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Russian Forces Wipe Out First French-Donated Crotale NG Missile System in Ukraine

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 25.12.2023

In the course of the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces have been successfully delivering high-precision strikes targeting foreign equipment and ammunition provided to the Kiev regime by Washington and its NATO allies, obliterating the much-touted sophisticated weaponry.

Russia’s Armed Forces operating in the special military operation zone have destroyed several Norwegian-made NASAMS (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System) and one French Crotale NG short-range air defense system that the Kiev regime received from its Western patrons, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday. The NATO-donated weapons systems were stationed at the Starokonstantinov Airfield in the Khmelnitsky region.

This is believed to be the first recorded instance of a Crotale NG being obliterated in combat, and serves as further proof that NATO’s state-of-the-art equipment is fair game for Russia’s military.

The Russian military carried out a coordinated assault that involved tactical aircraft, missile troops, artillery units, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Besides neutralizing the air defense systems, the attack inflicted damage on the Kiev regime’s aircraft equipment, flight navigation sysems, and aviation ammunition stored at the airfields in Kanatovo, Kirovograd region, and Dnepr, Dnepropetrovsk region. Furthermore, military personnel and equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was destroyed in 127 districts.

The strategic impact of Russian strikes on Ukraine’s air defense capabilities is expected to be significant, Army Recognition, an online Western military outlet, acknowledged, commenting the MoD announcement. It clarified that the destruction of enemy air defense capabilities enables Russia’s military to gain even greater control over the airspace. While reducing the risk to their own aircraft, it boosts their ability to carry out air operations such as strategic bombing, providing close air support to ground forces, and conducting reconnaissance missions.

As part of NATO’s ongoing proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, France has supplied Ukraine with two Crotale NG air defense batteries, the military outlet underscored.

The French Crotale NG (New Generation) missile system is a modernized version of the Crotale air defense system designed for short-to-medium range air defense. Equipped with the VT1 missile with an engagement range of around 11 kilometers (6.8 miles), it is touted as providing effective defense against aircraft, helicopters, various precision-guided weapons, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The system can engage targets at altitudes up to 6,000 meters.

As far as NASAMS are concerned, a number of countries have delivered these systems to Ukraine. Thus, Belgium has purportedly contributed an undisclosed number of AIM-120 NASAMS missiles, Lithuania has delivered two launchers, while Canada has supplied Kiev with one NASAMS air defense battery along with AIM-120 missiles.

The NASAMS utilizes the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM), capable of engaging targets at distances of up to 25 kilometers. This renders the NASAMS effective for medium-range air defense scenarios.

The United States reportedly sent eight NASAMS batteries as part of its billions’ worth of military assistance to Ukraine, while the UK has donated NASAMS missiles.

Despite the vast amounts of military aid being provided by the West, Ukraine’s much-hyped 2023 counteroffensive that began in June of this year failed to produce any tangible battlefield results. As the country’s military losses have mounted, public support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also waned in recent months.

Political developments have suggested that support for Ukraine is dwindling in the United States as well, where President Joe Biden’s massive funding package for Kiev has stalled in Congress. Republicans have insisted on incorporating funding for border security. In Europe, “Ukraine fatigue” is also gaining momentum, as EU states face depleted stocks from funneling military aid to Kiev, and repercussions from self-harming anti-Russia sanctions.

Since Western countries ramped up military support for the Kiev regime, Moscow officials have consistently warned that such moves do not bode well for Ukraine, and only prolong the conflict. NATO weaponry, no matter how sophisticated, will eventually be destroyed, the Kremlin underscored, and vehicles carrying supplied weapons are a legitimate target for the Russian army.

December 25, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The Anglo-American War on Russia – Part Twelve (NATO Wants War)

Tales of the American Empire | December 21, 2023

The American empire is expanding to rule the world with the help of its NATO vassal states. In 2008, American President George Bush announced that NATO wanted to add Ukraine to NATO, even though most Ukrainians opposed the idea. Russia announced this would be unacceptable while Germany and France said now is not the time to add Ukraine.

NATO now has 31 members who all must approve of new members, so it’s politically impossible to add Ukraine to NATO while it fights with Russia. However, the United States had already made Ukraine de facto member and wanted a war to occur.

Ukraine never implemented the 2015 Minsk peace accords nor the 2019 Steinmeier Formula agreement and continued random tank and artillery fire into rebel held cities, killing some 14,000 ethnic Russians since 2015. On the eve of the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine, the buildup of Russian troops on the eastern border of the Donbas was heavily reported. Unreported was the buildup of Ukrainian troops on the Donbas’ western border that preceded it. Ukraine had massed 60,000 troops along its border with Donbas rebels.

As Ukraine slowly loses its war with Russia, many fear NATO will intervene militarily. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenburg has spent years selling the dangerous idea of adding Ukraine to NATO. This led to disaster, yet Stoltenburg still promotes this insane idea that would lead to a world war.

_________________________________

“German agency suspends certification for NordStream 2”; DW; November 11, 2021; https://www.dw.com/en/german-agency-s…

Related Tale: “The American Colony Called Germany”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adfyC…

“Germany’s Economy is in Freefall”; Remix; September 2023; https://www.bitchute.com/video/bo10lE…

“Address by the President of the Russian Federation”; Vladimir Putin; The Kremlin; February 21, 2022; http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president…

Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

December 24, 2023 Posted by | Video | , , | Leave a comment

Attacking Yemen Is a Waste of Time, Money and Resources

By Declan Hayes | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 22, 2023

What to do with a problem like Yemen and its 2,000 km (1,200 mile) long Red Sea coastline? And indeed with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somali, all three of which share maritime borders with Yemen.

The issue is that Yemen’s Houthi have decided that all ships using the Red Sea that have any connection, near or far, with Israel, are legitimate targets for its batteries of missiles some of which, as previously discussed, are almost unstoppable ballistic missiles.

The problem is how to sail Israeli and other targeted ships through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and thence onwards to pay the $500,000-$1,000,000 toll to sail through Egypt’s Suez Canal. This problem is compounded by (Russia’s) dark and grey fleets, which transfer embargoed oil, being allowed free passage and the Chinese, which have a major naval base in nearby Djibouti, playing schlump about the whole matter. NATO’s problem is how to deal with the Houthi, whilst also marginalising China, Iran and Russia, all three of which have very big dogs in this very important fight.

Although diplomacy would seem an obvious candidate to help resolve matters NATO, in its wisdom, long ago discarded that card and China is, in any event, playing a totally different and far more incendiary global game.

On top of all that, NATO’s major shipping lines have their own profiteering demands, which further complicate matters. In essence, those major companies want NATO to escort all its ships, and not just those flying NATO flags, in convoy through the Red Sea. Although that would benefit them, NATO is primarily obliged to protect its own fleet and not the 40% of the world’s ships that fly the flags of open registry countries like Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands or, heaven forbid, that transport dark or grey cargo on behalf of Russia and its partners. And, if that were not enough, many non-eligible ships carry military ordnance for NATO and, most likely, Israel as well.

Even if NATO were, like Tom Hanks in Greyhound, to convoy some or all of those ships through the Red Sea, there is no guarantee that they would not be hit there or further up the chain, say in the Suez Canal itself. Although convoys are a risk those large shipping companies should probably run, their extreme risk aversion means they instead prefer to detour past the entire African continent and thereby weaken NATO’s already weak supply chains by needlessly extending them. NATO’s shipping companies are divided on how best to respond and, of course, a house divided cannot stand.

The second and third options are to plonk NATO armadas off the Yemeni coast, to send marines and French legionaries ashore and to bomb the living shit out of the Yemeni, to poke the Houthi hornet’s nest, in other words and make them bleed, something they are long inured to.

Although these are scenarios NATO’s High Command has yet to fully war game out, retired US Vice Admiral James Stavridris, who now fronts the Carlyle Group, summarises the main issues in this revealing article, where he points to the domino effect on global supply chains, where combatting swarms of cheap Houthi (and, later Iranian?) drones is a very expensive proposition and where alternative options to obliterate the Houthi threat are haram.

These other options include arming merchant shipping with appropriate weaponry, a solution that would be unacceptable to any neutral port the ships might like to dock in. Stavridris’ solution, unsurprisingly for NATO’s former military commander, is to bomb the living shit out of Yemen, “to carry out offensive strikes against targets ashore, perhaps using Tomahawk missiles and attack aircraft from the carrier USS Eisenhower, now patrolling the Gulf of Oman.”

All well and good but the Houthi are mobile and they have a lot of real estate to play about in, not only in Yemen itself but in contiguous countries. And that is before we consider Iran’s plans to have giant flotillas of small but highly armed speedboats causing mayhem in nearby waters, should the need arise. You can swat all the Houthi and Iranian mosquitoes you like but you will still get badly bitten.

Stavridris is undeterred by any of that. He believes that if saturation bombing does not work, “it would be entirely appropriate to strike the sponsor — Iran — especially its maritime infrastructure in the north Indian Ocean and the Gulf. This could include oil and gas platforms, port facilities and patrol vessels of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

All of which makes eminent sense if the problem is a solitary nail and NATO’s navy is, as it always seems to be, a hammer capable of hammering down only one defenceless group of people at a time.

The issue here is that the Houthi, perhaps in cahoots with Iran, have shown that global supply lines are easily interdicted and Stavridis, Hanks and their Hollywood armadas notwithstanding, NATO and its merchant marine fleet can no longer ride roughshod over even marginal players like the Houthi, Hezbollah and Hamas, never mind Russia and, with regards to Asian waters, China, whose Fishing Militia has helped inspire Iran to form its own Maritime Militia of some 55,000 voluntary forces with 33,000 vessels.

And then there is NATO’s very odd toehold of Djibouti, which is home to military bases belonging to Germany, Spain, Italy, France, the United States, Britain, China, and Saudi Arabia, with Russia and India also being eager to set up shop there. Not only does Djibouti depend on the rents from these bases to stay afloat but Djibouti’s growing national debt is such that she can have no independent diplomatic leverage. Djibouti’s increased debt to China, which promised to make it another Dubai, means that it is a “black box” of a looming danger in the region – a danger that arises from the competition over military bases that goes much beyond the Houthi’s pinpricks.

If the Houthi were not already sufficiently riled up, NATO’s plans to build a Ben Gurion Canal from the Gulf of Aqaba via a flattened Gaza to the Mediterranean is sure to really get up their noses. Leaving all other considerations aside, Aqaba is best known in the West from Lawrence of Arabia, where Hollywood heart throb Peter O’Toole led Arab tribesmen to a famous victory over the Turks embedded there, even though that assault put the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement to carve up Ottoman Arabia in jeopardy.

Though the consequences of the Sykes Picot Agreement and the related Balfour Declaration still have the noses of the Houthi and very many others out of joint, it seems NATO is prepared to play this game through to the end not only in the Gulf of Suez, the Gulf of Aqaba and the other West Asian choke points the Houthi and their allies have a presence in but much further afield to the Strait of Malacca and the Taiwan Strait as well. And, though the hammer happy US Vice Admiral James Stavridris no doubt has a solution for them factored around Tomahawk missiles, US marines and French paratroopers, one can only surmise that NATO’s adventurism in the Red Sea is the latest of several nails it is hammering into its own coffin.

December 22, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Time to admit US and NATO bit off more than they can chew in Ukraine proxy war

Thousands of Ukrainians die on the battlefield as the war with Russia continues, but Washington and London are unwilling to admit defeat

By Oscar van Heerden | news 24 | September 29, 2023

How many Ukrainians must die before the US and its Western allies grow a conscience?

It’s wrong what they are doing to the Ukrainian people, and all this under the guise that the protracted war with Russia is what the Ukrainians want. Ukrainians, I’m sure, did not sign up for a war of attrition with Russia where hundreds of thousands of mainly Ukrainian men are injured and/or dying. The fact that everyone on both sides of the war chooses to remain numb to the figures of the dead suggests that the numbers are very high.

Why, then, is the Ukrainian government forcing young and old men on the streets of Kyiv to enlist and go to the front lines to be butchered by Russian forces? Why is the Ukrainian government, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, requesting European governments to send Ukrainian men, who are legal immigrants and refugees in such countries, back to Ukraine against their will so they may be enlisted to go to the front lines of this war?

According to the website visitukraine.today, a new procedure for keeping military records of men was approved in Ukraine.

“One of the clauses of the resolution obliges foreign embassies to inform Ukrainian citizens abroad about the start of new conscription and to facilitate their return home if mobilisation is taking place in the motherland. After the changes in the legislation, they began to discuss the possible deportation of Ukrainians from the EU,” the website states.

Ukrainians are dying terribly in this war, and no one seems to care.

No one wants to stop the war

Apportioning blame to Russia is one way of dealing with this conflict, but the reality is that no one seems to want to put a stop to it.

If indeed Zelensky cared about his fellow citizens’ welfare and lives, surely by now he would have realised that this war is going nowhere, that the much-touted counter-offensive has failed, and that by starting negotiations with the Russians he can end this carnage once and for all.

However, under martial law, he has passed legislation making it illegal to negotiate peace with Russia while Vladimir Putin remains Russia’s president.

It’s a cop-out position to state that Russia can at any time stop this war if it withdraws all its troops from Ukrainian land. Why would Russia do that when it claims to be winning the war? And why would it do that if it started this conflict because of NATO’s expansion and when it claimed the people of the Donbas region were being persecuted by their own government while the rest of Europe did nothing? Not even the UN-adopted “responsibility to protect” is being invoked…

We’ve seen how the West can be trusted regarding agreements and negotiations. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel admitted last year in an interview with Germany’s Zeit magazine that the Minsk agreements were an attempt to “give Ukraine time” to build up its defences. We’ve seen that even when negotiations were concluded and signed in Turkey just weeks before the war broke out, it was not honoured by the Zelensky government.

So, tell me, why would Russia want to now, yet again, put its trust in the “collective West” and agree to what exactly? Whichever way you slice this matter, the truth is that Russia has been begging NATO not to expand eastwards for decades. To justify NATO’s continuous existence, it must, one, have a common enemy and why not the old foe, the Soviet Union, in its reincarnation? Two, it must continue expanding to enlarge and encircle the so-called enemy, Russia.

Zelensky’s US trip 

Russia was weak in the early 1990s and hence expansion could not be stopped. Ten eastern European countries were allowed into NATO, most of them bordering Russia, and then a second expansion took place. Russia did nothing but complain, and it was clear what the intention was. Russia could see it too, and it prepared because it knew that the final straw would be Ukraine.

Strategically, with regard to Black Sea access, Ukraine joining NATO would pose a direct threat to the sovereignty and national security of Russia. The 2014 popular uprising that saw former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich forced from office was the starting block towards conflict, which saw Russia annexing Crimea because of its strategic location. The rest is history, meaning we all know what has happened since then and here we are today – witnessing an ongoing war of attrition, with both sides doing everything they can to win.

Earlier this week, Zelensky took a wartime trip to the US to appear before the UN General Assembly. He also visited Canada.

House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy refused to allow Zelensky to address the joint sitting of the House as was the case in the past, citing time constraints. it appears McCarthy is walking a thin line within his party as many Republicans and some Democrats are not eager and downright hostile to any suggestion of additional aid for Zelensky’s government, asking questions about the accountability of previous billions sent to Ukraine.

Weapons systems, artillery and ammunitions all came to nought even though the American people and European parliaments were all promised that the counter-offensive would deliver victory, or at the very least significant advances by the Ukrainians.

Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that Zelensky was more than happy to use risky military actions such as occupying Russian villages to gain leverage over Moscow; bombing a pipeline that transfers Russian oil to Hungary, a NATO member; and privately pining for long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia’s borders. This is contained in classified US intelligence documents detailing Zelensky’s internal communications with top aides and military leaders. The authenticity of the materials has not been disputed.

The one man standing and supporting Zelensky is US President Joe Biden.

Why, you might wonder. Well, it’s because of the upcoming presidential election in 2024. Biden must be seen as strong and resolute with regard to this war. Being seen as faltering in this regard will not bode well for him and the Democratic Party.

The reality is that Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz all realise that their chosen actor, Zelensky, who was once compared with Winston Churchill nogal, is a failure; a walking disaster going around with a begging bowl for a war that seems unwinnable.

Clampdown

“Fighting for freedom” and “sovereignty” are being bandied around, but these are elements that were elusive in Ukraine even before this war. In fact, before the war, there was a clampdown on all alternative voices and media outlets in the country.

According to Reuters, the Ukrainian government in 2021 restricted media and the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, violating international law. Eleven opposition parties were suspended during the period of martial law due to alleged links to Russia and now Zelensky has indefinitely postponed the next general election, where, in my opinion, he knows he will certainly be voted out for failing his people.

The harsh sanctions against Russia have not worked. In fact, the Russian economy is growing, unlike most European economies that are going into recession. Russia’s oil and gas sales are through the roof, and everyone is buying despite sanctions, including European countries themselves. Liquified gas sales to Europe have been up by 35% over the past few months.

Why not acknowledge the obvious – the US and NATO bit off more than they can chew. Zelensky’s kicking and screaming over the past few days did have at least some success. A few Abrams tanks from the US have arrived, combat-ready. I fear what we will see over the next few weeks is footage of these very sophisticated tanks burning on the battlefield just like all the other impressive equipment received from Ukraine’s sponsors. Ukrainian troops are only receiving weeks of training for intricate weapons systems instead of the months that are required to make them field-ready.

But it seems peace efforts from African leaders, Chinese leaders and even the Pope all fall on deaf ears. By all accounts, Washington and London want this war to continue.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was quick to issue an arrest warrant for a particular atrocity against Putin, but is conspicuously silent when it comes to alleged atrocities by Zelensky, Biden, Sunak and others.

The US sent controversial cluster munitions and depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, yet ICC chief prosecutor Karim Asad Ahmad Khan remains silent. Surely, double-standards are at play?

This is yet another reminder to us in the global south that the rules which govern the world order were not written by us. This war must stop …  It’s terrible what is happening to our fellow brothers and sisters in both Ukraine and Russia.

Oscar van Heerden is a senior research fellow for African diplomacy and leadership at the University of Johannesburg.

December 22, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Empty Quiver

By William Schryver – imetatronink – December 21, 2023

As the sun sets here at the Winter Solstice of 2023, I would like to draw attention yet again to what, in my estimation, is one of the most strategically significant battlefield humiliations inflicted upon NATO over the course of the Ukraine War: the progressively comprehensive defeat of their precision-guided strike missile inventory — ATACMS, HARMS, JDAMS, GMLRS fired from HIMARS, cruise missiles (Storm Shadow and SCALP).

The Russians have demonstrated that they can routinely shoot down ANY species of strike missile the US/NATO can field against them — not all of them all of the time, but most of them most of the time.

And they get better and better at it as time goes on.

Indeed, over the past few months it is increasingly becoming “all of them most of the time”.

As Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported earlier this week:

“We are using air defence systems in a comprehensive manner during the special military operation. This significantly improved their responsiveness and strike range. Over the last six months, we have shot down 1,062 of NATO’s HIMARS rockets, short-range and cruise missiles, and guided bombs.”

No other military on the planet has previously attested this level of capability. The US does not have it, and is at least a decade away from developing it.

And, it is important to bear in mind that the precision-guided systems the US and its NATO allies have provided for Ukraine are representative of the best their own militaries could deploy in a conflict with Russia.

The current front-line inventory of US tactical ballistic missiles and sea- and air-launched cruise missiles would present no greater technical challenge for Russian air defenses than what they have already seen and defeated in the Ukraine War.

The significance of this battlefield development defies exaggeration. It alters the war-fighting calculus that has been assumed for many decades.

Against Russia at least, the Pentagon must know that the success of a large conventional strike missile package is far from assured. There is no doubt some damaging hits would be inflicted, but Russian retaliatory capacity would not be appreciably affected, and the subsequent Russian counterstrike against NATO targets would be devastating — for the simple reason that US/NATO air defenses are not even remotely as effective as their Russian counterparts. In fact, they are rookie league in comparison. They would be as utterly befuddled as was the Patriot system in Kiev the night the Russians launched a very modest attack against it.

It would also be logical to assume that China, if not as fully proficient as Russia in every respect, is very likely not far behind.

It is also increasingly apparent that Iran has made great strides in the same direction.

As I have noted repeatedly in recent months: for the declining empire and its decrepit vassals, there are no easy wars left to fight.

December 22, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine joins NATO’s Arctic projects against Russia

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | DECEMBER 19, 2023 

In a plea earlier this month to Republicans not to block further military aid to Ukraine, US President Joe Biden warned that if Russia is victorious, then President Vladimir Putin will not stop and will attack a NATO country. Biden’s remark has drawn a sharp rebuke from Putin when he said, “This is absolutely absurd. I believe that President Biden is aware of this, this is merely a figure of speech to support his incorrect strategy against Russia.”

Putin added that Russia has no interest in fighting with NATO countries, as they “have no territorial claims against each other” and Russia does not want to “sour relations with them.” Moscow senses that a new US  narrative is struggling to be born out of the debris of the old narrative on Ukraine war. 

To jog memory, on 24 February, during a White House press conference on the first day of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, Biden said western sanctions were designed not to prevent invasion but to punish Russia after invading “so the people of Russia know what he (Putin) has brought on them. That is what this is all about.”

A month later, on 26 March Biden, speaking in Warsaw, blurted out, “For God’s sake, this man (Putin) cannot remain in power.” These and similar remarks that followed, especially from Britain, reflected a US strategy for regime change in Moscow, with Ukraine as the pivot. 

This strategy dates back to the 1990s and was actually at the core of the expansion of NATO along Russia’s borders, from the Baltics to Bulgaria. The Syrian conflict and covert activities of US NGOs to foment unrest in Russia were offshoots of the strategy. At least since 2015 after the coup in Kiev, CIA was overseeing a secret intensive training programme for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel. Succinctly put, the US set a trap for Russia to get it bogged down in a long insurgency, the presumption being the longer the Ukrainians can sustain the insurgency and keep Russian military bogged down, the more likely is the end of the Putin regime.

The crux of the matter today is that Russia defeated the US strategy and not only seized the initiative in the war but also rubbished the sanctions regime. The dilemma in the Beltway narrows down to how to keep Russia as an external enemy so that the West’s often fractious member states will continue to rally under US leadership. 

What comes to mind is a sardonic remark by Soviet Academician Georgy Arbatov who was advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, to an elite group of senior US officials even as the curtain was coming down on the Cold War in 1987: “We are going to do a terrible thing to you -– we are going to deprive you of an enemy.”

Unless black humour in this cardinal truth is properly understood, the entire US strategy since the 1990s to rebuff the efforts of Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and early Putin to establish non-adversarial relations with the West cannot be grasped. 

Put differently, if the US’ post-cold war Russia strategy has not worked, it is because of a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, Washington needs Russia as an enemy to provide internal unity within the western alliance, while on the other hand, it also needs Russia as a cooperative, subservient junior partner in the struggle against China.

The US hopes to draw down in Ukraine and stave off defeat by leaving behind a “frozen conflict” which it’s free to revisit later at a time of its choice, but in the meanwhile, is increasingly eyeing the Arctic lately as the new theatre to entrap Russia in a quagmire. The induction of Finland into NATO (and Sweden to follow) means that the unfinished business of Ukraine’s membership, which Russia thwarted, can be fulfilled by other means.

After meeting Biden at the White House last Tuesday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky headed for Oslo on October 13 on a fateful visit to forge his country’s partnership in NATO projects to counter Russia in the Arctic. In Oslo, Zelensky participated in a summit of the 5 Nordic countries to discuss “issues of cooperation in the field of defence and security.” The summit took place against the backdrop of the US reaching agreements with Finland and Sweden on the use of their military infrastructure by the Pentagon.

The big picture is that the US is encouraging Nordic countries to get Ukraine to participate in strengthening NATO’s Arctic borders. One may  wonder what is the “additionality” that a decrepit military like Ukraine’s can bring into NATO. Herein hangs a tale. Simply put, although Ukraine has no direct access to the Arctic, it can potentially bring in an impressive capability to undertake subversive activities inside Russian territory in a hybrid war against Russia. 

In a strange coincidence, the Pentagon recently prepared the Starlink satellite system for use in the Arctic, which was used by Ukrainian military for staging attacks on the Crimean Bridge, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and strategic assets on Russian territory. The US’ agreement with Finland and Sweden would give the Pentagon access to a string of naval and air bases and airfields as well as training and testing grounds along the Russian border. 

Several hundred thousand Ukrainian citizens are presently domiciled in the Nordic countries who are open to recruitment for “an entire army of saboteurs like the one that Germany collected during the war between Finland and the USSR in 1939-1940 on the islands of Lake Ladoga,” as a Russian military expert told Nezavisimaya Gazeta recently. 

Russia’s naval chief Admiral Nikolai Evmenov also pointed out recently that “the strengthening of the military presence of the united NATO armed forces in the Arctic is already an established fact, which indicates the bloc’s transition to practical actions to form military force instruments to deter Russia in the region.” In fact, Russia’s Northern Fleet is forming a marine brigade tasked with the fight against saboteurs to ensure the safety of the new Northern Sea Route, coastal military and industrial infrastructure in the Arctic. 

Suffice to say, no matter Ukraine’s defeat in the US’ proxy war with Russia, Zelensky’s use for the US’ geo-strategy remains. From Oslo, Zelensky made an unannounced visit on December 14 to a US Army base in Germany. Analysts who see Zelensky as a spent force had better revise their opinion — that is, unless the power struggle in Kiev exacerbates and Zelensky gets overthrown in a coup or a colour revolution, which seems improbable so long as Biden is in the White House and Hunter Biden is on trial.

The bottom line is that Biden’s new narrative demonising Russia for planning an attack on NATO can be seen from multiple angles. At the most obvious level, it aims to hustle the Congress on the pending bill for $61 billion military aid to Ukraine. Of course, it also distracts attention from the defeat in the war. But, most important, the new narrative is intended to rally the US’ transatlantic allies who are increasingly disillusioned with the outcome of the war and nervous that US involvement in Europe may dwindle as it turns to Indo-Pacific.

When Putin reacts harshly that Biden’s new narrative is “absurd”, he is absolutely right insofar as Russia’s focus is on things far more important than waging a senseless continental war in Europe. After all, it was one of the founding fathers of the USA, James Monroe who said that a king without power is an absurdity. 

December 19, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO troops directly involved in Ukraine conflict – Russia

RT | December 19, 2023

Several NATO member states have boots on the ground in the Ukraine conflict, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has claimed. He alleged that Western military personnel are operating certain weapons systems, and that hundreds of satellites belonging to the US-led military bloc are providing Kiev with surveillance.

Speaking at a meeting of Defense Ministry officials on Tuesday, where President Vladimir Putin was also present, Shoigu stated that “NATO service members are directly operating air defense systems, tactical ballistic missiles, and multiple launch rocket systems” in Ukraine. He cited radio intercepts featuring English and Polish speakers. According to the minister, Western officers are also playing an active role in preparing Ukrainian military operations as well as training troops, both in their home countries and in Ukraine.

Russian officials have repeatedly warned that ever-deepening Western involvement in the conflict unnecessarily increases the chances of a direct military confrontation between NATO and Moscow.

The Russian defense chief went on to claim that more than 5,000 foreign fighters have been killed since hostilities broke out in February 2022, with 1,427 Polish, 466 US, and 344 UK nationals among them.

“Working in the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ interest are 410 NATO military and dual-purpose space devices,” Shoigu estimated.

He also lauded Russia’s defense industry for ramping up production in the past 18 months and helping prevent ammunition shortages on the front lines. “Despite the sanctions, we are manufacturing more high-tech weaponry than NATO countries,” Shoigu continued.

The minister concluded by stating that “as of today, the Russian army is the best-prepared and most combat-ready in the world, armed with cutting-edge weapons tested in combat.”

Putin insisted at the same meeting that the West’s efforts to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia have failed.

Speaking to the Ukrainian branch of US state-run broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on Friday, Kiev’s former ambassador to the UK, Vadim Prystaiko, claimed that Britain is developing plans to potentially deploy troops to Ukraine.

The diplomat, who was fired after criticizing Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, went on to suggest that while Western officials will deny any such plans, foreign deployments are still possible under certain circumstances.

December 19, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Finland’s new ‘defense’ deal with US eerily reminds of similar one with Nazi Germany

By Drago Bosnic | December 18, 2023

Ever since NATO formally (re)started the (New) Cold War, it has been expanding its military presence all across Europe, effectively escalating its crawling aggression on the continent. The obvious target – Russia. The belligerent alliance is determined to create a new “frontline” on Moscow’s western borders, this time by drastically increasing American military presence in Finland. Namely, last week, Helsinki announced that it will sign a bilateral “defense” cooperation agreement with the United States, allowing the latter to station troops and store weapons in Finland. During a news conference in Helsinki on December 14, the Nordic country’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen stated that Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen will sign the so-called Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) on December 18 (today).

“The pact is very significant for Finland’s defense and security,” Häkkänen was quoted by Euronews, adding: “It bears a very strong message in this time. The United States is committed to our defense.”

The DCA will allow American troops to access 15 military areas and facilities in the entirety of Finland, ranging from a key southern naval base and inland air bases to a vast remote army training area in Lapland in the north. Interestingly, Finnish officials admitted that American troops are allowed a permanent presence and regular exercises in the country, but they insist that “there are no plans to establish permanent US military bases in Finland”. These two claims are extremely contradictory, not to mention the fact that such deployments contribute nothing to Finnish security. On the contrary, this can only attract the attention of Russia, which otherwise would’ve never considered Finland a threat. The Nordic country of 5,6 million shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, nearly tripling the line of direct NATO-Russia contact.

Along with the Baltic states, it’s also the European Union’s external border with Russia. The troubled bloc itself is militarizing and effectively unifying with NATO, cementing Europe’s position as a mere pendant of America’s geopolitical strategy of so-called “containment”. Other countries on the continent have similar bilateral agreements with the US, including the neighboring Sweden, while Denmark (already a NATO member) is very likely to do the same. The obvious question arises, why are Finland and Sweden doing this? Will they feel safer with American and other NATO troops stationed in their military facilities? It’s quite obvious that the belligerent alliance has always been an auxiliary extension of the Pentagon and this has been the case since NATO’s unfortunate inception 74 years ago, as well as its subsequent expansion.

Thus, an increase in American military presence in Finland should always be observed from the perspective of US expansionism, as the world’s most aggressive country keeps moving its “defense” infrastructure ever closer to the borders of its geopolitical adversaries. This has been the case in the (First) Cold War and it’s no different nowadays when Washington DC is pushing one European country after another into a broader anti-Russian coalition that now includes the entire EU. The US is also trying to do the same by constituting a near carbon copy of NATO in the Pacific in a virtually identical step, only aimed against China. The formal admission of Finland back in April and the current military expansion are just steps toward the so-called “globalization” of NATO, a terrifying prospect for the security of the world.

It could be argued that Finland was never truly neutral, not even during the (First) Cold War and particularly not since it entered the EU. It has always been packed with US/NATO intelligence assets, although this has escalated significantly in the last several decades. Since then, the country has essentially become a NATO member in all but name. Helsinki directly broke from its formal neutrality when it decided to acquire F-35 fighter jets from the US in late 2021. The Pentagon has direct access to everything the F-35’s sensors can detect, meaning that Finland would be sharing key military data with the US regardless of whether it was a NATO member or not. On the other hand, as I argued back in early April, being a direct member means that the Nordic country is virtually guaranteed to see the deployment of American offensive weapons.

The details of the latest “defense” deal are yet to be revealed, but it can only be expected that it will involve much more than simple infantry deployments. For Russia, this is particularly concerning, as Finland and Estonia, now both NATO members, are in close proximity to St. Petersburg, its second most important city. The stationing of any US offensive weapons such as cruise missiles and nuclear-capable fighter jets would deeply destabilize the otherwise largely stable region. There’s also a quite eerie historical dimension in all this. Namely, Helsinki is essentially repeating the same mistake it made over 80 years ago when it joined the Axis led by Nazi Germany. Now when it’s among “old friends” once again, maybe the Nordic country should dust off the history books and pay very close attention to how this ended the last time.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

December 18, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The dangers NATO names and makes

By Radhika Desai | CGTN | November 28, 2023

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated in his pre-ministerial press conference on the eve of the NATO Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Brussels on November 28 and 29, that the almost 75-year-old organization faces “the most dangerous world in decades.”

However, little that the military alliance does seems designed to diminish those dangers. Instead, by holding out the hope of prevailing in these conflicts, most of which it has been instrumental in causing in carefully selected theaters outside itself, it is exacerbating them.

There is, upper-most on the world’s mind, the six-week-old Israel-Hamas conflict. While U.S. officials routinely invoke the danger that it will spiral out of control into a Middle Eastern war and even a World War III, rather than damping it down, the U.S. and NATO seem hell-bent on stoking it further. They back Israel militarily, financially, and diplomatically (with NATO members routinely vetoing or abstaining from numerous UN Resolutions calling for even a pause in the conflict) so one-sidedly that NATO governments face veritable revolts, not only on the streets but in its own ranks and those of the normally loyal national media.

The U.S. and NATO’s hopes of victory against Middle East countries are vain and hubristic. This is already clear from their failure to win the war in Ukraine. With defeat all but announced, the search for scapegoats is already on in Kyiv. If, after 20 months of war, billions in aid and armaments, boomeranging sanctions and unrelenting propaganda the war could not be won, the addition of new wars can hardly bring victory closer.

Finally, Stoltenberg referred to “growing global competition,” a code word for the aggression towards China into which the U.S. is trying to dragoon its NATO allies. It has, in recent years, entailed the revitalization of the Quad of Japan, Australia, India and the U.S., the launching of the AUKUS alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. and the shift from “Asia Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific” to designate the U.S. concerns and commitments beyond its western sphere with India positioned as a key U.S. and Western ally in the region.

It has also entailed unprecedented explicit mention of Asian objectives in NATO communiques since the Madrid Summit in 2022, and the attendance of leaders and ministers of Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia and New Zealand as regular guests at NATO meetings and summits.

However, this strategy is far from assured. Quite simply, China’s winning, development- and growth-based diplomacy continues to engage all these countries and even NATO members with considerable success. While enervated and financialized Western economies offer only subjection, political and financial, China’s vibrant economy, productive and technological dynamism and benign international [ism] offer/exert an economic gravity that leaves no country untouched.

There are many reasons why NATO is being too hubristic and vain: It is too used to being the top dog, too many of its governments have invested too much into these wars and potential wars and it needs achievements to celebrate next July, not failures. But, as became clear in U.S. President Joe Biden’s speech a few days ago, when he once again delusionally called his country the “indispensable nation,” he wishes to fight the next election as a war president and then some: with wars on two and possibly three fronts.

Given his abysmal ratings, that is the thin thread on which his victory hangs.

Radhika Desai, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba in Canada.

December 18, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Putin: “Odessa is a Russian city”

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE |DECEMBER 17, 2023 

At the year-end news conference on Thursday lasting four hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin made some key remarks on the conflict in Ukraine which throw light on the likely trajectory of the war through 2024. To be sure, Russia will not accept a “frozen conflict” that falls short of realising the objectives Putin had laid out at the commencement of the special military operations in February last year. 

Putin stated: “There will be peace when we achieve our goals… Now let’s return to these goals – they have not changed. I would like to remind you how we formulated them: denazification, demilitarisation, and a neutral status for Ukraine.” 

He spelt out denazification and demilitarisation as work in progress while leaving out the crucial question of a neutral status for Ukraine, a notion which the collective West outright rejects while pressing ahead with its intervention in newer forms despite the failure of Kiev’s months-long counteroffensive. Ironically, the accent in the revised western narrative is to create a strong resilient defence industry in Ukraine eventually with western technology and capital to ward off any Russian military threats in future. 

On denazification specifically, Putin said that during the negotiations in Istanbul last year in March, Kiev showed receptiveness towards the idea of legislating against the spread of extremist ideology, but that lies buried in the past. As for demilitarisation, that idea also never caught on as Ukraine began receiving weaponry “even more than what was promised by the West.” 

Therefore, Russia is left with no other option but to keep destroying the Ukrainian military capability as the core of the demilitarisation process. But Putin believed that certain parameters can still be negotiated, and, in fact, “We actually agreed on them [with Ukrainian negotiators] during the Istanbul talks; although these were thrown out later, we managed to reach agreement.” The alternative to reaching an agreement on demilitarisation is to “resolve the conflict by force. This is what we will strive for.” However, to this end, Putin ruled out another mobilisation as already “there will be about half a million people [in the war zone] by the end of this year.” 

These remarks bear the hallmark of a statesman speaking from a position of strength who is conscious of it, too. Putin asserted that Russian forces are “improving their position almost along the entire line of contact. Almost all of them are engaged in active combat. And the position of our troops is improving along [the entire line of contact.]” Putin conveyed no willingness to compromise with the US and EU. 

Significantly, Putin said that the southern part of Ukraine has “always been Russian territory… Neither Crimea nor the Black Sea has any connection to Ukraine. Odessa is a Russian city.” This is an ominous statement implying that the Russian operation may after all extend to Odessa which is on the western side of the Dnieper and even further westward along the Black Sea coast to Moldova that renders Ukraine a land-locked country. A prolonged conflict is in the cards. 

On the contrary, the reports from the US media quoting American officials convey the impression that there is no willingness to throw in the towel at the present stage. That is of course predicated on the belief that Russia will be hard put to realise its objectives and by the end of 2024, the tide of war can change and Russia may be compelled to compromise. Thus, a new strategy is being worked out between the US and Ukrainian military that can be executed by the early part of 2024 with the American accent on holding the territory that Ukraine controls as of now and digging in. 

The New York Times reported that the Ukrainian military subscribes to a “forward policy.” The Pentagon is stationing a three-star general in Kiev with a view to “stepping up the face-to-face military advice it provides to Ukraine.” This could be the beginning of deployment of American military advisors to Ukraine to oversee the war, which will put the Pentagon in a direct role in the management of the operations from both the tactical as well as strategic perspectives. 

Meanwhile, the final word is not yet spoken by the US Senate on the Administration’s demand of $61 billion as additional funds for Ukraine. The likelihood is that the senate will eventually pass the bill since there is a big groundswell of support among Republican lawmakers for the war effort. The Administration is driving home that Russia has an “imperial” agenda toward NATO countries and vital US interests are at stake in preventing Russia from winning the war. 

Interestingly, in a related development two days ago, Congress approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the US from NATO without approval from the Senate or an Act of Congress. Equally, Europe is also circling the wagons and taking a long-term view that Russia’s scale-up of arms production to sustain its operations in Ukraine poses a real threat to Europe, especially to the Baltic states, Georgia and Moldova. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg last week warned that “If Putin wins in Ukraine, there is real risk that his aggression will not end there.” 

The German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius echoed that sentiment when he said on Saturday that Europe must ramp up its security and defence capabilities to respond to the threat Russia poses, as the US will likely reduce its involvement on the Continent in the coming years and increasingly turn its attention to the Pacific region in the next decade. As he put it, “This isn’t just sabre-rattling. Dangers could lie ahead at the end of this decade.” 

The message from the European Council meeting in Brussels last Friday is also that in circumventing Hungary’s opposition, EU leaders are navigating a pathway to ensure Ukraine will still get its €50 billion aid package to help prop up its hollowed out economy — if necessary, by taking the radical step of sacrificing EU unity and providing the money on a bilateral basis. The EU leaders are expected to reconvene at the end of January or early February to unlock the issue. 

On Friday, Ukraine’s foreign ministry released a statement lauding the opening of EU membership negotiations and voicing optimism about the €50 billion aid package from Brussels. The tough talk notwithstanding, Russia too must be sensing that the EU will ultimately find a way somehow to solve the financial question. For the present, though, the deadlock in Brussels and Washington on aid has generated an air of uncertainty, which is bad optics for Kiev and plays into the Russian narrative.  

All in all, Putin’s tough remarks on Thursday factor in that the US isn’t going anywhere but stays put in Ukraine and the Biden administration’s game plan is to revamp the war strategy to put it on a stronger footing and make it sustainable through the period ahead till the November 2024 election. 

Kremlin’s hope that US support for Ukraine is on the wane seems misplaced. Curiously, spokesman Dmitry Peskov added in good measure in an interview on Friday with broadcaster NBC News that Putin would prefer an American president who is “more constructive” toward Russia and understands the “importance of the dialogue” between the two countries. Peskov added that Putin would be ready to work with “anyone who will understand that from now on, you have to be more careful with Russia and you have to take into account its concerns.” 

Between now and the presidential election in March in Russia, domestic politics will be hotting up. After Putin’s re-election for a fresh 6-year term as president, which is widely expected, by the time the new government is formed, the campaign for the US election will have accelerated and it is a safe bet that the Ukraine war will be on auto-pilot with the priority almost entirely lying on averting any serious embarrassment to Biden’s reelection bid. 

Suffice to say, staving off a military defeat in Ukraine and keeping the stalemate on track will be the Biden administration’s singular aim through 2024. The big question is whether Putin would “cooperate” or have some surprises in store. Peskov has begun looking beyond the Biden presidency.

December 17, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden’s World War III Fantasy

By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 16.12.2023

On July 13, 2023, US President Joe Biden confidently announced to the world that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has already lost the war.”

The “war” Biden spoke of was Russia’s Special Military Operation against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022.

Biden’s bold statement was made during a press conference with Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto, following a meeting with Nordic leaders that came on the heels of the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Biden declared that the US and its NATO allies had, through their decision to commit to the military victory of Ukraine over Russia, reached “an inflection point in history,” adding that “This fight is not only a fight for the future of Ukraine, it is about sovereignty, security and freedom itself.”

The American president’s pronouncements followed similarly themed rhetoric spoken in Vilnius a day prior, where he announced to his NATO colleagues, “Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken,” adding that “We will stand for liberty and freedom today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.”

“As long as it takes,” it turns out, isn’t the same as “long as needed.”

Confronted with a trifecta of bad news—the calamitous defeat of the NATO-trained and equipped Ukrainian military in the much-hyped summer counteroffensive, a Russian Army that is growing stronger by the day, and the collapse of political will and fiscal ability on the part of Ukraine’s erstwhile allies in the US and Europe to continue funding Ukraine’s flagging war effort—Joe Biden was compelled to alter his pledge to the cause of Ukrainian and European liberty and freedom to “as long as we can,” with the modifier contingent upon the US Congress’ willingness to throw another $60 billion into the $120 billion in aid the US has provided Ukraine since May 2022.

To intimidate Congress into yielding to his demands regarding money for Ukraine, Biden undertook a campaign of terror. “Frankly,” Biden said in a statement delivered at the White House in early December, “I think it’s stunning we have gotten to this point in the first place. Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership.”

While many Republicans support continued funding of the Ukraine war effort, the issue has become politicized in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, where domestic issues tend to trump foreign affairs. And, currently, there is no more high-profile domestic policy issue than border security and immigration reform. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who has been a vociferous supporter of Ukraine, noted that while he would support continued funding of Ukraine’s war effort, he could not return to his home state of South Carolina to “try to explain why I helped Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel and did nothing to secure our own border. I will help all of our allies, but we have got to help ourselves first.”

Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the House and a hardline conservative, indicated that the objection to continued funding for Ukraine went beyond simply funding issues. “What is the objective?” Johnson said to reporters after meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky earlier this month. “What is the endgame in Ukraine? How are we going to have proper oversight of the funds?”

Russian servicemen fire a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher towards Ukrainian positions in the course of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, at the unknown location in the

Both Graham and Johnson had been subjected to a full-court press by Joe Biden and the White House in an effort for the recalcitrant Republicans to reverse course on their objections. “We can’t let Putin win,” Biden pleaded. “If Putin takes Ukraine,” Biden noted, “he won’t stop there.” The US president said an emboldened Putin would move on to threaten his NATO neighbors. And then, Biden stated, “We’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops.”

If the threat of a Third World War in the face of Congressional inaction wasn’t enough, Biden authorized the Pentagon to declassify and release to CNN an intelligence report that claimed that Russia had suffered enormous casualties in its war with Ukraine, with some 315,000 of an estimated 360,000 troops that made up Russia’s pre-conflict ground force, having been killed or wounded. The declassified intelligence report also claimed that 2,200 of Russia’s 3,500 tanks have been lost, along with 4,400 of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.

The release of the declassified report was clearly timed to influence the US Congress by emphasizing the very talking points that have been repeatedly made by Senator Graham and others that the US aid was “Best money we’ve ever spent” because “the Russians are dying.”

Given the history of the US intelligence community of declassifying intelligence reports for the specific purpose of releasing the information to mainstream media outlets to shape public opinion—even if the intelligence community knows the information contained in the report is wrong—one must take the report regarding Russian casualties with a heavy grain of salt. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia currently has some 617,000 troops deployed in the Special Military Operation zone. These forces are on the offensive, actively advancing on several fronts against a Ukrainian Army which is rapidly losing its ability to sustain large-scale ground combat operations. This doesn’t sound like the performance of an organization that suffered some 87% casualties, a figure which would make the survivors combat ineffective.

The fact is, US and European support for Ukraine is flagging, and Ukraine is facing an existential crisis in the coming weeks and months that it most likely will not be able to resolve in its favor.

While Russian troops are taking casualties, it is far more likely than not that the real Russian casualty figures are significantly less than the number reported in the declassified US intelligence report, spread out over the original force and the hundreds of thousands of mobilized reservists and volunteers who have entered the fighting since. These losses pale in comparison to the more than 400,000 dead and nearly one million wounded Ukraine has suffered.

Russia’s combat power grows every day, with fresh troops and equipment being made available for the war effort. Ukraine, on the other hand, has exhausted its reserves, and is left scraping the bottom of its human resources barrel to man whatever units it is able to organize from what is left of Ukraine’s diminished, and diminishing, arsenal.

While the Russian Army is indeed large, and growing, and its capabilities expanding as it becomes more combat experienced, it is an army with a very specific mission—the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Russian force structure is currently more than sufficient to defeat the Ukrainians on a frontage that stretches some 2,000 kilometers in length. It is even large enough to secure some additional Ukrainian territory, in addition to liberating the newly absorbed Russian territories of the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk regions still held by Ukraine. But there are physical limitations as to what one can accomplish with 617,000 troops and occupying all of Ukraine before invading Poland and/or the Baltics is well beyond the capacity of the Russian forces currently deployed in the Special Military Operation.

Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin has never intimated that Russia had any intention to either occupy all of Ukraine or seek to attack NATO — just the opposite. The Russian goals and objectives of the Special Military Operation are spelled out very clearly — demilitarization (the destruction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces), de-Nazification (the elimination of the regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the pro-Nazi political element inside Ukraine), and permanent neutrality for Ukraine (i.e., Ukraine will never join NATO). There is no intent to take the war to NATO. Such thinking is a fear-based construct of the Biden administration that is inaccurate and far removed from reality, little more than a fantasy which the sober-minded Russian government, ever mindful of the need to carefully manage escalation because of the Special Military Operation, will pay scant attention to.

Joe Biden and his national security team are scrambling to manage the consequences of policy failure. Putin, it seems, has not lost the war with Ukraine. Russia is winning, something no amount of funding by either the US, the Europeans, or both, can reverse. The best thing that could happen to Ukraine is for the congressional Republicans to hold steadfast to their objections and allow Ukraine to be taken off the life support that US funding provides. Ukraine is a terminal case. Continuing to underwrite its failed war effort simply prolongs the agony of its people.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky’s Global Begging Tour Is an Obscene Fiasco

Strategic Culture Foundation | December 15, 2023

The United States’ proxy war in Ukraine against Russia has cost the lives of up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers. In the last six months alone, it is estimated that over 120,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in a failed counteroffensive.

Even Western media are coyly admitting the grim reality of failure after much-vaunted predictions last year of imminent victory against Russia.

Yet nearly two years after the conflict erupted, the leader of the puppet regime in Kiev persists in begging for billions more in funds from his Western sponsors to continue the bloodbath – the biggest armed confrontation in Europe since the Second World War.

The hostilities can be traced back to the 2014 coup in Kiev orchestrated by the CIA and precipitated by the European Union and Washington trying to cleave traditional Ukrainian relations with Russia. Those hostilities culminated in February 2022 in what can be seen as a U.S.-led proxy war against Russia. A war that has failed for the Western powers and needs to be peacefully negotiated to spare further death and destruction.

This week, however, saw Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky going to Washington to plead for $60 billion in additional funds. His begging mission failed. The U.S. Congress refused to pass the supplemental bill requested on his behalf by President Joe Biden for Ukraine.

After that humiliation, Zelensky then turned his solicitation to the European Union. The EU, by turn, failed to agree on a requested fund for $54 billion for Ukraine.

As a sort of consolation prize, the EU leaders at their two-day summit in Brussels declared that Ukraine could start negotiations for eventually gaining access to the 27-member bloc. That decision was bombastically hailed as “historic” but it seemed more theatre than substance given that the negotiations will take several years to conduct and there is no guarantee at the end of the tedious process that Ukraine will actually gain EU membership. Will Ukraine even exist as a state in a few years, as our columnist Stephen Karganovic ponders in an article this week?

The EU membership talks were granted no doubt as a way to distract from the fact that the EU funds were not forthcoming and especially following the miserable response from U.S. lawmakers.

The whole sorry saga indicates that the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine has become a deplorable black hole for Western public money. Given the military debacle and the futile bloodshed, it is becoming politically untenable for Washington and Brussels to keep shovelling billions of taxpayer money into this abyss.

Up for the asking this week was a total of nearly $100 billion between the U.S. and Europe for Ukraine. How many badly needed public services in Western states could do with – and are denied – that kind of financial sustenance?

The spectacle of Zelensky touring the world scrounging for more money is as shameful as it is sordid.

Official figures show that the Western governments have already donated a combined total of $200 billion to Ukraine since the conflict escalated in February 2022.

To put that largesse into perspective, it is estimated that the U.S. Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of the whole of Europe following World War Two was equivalent to $173 billion in today’s money.

Think about that. The Western funding to Ukraine already exceeds this historic salvage package by some $30 billion. And yet Western governments are trying to muster another $100 billion on top of that.

There are several conclusions to be made. First of all, the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia is indisputably a calamitous failure. Despite the unprecedented financing of weapons and other support to the Kiev regime, the war is a dead-end for the Western powers. The 30-member NATO military alliance is staring at a defeat unparalleled in its 75-year history.

Secondly, it is patent that the Kiev regime is only being propped up by the transfer of colossal flows of aid from the West. Without those transfusions of weapons and capital, the regime is finished. It has already lost grievous numbers of troops on the battlefield. Conscription drives are scraping the barrel. Without the lifeline of aid, the regime is finished. The Kiel Institute for World Economy reported last week that Western capital pledges to the Kiev regime have fallen off a cliff since the summer.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week in his annual marathon televised Q&A with the public and journalists that Russia will push on with its objectives of eradicating the NATO-backed Nazi forces in Ukraine. There seems little doubt that the objective will be achieved given the parlous state of the Kiev regime.

Another conclusion to draw is the scale of corruption that Ukraine is mired in. For all the funds pumped into this regime so much of it has been siphoned off from the stated purposes.

The obscenity of this war racket is the inordinate corruption, deaths and destruction of economies across Europe while Western weapons corporations have raked in mega-profits.

Zelensky’s global begging tour is a desperate attempt to keep the war racket going for a while longer. He and his wife Olena have enriched themselves with overseas properties and shopping trips to Paris and New York. Zelensky and his cronies have been paid off with blood money for their role in peddling the biggest war scam in modern history. A scam that is funded by hard-pressed and hoodwinked Western taxpayers who have been gaslighted by their politicians and media about “defending democracy and freedom”.

To keep this grotesque charade going, Western politicians in the pay of arms companies and NATO think tanks are resorting to desperate scaremongering and blackmail.

President Biden has repeatedly warned that if extra funds were not released to Ukraine to “defend against Russian aggression” the rest of Europe will be overrun by Moscow.

In Washington this week, U.S. lawmakers who refused to pass the supplemental funding bill for Ukraine were, in effect, accused of being traitors by helping Russia.

Zelensky appealed to European leaders by saying that Putin would exploit any negativity towards Ukraine, and he pleaded with the EU to not “betray” Ukrainians.

On the eve of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, the European Commission declared that it was finally releasing €10 billion in withheld funds to Hungary. That was a bribe to Hungarian premier Viktor Orban to concede to the proposed €50 billion in extra aid for the Kiev regime. In the end, Orban did not concede to the multi-billion-euro handout, however, he gave way to his objection to talks for Ukraine’s membership of the EU. Such is the shoddy business of propping up the Kiev regime that arm-twisting and bribery are the order of business in Brussels.

The horrendous waste of lives and financial resources in Ukraine by the Western elite – instead of pursuing diplomacy and peace – is the hallmark that these regimes are terminally corrupt and doomed to failure.

The conflict in Ukraine has recklessly stoked tensions between nuclear powers and has condemned generations of Americans and Europeans to debt. The war in Ukraine is a historic dead-end for the U.S. and its European vassals. Zelensky’s begging bowl is a death rattle.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

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