plastered with flags to give visitors a sense of the countries which have contributed most to the West’s proxy war against Russia over the past two years. Information stands provide data on the equipment’s manufacturers, their technical and tactical characteristics, and the location and circumstances in which they fell into Russian troops’ hands.
The exhibition serves as a visual and tactile confirmation of sentiments which first became evident last fall, after the catastrophic failure of Ukraine’s NATO-armed and trained armies to breach Russian defenses in Zaporozhye, Kherson and the Donbass in a much-touted summer counteroffensive.
That campaign bled Ukrainian and allied mercenary forces white, and debunked the decades-old myth that emerged in the 80s, 90s and 2000s on the back of Tom Clancy novels and NATO wars of aggression against smaller countries like Yugoslavia and Iraq about the superiority of Western military equipment over its Soviet and Russian analogues. During the scorching summer of 2023, Russian forces demonstrated that the Western alliance’s technologically sophisticated weaponry could be destroyed, damaged or captured just as readily as Ukraine’s Soviet-era equipment.
The trophy weapons exhibition’s location is also significant – situated in Victory Park at Poklonnaya Hill, a memorial complex dedicated to the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War. The site also happens to be the place where Napoleon Bonaparte stood in 1812 before entering the Russian capital during the first Patriot War with France.
The Victory Park Museum already features an open-air exposition of Soviet and Axis weaponry that was captured during the Second World War. Now, 79 years after Nazi Germany’s capitulation on May 9, 1945, the complex has been topped up with new, modern weaponry, fresh from the battlefield and this time belonging to NATO.
Important Gesture
“This is a gesture – we are demonstrating our strength, and in some areas superiority, by flaunting this NATO hardware, not only to our own people, but to the West,” Alexei Podberezkin, director of the Center of Military-Political Studies at Russia’s prestigious MGIMO University, told Sputnik, commenting on the Victory Park display.
The exhibition serves as “an illustration of what will happen next with the equipment that is being sent to Ukraine, including those new weapons which are starting to arrive now, including Abrams tanks, ATACMS missiles, and much, much more,” Podberezkin emphasized.
Earl Rasmussen, a 20-year US Army veteran-turned independent military and foreign affairs commentator, agrees that the display is designed “to send a signal to the West.”
“[It signals] that Russia is there, they’re capable, their military is capable. They’ve destroyed almost the equivalent of three Ukrainian armies so far. And they will continue to do so. So whatever the West sends, those weapons will be destroyed,” the retired lieutenant colonel said.
“The weapons, ammunition… the production capability, the logistical capability – it’s all on the side of Russia. It’s superior in that area. It has escalation dominance. There is air superiority and tactical superiority as well. Time is on their side. And all this does [continuing the proxy war, ed.] is drain the West more and more and more. It’s a sad affair, I think for the Western public, unfortunately. And they’re being lied to by their own leaders,” Rasmussen added.
The exhibit is basically “an embarrassment to the West,” adding insult to injury regarding the tens of billions of dollars that have been wasted in Ukraine, the soldier said. “In any case, it shows basically that the aid packages” being provided by Western countries “are not going to change the outcome of the war, and will be essentially just a waste in funds and, unfortunately, both Ukrainian and Russian lives.”
NATO Hardware Not Wunderwaffe
The display is also another apt and timely reminder to the West that its military technology, including Leopards, Abrams, Bradleys, etc. are not the “miracle weapons” they were hyped to be ahead of Ukraine’s much-touted counteroffensive last year, which ran into the wall of well-prepared Russian defenses, Podberezkin said.
“This equipment proved to be no better, and often worse, than our weapons, both Soviet and Russian, in the arena of combat. And once again it was demonstrated that conflicts are fought not only with steel, but by people, first of all commanders, the military leaders who give orders and think about how to use these weapons most effectively,” Podberezkin said.
“I would really enjoy going through it as well, and think I would learn a lot from it,” Rasmussen said of the exhibition, adding that he predicts the display may be visited by international visitors, including individuals from countries asking questions about the utility of purchasing much-hyped and pricey Western military equipment vs. Russian-made hardware.
In any case, the American observer is confident that Russian military engineers and defense scientists have already gone through the equipment with a fine-tooth comb, analyzing armor capability, sensors, communications and targeting capabilities and equipment, their interoperability characteristics, etc.
“There is a lot of information Russia already probably knows. And a lot of highly classified, highly sensitive type of capability, information fusion, other sensors, other additional sensor capability, active armor capability may not have been provided to Ukraine as well. So there will be limits on what the Russian engineers will be able to discover. But it definitely provides a basis to fill some gaps. I’m sure that the engineers and designers have made it so they can turn around and readily modify Russian equipment to counter any capabilities that they haven’t already addressed,” Rasmussen concluded.
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 30.04.2024
On April 13, Iran responded to an Israeli attack on its embassy in Syria by striking Israel with more than 300 drones and missiles. While most were shot down by Israeli and US air defenses, hypersonic missiles fired by Iran hit their targets, showcasing the limits of Western defenses.
US President Joe Biden revealed to the world that the US military is no longer the giant that woke up on December 7, 1941, but a paper tiger unable to exert the power it once held. Both former Chinese leader Mao Zedong and Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden described the United States in this way. Though it may have taken several decades, they are finally being proven correct.
The United States showed in the 1990s and through the start of this century that it was capable of dominating the battlefield when facing opponents with significantly less sophisticated equipment.
But, as American hegemony has slipped, other countries have caught up and in some aspects surpassed the so-called world’s only remaining superpower.
This is evident in the United States’ inability to halt the Yemen Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement’s blockade against ships traveling to Israeli ports and the United States’ failure to prevent Iran’s attack on Israeli military targets.
With the Houthis, the United States has resorted to attempting to bribe the group into stopping their attacks, a tactic that has failed. But the attack by Iran was worse for the perception of American-dominance, because the failure of its weapons were on full display.
While most if not all of the drones sent by Iran were taken out by a combination of Israeli and US air defense systems, the drones were intended to distract and exhaust the defenses and allow Iran’s hypersonic missiles to hit their targets, which most reports say they did.
The attack from Iran showed the world “that US defense capabilities” are “not there,” retired senior security policy analyst Michael Maloof told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Monday.
“The ability to have a strong missile defense is not there, and the Russians [also] have these hypersonic capabilities,” Maloof explained. “[Iran] did hit their targets, and they did it with hypersonics and there was no defense.”
In Ukraine, the situation would be comical were it not so dark. As the Kiev regime hyped what became its failed counteroffensive last year, a succession of NATO equipment was touted as the game changer that would send the Russians into retreat.
First, it was the Bradley Fighting Vehicles, then Leopard tanks, then Challenger tanks, then a growing list of air defense systems and long-range artillery. Russia systematically destroyed them all, proving that NATO weapons are not the pinnacle of modern warfare and in many cases are relics of 20th-century warfare that will act as a gilded millstone around the neck of any army that relies on them in the 21st century.
There was another tank the US provided to Ukraine last summer, but it was not seen on the battlefield until very recently: the Abrams M1 tank. It too was touted as a game changer, but despite Ukraine’s desperate need for armor, they were not used until the battle for Avdeyevka in February of this year.
In September, Sputnik wrote an article highlighting the weaknesses of the Abrams tank, which was responded to by Popular Mechanics. The outlet asserted the Abrams would represent a “huge leap in the capabilities” of Ukrainian armor formations and accused Sputnik of exaggerating “not only the threat to Abrams tanks, but the tank’s vulnerabilities.”
The article concluded that Russian forces “will have to work very hard to kill an Abrams tank.” But when it finally arrived, five tanks were quickly destroyed and at least one tank was captured. Last week, US military officials confirmed to US media that Ukraine had removed the Abrams tanks from the front lines, saying that they are too easily destroyed by Russian drones.
“We saw, as with pretty much every type of tank we’ve seen in this combat that relatively cheap, $500, $1,000 a pop, Kamikaze drones can seriously damage a tank fairly easily,” security and international relations expert Mark Sleboda told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Monday.
The Abrams tank costs roughly $10 million a piece.
The shattering of NATO’s veneer of invincibility will have geopolitical implications, Maloof argued. “Are we going to … convince the Saudis now that we’re going to defend them, when they saw with their own eyes that whatever layering we performed for the Israelis didn’t work. Are they going to buy into that? No, they’re going to start going their own way, increasingly more so.”
On Tuesday, Iranian Economy Minister Ehsan Khandouzi described his talks with the Minister of Economy and Planning of Saudi Arabia, Faisal F. Alibrahim as “productive.”
“Faisal F. Alibrahim agreed with all [of] Iran’s [economic] proposals,” Khandouzi noted.
“The days of US dominance [are] over, and we’re seeing this now as some 40 countries want to join BRICS and get out from under the dollar,” Maloof explained. “So, all of this is interrelated. It’s all playing [out] in real-time, before our very eyes, and it’s happening very rapidly.”
By Ahmed Adel | April 30, 2024
Several opposition parties have attacked the proposal by French President Emmanuel Macron to share French nuclear weapons with the European Union. Macron’s controversy follows another recent one in which the erosion of France’s sovereignty and the legacy of Charles de Gaulle were highlighted in the most ironic way.
During a speech on April 28, Macron stated that the EU needs a common defence strategy and that French nuclear weapons could be a key component. According to him, this would provide the security guarantees that Europe expects and would also allow for neighbourly relations with Russia.
Macron stressed that a “credible European defence” needs to go beyond NATO, which “may mean deploying anti-missile shields” that will “block all missiles and deter the use of nuclear weapons.”
The French president said he was open to giving a more “European dimension” to vital interests, even if France’s doctrine has been to only use nuclear weapons when their own vital interests are threatened.
“I’m in favour of opening this debate, which must therefore include missile defence, long-range weapons and nuclear weapons for those who have them or who have American nuclear weapons on their soil,” he said.
However, his statements were criticised by all political parties.
“It is not appropriate for the head of state to say such things. Macron says he wants to start discussions on sharing nuclear weapons with European countries. This is extremely serious because it touches on the issue of French sovereignty,” said François-Xavier Bellamy, leader of the Republican Party list for the European Parliament elections, to the French channel CNews on April 28.
Thierry Mariani, an MEP from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (Rassemblement National) party, said on April 28 that Macron had become a “threat to the nation.”
“Nuclear weapons will be followed by France’s place as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which will also be given to the European Union […] Macron is becoming a threat to the nation!” the MEP wrote on X.
Meanwhile, the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI) party pointed out that “the head of state has dealt another blow to the credibility of French nuclear weapons. He is lumping everything into a single pile. Share nuclear weapons? Lose our sovereignty. This decision does not belong to the president but to the people.”
Mathilde Panot, leader of the LFI faction in the French National Assembly, said on RTL radio that she “does not believe in a common EU nuclear umbrella.”
“We will not resort to the use of nuclear weapons because of another country,” she said, calling Macron’s proposal madness and irresponsibility as it increases the risk of nuclear war in Europe.
LFI MP Bastien Lachaud also noted on X that Macron “wants to abandon the French nuclear deterrence doctrine.”
In turn, Florian Philippot, the head of the Patriots party, accused Macron of being a “traitor” on X, recalling on April 28 the words of General Charles de Gaulle, who argued in 1959: “The defence of France must be French. […] It is essential that the defence is ours, that France defends itself, for itself and in its own way. If it were otherwise, if it were admitted for a long time that the defence of France stopped being part of the national framework and became confused or merged with something else, it would not be possible for us to maintain a State in our country.”
As Philippot points out, Macron is challenging the legacy of one of France’s most respected statesmen, which very well could lead to the French president’s demise considering his people’s fiercely independent spirit, something he has been eroding, especially after Russia launched its special military operation against Ukraine.
In fact, Moscow described the deployment of the French nuclear aircraft carrier, ironically called Charles de Gaulle, to Souda Bay on the Greek island of Crete for the largest NATO naval exercise in recent times as an “erosion of French sovereignty.”
According to Reuters, placing the Charles de Gaulle under the operational control of the Atlantic Alliance is “highly symbolic, not least because the warship is named after the former president who took France out of the alliance’s US-led command structure in 1966.”
Agreeing with Moscow’s position, “the decision to put the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier under NATO command drew criticism from the French far left and far right, who said it represented a loss of sovereign power,” Reuters reported.
Macron has consistently promoted pan-European defence, but the conversation has never reached the point of compromising French sovereignty. It is likely that this proposal will have negative effects on Macron’s popularity as the fiercely sovereign policies and spirit of Charles de Gaulle are being challenged in an unprecedented manner by the French president.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Tales of the American Empire | April 25, 2024
Russia has won the war in Ukraine, but is in no hurry to end it as much of its army remains in reserve. It enjoys the friction in NATO whose members suffer from the resulting high energy costs and mass Ukrainian immigration. Russia prefers to slowly destroy Ukraine’s army in the open farmland of the Donbas rather than chase it into major cities where fighting would prove horrible. At some point, Ukraine’s army will collapse and the Russians will roll forth and take all of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed four peace agreements to end this conflict. Each time Ukraine never complied after pressure from NATO leaders to fight on. Russia will not agree to yet another ceasefire so NATO can rebuild Ukraine’s army and restart the war.
Europeans know the United States caused the conflict in Ukraine, profits from banning Russian oil and gas, and remain uneasy about the mysterious destruction of the Nordstream pipelines. The Americans promoted a mindless NATO expansion strategy that caused a disastrous war in Ukraine and weakened NATO nations, who were pressured to donate billions of dollars and much of their military equipment to Ukraine, even though it isn’t a member of this “defensive” alliance. An American refusal to make peace after Russia conquers Ukraine to reestablish trade will further agitate some NATO members, who may leave the EU and possibly NATO to join the winning side for a huge discount in Russian energy imports.
For anyone surprised that Russia may take all of Ukraine, note this April 12, 2024 news item: Russia Expects ‘Unconditional Capitulation’ Of Kiev Regime
During yesterday’s UN Security Council meeting Vasily Nebenzya, the Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations, said:
“This is how it will go down in history – as an inhuman and hateful regime of terrorists and Nazis who betrayed the interest of their people and sacrificed it for Western money and for Zelensky and his closest circle. In these conditions, attempts by the head of the Kiev regime to promote his formula and convene summits in support of the Kiev regime cause only confusion. Very soon the only topic for any international meetings on Ukraine will be the unconditional capitulation of the Kiev regime. I advise you all to prepare for this in advance.”
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“UKRAINE WILL WIN” | No Amount of Propaganda Can Hide the Fact that Ukraine is Winning this War”; Matt Orfalea; February 22, 2024; a series of short clips of pundits, experts, and political leaders saying Ukraine will win; 
• “UKRAINE WILL WIN” | No Amount of Pro…
“Orwellian Morning Joe ‘Redefines Success’ in Ukraine—Erasing Their Warmongering”; System Update; Glenn Greenwald; November 22, 2023; • Orwellian Morning Joe “Redefines Succ…
“The Duran and Brian Berletic: Russia is DESTROYING NATO as Putin Rejects Europe for Global South”; Danny Haiphong; November 28, 2023; • The Duran and Brian Berletic: Russia …
“Neocons Still Can’t Believe Russia Defeated Them”; Nicolai Petro; Neutrality Studies; November 27, 2023; • Neocons Still Can’t Believe Russia De…
Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”; • The Anglo-American War on Russia
RT | April 26, 2024
The Ukraine conflict is Washington’s doing and the US is deliberately trying to prolong the fighting, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Friday during a meeting with his counterparts from Asian nations.
Shoigu is taking part in a gathering of military chiefs from members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a nine-strong mutual defense organization. The Russian minister used the forum hosted by Kazakhstan to reiterate Moscow’s position on the origins of its conflict with Ukraine.
He identified Washington as a major source of global instability, citing its record of military interventions abroad, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The US also uses less direct financial and diplomatic tools to damage its opponents, including by fueling chaos in different parts of the world, Shoigu alleged.
“The US had first created, and now is deliberately prolonging the Ukraine conflict,” the minister stated. “As it signals purported intention to de-escalate, the West keeps pumping Kiev with weapons.”
Ukraine cannot properly control the donations, meaning there is the risk that they could end up with terrorist groups, Shoigu warned.
“They provide real-time intelligence, train Ukrainian troops, deploy Western military specialists and mercenaries on the battlefield,” he added, describing the involvement by various NATO members.
The US and its allies claim that Russia launched an “unprovoked” attack on Ukraine in February 2022, and they have since sent tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Kiev.
Shoigu accused the US of double standards regarding a nation’s right to self-defense. He cited Washington’s blocking of a UN Security Council resolution which would have condemned Israel for attacking an Iranian consulate in Damascus in early April. Tehran’s eventual retaliatory attack was the result of this obstruction, the Russian minister said.
Iran joined the SCO last year and was also taking part in the meeting in Kazakhstan.
Sputnik – 26.04.2024
ASTANA – Russia has never threatened NATO and has neither geopolitical nor military interests to attack the states of the alliance, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Friday.
“Russia has never threatened NATO. We have neither geopolitical nor military interests to attack the states of the bloc. We are simply protecting our people in our historical territories,” Shoigu said during a meeting of defense ministers of the SCO member countries in Astana.
Russia has always made maximum efforts to maintain strategic stability and balance of power in the world, the minister added.
The SCO was founded in 2001. India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan are its full members. Afghanistan, Belarus, and Mongolia are observer states; Azerbaijan, Armenia, Egypt, Cambodia, Nepal, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Myanmar, Bahrain, and Kuwait are dialogue partners.
US Plans on Military Infrastructure in Central Asia Threatens SCO Space Stability
The US intention to deploy military infrastructure in the Central and South Asia is direct a threat to stability in the SCO space, the minister noted.
“I believe that all those present share the opinion that the deployment of military infrastructure in the region by the United States and its allies is unacceptable. Such intentions must be regarded as a direct threat to stability in the SCO space,” Shoigu said.
Commenting on the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, Shoigu said that US-oriented military and political structures are trying to remake security system in the region to dominate this part of the planet.
Additionally, the minister added that the return of radical Islamists from the Middle East and North Africa to Southeast Asia creates prerequisites for new hot spots.
The United States uses the tactics of inciting hotbeds of instability in the world, generating security threats, while it simultaneously offers military assistance, Shoigu pointed out.
On Tuesday, the US Senate passed the $95 billion legislation with approximately $61 billion in Ukraine-related funding, $26 billion in Israel-related funding and $8 billion for Indo-Pacific security initiatives in a vote of 79-18. The Biden administration is reportedly readying a $1 billion military aid package for Ukraine sourced from the legislation.
“[The US] uses a technique that has been proven many times — inciting and maintaining hotbeds of instability in various regions of the world, generating security threats while simultaneously offering military assistance to neutralize them,” he said.
Continued Strikes by Ukraine on Zaporozhye NPP Can Lead to Catastrophic Consequences
Shoigu also touched upon potential catastrophic consequences caused by the ongoing Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP).
“The ongoing strikes of the Ukrainian armed forces on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which could lead to catastrophic consequences, are of particular concern,” Shoigu emphasized.
The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant is located on the left bank of the Dnepr River and is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. It came under the control of Russian forces in early March 2022 and has since been repeatedly shelled by Ukrainian forces, raising international fears of a possible nuclear accident.
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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
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