American Meddling Failed To Prevent Robert Fico’s Victory In The Latest Slovak Elections
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | OCTOBER 1, 2023
The “Direction-Social Democracy” (SMER) party of former Prime Minister Robert Fico emerged victorious after Slovakia’s latest elections on Saturday in spite of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warning before the vote that the US will go to any lengths to prevent that outcome. Nobody should have been surprised by that since CNN’s reporting made it obvious that Washington wanted him to lose. Here are three of their articles fearmongering about his democratically driven return to office:
* “A NATO country could soon have a pro-Russian leader”
* “With Kremlin apologist leading the polls, Slovakia vote threatens country’s support for Ukraine”
* “Pro-Russian politician wins Slovakia’s parliamentary election”
The reason why America meddled in this election is because it fears both the substance and symbolism of a hitherto stalwart NATO vassal defecting from the bloc’s anti-Russian proxy war coalition. Fico previously condemned the West’s role in provoking and perpetuating this conflict exactly as neighboring Hungarian leader Viktor Orban has done since the get-go. Just like him, Fico is also against arming Ukraine and could prevent others’ weapons from transiting across his country as well.
He’ll still need to form a governing coalition in order to make good on his promises, but few doubt that he’ll be able to. Assuming that’ll happen, then Slovakia will join Hungary in creating a center of anti-war gravity in the heart of both the EU and NATO, which complements Poland’s newly cautious stance towards this proxy conflict brought about by its dispute with Ukraine. These three could then form an influential force if the latter’s ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party wins re-election on 15 October.
Poland remains much more committed to this conflict than Hungary and post-election Slovakia, but there’s also no denying that the Polish people are incredibly offended at Ukraine’s ungratefulness. A critical mass of them might therefore vote for the anti-establishment Confederation party to protest PiS’ prior appeasement of Kiev up until recently despite that regime’s glorification of those who genocided Poles. If enough do so, then PiS might be compelled to form a coalition government with Confederation.
In that case, Poland might move closer towards Hungary and Slovakia’s position, which could inspire average Europeans to follow these countries’ lead during their own upcoming elections. The demonstration effect that was set into motion by Slovakia and which might soon manifest itself in Poland is therefore regarded by the US as a strategic challenge for good reason. That doesn’t justify its failed meddling in the latest Slovak elections, but simply places its motives into the appropriate context.
The fact that the CIA still failed to prevent Fico’s re-election dispels three popular myths, first and foremost that agency’s omnipotence. The second is foreign voters’ alleged inability to defy the American government’s will, the false perception of which has been exploited to suppress anti-establishment turnout. And finally, the Ukrainian Conflict is truly unpopular in some countries despite the media’s claims to the contrary and its crazed efforts to artificially manufacture support for this proxy war there.
With these symbolic outcomes in mind as well as the substantive changes to Slovak policy that are likely to follow its latest election, not to mention their possible impact on Poland in the coming future and the rest of Europe after that, the failure of America’s meddling campaign is a major development. It’s premature to describe it as a game-changer, but it still suggests a potentially impending inflection point in the Ukrainian Conflict, provided of course that the CIA doesn’t successfully sabotage related trends.
US bent on creating insecurity for Afghanistan’s neighbors: Iran envoy
Press TV – October 1, 2023
Iran’s ambassador to Afghanistan says the United States’ main policy on Afghanistan is to create insecurity for the country’s neighbors.
Hassan Kazemi Qomi said on Sunday that the US is continuing to make troubles in Afghanistan two years after it was forced to withdraw its troops after the Taliban group took control of the country.
“(The US) is after creating anxiety and disturbance for countries in the region, including for Afghanistan’s neighbors,” Qomi was quoted as saying in an interview with the IRIB News.
The ambassador made the remarks in Kazan, in southwest Russia, where he attended a fifth regional consultation meeting on Afghanistan known as the Moscow Format.
He said the 13 countries attending the meeting were almost unanimous in their position that the security and economic challenges in Afghanistan are mainly the result of 20 years of occupation by the US and allied countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
He accused the US of providing indirect support to the so-called Daesh of Khorasan, which is the regional offshoot of the ISIS terrorist group, to create insecurity in Central Asia and to pave the way for setting up a military base in the region with the pretext of fighting terrorism.
“Neighboring countries (of Afghanistan) reached the conclusion that they should change the conditions in Afghanistan through a collective move and a regional initiative and with cooperation with the rulers in Kabul,” said Kazemi Qomi.
The long-serving Iranian diplomat said countries attending the Moscow Format meeting in Kazan also decided to form a regional contact group to coordinate their actions and policies on Afghanistan.
“With the formation of the contact group we can put into operation (the outcomes of) talks on Kabul and the economic and security cooperation around the borders and inside the Afghan territory,” he said.
The Anglo-American War on Russia – Part Ten (NATO Lies at Minsk)
Tales of the American Empire | September 28, 2023
The United States CIA organized a coup to overthrow the neutral government of Ukraine and installed a Russian hating regime in 2014 that wanted to drive millions of ethnic Russians out of Ukraine. This led to a rebellion in eastern Ukraine where the Russian majority took up arms to protect themselves. This led to a small civil war that was quickly settled with a peace agreement. These 2015 Minsk agreements were brokered by France and Germany, agreed to by Ukraine and Russia, and accepted by the United States. Ukraine would retain official ownership of this rebellious region called the Donbas that would be granted full autonomy for internal rule. The Minsk agreements were endorsed unanimously with United Nation’s Security Council Resolution 2202, see the link in the description.
Ukraine never complied by withdrawing its heavy weapons from the Donbas region and continued random artillery and tank fire into Donbas cities. The Donbas rebel’s ability to retaliate was limited because the Ukrainians fired from urban areas mostly inhabited by ethnic Russians. Russian President Vladimir Putin appealed to the United Nations, United States, France, and Germany to apply economic and diplomatic pressure on Ukraine to abide by Minsk. They promised to help and the occasional terror bombardments into Donbas cities lessened, but never stopped as they killed thousands of civilians, mostly ethnic Russians.
NATO refused to pressure Ukraine to adhere to the Minsk agreements and continued massive economic and military assistance. Ukraine possessed only 6000 combat-ready soldiers in April 2014 but NATO help allowed it to build its military into the second largest in Europe comprising about 250,000 active-duty troops and 80,000 reservists who were trained at the billion dollar American built base at Yavoriv where hundreds of American soldiers were based. Ukraine soon had more tanks than France, the United Kingdom, and Germany combined.
President Putin began to understand that NATO had no interest in peace. He correctly concluded that the United States planned for war on Russia. We now know this for certain because in 2022, Minsk agreement signers, former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and former French President François Hollande, admitted that the Minsk agreements were a deception to trick Russia into a ceasefire with the promise of a peaceful settlement to buy Ukraine and NATO time to build up its military to attack Russia.
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“Unanimously Adopting Resolution 2202 (2015); Security Council Calls on Parties to Implement Accords Aimed at Peaceful Settlement in Eastern Ukraine”; United Nations; February 17, 2015; https://press.un.org/en/2015/sc11785….
“Children Living in Bombshelters Entire Lives”; Patrick Lancaster; YouTube; March 10, 2022; 
• Children Living In Bombshelters Entir…
“Ukrainian/NATO Training Centre”; NATO; October 20, 2003; https://www.nato.int/structur/nmlo/li…
Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”; • The Anglo-American War on Russia
RT surges after X (aka Twitter) removes censorship – ‘disinformation’ lobbyist
RT | September 27, 2023
NewsGuard, a self-proclaimed disinformation watchdog, has lamented the rise in popularity of RT and 11 other news outlets after Elon Musk relaxed censorship on X (formerly Twitter).
Among 12 media accounts analyzed, RT experienced the highest engagement growth in the 90 days following Musk’s decision in April to remove ‘government-funded’ and ‘state-affiliated’ labels from certain outlets, NewsGuard said on Tuesday. The number of ‘likes’ and reposts for RT’s account increased to 2.5 million in the period studied, up from 1.3 million.
The analysis focused on Chinese, Iranian, and Russian media outlets, which NewsGuard branded “state-run disinformation sources” and purveyors of “propaganda.”
NewsGuard cited political memes posted by Iranian news accounts as purported examples of disinformation. Another instance was supposedly a link shared by Iran’s PressTV to an article on remarks made by US presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who argued that Americans “created” the Islamic State terrorist group. Kennedy made the claim during an election rally in Boston, where he accused Washington of decades of misguided foreign policy.
The self-described disinformation watchdog advocates imposing strict moderation on online platforms to protect users from supposed foreign influence. NewsGuard’s rating of news outlets generally labels mainstream Western media as trustworthy, while outlets linked with governments opposed by the US are branded deceitful.
Among NewsGuard’s advisers is Michael Hayden, a former head of the CIA and the NSA. He was notably one of the more than 50 former intelligence officials who claimed in 2020 that the factual New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Others include former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former US Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, and former US Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel. The latter stated publicly that his job in the Obama administration was jokingly described as “chief propagandist” by others.
The Pentagon and Microsoft have contracted NewsGuard services.
The report heavily implied that the lack of X labels for the likes of RT was to blame for the rise in engagements, as it is now “impossible for users to know whether an account is government-affiliated” simply by looking at posts.
NewsGuard claimed that the 12 accounts in question are attempting to conceal their associations, such as when RT rebranded from its previous name Russia Today. The report described the move as taking place “several years ago,” although the rebranding was implemented in 2009.
Musk, who formally stepped down as CEO of X (then Twitter) in June, ordered the ‘government-funded’ and ‘state-affiliated’ labels to be removed amid a row with America’s NPR, which exited the platform after being branded. Around the same time, X ended its ‘shadow-ban’ on RT and others, lifting a restriction imposed under the previous executive leadership.
The subsequent publication of the ‘Twitter Files’ has detailed extensive US government oversight and pressure on the social media company to amplify Pentagon talking points over dissenting voices.
NewsGuard conceded that Musk’s move to end restrictions on X, which it described as “pushing” undesirable accounts, may have benefited them.
In August, NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence blamed Musk for a “dramatic rise” in the visibility of Russian government and media accounts.
Hungary issues ultimatum to Ukraine
RT | September 25, 2023
Hungary will not support Ukraine “on any issue” until Kiev restores the rights of ethnic Hungarians on its territory, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in parliament on Monday. Budapest’s backing is vital to Ukraine’s bid to join the EU.
“We will not support Ukraine on any issue in international life until it restores the laws that guaranteed the rights of Transcarpathian Hungarians,” Orban said, adding that “for years [the Ukrainians] have been tormenting” Hungarian schools.
Since 2017, successive laws mandating the use of the Ukrainian language have resulted in the closure of around 100 Hungarian schools in Ukraine. These laws have been harshly criticized by the Council of Europe and by human rights organizations.
According to Orban, the situation has deteriorated with the beginning of a new school year, with management at a school in the city of Munkacs forbidding the singing of the Hungarian national anthem or the wearing of Hungarian national colors on the first day back in the classroom.
Around 156,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Ukraine, most of them in the region of Transcarpathia. Once a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this region fell under Soviet control after World War II. It remained in Kiev’s hands when the Ukrainian SSR became modern Ukraine after the fall of the USSR. Ukraine is also home to around 150,000 ethnic Romanians and more than 250,000 Moldovans, and Bucharest has joined Budapest in demanding that the language laws be revised.
Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto warned in March that Budapest would not support Kiev’s applications to join the EU and NATO until these issues are resolved.
Hungary does not provide any military aid to Ukraine or allow weapons to enter the country via its territory. However, Hungary will have veto power over whether Ukraine can join the EU and NATO due to both bodies requiring the unanimous consent of existing members before admitting new states. The dispute over language rights is just one of several points of contention between Budapest and Kiev.
Orban’s government has also condemned the Ukrainian military’s efforts to conscript ethnic Hungarians into military service and blocked EU military aid to Ukraine over Kiev’s sanctioning of one of its banks due to its lending activities in Russia. More recently, Hungary has blocked the import of Ukrainian grain to protect its farmers from being undercut, prompting Ukraine to threaten a lawsuit at the World Trade Organization.
How could Russia respond when Kiev gets ATACMS missiles and armed drones?
By Drago Bosnic | September 25, 2023
It’s virtually guaranteed that the Kiev regime will get the MGM-140 ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System), a US-made tactical/theater ballistic missile system with a maximum engagement range of approximately 300 km and a supersonic speed of up to Mach 3. While its capabilities are far from Russian counterparts, such as the now legendary “Iskander” with a hypersonic speed (up to Mach 8, with maneuvering capabilities for its missiles) and a range of approximately 500 km, this is still enough to jeopardize Russian supply lines, as well as civilian settlements deeper within Moscow’s territory. The ATACMS can also be fired from two platforms, namely the tracked M270 MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) and the wheeled M142 HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), both of which have been delivered to the Neo-Nazi junta forces well over a year ago.
When paired with adequate ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets, which NATO fields extensively, particularly in the vicinity of Russian borders, the ATACMS can be quite a challenge. Its battlefield performance can be significantly amplified through the effective usage of real-time ISR data that essentially acts as a major force multiplier. This is where the legal “grey areas” of warfare get even more complicated. Namely, Moscow is doing its best to keep the scope of the SMO localized, but NATO continues to escalate, as evidenced by the resurgent presence of its ISR platforms around Russia’s borders, particularly in the Black Sea. The Russian military already shot down some of NATO’s ISR platforms, resulting in several months of pause in flights close to the SMO zone. However, the belligerent alliance recently restarted this highly destabilizing practice.
Moscow is perfectly aware that the political West controls the Kiev regime’s targeting, even issuing orders which Russian assets are to be attacked. The sole reason why Russia hasn’t responded by shooting down all NATO ISR platforms in the relative vicinity of its forces is that it wants to avoid escalating the conflict. However, the US-led political West sees this as a weakness and an opportunity to hurt Russia, because the way the Ukrainian conflict is being conducted is highly beneficial to NATO. Namely, the way that the political West is engaged in hostilities in Ukraine would simply be impossible in a shooting war with Moscow. The reason is quite simple. One of the very first targets for Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) would be NATO’s ISR platforms. Precisely these are responsible for the vast majority of data being relayed to the Kiev regime.
As Ukraine borders four NATO members, this gives the belligerent alliance a unique opportunity to use their airspace for ISR flights. And while the political West argues that these are “perfectly legal” and that the aircraft “just passively collect information”, the impact of their activities is anything but “passive”. NATO ISR platforms are directly responsible not only for the deaths and injuries of Russian servicemen, but also civilians. The United States Air Force (USAF) and the British Royal Air Force (RAF) are the most active NATO members in this regard, particularly with their Boeing RC-135V/W SIGINT (signals intelligence) aircraft that regularly fly over the Black Sea. These are among the belligerent alliance’s most commonly used strategic ISR assets and play a crucial role in spying on Russian forces, covering the collection of ELINT (electronic intelligence) and COMINT (communications intelligence).
These are used to find gaps in Russian defenses (particularly radar coverage) which are then reported to the Neo-Nazi junta forces that can exploit them to launch attacks on valuable assets, as evidenced by recent air strikes with NATO-sourced cruise missiles. This makes ISR aircraft far deadlier than satellites that simply cannot loiter in an area to provide a constant supply of real-time data. NATO SIGINT aircraft also complicate Russian communications significantly, as military units are forced to maintain radio silence or use encryption, which slows down battlefield coordination, thus degrading their effectiveness. More precisely, Moscow’s military planners simply have to pay close attention to what sort of information will end up in the hands of NATO, as this could help in the creation of better countermeasures against Russian forces.
The sheer magnitude of ISR data collected by SIGINT aircraft has helped the Kiev regime forces to a certain extent, but not nearly enough to create conditions for defeating Russian troops. Still, it’s often enough to bring the much-needed PR “victories” that are a crucial part of the overall propaganda war. However, with the delivery of the ATACMS, things can become a lot more complicated, forcing the Russian military to expand the scope of the SMO. Namely, since it’s a land-based missile system, the ATACMS is logistically far less strenuous than the Franco-British “Storm Shadow/SCALP EG” or the German-Swedish “Taurus”, both of which are air-launched and are limited by the number of carrier aircraft (in the case of Neo-Nazi junta, that would be the Soviet-era Su-24), as well as the logistics for the said aircraft. To say nothing of the possibility these could get shot down.
On the other hand, the launch of a single ATACMS is not only more difficult to detect on time, but the weapon is also several times faster than air-launched cruise missiles, meaning that Russian air and missile defenses have significantly less time to respond. This changes the calculus for Moscow, as its major assets could be targeted, causing significant losses that will not be easy to replace, while it may prove difficult to detect and destroy the ATACMS launchers. Once again, it would be impossible for NATO to wage a direct war against Russia in this way, as the VKS would simply send its fighter jets, such as the superfast, high-flying MiG-31BM interceptor or the state-of-the-art Su-35S, both of which carry unrivaled long-range air-to-air missiles (AAM), such as the 400-km-range R-37M, known for its ability to maneuver at hypersonic speed (Mach 6).
Such AAMs would be used to easily destroy any ISR aircraft and other supporting assets hundreds of kilometers around Russian borders. Having the Neo-Nazi junta do all the heavy lifting and dying for “a NATO mission” while the belligerent alliance collects battlefield data is perfect for the political West, but only as long as they can maintain plausible deniability of involvement. However, as Moscow is losing patience for this sort of insolence, the conflict that is still largely limited to Ukraine could inevitably escalate, as Russia can decide to legally redefine what constitutes direct involvement. For the time being, the Russian military might decide to shoot down unmanned SIGINT assets, such as the RQ-4B “Global Hawk”. This was already done once, when a Russian Su-27SM3 masterfully downed a USAF MQ-9 “Reaper” back in March.
What’s more, the political West is close to approving deliveries of such drones as well, specifically the MQ-9 and the medium-range MQ-1C “Grey Eagle”. However, these were designed to fight low-tech enemies, meaning they’re completely useless against opponents like Russia, which shot down over 100 “Bayraktars” by April. And while some ISR drones, such as the RQ-4B are extremely expensive and strategically important, the “Global Hawk” is still just a machine, unlike the RC-135, which is manned by up to 30 crewmen. Still, if the political West decides to continue escalating even in that case, then Moscow will be forced to shoot down all of NATO’s ISR assets, which could potentially lead to a world-ending thermonuclear confrontation. If the belligerent power pole thinks it’s worth risking the fate of the world over this, then so be it, as Moscow has had enough.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Latest news on the war: these past two days we have advanced considerably to a full-blown Russia-NATO war
By Gilbert Doctorow | September 23, 2023
This past week most Western media discussion of the Russia-Ukraine war has focused on developments in New York, where Zelensky and Biden gave their propaganda speeches about Russian imperialism threatening the world order, and then in Washington, where Zelensky met with Congressional leaders and with the President in his pursuit of further deliveries of arms. The focus was on air defense systems, on F-16 fighter jets and on the ATACMS ground to ground missiles.
This past week Western media broke ranks on the prospects for a Ukrainian victory. It appeared that there is growing consensus that the Ukrainian counter-offensive had failed and there was more talk of Ukraine-fatigue in American political circles. Speculation now turned both in major media and in dissident media on how the United States will respond to a looming defeat in Ukraine. Many decided that Washington would just move on after ‘throwing Ukraine under the bus’ and raise the war cries against China so as to avoid getting bogged down in recriminations over ‘who lost Ukraine.’
However, that was two days ago. Today Washington’s Plan B is becoming clearer. And what I see does not look good for world peace and for our chances of surviving this conflict.
Plan B took the form of the Storm Shadow strike a couple of days ago directly on the General Staff building of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. You have not seen or heard much about this in Western media and the Russians were dead silent until today. And even today what little information we have comes from the civilian administration in Sevastopol, not from the Russian Ministry of Defense, a fact which by itself raises the intrigue.
The Russian news tickers, by which I mean Dzen (formerly Yandex news) and mail.ru, tell us that one staff member of the general staff is unaccounted for. We are told by the Governor of Sevastopol that another strike may be expected and people were warned not to visit the downtown area. As for the building itself, the attack touched off a fire which took several hours to bring under control. There were reports that debris was scattered up to several hundred meters away. There was talk of back-up equipment being prepared to carry on the functions that were performed in the staff building. Finally, the attacking missile has been identified as a British-made Storm Shadow air-to-ground cruise missile. There may have been a cluster of these missiles incoming, because Russian air defense is said to have shot down five.
Judging by past experience when the Ukrainians have committed some sensational act, such as their bombing of the Crimean bridge or the destruction of the Kakhovka dam or their incursion across the border to the Belgorod region of Russia, there was some menacing response from the Russian Defense Ministry. Now there is silence. Why? Russian state television news yesterday and today has carried on as if there is nothing more important than the price of diesel fuel and whether the new ban on export will dampen the price and improve availability across the country.
The next troublesome straw in the wind is the reversal of the Biden administration on the question of sending the ATACMS to Kiev. The optimal moment to announce such a decision would have been during Zelensky’s day on Capitol Hill and meetings in the Oval Office. Instead Jake Sullivan told reporters that no decision had been taken as yet by the President.
I believe there is a clear connection between the successful Storm Shadow attack on the general staff building in Sevastopol and the decision to ship ATACMS to Ukraine now. I also note that the decision to supply the American missiles will surely be followed in a few days by the German decision to ship its long-range TAURUS missiles. Both decisions have till now been held back on grounds that they would lead to a Russian escalation of the war. Now it would appear that, facing imminent defeat, the Biden administration is throwing caution to the wind and is ready to risk outbreak of a direct, not proxy Russia-NATO war.
As a further straw in the wind, I point to another deeply troublesome bit of information that you will not find in The New York Times. The Russian news ticker today carries a report from a Russian commander in the field in Ukraine that his unit just destroyed a Leopard tank and found that the entire crew was Germans. Two of them were killed and one injured tank officer was taken prisoner. Those manning a Leopard surely were not soldiers of fortune but genuine Bundeswehr boys. Put in other words, NATO is now directly on the battlefield and not as advisers or instructors. We are headed into very dangerous territory.
Poscript:
One reader has sent in a valuable further bit of information that is not in mainstream reporting:
This, coming from Turkish sources, says that the Russians retaliated to the Sevastopol destruction by staging their own cruise missile attack on the Kremenchug Airport, the launch site used by the Ukrainians. “Both SCALP and Storm Shadow missiles, which were stationed at the airbase, along with the SU24M/MR bombers responsible for today’s attack, have been detroyed. A substantial number of firefighters and ambulances have been dispatched to the airfield. There are significant casualties among pilots, ground personnel and even NATO personnel, including Poles, who were involved in coordinating the operatoins and maintaining the missiles.”
This all suggests an additional reason for Biden to consent to shipment of the ATACMS missiles to Ukraine now: unlike the Storm Shadow, they are launched from the ground on mobile launchers similar to HIMARS. Therefore the loss of airfields and bombers and pilots does not constrain their use and holds the promise of more destuction of Russian assets in Crimea. I would also wager that US forces will be sent not just to maintain but to target and launch the ATACMS.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
NATO membership for Ukraine not in US interests – DeSantis
RT | September 24, 2023
Ukraine joining NATO would be of no benefit to the US and would become yet another burden for Washington, Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has said.
In an episode of The Glenn Beck Program podcast on Saturday, he was asked whether he believed Ukraine should give a commitment never to join the US-led military bloc in order to make peace.
“I don’t think NATO membership is in our interest,” replied DeSantis, who is considered a top rival of former president Donald Trump in the GOP primaries.
“All that would do is add more obligations to us, so … if you’re adding more obligations, then what are the benefits that we’re getting in return? In that case, I don’t know what the benefits necessarily would be,” he added.
Ukraine applied to join NATO in September 2022 after four of its regions overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in referendums. While the bloc’s members have declared that Kiev will eventually become a member of NATO, they have not provided any timelines.
DeSantis also reiterated that he categorically opposes sending American troops to Ukraine, adding that Washington’s goal should be to end the conflict. He criticized the current “blank-check” policy of supporting Kiev with financial and military aid.
This position has been gaining traction within the ranks of the GOP in recent months, with some Republicans repeatedly raising accountability concerns. Earlier this week, a group of more than two dozen of the party’s senators and Congress members submitted a letter to the White House demanding answers.
“The American people deserve to know what their money has gone to. How is the counteroffensive going? Are the Ukrainians any closer to victory than they were six months ago? What is our strategy, and what is the president’s exit plan?” they asked the Biden administration.
The lawmakers indicated that, until those questions are answered, they will oppose additional spending in support of Ukraine. Their pushback came as Congress debates whether the US, which has already provided tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, should approve Biden’s latest request to send another $24 billion in assistance.
One Western Official Finally Comes Clean About NATO Expansion
By Ted Galen Carpenter | The Libertarian Institute | September 21, 2023
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg likely surprised both factions in the ongoing debate about NATO expansion and its role in triggering the Russia-Ukraine War. He also undermined (perhaps fatally) the official cover story about the reasons for the Ukraine war. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Western officials and their allies in the corporate media have insisted vehemently that the alliance’s addition of Eastern European nations after the Cold War and giving a pledge to Ukraine that it would become a member someday had nothing to do with Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack his neighbor. Indeed, anyone who argued otherwise risked being accused of echoing Russian propaganda and being “Putin’s puppet.”
Both the official explanation and the pervasive narrative regarding the war were unequivocal. Putin was power-hungry and unwilling to tolerate an independent, pro-Western Ukraine on Russia’s border. Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Steven Pifer’s interpretation was typical; “For the Kremlin, a democratic, Western-oriented, economically successful Ukraine poses a nightmare, because that Ukraine would cause Russians to question why they cannot have the same political voice and democratic rights that Ukrainians do.” Even when Pifer published his piece in July 2022, that explanation was extremely weak, given Ukraine’s own corruption and authoritarianism. Volodymyr Zelensky’s subsequent systematic assault on civil liberties makes the notion that Putin felt threatened by Ukraine as an irresistible democratic magnet patently absurd. Ukraine is not a democratic country by any reasonable definition of the term.
Nevertheless, other analysts made arguments similar to Pifer’s thesis. That Russian grievances over NATO helped spark the war “makes no sense,” wrote Rutgers professor Alexander Motyl. “NATO cannot have been the issue,” historian Timothy Snyder insists; Putin “simply wants to conquer Ukraine, and a reference to NATO was one form of rhetorical cover for his colonial venture.” Such comments matched the official positions that the U.S. and other NATO governments adopted. Interventionist opponent Caitlin Johnstone was accurate that “arguably the single most egregious display of war propaganda in the 21st century occurred last year, when the entire western political/media class began uniformly bleating the word ‘unprovoked’ in reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
In a September 6, 2023 speech to the European Union Parliament, Secretary General Stoltenberg contradicted the entrenched official narrative, most likely inadvertently. “President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade (sic) Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.”
Stoltenberg emphasized, “He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.” Consequently, “he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.” [Emphasis added]
Several scholars and former officials had warned for years that NATO’s expansion to Russia’s border would end badly, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine confirmed those predictions. George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of NATO’s first round of expansion would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”
NATO’s attempt to make Ukraine a full-fledged military asset was especially provocative. Kremlin leaders regarded Ukraine as not only being in Moscow’s rightful sphere of influence, but in Russia’s core security zone. Putin made that point clear on numerous occasions at least as far back as his speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Instead of taking those warnings seriously, Western leaders blew through one red light after another. NATO’s leader, the United States, especially worked to forge ever-closer military ties with Ukraine. In essence, the Trump and Biden administrations began to treat Ukraine as a NATO member in all but name.
Extensive arms shipments to Kiev along with U.S. and NATO joint military exercises constituted the centerpiece of that policy. But that was not the extent of Washington’s provocations. Shortly after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the CIA initiated secret paramilitary training programs for Ukrainian special operations personnel in the United States and in Ukraine. Massive arms shipments to Kiev along with joint U.S. and NATO military exercises with Ukrainian forces constituted the centerpiece of that policy. Yahoo national security correspondent Dan Dorfman noted that “U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence have even participated in joint offensive cyber operations against Russian government targets, according to former officials.”
Such actions make a mockery of the argument that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. That assertion is convenient propaganda, but it was always devoid of both facts and logic. Stoltenberg’s comments merely confirm what should have been obvious to both the foreign policy community and the news media from the beginning.
Lavrov’s claim that America is at war with Russia is no ‘exaggeration’
By Drago Bosnic | September 20, 2023
Since the start of Russia’s special military operation (SMO) against NATO’s crawling encroachment on its borders, the United States has been adamant that it’s “not a party to the conflict” and that it supposedly “doesn’t want escalation with Moscow“. However, time proved both of these statements to be patently false. According to the claims of the Neo-Nazi junta itself, the US controls the targeting of every long-range weapon deployed by the Kiev regime forces. On the other hand, the falsehood of the laughable claim that Washington DC “doesn’t want war” is painfully obvious to anyone remotely familiar with its neverending escalation aimed against Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is certainly aware of all this, although basic diplomatic etiquette prevented him from stating the obvious in the past. And yet, after well over a year and a half of being exposed to the blatant hypocrisy of the political West, it seems that even the usually reserved Lavrov has stopped holding back, as trying to follow diplomatic protocols when dealing with someone who openly breaks them is simply futile and ultimately self-defeating. Namely, in recent remarks for the press, the Russian Foreign Minister said that the US is waging war against Russia. Strong statement, one might say, but who could possibly refute it given the ongoing events?
Even if we don’t count statements made by top-level US officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin’s admission that Washington DC wants to see a “strategic defeat” inflicted on Russia and President Joe Biden’s Freudian slip that “Putin cannot stay in power“, the evidence that supports Lavrov’s claim is simply overwhelming and we’re seeing it every single day. He also pointed out the fact that the US is not only transferring enormous amounts of so-called “lethal aid” to the Neo-Nazi junta (worth hundreds of billions at this point), but is actually controlling these weapons through direct decision-making while maintaining plausible deniability.
Lavrov himself also reiterated Austin’s admission that this is because the belligerent thalassocracy wants to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. The statements about US belligerence were given while he was speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum on the morning of September 17, where he pointed out that “no matter what it says, it [the US] controls this war, it supplies weapons, munitions, intelligence information, data from satellites, it is pursuing a war against us”. Lavrov also stated that Ukraine is simply being used as a springboard to achieve American strategic goals, as it was being prepared for the ongoing conflict years in advance.
“There is a real plot around the topic of the so-called (peace) negotiations, as well as attempts to turn everything upside down through pseudo diplomacy,” he said just two days prior, adding: “The West has been saying for months that this ‘peace formula’ is the only basis for negotiations. It starts from innocent topics … and then comes to the purpose for which it was concocted – inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, to restore the borders of Ukraine as they were in 1991, court-martial the Russian leadership, force Russia to pay reparations, and then ‘mercifully’ agree to sign a peace agreement.”
Lavrov made the said comments on September 15, referring to the abortive Saudi-hosted “peace talks” and added that this pattern of double standards and hypocrisy is also used when dealing with most other countries.
“These are exactly the dirty methods that the West uses not only in relation to Ukraine but in many other areas of global politics,” he stated.
The recent direct endorsement US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave for the Kiev regime’s long-range strikes on targets within Russia is yet another proof of Lavrov’s claims. Namely, during an interview with ABC News on September 10, Blinken stated that it was supposedly “up to Ukraine” whether or not it should target Russia proper with US-made long-range weapons. The idea that the Kiev regime could ever make such a decision on its own is beyond laughable, which means that it’s the belligerent thalassocracy itself that ordered the Neo-Nazi junta to target areas deeper within Russia in order to inflict maximum damage with minimal investment or risk for itself.
Blinken’s statement came only a day after ABC News reported that the US would provide the ATACMS to the Kiev regime. The range of these missiles, while hardly groundbreaking, is enough to jeopardize not only Russian supply lines, but also civilian infrastructure hundreds of kilometers behind the frontlines. And yet, this isn’t the only danger Lavrov pointed out thus far, as back in early June, he warned that nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets could lead to an uncontrollable escalation that Russia will certainly not tolerate. He stressed that Moscow would be forced to respond militarily, meaning that NATO would also be held directly responsible in that case.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
‘Biden’s phase’ of Ukraine war is beginning
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | SEPTEMBER 17, 2023
The ground war in Ukraine has run its course, a new phase is beginning. Even diehard supporters of Ukraine in the western media and think tanks are admitting that a military victory over Russia is impossible and a vacation of the territory under Russian control is way beyond Kiev’s capability.
Hence the ingenuity of the Biden Administration to explore Plan B counselling Kiev to be realistic about loss of territory and pragmatically seek dialogue with Moscow. This was the bitter message that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken transmitted to Kiev recently in person.
But President Zelensky’s caustic reaction in a subsequent interview with the Economist magazine is revealing. He hit back that the western leaders still talk the good talk, pledging they will stand with Ukraine “as long as it takes” (Biden mantra), but he, Zelensky, has detected a change of mood among some of his partners: “I have this intuition, reading, hearing and seeing their eyes [when they say] ‘we’ll be always with you.’ But I see that he or she is not here, not with us.”
Zelensky knows that sustaining the western support will be difficult. Yet he hopes that if not Americans, the European Union will at least keep supplying aid, and but may open negotiations over the accession process for Ukraine possibly even at its summit in December. But he also held out a veiled terrorist threat to Europe — warning that it would not be a “good story” for Europe if it were to “drive these people [of Ukraine] into a corner”. So far such ominous threats were muted, originating from low ranking activists of the fascist Bandera fringe.
But Europe has its limits, too. The western stockpiles of weapons are exhausted and Ukraine is a bottomless pit. Importantly, conviction is lacking whether continued supplies would make any difference to the proxy war that is unwinnable. Besides, European economies are in doldrum,’ the recession in Germany may slide into depression, with profound consequences of “deindustrialisation.”
Suffice to say, Zelensky’s visit to the White House in the coming days becomes a defining moment. The Biden Administration is in a sombre mood that the proxy war is hindering a full-throttle Indo-Pacific strategy against China. Yet, during an appearance on ABC’s This Week, Blinken explicitly stated for the first time that the US would not oppose Ukraine using US-supplied longer-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory, a move that Moscow has previously called a “red line,” which would make Washington a direct party to the conflict.
The well-known American military historian, strategic thinker and combat veteran Colonel (Retd.) Douglas MacGregor (who served as advisor to the Pentagon during the Trump administration), is prescient when he says that a new “Biden’s phase of the war” is about to begin. That is to say, having run out of ground forces, the locus will now shift to long-range strike weapons like the Storm Shadow, Taurus, ATACMS long-range missiles, etc.
The US is considering sending ATACMS long-range missiles that Ukraine has been asking for a long time with the capability to strike deep inside Russian territory. The most provocative part is that NATO reconnaissance platforms, both manned and unmanned, will be used in such operations, making the US a virtual co-belligerent.
Russia has been exercising restraint in attacking the source of such enemy capabilities but how long such restraint will continue is anybody’s guess. In response to a pointed query about how Washington would see the attacks on Russian territory with American weaponry and technology, Blinken argued that the increasing number of attacks on Russian territory by Ukrainian drones are “about how they’re [Ukrainians] going to defend their territory and how they’re working to take back what’s been seized from them. Our [US] role, the role of dozens of other countries around the world that are supporting them, is to help them do that.”
Russia is not going to accept such a brazen escalation, especially as these advanced weapon systems used to attack Russia are actually manned by NATO personnel — contractors, trained ex-military hands or even serving officers. President Putin told the media on Friday that “we have detected foreign mercenaries and instructors both on the battlefield and in the units where training is carried out. I think yesterday or the day before yesterday someone was captured again.”
The US calculus is that at some point, Russia will be compelled to negotiate and a frozen conflict will ensue where the NATO allies would retain the option to continue with Ukraine’s military build-up and the process leading to its membership of the Atlantic alliance, and allow the Biden Administration to focus on the Indo-Pacific.
However, Russia will not settle for a “frozen conflict” that falls far short of the objectives of demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine that are the key objectives of its special military operation.
Faced with this new phase of the proxy war, what form the Russian retaliation will take remains to be seen. There could be multiple ways without Russia directly attacking NATO territories or using nuclear weapons (unless the US stages a nuclear attack — of which the chances are zero as of now.)
Already, it is possible to see the potential resumption of military-technical cooperation between Russia and the DPRK (potentially including ICBM technology) as a natural consequence of the aggressive US policy towards Russia and its support for Ukraine — as much as of the current international situation. The point is, today it is with DPRK; tomorrow it could be with Iran, Cuba or Venezuela — what Col. MacGregor calls “horizontal escalation” by Moscow. The situation in Ukraine has become interconnected with the problems of the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan.
Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said on state television on Wednesday that Russia has “no other options” but to achieve a victory in its special military operation and will continue to make progress with their key mission of mowing down the enemy’s equipment and personnel. This suggests that the attritional war will be further intensified while the overall strategy may shift to achieving total military victory.
The Ukrainian military is desperate for manpower. In the 15-week “counteroffensive” alone, over 71,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. There is talk of Kiev seeking repatriation of its nationals in military age from among the refugees in Europe. On the other hand, in expectation of a prolonged conflict, the mobilisation in Russia is continuing.
Putin disclosed on Friday that 300,000 people have volunteered and signed contracts to join the armed forces and new units are being formed, equipped with advanced types of weapons and equipment, “and some of them are already 85–90 percent equipped.”
The high likelihood is that once the Ukrainian “counteroffensive” peters out in another few weeks as a massive failure, Russian forces may launch a large-scale offensive. Conceivably, Russian forces may even cross Dnieper river and take control of Odessa and the coastline leading to the Romanian border, from where NATO has been mounting attacks on Crimea. Make no mistake, for the Anglo-American axis, encircling Russia in the Black Sea has always remained a top priority.
Watch the excellent interview (below) of Col. Douglas MacGregor by Professor Glenn Diesen at the University of North-Eastern in Norway:
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From the Archives
How Bill Gates Premeditated COVID Vaccine Injury Censorship
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | March 30, 2021
In 2000, everything about Bill Gates’ public persona changed. He morphed from a hardnosed and ruthless technology monopolizer into a soft, fuzzy and incredibly generous philanthropist when he and his wife launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.1
It was a public relations coup. May 18, 1998, the U.S. Justice Department, in collaboration with 20 state attorneys, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.2 At that time, the company was 23 years old and was ruling the personal computer market. The Seattle Times described the fallout from the antitrust lawsuit:3
“The company barely escaped being split up after it was ruled an unlawful monopolist in 2000 for using its stranglehold on the PC market with its Windows operating system to cripple competitors, such as Netscape’s Navigator Web browser.”
How would the world be different today if the company had been split? Yale law professor George Priest described the antitrust lawsuit as “one of the most important antitrust cases of its generation.”4 In 2002, a court settlement placed restrictions on Microsoft to curb some of its practices for five years.
It was later extended twice and then expired May 12, 2011. The lawsuit had a dramatic effect on “the emergence of an entirely new field called IP (intellectual property) antitrust,” Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp told the Seattle Times.5
Later, large sums donated from the foundation made the news multiple times, including $9.5 million to GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines), a second $7.5 million to GAVI and $6.8 million to the World Health Organization in 2017.6
By June 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic, the Gates Foundation’s donations totaled 45% of WHO’s funding from nongovernmental sources.7 Once mainstream media’s attention was no longer on Gates’ antitrust activities and focused on the philanthropist actions of the foundation, Gates publicly turned his attention to vaccinating the world, long before COVID-19.8
Event 201: A Preplanned Pandemic
In a deep dive into the Gates Foundation’s charitable donations, The Nation found there were $250 million in grants to companies where the foundation held corporate stocks, including Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Sanofi and Medtronic. The money was directed at supporting projects “like developing new drugs and health monitoring systems and creating mobile banking services.”9 … continue
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