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German Military’s Crimean Bridge Strike Talk: ‘NATO Has Found Itself in Hot Water’

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 02.03.2024

The situation around the leaked conversation between high-ranking German army officers has once again refuted NATO’s allegations about the alliance’s non-interference in the Ukrainian conflict, experts told Sputnik.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has demanded an “immediate explanation” from Berlin on the audio recording released earlier this week by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik’s parent media group.

In it, German generals are heard discussing a potential attack on the Crimean Bridge with Taurus missiles.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stressed in a statement that attempts by German authorities “to dodge the question will be considered an admission of guilt.”

High-ranking German officers discussed launching strikes on “Russian civilian infrastructure either with the tacit official consent of Berlin or behind its back; both variants are the matter of serious concern,” military expert Robinson Farinazzo, a former Brazilian Navy officer, said in an interview with Sputnik.

“The authorities are either aware of everything or they knew nothing, which means it was the military’s conspiracy – something that should be punished accordingly, right down to an option of all those involved being brought to tribunal,” Farinazzo said.

“If Berlin was in the know, it can be likened to a declaration of war,” he insisted, urging Moscow and Berlin to use diplomatic channels to defuse tensions over this information “about aggressive intentions.”

According to the expert, “It’s hard to imagine what measures Moscow might take if it considers actions by the German officers a serious provocation.”

The former Brazilian naval officer also drew attention to German authorities keeping mum on the matter. Likewise, how the information comes amid disagreements among Western countries on additional military aid to the Kiev regime, including the possibility of providing Ukraine with the Taurus cruise missiles and sending NATO military units to the country.

In this vein, Farinazzo said he believes that further developments will depend on whether the US Congress will okay more supplies to Ukraine or not. Even if Congress gives the green light, this will only add to prolonging the conflict and will fail to change the situation on the battlefield in favor of Ukraine, per the expert.

“The West and high-ranking NATO officers have already realized the fact that Ukraine cannot win. A potential strike on the Crimean Bridge would be tangible from a psychological point of view, but it would hardly affect the course of the special military operation, since Russia instead can use railroad or sea transport,” Farinazzo said.

International relations expert Tito Livio Barcellos Pereira from the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, for his part said that the conversation once again raises doubts about the veracity of previous claims by Western authorities that NATO countries are not involved in the Ukraine conflict.

“NATO countries, which previously argued that they were not directly involved in the conflict and only limit themselves to sending aid to Kiev, have found themselves in hot water. Their claims are becoming less credible, while Russia’s arguments are sounding more convincing,” the expert underscored.

He noted that “in this situation, the leaders of Western states will probably have to explain themselves before lawmakers and the entire society of their countries, as well as before other NATO members, which have a more restrained stance.”

In Pereira’s opinion, the situation could lead to an even greater escalation of tensions between Russia and NATO, especially given that the alliance “does not want to hear the arguments by Moscow, which has repeatedly warned against the alliance’s infrastructure getting closer to Russian borders.”

“The German military’s recorded conversation once again confirms that the alliance continues to be involved in a [proxy] war with Russia,” Pereira concludes, berating Kiev and the West for deliberately sabotaging all alternative peace initiatives put forward by the Global South.

March 2, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Why the West can’t be trusted to observe its own ‘red lines’ in Ukraine

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | March 2, 2024

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have disagreed publicly over how to support Ukraine – which has been ruthlessly deployed by the West as a geopolitical proxy – in its conflict with Russia. Macron used a special EU meeting he had convened, rumor has it directly inspired by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, to state, in effect, that sending Western combat troops into Ukraine was an option.

Of course, the West already has troops on the ground, including those flimsily camouflaged as volunteers and mercenaries, or otherwise participating in the conflict (for instance by planning and targeting), as a recent leak of US documents has confirmed. But an open intervention by ground forces would be a severe escalation, directly pitting Russia and NATO against each other, as Moscow has quickly pointed out, and making nuclear escalation a real possibility.

Russia has deliberately tolerated a certain degree of Western intervention, for its own pragmatic reasons: In essence, it seeks to win the war in Ukraine, while avoiding an open conflict with NATO. It is willing to pay the price of having to deal with some de facto Western military meddling, as long as it is confident it can defeat it on the Ukrainian battlefield. Indeed, the strategy has the added advantage that the West is bleeding its own resources, while the Russian military is receiving excellent hands-on training in how to neutralize Western hardware, including much-touted “miracle weapons.”

You do not have to believe Moscow’s words, but simply consult elementary logic to understand that there is an equally hard-headed limit to this kind of calculated tolerance. If the Russian leadership were to conclude that Western military forces in Ukraine were endangering its objectives (instead of merely making achieving them harder), it would raise the price for certain Western countries. (Selective treatment would be adopted to put under stress – quite possibly to breaking point – Western cohesion.)

Consider Germany, for instance: Berlin is by far Ukraine’s biggest bilateral financial supporter among EU states (at least in terms of commitments). Yet militarily, for now, Russia has been content with, in essence, shredding German Leopard tanks as they arrive on the battlefield. And, in a sense, punishing Germany’s meddling can safely be left to its own government: the country has already taken massive hits to its economy and international standing.

But if Berlin were to go even further, Moscow’s calculations would change. In that case, as little as German mass media allow German citizens to think about it, a “sobering” (to use a term from Russian doctrine) strike – initially probably non-nuclear – on German forces and territory is possible. The domestic consequences of such an attack are unpredictable. Germans might rally round the flag, or they might openly rebel against an already deeply unpopular government that has been sacrificing the national interest with unprecedented bluntness to Washington’s geopolitics.

If you think the above sounds a little far-fetched, I know of someone who clearly does not share your complacency: the German chancellor. Stung by Macron’s provocation, Scholz countered with telling alacrity. Within 24 hours after the surprise French move, he publicly ruled out the sending of “ground troops” by “European nations or NATO nations,” underlining that that this red line has always been agreed on.

In addition, the chancellor also chose exactly this moment to reaffirm that Germany will not deliver its Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev, as escalation that proponents have long demanded, including inside Germany. With, according to Scholz, the capability of striking Moscow, Berlin’s missiles in Ukrainian hands and Macron’s hypothetical ground forces have one thing in common: they come with a serious risk of spreading direct fighting beyond Ukraine, in particular to Western Europe and Germany.

In other words, the leaders of the two countries traditionally recognized as the core of the European Union have displayed profound disagreement on a key issue. Macron, it is true, often says more than he means or will care to remember. Scholz is an extreme opportunist, even by the standards of professional politics. In addition, clearly intentional indiscretions from the two men’s teams point to mutual and heartfelt antipathy, as Bloomberg has just reported. We could dismiss the spat between them as nothing but the result of incompatible political styles and personal animosity.

But that would be a grave mistake. In reality, their open discord is an important signal about the state of thinking, debate, and policy making within the EU, and, more broadly, NATO and the West. The real challenge is to decipher what this signal means.

Let’s start with something the two leaders will not openly admit but, it is virtually certain, share: The background to their quarrel is their fear that Ukraine and the West are not only losing the conflict, but more importantly in the information-streamlined West, that this defeat is about to become undeniably obvious. For instance, in the shape of further Russian advances, including strategic victories like the taking of Avdeevka and a partial or total collapse of Ukrainian defenses. Even the robustly bellicose Economist, for instance, is now admitting that Russia’s offensive is “heating up,” that the fall of Avdeevka has not made the Russian military pause, and that Ukrainians themselves are “becoming pessimistic.” Both Macron’s remarks and Scholz’s hasty disclaimer are indicators of a growing and well-founded pessimism, perhaps even incipient panic among Western elites.

Yet that does not tell us much about how these elites really intend to react to this losing game (assuming they know themselves, that is). In principle, there are two strategic options: raise the stakes (again) or cut your losses (finally). At this point, the “raise the stakes” faction is still dominating the policy debate. The negative response to Macron’s show-stealer move has overshadowed that the general trend of the NATO and EU strategy is still to add fresh resources to the fight, for instance by agreeing to source ammunition from outside the EU, a move long resisted by France. At least as far as the public is permitted to see, NATO and the EU are still run by sunk-cost-fallacy addicts: The more they have failed and lost already, the more they want to risk.

In reality, however, the option of deception and the temptation of self-deception (they easily blend into each other, an effect commonly known as “drinking your own Kool Aid” ) make things more complicated: Take, for instance, Russia’s evidence, in verbatim transcript detail, of high-ranking German military officers discussing – or was it “brainstorming” ? – how Ukraine could, after all, use Taurus missiles to attack the Kerch Strait Bridge that connects Crimea with the Russian mainland, while maintaining, in effect, plausible deniability. Scholz’s public statement that “German soldiers must at no point and in no place be linked” to Taurus attacks is proof that evading responsibility – or the impossibility to do so – are on his mind. As you would expect from a politician whose only strategy is finding the path of least resistance.

The muddled German response to this embarrassing intelligence fiasco (Why exactly was something so obviously sensitive discussed via hackable telecommunications instead of in a secure room, for instance?) only confirms that the Russian evidence is authentic. Instead of denying that the discussion took place, Germany has reacted – in typical authoritarian manner – by blocking social media accounts reporting it, and by trying to spin the conversation as nothing but a harmless thought experiment.

And yet, Scholz’s suspiciously elastic phrasing and the German officers’ discussion do not mean that such a course of naively transparent cheating will be adopted by Berlin. It may even have been a way of figuring out why that would not work.

Especially if this information is not entirely new, Russia’s choosing to publicize it now and perhaps even risking some (minor) intelligence disadvantage by revealing the extent of the German military’s penetration is, of course, also a signal to Germany’s leadership: Moscow will not play along with plausible deniability (a “don’t even try” message) and is deadly serious about this red line (a “we mean it” message). This as well may help focus minds in Berlin and make cheating less likely.

In any case, the evidence of German officers thinking about how to help attack Russia without leaving fingerprints does underline two things: Western public statements can easily be deliberate lies; and even when they are not, they are always open to radical revision. Indeed, Macron, too, alluded to that fact, pointing out that even if direct military intervention is not a consensus yet, it could become one in the future, just as other red lines have been crossed before.

In that light, Macron’s loose talk could be read as just another bluff – or, as they say in France, “strategic ambiguity” : a desperate attempt to strut so fiercely that Russia will not press its military advantage. If that was the French president’s intention, it has backfired spectacularly: Macron has provoked not only Germany but other, bigger Western players as well to clarify that they do not agree with him. Note to the Jupiterian self in the Élysée Palace: It’s not “ambiguous” when everyone who counts says “No way!”; it’s not very “strategic” either.

Yet it would be complacent to take solace from Macron’s current isolation. First, it is not complete: There are hardcore escalationists, such as the Estonian leader Kaja Kallas, in the EU and NATO who have praised  him precisely because they want to drag everyone else into a direct clash with Russia. It is good that these especially zealous warmongers do not have the upper hand for now. But they have not been defeated or even appropriately marginalized either, and they will not give up.

Second, a strategy of escalation and threats can get out of hand. Consider the too-little-known fact that, in the July Crisis of 1914, just before World War I started, even the German emperor Wilhelm II had moments where he privately felt that it could still be avoided. That, however, was after he and his government had personally done their worst to bring the big war about. Lesson: If you take too many risks, at some point you may no longer be able to dial down the escalation you have promoted yourself.

Third, and most fundamentally, while rationally applied dishonesty is not unusual in international politics, for an international system to produce stability, it must first produce predictability. That, in turn, requires that even deception is kept within tacitly agreed limits and is, to a degree, predictable (because of its underlying rationality). The problem with the post-Cold War West is that it has chosen to forget and flaunt this basic rule of global order. Its addiction to unreliability is so severe that signals of escalation are inherently more credible than signals of de-escalation, as long as there is no principal, general, and clearly recognizable change of approach.

Put differently, Macron’s current isolation does not count for much because its due-diligence interpretation from Moscow’s perspective has to be that he merely went a little too far too soon. Neither Scholz’s nor other Western disavowals make a difference. What would make a difference is a united and clear signal by the West that it is now ready for genuine negotiations and a real compromise settlement. For now, the opposite remains true.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul.

March 2, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Transcript released of purported German discussion on attacking Crimean Bridge

RT | March 1, 2024

The full text of what is claimed to be a discussion by senior German military officers on how to attack the Crimean Bridge in Russia was published by RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan on Friday. She reported that Russian security officials had leaked the recording hours earlier and has pledged to release the original audio shortly.

Simonyan identified the officers as General Ingo Gerhartz, the German Air Force commander, and senior leaders responsible for mission planning. The alleged conversation took place on February 19, according to the source of the leak.

The transcript reveals the officials discussed the efficiency of the Franco-British cruise missile called Storm Shadow by the UK and SCALP by France. Both nations donated some of their stockpile to Ukraine.

Kiev has called on Germany to provide some of its Taurus missiles. The officers in the leaked recording debate whether the weapon system was adequate for hitting the Crimean Bridge in Russia, which connects eastern Crimea to Krasnodar Region across the Kerch Strait.

According to the transcript, the officers discussed how a successful attack on a key piece of Russian infrastructure would require additional satellite data, possible deployment of missiles from French Dassault Rafale fighter jets, and at least a month of preparation.

One participant observed that due to the size of the bridge, which is the longest in Europe, even 20 missiles may not be enough to cause significant damage. It is comparable to a runway in that regard, he noted.

“They want to destroy the bridge… because it has not only military strategic importance, but also political significance,” Gerhartz is quoted as saying, apparently referring to officials in Kiev. “It would be concerning if we have direct connection with the Ukrainian armed forces.”

The officers went on to discuss how close the German military should be working on the proposed operation so as not to cross the ‘red line’ of being involved directly. Secretly training Ukrainians in the use of German weapons and helping them plan the operation were deemed acceptable. Concerns about the press learning about such cooperation were also raised, the transcript reveals.

Senior officials in Berlin have repeatedly made public statements explaining their reservations about sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said this week that the Germany’s military cannot do for Ukraine what “was done on the part of the British and French in terms of target-control and target-control assistance.” The remark was rebuked by London and Paris, for allegedly distracting public attention from German unwillingness to donate arms to Kiev.

According to the released text, a large segment of the conversation was about practical aspects of preparing Kiev’s forces for deploying Taurus missiles, from training its military personnel, to adapting hardpoints of Ukrainian military jets for Berlin’s weapons, to providing technical support remotely via a safe link. The officers were concerned that speeding up the proposed handover may result in civilians being killed “again” in a weapons mishap.

When assessing the intelligence necessary for targeting the missiles, Gerhartz allegedly mused that, to provide such information, there are plenty of “people in civilian clothes with American accents” in Kiev that would cover up for the Germans.

UPDATE:

Full Transcript of German Top Military Officials’ Leaked Plot to Attack Crimean Bridge

March 1, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The CIA in Ukraine — The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour

By Patrick Lawrence | ScheerPost | February 29, 2024

If you have paid attention to what various polls and officials in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West have been doing and saying about Ukraine lately, you know the look and sound of desperation. You would be desperate, too, if you were making a case for a war Ukrainians are on the brink of losing and will never, brink or back-from-the-brink, have any chance of winning. Atop this, you want people who know better, including 70 percent of Americans according to a recent poll, to keep investing extravagant sums in this ruinous folly.

And here is what seems to me the true source of angst among these desperados: Having painted this war as a cosmic confrontation between the world’s democrats and the world’s authoritarians, the people who started it and want to prolong it have painted themselves into a corner. They cannot lose it. They cannot afford to lose a war they cannot win: This is what you see and hear from all those good-money-after-bad people still trying to persuade you that a bad war is a good war and that it is right that more lives and money should be pointlessly lost to it.

Everyone must act for the cause in these dire times. You have Chuck Schumer in Kyiv last week trying to show House Republicans that they should truly, really authorize the Biden regime to spend an additional $61 billion on its proxy war with Russia. “Everyone we saw, from Zelensky on down made this very point clear,” the Democratic senator from New York asserted in an interview with The New York Times. “If Ukraine gets the aid, they will win the war and beat Russia.”

Even at this late hour people still have the nerve to say such things.

You have European leaders gathering in Paris Monday to reassure one another of their unity behind the Kyiv regime—and where Emmanuel Macron refused to rule out sending NATO ground troops to the Ukrainian front. “Russia cannot and must not win this war,” the French president declared to his guests at the Elysée Palace.

Except that it can and, barring an act of God, it will.

Then you have Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s war-mongering sec-gen, telling Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty last week that it will be fine if Kyiv uses F–16s to attack Russian cities once they are operational this summer. The U.S.–made fighter jets, the munitions, the money—all of it is essential “to ensure Russia doesn’t make further gains.” Stephen Bryen, formerly a deputy undersecretary at the Defense Department, offered an excellent response to this over the weekend in his Weapons and Strategy newsletter: “Fire Jens Stoltenberg before it is too late.”

Good thought, but Stoltenberg, Washington’s longtime water-carrier in Brussels, is merely doing his job as assigned: Keep up the illusions as to Kyiv’s potency and along with it the Russophobia, the more primitive the better. You do not get fired for irresponsible rhetoric that risks something that might look a lot like World War III.

What would a propaganda blitz of this breadth and stupidity be without an entry from The New York Times ? Given the extent to which the Times has abandoned all professional principle in the service of the power it is supposed to report upon, you just knew it would have to get in on this one.

The Times has published very numerous pieces in recent weeks on the necessity of keeping the war going and the urgency of a House vote authorizing that $61 billion Biden’s national security people want to send Ukraine. But never mind all those daily stories. Last Sunday it came out with its big banana. “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin” sprawls—lengthy text, numerous photographs. The latter show the usual wreckage—cars, apartment buildings, farmhouses, a snowy dirt road lined with landmines. But the story that goes with it is other than usual.

Somewhere in Washington, someone appears to have decided it was time to let the Central Intelligence Agency’s presence and programs in Ukraine be known. And someone in Langley, the CIA’s headquarters, seems to have decided this will be O.K., a useful thing to do. When I say the agency’s presence and programs, I mean some : We get a very partial picture of the CIA’s doings in Ukraine, as the lies of omission—not to mention the lies of commission—are numerous in this piece. But what the Times published last weekend, all 5,500 words of it, tells us more than had been previously made public.

Let us consider this unusually long takeout carefully for what it is and how it came to make page one of last Sunday’s editions.

In a recent commentary I reflected on the mess the Times landed in when it published a thoroughly discredited p.o.s.—and I leave readers to understand this newsroom expression—on the sexual violence Hamas militias allegedly committed last Oct. 7. I described a corrupt but routinized relationship between the organs of official power and the journalists charged with reporting on official power, likening it to a foie gras farmer feeding his geese: The Times’s journalists opened wide and swallowed. For appearances’ sake, they then set about dressing up what they ingested as independently reported work. This is the routine.

It is the same, yet more obviously, with this extended piece on the CIA’s activities in Ukraine. Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz tell the story of—this the subhead—“a secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries in countering Russia.” They set the scene in a below-ground monitoring and communications center the CIA showed Ukrainian intel how to build beneath the wreckage of an army outpost destroyed in a Russian missile attack. They report on the archipelago of such places the agency paid for, designed, equipped, and now helps operate. Twelve of these, please note, are along Ukraine’s border with Russia.

Entous and Schwirtz, it is time to mention, are not based in Ukraine. They operate from Washington and New York respectively. This indicates clearly enough the genesis of “The Spy War.” There was no breaking down of doors involved here, no intrepid correspondents digging, no tramping around in Ukraine’s mud and cold, unguided. The CIA handed these two material according to what it wanted and did not want disclosed, and various officials associated with it made themselves available as “sources”—none of the American sources named, per usual.

Are we supposed to think these reporters found the underground bunker and all the other such installations by dint of their “investigation”—a term they have the gall to use as they describe what they did? And then they developed some kind of grand exposé of all the agency wanted to keep hidden? Is this it?

Sheer pretense, nothing more. Entous and Schwirtz opened wide and got fed. There appears to be nothing in what they wrote that was not effectively authorized, and we can probably do without “effectively.”

There is also the question of sources. Entous and Schwirtz say they conducted 200 interviews to get this piece done. If they did, and I will stay with my “if,” they do not seem to have been very good interviews to go by the published piece. And however many interviews they did, this must still be counted a one-source story, given that everyone quoted in it reflects the same perspective and so reinforces, more or less, what everyone else quoted has to say. The sources appear to have been handed to Entous and Schwirtz as was access to the underground bunker.

The narrative thread woven through the piece is interesting. It is all about the two-way, can’t-do-without-it cooperation between the CIA and Ukraine’s main intel services—the SBU (the domestic spy agency) and military intelligence, which goes by HUR. In this the piece reads like a difficult courtship that leads to a happy-at-last consummation. It took a long time for the Americans to trust the Ukrainians, we read, as they, the Americans, assumed the SBU was thick with Russian double agents. But the Ukrainian spooks enticed them with stacks and stacks of intelligence that seems to have astonished the CIA people on the ground and back in Langley.

So, a tale with two moving parts: The Americans helped the Ukrainians get their technology, methods, and all-around spookery up to snuff, and the Ukrainians made themselves indispensable to the Americans by providing wads of raw intel. Entous and Schwirtz describe this symbiosis as “one of Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.” Here is how a former American official put it, as the Times quotes him or her:

The relationships only got stronger and stronger because both sides saw value in it, and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv—our station there, the operation out of Ukraine—became the best source of information, signals and everything else, on Russia. We couldn’t get enough of it.

As to omissions and commissions, there are things left out in this piece, events that are blurred, assertions that are simply untrue and proven to be so. What amazes me is how far back Entous and Schwirtz reach to dredge up all this stuff—even to the point they make fools of themselves and remind us of the Times’s dramatic loss of credibility since the current round of Russophobia took hold a decade ago.

Entous and Schwirtz begin their account of the CIA–SBU/HUR alliance in 2014, when the U.S. cultivated the coup in Kyiv that brought the present regime to power and ultimately led to Russia’s military intervention. But no mention of the U.S. role in it. They write, “The CIA’s partnership in Ukraine can be traced back to two phone calls on the night of Feb. 24, 2014, eight years to the day before Russia’s full-scale invasion.” Neat, granular, but absolutely false. The coup began  three days earlier, on Feb. 21, and as Vladimir Putin reminded Tucker Carlson during the latter’s Feb. 6 interview with the Russian president, it was the CIA that did the groundwork.

I confess a special affection for this one: “The Ukrainians also helped the Americans go after the Russian operatives who meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Entous and Schwirtz write. And later in the piece, this:

In one joint operation, a[n] HUR team duped an officer from Russia’s military intelligence service into providing information that allowed the C.I.A. to connect Russia’s government to the so-called Fancy Bear hacking group, which had been linked to election interference efforts in a number of countries.

Wonderful. Extravagantly nostalgic for that twilight interim that began eight years ago, when nothing had to be true so long as it explained why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, and why Donald Trump is No. 1 among America’s “deplorables.”

I have never seen evidence of Russian government interference in another nation’s elections, including America’s in 2016, and I will say with confidence you haven’t, either. All that came to be associated with the Russiagate fable, starting with the never-happened hack of the Democratic Party’s mail, was long ago revealed to be concocted junk. As to “Fancy Bear,” and its cousin “Cozy Bear”—monikers almost certainly cooked up over a long, fun lunch in Langley—for the umpteenth time these are not groups of hackers or any other sort of human being: They are sets of digital tools available to anyone who wants to use them.

Sloppy, tiresome. But to a purpose. Why, then? What is the Times’s purpose in publishing this piece?

We can start, logically enough, with that desperation evident among those dedicated to prolonging the war. The outcome of the war, in my read and in the view of various military analysts, does not depend on the $61 billion in aid that now hangs in the balance. But the Biden regime seems to think it does, or pretends to think it does. The Times’s most immediate intent, so far as one can make out from the piece, is to add what degree of urgency it can to this question.

Entous and Schwirtz report that the people running Ukrainian intelligence are nervous that without a House vote releasing new funds “the CIA will abandon them.” Good enough that it boosts the case to cite nervous Ukrainians, but we should recognize that this is a misapprehension. The CIA has a very large budget entirely independent of what Congress votes one way or another. William Burns, the CIA director, traveled to Kyiv two weeks ago to reassure his counterparts that “the U.S. commitment will continue,” as Entous and Schwirtz quote him saying. This is perfectly true, assuming Burns referred to the agency’s commitment.

More broadly, the Times piece appears amid flagging enthusiasm for the Ukraine project. And it is in this circumstance that Entous and Schwirtz went long on the benefits accruing to the CIA in consequence of its presence on the ground in Ukraine. But read these two reporters carefully: They, or whoever put their piece in its final shape, make it clear that the agency’s operations on Ukrainian soil count first and most as a contribution to Washington’s long campaign to undermine the Russian Federation. This is not about Ukrainian democracy, that figment of neoliberal propagandists. It is about Cold War II, plain and simple. It is time to reinvigorate the old Russophobia, thus—and hence all the baloney about Russians corrupting elections and so on. It is all there for a reason.

To gather these thoughts and summarize, This piece is not journalism and should not be read as such. Neither do Entous and Schwirtz serve as journalists. They are clerks of the governing class pretending to be journalists while they post notices on a bulletin board that pretends to be a newspaper.

■

Let’s dolly out to put this piece in its historical context and consider the implications of its appearance in the once-but-fallen newspaper of record. Let’s think about the early 1970s, when it first began to emerge that the CIA had compromised the American media  and broadcasters.

Jack Anderson, the admirably iconoclastic columnist, lifted the lid on the agency’s infiltration of the media by way of a passing mention of a corrupted correspondent in 1973. A year later a former Los Angeles Times correspondent named Stuart Loory published the first extensive exploration of relations between the CIA and the media in the Columbia Journalism Review. Then, in 1976, the Church Committee opened its famous hearings in the Senate. It took up all sorts of agency malfeasance—assassinations, coups, illegal covert ops. Its intent was also to disrupt the agency’s misuse of American media and restore the latter to their independence and integrity.

The Church Committee is still widely remembered for getting its job done. But it never did. A year after Church produced its six-volume report, Rolling Stone published “The CIA and the Media,” Carl Bernstein’s well-known piece. Bernstein went considerably beyond the Church Committee, demonstrating that it pulled its punches rather than pull the plug on the CIA’s intrusions in the media. Faced with the prospect of forcing the CIA to sever all covert ties with the media, a senator Bernstein did not name remarked, “We just weren’t ready to take that step.”

We should read the Times’s piece on the righteousness of the CIA’s activities in Ukraine—bearing in mind the self-evident cooperation between the agency and the newspaper—with this history in mind.

America was just emerging from the disgraces of the McCarthyist period when Stuart Loory opened the door on this question, the Church Committee convened, and Carl Bernstein filled in the blanks. In and out of the profession there was disgust at the covert relationship between media and the spooks. Now look. What was then viewed as top-to-bottom objectionable is now routinized. It is “as usual.” In my read this is one consequence among many of the Russiagate years: They again plunged Americans and their mainstream media into the same paranoia that produced the corruptions of the 1950s and 1960s.

Alas, the scars of the swoon we call Russiagate are many and run deep.

February 29, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden regime admits Ukraine will lose more territory within next two months

By Ahmed Adel | February 29, 2024

Ukraine will lose additional territory in the coming months due to a lack of US military support, White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby lamented on February 27. This comes as Washington confirmed that US troops would not be sent to fight in Ukraine even if discussions were held with France over this possibility.

“If they continue to get no support from the United States, in a month or two, it is very likely that the Russians will achieve more territorial gains and have more success against Ukrainian frontlines,” Kirby told reporters, adding that this could occur in not only eastern Ukraine but also potentially in the south of the country.

In the same press conference, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly emphasised that the situation is “dire” for Ukraine and recalled how the CIA Director “laid out the — the consequences, how dire they were” and “what was going on in the battle — in a battlefield, obviously, and how Ukraine was losing ground, which is important.”

On the same day, US President Joe Biden also said that the need to provide additional support to Ukraine is urgent. However, the Republicans have blocked any further funding for Ukraine unless Biden relents on his open border policy, something that he is seemingly unwilling to do.

The lack of weapons and admission that Russia is about to liberate more territory compounds Kiev’s frustrations, especially after Washington confirmed that American troops would not be sent to fight in Ukraine. According to a military source interviewed by the AFP news agency, the US spent weeks discussing plans to send troops with France but ultimately deemed the risk to be too high.

On February 26, French President Emmanuel Macron raised the idea of sending troops to Ukraine, a surprising statement since the deployment of fighters was never publicly discussed or expected. Since Macron’s alarming statement, numerous European countries have disassociated from the idea, including Germany, Poland, Spain, Greece, and the Czech Republic.

Now it was the White House’s turn to deny that US troops would be deployed in Ukraine. In a statement to the press, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller stated that “the US will not send troops to fight in Ukraine.”

According to a military source cited by AFP, NATO countries have been discussing for weeks the possibility of sending their own soldiers to support the Ukrainians, and the US was one of those who supported the idea.

Responding to Macron’s statement, the Kremlin said, “The very fact of discussing the possibility of sending certain contingents to Ukraine from NATO countries is a very important new element.” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that if troops are sent, “we would need to talk not about the probability, but about the inevitability (of a direct conflict).”

Macron seemingly wants to start a Russia-NATO war, a war that would inevitably lead to nuclear strikes and with no winner, and for this reason, it is obvious why the French president became immediately isolated, so much so that even Washington cowered and distanced itself from the idea.

French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné attempted to soften the humiliating blow on February 28 by claiming that Macron had in mind sending troops for specific tasks such as helping with mine clearance, production of weapons on site, and cyber-defence.

“[This] could require a [military] presence on Ukrainian territory without crossing the threshold of fighting,” Sejourne told French lawmakers. “It’s not sending troops to wage war against Russia.”

This is an obvious cover story as Macron was almost immediately isolated, and as Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova highlighted, France’s allies neither understood nor supported the French president’s idea.

“This same statement shocked their NATO allies. A few hours later, a series of statements were made by the leadership of NATO countries, foreign ministers, and defence ministers, who said that they […] disassociate themselves from Macron’s statement. That they themselves do not plan any of this, they do not plan to send anyone and understand that this will already be a different story,” she said.

With the West failing to meet weapon supply promises made to Kiev, further US financing blocked in Congress, and, more importantly, the recent liberation of the fortress town of Avdeyevka, Ukraine will inevitably lose territory at a rapid rate. Given that the White House is openly admitting to this reality, one would expect the Kiev regime to search for an end to the conflict, yet it still chooses to pin its hopes on weapons that are not arriving on time or, more delusionally, that the West will finally directly intervene in the conflict.

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

February 29, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Scholz slammed for revealing UK troop presence in Ukraine

RT | February 29, 2024

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has come under fire from the UK after he suggested that there were British troops operating in the Ukraine conflict. Explaining why Berlin would not supply Kiev with long-range Taurus missiles, Scholz said it would require German military personnel on the ground providing assistance.

He went on to say that Taurus “is a very long-range weapon, and what was done on the part of the British and French in terms of target-control and target-control assistance can’t be done in Germany.”

Commenting on Scholz’s remark, Tobias Ellwood, the former chair of the British Commons defense committee, said it was “a flagrant abuse of intelligence deliberately designed to distract from Germany’s reluctance to arm Ukraine with its own long-range missile system,” as quoted by The Telegraph. The British lawmaker was also sure that the statement would be “used by Russia to rachet up the escalator ladder.”

“German soldiers can at no point and in no place be linked with the targets that this system reaches,” Scholz insisted, even if operating from German soil, according to the DPA news agency.

The German chancellor stated that it would be “not very responsible” for his country to risk becoming a “party to the war.”

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Financial Times quoted an anonymous senior European defense official as saying that “everyone knows there are Western special forces in Ukraine – they’ve just not acknowledged it officially.”

Addressing the press following a summit of Kiev’s backers in Paris on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron noted that “in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything,” referring to a potential ground deployment of Western militaries.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg however hastened to clarify that there were “no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.” This was followed by similar assurances by the leaders of Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that such a development would mean that “we have to talk not about the probability, but rather the inevitability” of an all-out military confrontation between NATO and Russia.

February 29, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine ‘Fiasco’ Likely Driving West to Seek Victory Against Houthis

Sputnik – 28.02.2024

Efforts of the US-led coalition to thwart Houthi attacks on Israeli-linked shipping in the Gulf of Aden have been recently backed by Germany which deployed one of its warships, frigate Hessen, to aid Washington’s effort.

The frigate’s deployment came as part of an “EU-wide operation that includes other countries as well,” said Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, assistant professor of public policy and international affairs at the American University of Beirut.

“I know that my country, Greece, also sent off frigates only a few days ago. So this is a major escalation. This is a very dangerous major escalation,” he told Sputnik. “[It is] A decision that’s made by the EU to interfere in the conflict that has been raging in the Sea of Aden and the coast of Yemen.”

According to Kosmatopoulos, this a “very worrisome development” as the European Union’s decision to join the US conflict with the Houthis leads to “extreme militarization of the waters” in the region, not to mention the EU becoming a “party to the regional war waging in Israel –Palestine.”

He also suggested that it is hard to tell whether the Hessen’s deployment came as a result of US pressure on Germany or as part of an EU effort to unblock the waterway in question.

On one hand, Kosmatopoulos noted, the US does seek to have other NATO members “share the burdens of the collective security under the NATO alliance,” including all of the associated costs and risks.

On the other hand, “the current European governance and current European leadership seems to be willingly going in this direction.”

“We saw it also in the case of the Ukraine-Russia conflict that it has been more or less unified front, consolidated front that makes it difficult to decide whether it’s just the US pressure or is also a collective decision of the West to close ranks and show strength in multiple fronts,” Kosmatopoulos said.

Regarding the reason why the US seeks to drag more of its NATO allies into the confrontation with the Houthis, the scholar postulated that Washington “wants to share the responsibility, wants to make others partake in this, wants them to dirty their hands and to show what they got,” just like they did by compelling European nations to back Kiev.

The ensuing escalation in the Middle East, he reasoned, “allows the US and its allies to ask for more and more intensive engagement that might also mean active military action against the Ansar Allah and Houthis in Yemen” as the West seeks to “reestablish its hegemony.”

“Perhaps the Ukraine fiasco made it necessary to have victory somewhere else,” Kosmatopoulos. “I hope that this is not understood as a zero-sum game in the Western elites. But it might look like that from the outset. So in that case, we’re in for a regional flare-up, if not – bigger than that. And this is an extremely worrisome development.”

February 28, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who’s Brain-Dead Now, Macron?

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 28, 2024

French President Emmanuel Macron wants to send NATO ground troops into Ukraine to defeat Russia.

Only a delusional fool could make such a crass proposal which goes to show that Macron is brain-dead. NATO troops deployed to fight Russian forces would mean an all-out war, which most likely would spiral into a nuclear conflagration.

Ironically, the French leader made headlines a while back when he labeled the US-led NATO alliance as being “brain-dead”. He’s now competing for the same epithet.

When Macron made those harsh remarks about NATO in an interview with the Economist in November 2019, some observers thought that he was being intelligently critical of the transatlantic military organization and how it was no longer fit for purpose in the modern age.

But, no, Macron wasn’t offering constructive criticism of NATO or American leadership. He was simply being a conceited charlatan, trying to promote himself as the “strong leader” of Europe and peddling his hobby horse of building up a European army by appearing to bad mouth NATO.

This week, the former Rothschild banker was at it again, indulging in his grandiose fantasies of leading the rest of Europe.

Macron hosted 25 European heads of state or government at the Conference in Support of Ukraine. In the grandeur of the Elysee Palace, he warned that Russia “must not win the war in Ukraine” otherwise, he claimed, the whole of Europe would succumb to Russian aggression.

This is reckless and dangerous fantasy by the French president indulging in the most unhinged Russophobia. Moscow has categorically stated that it has no interest in anything beyond denazifying the NATO-sponsored regime in Kiev and protecting its national security.

To offset such a purported nightmarish outcome of Russian tanks rolling over Europe, Macron told European leaders that they should not rule out deploying NATO ground troops to assist the Kiev regime.

“Nothing should be excluded. We will do whatever it takes to ensure that Russia cannot win this war,” the French president said in front of approving European leaders.

Among the conference attendees were German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Foreign Minister David Cameron. Germany and France earlier this month signed bilateral security pacts with Ukraine, which could be invoked for sending military forces officially to prosecute the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia.

NATO officers in the guise of private mercenaries are already heavily participating in the Ukraine conflict against Russia. Last month, more than 60 French servicemen were killed in a Russian missile strike near the Ukrainian city of Kharkov.

French media reported of the event in Paris this week: “The conference [in Paris] signaled Macron’s eagerness to present himself as a European champion of Ukraine’s cause, amid growing fears that American support could wane in the coming months.”

As well as calling for the deployment of NATO troops, Macron also pledged to send more long-range missiles to the Kiev regime for “deep strikes” in Russia.

French cruise missiles have already been used to strike the Russian territory of Crimea. Now the French leader wants a NeoNazi regime to have the capability to hit deep into Russia. How much longer can Moscow tolerate this outrageous provocation without reciprocal strikes?

No doubt the French president sees an opportunity for self-aggrandizement. Macron is obsessed with notions of his self-importance and restoring France’s international image to some imaginary glorious past.

With the Americans squabbling in Congress about whether to send Ukraine another $60 billion in military aid and with the possible election of NATO-skeptic Donald Trump to the White House later this year, Macron sees an opening to show Western leadership by stepping up Europe’s support for Ukraine.

Macron’s egotism and delusions of grandeur are liable to start World War Three.

He is doing all this by telling blatant lies about the conflict in Ukraine.

Macron is indulging the Kiev puppet president Vladimir Zelensky in pretending that Ukraine has a chance of defeating Russia. Zelensky also addressed the conference in Paris via video link and made his tiresome appeal for more weapons. He asserted with barefaced lies that Ukrainian military deaths amounted to 31,000 troops since the conflict erupted two years ago. The most realistic figure is that over 400,000 and perhaps as many as 500,000 Ukrainian military have been killed by far superior Russian forces.

That’s the implicit admission made by Macron. Why would NATO troops be required in Ukraine if it was not for replacing Ukrainian ranks that have been devastated?

Macron justifies his lies by compounding the more outrageous lie that Russia is intent on invading other European nations once it defeats the Ukrainian army.

This bogeyman version of geopolitics ignores the reality that the United States and NATO fomented a proxy war against Russia using a NeoNazi regime.

Macron wants to start World War Three based on sheer lies and vanity. He’s not only brain-dead. He’s soul-dead too.

Emma

February 28, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

NATO’s Debate Over Whether To Conventionally Intervene In Ukraine Shows Its Desperation

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | FEBRUARY 27, 2024

French President Macron hosted over 20 fellow European leaders in Paris on Monday to discuss their next moves in Ukraine, including the possibility of a conventional NATO intervention, which he said they hadn’t ruled out for reasons of “strategic ambiguity” despite not reaching a consensus on this. His Polish counterpart Duda also confirmed that this subject was the most heated part of their discussions. The very fact that this scenario is being officially considered shows how desperate NATO has become.

Russia’s victory in Avdeevka, which was the natural result of it winning the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with NATO, prompted policymakers to contemplate what they’ll do in the event that it achieves a breakthrough across the Line of Contact (LOC) and starts steamrolling through the rest of Ukraine. They hadn’t previously considered this to be a serious possibility until last summer’s failed counteroffensive exposed the weakness of their military-industrial complex and tactical-strategic planning.

It’s now a credible scenario that’s reviving speculation about a Polish-led intervention aimed at drawing a red line in the sand for halting any potential Russian breakthrough before it gets too far. This would preserve the G7’s “sphere of (economic) influence” in Ukraine while preventing that former Soviet Republic’s collapse and thus averting another Afghan-like foreign policy disaster for the West. The problem, however, is that Poland also doesn’t want to be put up to this only to be hung out to dry.

Although Poland has comprehensively subordinated itself to Germany after the return of Berlin-backed Prime Minister Tusk to power late last year and envisages carving out its own “sphere of influence” in Western Ukraine, this doesn’t mean that it wants to lead a Western intervention there. The risk of World War III breaking out with Russia by miscalculation is much too high and Poland might fear that NATO won’t activate Article 5 if it clashes with Russia inside Ukraine in order to prevent that from happening.

These concerns could explain why there wasn’t any consensus during Monday’s meeting on this issue since other members wisely won’t want to take the chance of catalyzing an apocalyptic scenario, ergo the reason why the West might be plotting a false flag in Poland to blame on Russia and Belarus. President Lukashenko warned about that in late February, and if it comes to pass, then it could serve as the trigger for pushing Poland into leading a Western intervention in Ukraine without full NATO backing.

Warsaw could be misled to believe without any written guarantees that it has the bloc’s support and Article 5 would be activated if its forces clash with Russia’s there, but only to be hung out to dry if that happens so as to stave off World War III by miscalculation for the greater good. Nevertheless, it would still serve the purpose of drawing a red line in the sand that could halt Russia’s advance since NATO might escalate via brinksmanship afterwards by promising to activate Article 5 if the clashes continue.

Poland would also be left to pick up the tab in that event by having to pay the financial and physical costs of this de facto NATO intervention, thus representing an amoral form of “burden-sharing” that would fall solely on its taxpayers instead of the rest of the bloc’s. The farmers’ protests that are rocking that country right now could lead to a full-blown rebellion if that happens since others could join in, however, which the ruling liberal-globalists would prefer not to unfold since they fear that they’d risk losing power.

That’s why they’re reluctant to lead a Western intervention in Ukraine since there’s a high chance that it’ll backfire on them in particular and Poland’s national interests in general despite being to the benefit of Western hegemony as a whole. Whatever ends up happening, the takeaway from Monday’s meeting in Paris and the details that were revealed about their discussions is that NATO is planning for a possible Russian breakthrough across the LOC later this year but isn’t yet sure how to react if that happens.

Poland could either be pushed to preempt that voluntarily or after being manipulated by the false flag that President Lukashenko warned last week is being plotted, with the second option also potentially being employed right after any breakthrough. If this occurs before NATO’s “Steadfast Defender 2024” drills wrap up in June, then those of the bloc’s forces that are presently training in Poland for its largest continental exercises since the Old Cold War could play a pivotal support role or possibly join in as well.

Should a breakthrough occur after those war games end as part of the Russian offensive that Zelensky claimed is being planned for as early as May, however, then Poland probably couldn’t count on as much NATO support and would likely be pressured to go it alone (at least at first) with only vague promises. Another possibility is that the exercises are extended, whether in whole or in part, including through the semi-permanent stationing of some other NATO forces like Germany’s there until the offensive ends.

That might give Poland enough reassurance to take a leap of faith in plunging head-first into Ukraine with the expectation that the rest of NATO will follow even if they purposely lag behind in order to avoid World War III with Russia by miscalculation as was previously explained. It remains to be seen what’ll happen, but as Macron himself said, “we will do everything needed so Russia cannot win the war” and this therefore means that NATO will certainly intervene to some extent if Russia breaks through the LOC.

The bloc can’t afford another Afghan-like disaster, let alone on European soil in the most geostrategically significant conflict since World War II, which is why it won’t sit idly on the sidelines as Ukraine collapses if there’s a credible chance of that happening and Russia steamrolling through the ruins. The only reason why they’re now planning for this is because Russia’s victory in the “race of logistics”/“war of logistics” makes it conceivable sometime later this year, though it of course can’t be taken for granted either.

February 28, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

US Army calls Russia ‘the enemy’

RT | February 27, 2024

The US Army has branded Moscow the “enemy” while promoting a newly-published manual on the Russian military on social media.

The Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate’s (CADD) new 280-page manual gives a detailed overview of Russian military strategy and tactics, and tries to predict how the country would conduct itself in future conflicts. The CADD promoted the manual in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, asking, “Do you know your enemy?”

The primary focus is on Moscow’s ground forces, which would be pitted against the US Army in a hypothetical direct war.

The document, known as ATP 7-100.1 and released last week, is part of a series that the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) has been developing for years. Previous publications provided similar studies of the militaries of other potential near-peer and peer opponents: North Korea, China, and Iran. The materials are not classified and intended for professional US and allied military officers.

With Russia currently involved in the Ukraine conflict, US military researchers stressed that they are still examining data gathered there and would revise their instructions accordingly. They said it was “too early to assess the structure and equipping of any Russian unit for the next 5 to 10 years” with hostilities still ongoing.

Discussing Russia’s relations with the US and its NATO allies, the manual says they are defined “by a perpetual state of competition and self interest.” The country seeks recognition as a world power and it is “highly likely” that future Russian leaders will pursue policies similar to that of the current government “for the foreseeable future,” it said; Russia will “challenge the relative position of US influence in the global order while avoiding direct confrontation with the US military.”

The Russian leadership views NATO as an instrument of American geopolitical hegemony and has called its expansion in Europe a threat to national security. The Ukraine conflict, according to Moscow, is part of a wider US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainian troops are sacrificed in the name of containment.

”The core of the problem is not in Ukraine but in those who are trying to destroy Russia with Ukrainian hands,” President Vladimir Putin said last month while visiting a military hospital. “Even though they have been pursuing this goal of tackling Russia for ages, we will sooner tackle them.”

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Kremlin reacts to Macron’s remarks on NATO troops in Ukraine

RT | February 27, 2024

A direct conflict between Russia and NATO will likely become inevitable if member states of the US-led military bloc send troops to Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, after French President Emmanuel Macron raised the possibility.

Macron, whose government hosted a high-profile meeting of Ukraine backers on Monday, said EU members “will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning” – including deploying forces on the ground to support Kiev. Several governments have since ruled out sending troops to the front line.

Opponents of the proposal “have a sober assessment of the potential risks” of having NATO forces in Ukraine, Peskov told the media on Tuesday. That would be “absolutely against the interests of those nations” and their people, he warned.

Asked about the probability of a direct conflict with NATO if Western troops are sent to Ukraine, the Kremlin spokesman said, “in this case, we have to talk not about the probability, but rather the inevitability.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken out against the idea. Participants of the meeting in Paris came to an agreement against it, he told a news conference on Tuesday.

At a joint press conference in Prague on Tuesday, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, ruled out sending their citizens to fight in Ukraine. Senior officials in Hungary and Slovakia issued similar statements.

Macron said Western leaders could end up changing their minds in the future, similarly to how they did with military assistance – which in some cases initially involved items such as helmets to eventually donating lethal weaponry including tanks and fighter jets.

While there was no consensus over the proposal, the participants agreed to create a coalition to supply medium and long-range missiles to Kiev, the French president said.

Moscow considers the Ukraine conflict to be a US-orchestrated proxy war against Russia, and has repeatedly warned that by supplying increasingly sophisticated weapons to Kiev, NATO members are drawing closer to a direct confrontation.

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

NATO Countries Did Not Make Decision to Send Their Military to Ukraine – Polish President

Sputnik – 26.02.2024

WARSAW – NATO countries disagree on sending their military to Ukraine and have not made a decision to do so, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Tuesday.

On Monday, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said that several EU and NATO countries are considering the possibility of sending their military to Ukraine on the basis of bilateral agreements.

“If we are talking about providing specific assistance, then individual countries decide what kind of assistance they specifically provide to Ukraine. There was a heated discussion about sending soldiers to Ukraine, and there was no absolute mutual understanding on this issue. There are different opinions. But I want to emphasize that there are absolutely no such decisions,” Duda told reporters after the end of a conference on supporting Ukraine, held in Paris.

French President Emmanuel Macron added that “nothing can be ruled out,” commenting on the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine.

February 26, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

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