Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Poland denies US media claims about Nord Stream

RT | June 22, 2023

A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on Poland’s alleged role in the Nord Stream gas pipelines blasts last September is “completely untrue,” the Polish National Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement to the country’s daily Rzeczpospolita on Thursday.

Citing German investigators, the US media outlet claimed in early June that the EU nation supposedly served as an operational base for the suspects that might be behind the Russian natural gas pipeline sabotage. A Polish source familiar with the investigation told the paper that Berlin allegedly knew very little about some of the suspects and might be following the wrong track entirely.

Warsaw has launched its own probe into last September’s incident, alongside Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, the prosecutor’s office told the Polish outlet. The data gathered by Polish officials contradicts the claims made by the WSJ, it added.

“The statement that ‘Poland was a logistics hub for the operation of blowing up Nord Stream’ is completely untrue and is not supported by the evidence of the investigation,” the prosecutor’s office said.

The WSJ reported that a yacht called the ‘Andromeda’ – which was chartered by a Ukrainian-owned, Warsaw-based travel agency and moored at a Polish port – had been sailing around each of the locations where the explosions later occurred.

The Polish prosecutor’s office said there was “no direct evidence” of the yacht’s or its crew’s involvement in the blasts. ‘Andromeda’ arrived in Poland from a small German port called Wiek with six people on board. It moored in one of the Polish ports for 12 hours before leaving the nation’s territorial waters, according to the prosecutors.

“The findings of the investigation show that, during the stay of the yacht in a Polish port, no items were loaded onboard, and the crew of the yacht was inspected by the Polish Border Guard,” the prosecutor’s office said. The vessel’s crew had Bulgarian passports, which appeared authentic, according to the officials. None of the crew members were banned from entering the Schengen area either, they added.

“There is no evidence that would indicate the participation of Polish citizens in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline,” the prosecutor’s office concluded.

A source familiar with the Polish probe also told Rzeczpospolita that German investigators had contacted Polish officials in mid-May and requested information under the European Investigation Order. The Germans asked many questions about ‘Andromeda’ and its crew, including “many trivial facts,” the source said, adding that they apparently had no knowledge of them. Berlin was also not willing to share its own findings on the issue, the source added.

Rzeczpospolita’s source also questioned the yacht’s role in the sabotage operation by claiming that it could not be used to transport enough explosives to relevant locations and deliver them to the undersea pipelines. No equipment that could facilitate that was found onboard, they added.

Rzeczpospolita also reported that Polish officials had not ruled out the possibility that the yacht might have been used as a distraction from the very onset and its purpose was to put the entire investigation on the wrong track.

June 22, 2023 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , | 1 Comment

Ukraine drone attack on Russian oil pipeline to EU failed, official says

RT | June 17, 2023

Ukrainian drones have attempted to strike the Druzhba pipeline that delivers Russian oil to several European countries, Bryansk Region governor Alexander Bogomaz has said. He added that the attack was thwarted by Russian air defenses.

On his Telegram channel on Saturday, Bogomaz wrote: “Last night, air defense units of the Russian armed forces… repelled the Ukrainian military’s attack on the oil-pumping station ‘Druzhba’.” According to the official, a total of three UAVs were brought down.

Last month, the Washington Post claimed, citing leaked Pentagon documents, that back in February Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had suggested to Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko that Kiev “should just blow up the [Druzhba] pipeline,” which pumps oil to Hungary and other states.

According to the report, Zelensky described the destruction of “Hungarian [Prime Minister] Viktor Orban’s industry” as one of his goals.

While Zelensky dismissed the allegations as “fantasies,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto several days later accused Kiev of “virtually attacking Hungary’s sovereignty” by supposedly plotting to undermine the security of Budapest’s energy supply.

Around that same time, a loading station of the Druzhba oil pipeline in Bryansk Region was shelled by Ukrainian forces, with three fuel storage tanks, all of them empty, damaged as a result.

In March, Transneft, the pipeline operator, reported that several drones had dropped explosives in the vicinity of an oil-pumping station. Multiple incidents of shelling had taken place before that as well.

The Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline is one of the largest oil-transport networks in the world, spanning some 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) and transporting oil from Russia to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany.

Bryansk Region, which is adjacent to Ukraine, has repeatedly been targeted by cross-border strikes.

In March, a Ukraine-based neo-Nazi unit conducted a sortie into the region.

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Latest Twist In Germany’s Nord Stream II Investigation Puts More Pressure On Poland

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 11, 2023

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Germany is now investigating whether Poland played a role in last September’s terrorist attack against the Nord Stream II pipeline. This latest twist builds upon the narrative that was introduced a few months back alleging that ‘rogue Ukrainian saboteurs’ were responsible, which came after Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published a detailed report in February citing unnamed US sources who accused Biden of personally planning a very different American-led operation than the one that Germany is looking into.

President Putin publicly endorsed his interpretation of events, which could explain why the alternative one exculpating the US and blaming a ‘rogue’ Ukrainian faction was introduced shortly thereafter. It was analyzed at the time that this new narrative might be a back-up plan consisting of false “evidence” that was planted in advance in order to be “discovered” if America was ever implicated in this attack. As surreal as it sounds, this partially anti-Ukrainian spin might thus be a pro-US disinformation campaign.

Whatever the truth might be, the importance of the latest development is that it puts more pressure on Poland at the worst time possible for its ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party. A few days prior to the WSJ’s report, the European Commission announced that it’s suing Poland over its newly formed “Russian influence commission” that both the EU and the US earlier criticized. That country’s top two partners expressed deep concern that it might be exploited to persecute the opposition ahead of fall’s elections.

President Duda then introduced an amendment removing the possibility of barring alleged “Russian influence” agents from holding office in an attempt to assuage their concerns, suggesting that PiS will settle for branding those found guilty of this with a scarlet letter instead. The German-led EU wasn’t satisfied and subsequently sued Poland, which prompted Mainstream Media (MSM) outlets to unleash a torrent of criticism against that country.

As a case in point, CNN headlined a piece over the weekend declaring that “Poland is a key Western ally. But its government keeps testing the limits of democracy”, which is meant to precondition the public into suspecting that PiS’ potential victory in the upcoming elections might be partially due to fraud. When combined with the European Commission’s latest lawsuit and the WSJ’s most recent report, the perception that’s being shaped by powerful forces is that Poland is a so-called “rogue state”.

The West’s ruling liberal–globalist elite despises PiS for its stance towards abortion, immigration, and LGBT, which is why they’d prefer to have it replaced by the “Civic Platform” (PO) opposition that shares their position towards these issues. Germany has more of a stake in this than anyone else since it fiercely opposes PiS’ ideologically driven plans to restore Poland’s long-lost “sphere of influence” over Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) throughout the course of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine.

This geopolitical plot poses the greatest challenge yet to Germany’s continental hegemony, but it could be stopped if PiS is replaced by PO, which is regarded as being pro-German. Poland could then be resubordinated into Germany’s “sphere of influence”, thus putting an end to any chances of breaking Berlin’s grip over the EU. The East-West divide that PiS sought to exacerbate between conservative-nationalists and liberal-globalists would be bridged upon Poland’s return to Germany’s camp via PO.

Even if PiS remains in power, the three latest developments – the European Commission suing Poland over its newly formed commission, the MSM then warning about Poland’s ‘illiberalism’, and the WSJ’s latest Nord Stream II report – set the basis for isolating and possibly sanctioning that party. The West would go along with this for ideological reasons related to its ruling elites’ interests in fearmongering about conservative-nationalists despite PiS being partial sellouts to that cause as explained here.

If Germany’s investigation continues suggesting that Poland was complicit in the Nord Stream terrorist attack even if no evidence is ever found or manufactured in support of this theory, then public opinion across Europe could decisively shift against that country. Should this happen before fall’s elections, then it could influence third-party and undecided Polish voters to cast their ballot for PO in order to depose PiS, while coming after PiS’ potential victory could set the basis for possibly sanctioning its officials.

In either scenario, the primary one of which can’t be taken for granted since there’s no guarantee that Germany’s investigation will retain its newfound focus on Poland, the European public could be made to believe that PiS played a role for ideological reasons. It could be implied that its conservative-nationalist views inspired the party to collude with ‘rogue Ukrainian saboteurs’ out of equal hatred for Russia and Germany, thus exculpating Kiev and Washington while pinning the blame on PiS.

This narrative would also serve to redirect populist anger across Europe over the soaring cost of living towards that party and away from the US, which is responsible for provoking this proxy war in the first place and then pressuring the EU to impose the sanctions that spiked prices across the board. Furthermore, the conservative faction among these same populists would also have their cause discredited by partial ideological association with PiS, thus dividing the EU’s growing peace movement.

Germany’s disproportionately influential Greens also stand to benefit from this too since they can then claim that any remotely right-wing political force is a threat to the environment if PiS is implicated in the Nord Stream terrorist attack that damaged the Baltic Sea’s ecology. The narrative predictions from the preceding three paragraphs show how advantageous it would be for the West’s liberal-globalist elite and Germany’s geopolitical interests in CEE if the latter’s investigation stayed focused on Poland.

Even if it doesn’t for whatever reason, which would be cogently accounted for in a follow-up analysis in the event that attention shifts in another direction, the latest lead still puts pressure on Poland at the worst possible time for its ruling party. The fast-moving sequence of events over the past few days shows that powerful forces are shaping the perception that this country is a “rogue state”, which could set the basis for isolating and possibly sanctioning PiS if it ekes out a victory in the upcoming elections.

June 11, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

Poland refutes Nord Stream sabotage claim

RT | June 11, 2023

Poland had nothing to do with last September’s explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, high-ranking security official Stanislaw Zaryn has stated. Reports alleging Warsaw had a role in the sabotage are aimed at distracting the public’s attention from what actually happened, he added.

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal claimed that German investigators were seeking to establish if Poland was somehow involved in the attack on the undersea pipelines, built to deliver Russian natural gas to Europe via Germany.

According to the paper, officials in Berlin suggested that Ukrainian saboteurs could have used the country as an operational base before the explosions. They reached this assumption based on the fact the Andromeda yacht, which could have been used in the attack, had been chartered through a Ukrainian-owned travel agency in Warsaw, and that the suspects arrived at a German port, where they boarded the vessel on a van with Polish license plates, the report claimed.

“Poland had no connection with the blowing up of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2,” Zaryn wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

Attempts to link Poland to those events are “baseless,” the official, serves as Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland and as acting deputy of the minister coordinator of Special Services, insisted.

The recent spreading of theories on who might have destroyed a key component of Europe’s energy infrastructure “resembles the tactics of information noise, the aim of which is to distort the true picture of events,” he argued.

“The hypothesis that the blow-up was committed by Russia, which had the motive and the ability to carry out such an operation, remains valid,” Zaryn said.

Russia has repeatedly denied accusations made by some in the West that it blew up its own pipelines. It has also rejected claims that a “pro-Ukrainian” group was responsible for the sabotage, saying such stories were aimed at distracting attention from a bombshell article by veteran reporter Seymour Hersh, who insisted in February that Nord Stream had been destroyed by American operatives.

According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives were planted on the pipelines in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the cover of a NATO exercise and detonated two months later on the order of US President Joe Biden.

June 11, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , | 2 Comments

Following Ukraine steps, Poland now uses Russophobia to crush dissent

By Uriel Araujo | June 7, 2023

President Andrzej Duda has signed a law which allows Warsaw to conduct political repression against the opposition, by creating a commission to “investigate Russian influence on Polish politics that could ban people from public office for a decade” – Duda and the the Law and Justice (PiS) party argue this is necessary to neutralize “Moscow agents”, but the opposition fear this could trigger a civil war, as journalist Wojciech Kość wrote for POLITICO. This could complicate Warsaw’s relations with Brussels, as well – “with the European Commission freezing billions in EU pandemic recovery cash over worries the Polish government is backsliding on the bloc’s democratic principles”, writes Kość.

Poland’s relations with the European bloc have been complicated for a while: in 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which is part of the Council of Europe (not the EU) condemned the Central European country over the removal of judges from office and their arrest. Warsaw has been on a collision route with Brussels as well over a number of issues regarding the rule of law (from the European Commission perspective), and also free press, LGBT rights, and so on.

Poland’s diplomacy, since 1989, has been largely shaped by its aspiration to join both NATO and the EU. Since at least 2015, Warsaw has maintained its alliance with Washington, while becoming, on the other hand, increasingly isolated within Europe and becoming kind of adrift. In 2021, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau urged the US to support the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) projects, arguing that it could become  a strategic “American economic footprint” in the Adriatic, Baltic, and Black Sea region and a “counterweight to investments in critical infrastructure by actors who do not share our democratic value.”

Since 2022, the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian confrontation has opened a kind of window of opportunity for Warsaw. In December last year, Estonian Ambassador to the EU Aivo Orav, stated that the “political center of influence” in Europe no longer was “in Berlin and Paris” (only), but now “also lies in Eastern and Central European Countries as well, including the Baltic countries, together with U.S. support.” Such a possible outcome would be very much welcomed by Washington, especially considering how both France and Germany today flirt with the idea of strategic autonomy.

As I’ve written, Warsaw has been antagonizing Berlin while trying to project its own influence within the continent – clearly with Washington’s crucial support, as the US seems to be “fed up” with Germany. Poland’s legal campaign against Germany over WWII reparations and its attempts to absorb neighboring Ukraine in a confederacy should be seen as part of this larger agenda. The Polish renaming of Kaliningrad, as I also wrote, is yet another instance of the current memory war which haunts Europe today.

Germany, in turn, on May 8 this year banned Soviet and Russian flags during its “World War II commemorations”. The Allied Forces triumph over Nazi-Fascism has been celebrated for half a century as the fundamental victory of democracy and true Western values. This Western narrative is short-circuiting as the West has seen fit to rewrite History, by preposterously erasing Russia from it while white-washing the blatant neo-Nazism of Ukraine’s Azov regiment and its human rights infringements.

In Ukraine too “anti-Russian” measures have been advanced by the current regime to persecute the opposition and civil society. Since at least December last year Zelensky has been advancing moves to outlaw Orthodox communities, something which even Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, has denounced.

No less than 11 political parties have been banned there since 2022 over their “pro-Russia” stances. According to Volodymyr Ishchenko, a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies (Freie Universität Berlin), these measures have more to do with “post-Euromaidan polarization” than with “genuine security concerns”.

Since the ultranationalist 2014 Maidan Revolution, and the ongoing civil war in Donbass, “pro-Russia” has become an accusatory category to label and marginalize, according to Ishchenko, “anyone calling for Ukraine’s neutrality” as well as “state-developmentalist, anti-Western, illiberal, populist, left-wing, and many other discourses.” In the Eastern European nation, there has always been a political camp which calls for closer integration with neighboring Russia rather than the West – which is no wonder, considering that in this strongly bilingual nation, at least 34% of the population speaks Russian, with a high degree of intermarriage.

In short, in a kind of neo-McCarthyism, anti-Russia discourse and the re-writing of history is used today both by Kiev and Warsaw as a pretext to persecute and even outlaw dissent.

In other words, the problem is that being at war over the past (and at war with the past itself) can always backfire: Polish-Ukrainian bilateral relations and their ambitious plans towards a confederacy have always been hampered by differences precisely about World War II. How can there be strong ties of friendship between two nations when one of them today celebrates as heroes those who supported the genocide of the other?

Last February, while Ukrainian Parliament celebrated Stepan Bandera, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in turn expressed his disapproval of all who commemorate Bandera, describing as “genocide” the brutal murder of between 100,000 to 200,000 ethnic Poles. Here, Polish and Ukrainian nationalism clash. And both regimes clash with the democratic values which the Western bloc purportedly champions – while Europe now welcomes the specter of far-right nationalism and even neo-Nazism.

As non-alignmentism and multi-alignmentism are on the rise, the US-led Western global order has been in decline not just due to de-dollarization or to the potential end of the US-Saudi relationship – in a deeper level, its hypocritical weaponization of human rights is losing force as are its most cherished narratives and political myths.

June 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

Poland’s “Russian Influence Commission” Shows The Ruling Party’s Fear Of The Opposition

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 30, 2023

Polish President Andrzej Duda from the ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party just signed into a law a bill mandating the creation of a commission for investing alleged “Russian influence” in the country from 2007-2022 according to Reuters. Associated Press added that this newly formed body will have “powers to ban people from public positions and to reverse administrative and business decisions”, which the “Civic Platform” (PO) opposition believes will be used against them.

Former Prime Minister and European Council President Donald Tusk hopes to return to office during this fall’s elections, but he and leading figures in his erstwhile government could potentially be barred from doing so if they’re implicated in an alleged “Russian influence” plot by this commission. Considering that PiS only narrowly won re-election in summer 2020 by just around 2%, it’s possible that they might exploit this latest law to carry out a witch hunt against PO in order to ensure that they don’t lose power.

This development represents their latest pre-election spectacle after seizing a Russian Embassy-run school in Warsaw in late April in an attempt to pressure Moscow into breaking off ties first, renaming Kaliningrad in early May, then pleading for Zelensky to condemn Bandera’s genocide of Poles. Each of these moves was aimed at boosting PiS’ electoral prospects in the face of the anti-establishment Confederation party’s rising popularity since they don’t want to enter into a coalition with them.

These moves only ever had the chance of appealing to PiS’ conservative-nationalist base, however, and not PO’s liberal–globalist one. Both parties are anti-Russian, but the former is much more so when compared to the latter, whose embrace of Western socio-cultural causes like abortion and LGBT+ takes precedence over their followers’ hatred of Russia. Moreover, PO is considered to be a German proxy whose return to power could resubordinate their country to its western neighbor.

Foreign policy rarely plays a major role in American or European elections, with Poland being no exception in this regard, which is why PiS should have focused more on the home front than on the regional one. The ruling party overlooked this due to its ideologically driven obsession with restoring Poland’s long-lost commonwealth in a modern form through the merger of it and Ukraine into a de facto confederation in parallel with participating in the NATO-Russian proxy war and destabilizing Belarus.

Their pollsters presumably only just realized that these policies and their recent stunts haven’t succeeded in giving PiS a comfortable edge over PO, but there isn’t enough time left to try changing the socio-cultural views of the latter’s base, which has always been a long shot anyhow. Out of desperation to remain in power, the ruling party therefore decided to devise the pretext for possibly banning the opposition, including its leader Tusk.

The only possible way of deflecting Western criticism from this is to claim that it’s directed against Russia, but even that might not be sufficient since PO is much more popular among Poland’s partners than PiS is and their media are already skeptical of the official reason behind this move. Had the ruling party realized long ago that they might have to resort to this form of election meddling to win, then they could have cooked up a more plausible reason for investigating and possibly banning Tusk if need be.

Implying that the period of comparatively better Russian-Polish relations under his tenure was the result of a conspiratorial Kremlin influence campaign ignores the political reality of practically every EU country following Germany’s lead to improve ties with Moscow around that time. If anything, Tusk was either going along with the latest trend since he and his team calculated that it was in their country’s best interests to do so or they were operating under some degree of German influence.

Whichever of these two explanations was the case, neither of them extends any credence to PiS’ innuendo that “Russian influence” was responsible for the renaissance in bilateral relations back then. The ruling party knows that declaring an investigation into German influence would immediately prompt unprecedented condemnation from the EU’s de facto leader and likely result in it leveraging all agents of influence across the continent to do their utmost to ensure that PiS loses this fall’s elections.

Even if they win, they’d probably then be shunned by the entire bloc and possibly even sanctioned on whatever pretext Berlin concocts since it would regard PiS as an adversarial political force that threatens the EU’s unity at its most decisive moment since conception. Aware of how strategically disadvantageous it could be to directly challenge Germany for leadership of Central & Eastern European amidst their heated rivalry over this region, PiS decided to persecute PO on a ridiculous anti-Russian basis instead.

It’s too early to tell whether the “Russian influence commission” will ban Tusk and his allies from politics, but it’s difficult to imagine any other practical reason why the ruling party created this body, let alone at this particular time. At the very least, PiS’ investigation into PO appears aimed at manipulating on-the-fence voters’ perceptions of the opposition. This spectacle risks backfiring, however, if undecided voters turn against PiS to protest their tactics and/or the EU doesn’t recognize the election if Tusk is banned.

May 30, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine to hike tariffs on Russian oil transit to EU

RT | May 24, 2023

Ukraine will significantly raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the Druzhba pipeline on its territory to the EU on June 1, TASS reported on Tuesday, citing data from Russian oil and gas transport company Transneft.

It is expected that Kiev will increase tariffs for transporting crude to Hungary and Slovakia by €3.4 per ton to €17 ($18), bringing the total hike to 25%.

The planned increase in transit costs will be the second this year, after Kiev raised the tariff by 18.3% in January. Prior to that, the tariff was hiked twice last year.

Ukraine has cited the destruction of the country’s energy infrastructure which resulted in “a significant shortage of electricity, an increase in its costs, a shortage of fuel, and spare parts” as the main reason behind the decision.

Russian business daily Kommersant reported last month that Kiev was planning to hike transit fees for Moscow by over 50%. According to the outlet, Ukrainian pipeline operator UkrTransNafta had applied for a two-step increase in transit prices, by 25% from the current $14.6 per ton to $18.3 on June 1, and by an additional 23.5% to €21 ($22.6) on August 1.

Ukraine continues to collect payments for fuel flowing through pipelines in the country, while urging EU countries to stop purchasing Russian oil and gas.

Kiev is currently negotiating the hike directly with buyers in Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, according to media reports.

Druzhba, one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, carries oil around 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , , , | 1 Comment

The US, Poland, & Germany Are Responsible For Russia Formally Withdrawing From The CFE Treaty

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 10, 2023

The Kremlin revealed on Wednesday that it’ll formally withdraw from the long-defunct Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) that it had already partially suspended participation in and then pulled out of its mechanisms in 2007 and 2015 respectively due to NATO failing to fulfill its commitments. This arms control pact did exactly what its name implies by limiting the deployment of conventional forces in Europe, the purpose of which was to preemptively avert future security dilemmas.

That noble goal was sabotaged by the US as part of its global power play that began after the former Bush Administration’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 on the false pretext of needing to build a “missile defense shield” in Europe to protect against Iran and North Korea. In reality, this was actually aimed at eventually neutralizing Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities in order to place it in a position of nuclear blackmail so as to coerce never-ending concessions from it.

Despite being defunct for eight years already, Russia had thus far been reluctant to formally withdraw from the CFE Treaty since it held out hope (naively in hindsight) of US-led NATO once again complying with this pact as part of the larger deal that it sought to negotiate with the West. Even after Moscow was compelled to commence its special operation in Ukraine, its leadership still thought that the West’s return to the CFE Treaty could factor into a forthcoming peace treaty for reforming European security.

The timing behind this decision, being over one year since the start of this proxy war’s latest phase, suggests that some of the subsequent events that unfolded since then were most responsible for the Kremlin’s recalculations in this respect. In particular, this likely concerns the US, Poland, and Germany’s military buildup plans, which collectively leave no doubt about their intent to not even keep up the prior pretense of supposedly complying with the CFE.

Whatever well-intended but ultimately naïve hopes the Russian leadership previously had about this pact playing a role in a post-conflict peace agreement were shattered by these developments, but even then, there was a delay between their respective announcements and this decision. That was likely attributable to still holding out hope against the odds that these were mostly just rhetorical statements that wouldn’t be tangibly acted upon, yet now nobody can deny that these plans are indeed sincere.

America was going to deploy more assets to this theater no matter what since its leadership believed that this aligns with their unipolar hegemonic interests, but what Russia apparently didn’t expect was the gusto with which Poland would seek to exploit events to accelerate its rise as a regional power. The military-strategic complementarity between the US and Poland in this respect exacerbated the Kremlin’s threat assessment of their coordinated moves, which was made all the worse by Germany’s later on.

Chancellor Scholz waited until last December to signal his country’s hegemonic ambitions in a lengthy article for the influential Council on Foreign Relations’ official magazine, which were arguably influenced by its regional competition with Poland for leadership of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE). Accordingly, “Russia Needs To Once Again Brace Itself For A Prolonged Rivalry With Germany”, which is fighting tooth and nail not to cede control over the EU’s foreign and military policies to Poland.

The US is masterfully playing Germany and Poland off against one another as they compete to remain or become its top partner in Europe respectively, to which end they’re literally in an arms race with each other that’s driven by their shared desire to lead the continent’s containment of Russia. Amidst these newfound military-strategic dynamics, remaining party to the CFE in any capacity makes absolutely no sense, hence why the decision was finally made to formally withdraw from it.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Poland Wants To Provoke Russia Into Being The First To Formally Cut Off Bilateral Relations

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 29, 2023

Poland’s ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party is hellbent on provoking Russia into being the first to formally cut off bilateral relations as proven by Warsaw’s earlier seizing of its embassy’s bank account on ridiculous “anti-terrorist” pretexts and Saturday’s police raid against an embassy-run school in the capital. The Kremlin is therefore under immense pressure to respond to these developments, though it’s unclear at the time of this analysis’ publication whether it’ll do what Poland expects.

The purpose behind provoking Russia into this course of action is threefold: 1) PiS hopes to manipulate and subsequently exploit optics of this scandal in order to cultivate more support ahead of this fall’s elections; 2) Poland then plans to pressure the rest of the EU to formally cut off ties with Russia “out of solidarity”; and finally, 3) Warsaw wants to present itself to Washington as its most reliable anti-Russian ally. Each of these interconnected goals will now be briefly expanded upon.

Regarding the first, PiS fears that genuinely conservative-patriotic forces will flock to the anti-establishment Confederation party as an act of protest against the ruling one’s support for mass immigration from Ukraine over the past year. That could compel it to enter into a coalition government after this fall’s elections, which might reduce the intensity of Poland’s anti-Russian policies. Accordingly, they hope to exploit voters’ Russophobia to scare them into supporting the incumbents no matter what.

As for the second, Germany and Poland are fiercely competing for leadership over Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), but Warsaw has an edge when it comes to winning hearts and minds since it’s always one step ahead of Berlin in appealing to the region’s Russophobia. If Poland can successfully pressure Germany to follow its lead in formally cutting off ties with Russia if the latter is coerced into cutting them off first after this weekend’s incident, then it would be a major soft power victory.

Concerning the third, Poland’s envisaged restoration of its former “sphere of influence” is dependent on the US’ support, which can only be assured if it convinces American policymakers that their successfully reasserted hegemony over the EU is symbiotically dependent on these plans. To that end, Warsaw must show Washington that it’s more capable of leading the latter’s anti-Russian crusade in the EU during the New Cold War than Berlin is, hence the importance of provoking crises and getting Germany to follow.

These goals are all interconnected since the abovementioned grand strategy is purely PiS’ own creation. It therefore naturally follows that their potential loss of power after this fall’s elections – whether in whole if it’s replaced by the German-backed “Civic Platform” (PO) opposition or in part via a coalition with Confederation – could impede its regional plans and thus also the US’ to an extent as well. That’s why the latest diplomatic crisis with Russia was cooked up in order to help PiS stay in power.

Everything else proceeds from that scenario since their continued leadership of Poland would keep Warsaw in the race with Berlin for hearts and minds across CEE, thus giving Washington the option of choosing between them (or even cynically playing those two against each other) as its top EU partner. PiS’ potential removal from this geopolitical calculation in the event that voters punish it at the polls this fall could therefore have far-reaching consequences for the region and even for the New Cold War.

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Poland’s Top Military Official Shared Some Unpopular Truths About The NATO-Russian Proxy War

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 29, 2023

The last time that Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces General Rajmund Andrzejczak generated media attention was in late January after he elaborated on how formidable Russia remained at the time, but now he’s once again making headlines for building upon this assessment. Poland’s Do Rzecy reported on his recent participation in a strategy session with the National Security Bureau, during which time he shared some unpopular truths about the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine.

Andrzejczak said that the situation doesn’t look good for Kiev at all when considering the economic dynamics of this conflict, with him drawing particular attention to finance, infrastructure issues, social issues, technology, and food production, et al. From this vantage point, he predicts that Russia can continue conducting its special operation for 1-2 more years before it begins to feel any structural pressure to curtail its activities.

By contrast, Kiev is burning through tens of billions of dollars’ worth of aid, yet it still remains very far away from achieving its maximum objectives. Andrzejczak candidly said that Poland’s Western partners aren’t properly assessing the challenges that stand in the way of Ukraine’s victory, including those connected to the “race of logistics”/ war of attrition” that the NATO chief declared in mid-February. Another serious problem concerns refugees’ unwillingness to return to their homeland anytime soon.

These economic, logistical, and population factors combined to convince him that he must urgently raise the greatest possible awareness of these problems in order to “give Ukraine a chance to build its secure future”, which in the context that he shared this motivation, is a euphemism for even more Western aid. He elaborated by adding that “As a soldier, I am also obliged to present the most unfavorable and difficult to implement variant, giving a field to all those who can and should help Ukraine.”

Nobody should therefore doubt Andrzejczak’s intentions or suspect that he’s a so-called “Russian agent” since he sincerely wants the West to win its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, but he’s also very worried that it might lose unless his side acknowledges the unpopular truths that he just shared. In his view, their failure to do so could doom Kiev to defeat, though the argument can also compellingly be made that indefinitely perpetuating this conflict like Poland seeks to do might be even more disastrous.

After all, none of the three challenges that he drew attention to can be overcome anytime soon. The only exception might be the population one, but that would entail changing EU legislation in order to allow the expulsion of refugees, which is unlikely to happen. The economic and logistical factors are systemic ones, which affect not only Ukraine, but the entire West in general. It’s simply impossible to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of the West’s multidimensional aid to Ukraine if the conflict drags on.

As Andrzejczak himself admitted, “We just don’t have ammunition. The industry is not ready not only to send equipment to Ukraine, but also to replenish our stocks, which are melting.” Considering that Poland is Ukraine’s third most important patron behind the Anglo-American Axis, this strongly suggests that all other NATO members are struggling just as much as it is to keep up the pace, scale, and scope of support, if not more since many are a lot smaller and thus less capable of contributing in this respect.

Accordingly, this observation means that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will likely be its “last hurrah” prior to resuming peace talks with Russia since the West won’t be able to keep up its assistance for much longer. Andrzejczak seems keenly aware of this “politically inconvenient” fact, hence why he wants his side to give its proxies as much as possible until the end of that operation in the hopes that they can then be in a comparatively more advantageous position by the time these talks recommence.

He and those who think like him are making two very dangerous gambles: 1) they expect the upcoming counteroffensive to be at least mildly successful in gaining some ground; and 2) anticipate that Russia will agree to resume peace talks once this operation finally ends. The corresponding risks are obvious in that: 1) the counteroffensive might fail so badly that Russia exploits this disaster to gain an uncertain amount of ground instead; and/or 2) Moscow might not recommence talks upon Kiev’s request.

No responsible policymaker would take either of those variables for granted, hence why it’s arguably better if Kiev abandons its counteroffensive and accepts China’s ceasefire proposal instead of taking the growing risk that it fails and/or Russia keeps fighting knowing that Western support might soon end. Those interconnected worst-case scenarios are growing in likelihood due to the economic and logistical challenges that Andrzejczak identified, with only the chance of Russian mishaps balancing out the odds.

Nevertheless, all indications suggest that the counteroffensive will soon begin despite the serious challenges inherent in it, with this decision being driven by political factors connected with the need to show the Western public that their over $150 billion worth of aid has been spent on something tangible. Even if it ends up being a disastrous spectacle, decisionmakers are willing to take that risk, with some like Andrzejczak wanting to go all in out of desperation to score a final victory before resuming peace talks.

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine looking to grab more of Russia’s oil revenues

RT | April 28, 2023

Kiev is preparing to significantly increase tariffs for transporting Russian crude oil to the EU through its territory via the Druzhba pipeline, business daily Kommersant reported on Friday.

According to the report from the Russian outlet, which cites the consultancy Argus and market sources, Ukrainian pipeline operator Ukrtransnafta has applied for a two-step increase in transit prices, by 25% from the current $14.90 per ton to $18.70 on June 1, and by an additional 23.5% to $23 on August 1.

Transneft, Russia’s state pipeline transport company, confirmed to Kommersant having received notification from Ukrtransnafta of the tariff hike but said that it was not conducting negotiations with Kiev on the matter.

According to Kommersant’s sources, Ukraine is currently negotiating the hike directly with buyers in Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. However, any arrangements with them will have to be formalized with the Russian Energy Ministry and Transneft, experts say. The latter traditionally pays in advance for the transit of Russian oil through Ukrainian territory. The transit cost is included in the price of oil deliveries, and Russian oil companies, having received payment from buyers, reimburse Transneft for the transit.

The planned hike in transit costs will be the second this year, after Kiev raised the tariff by €2.10 per ton (18.3%) on January 1. Prior to that, the tariff was hiked twice last year.

Experts warn that overly frequent tariff hikes may bring oil transport via Druzhba to a halt, as buyers, despite not having many alternatives to Russian oil, may find the costs too high. According to Igor Yushkov, a professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, this scenario would hurt Ukraine, which relies on the transit fees.

Druzhba carries crude some 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Supplies via the route were not targeted by the EU embargo on Russian crude that was introduced late last year.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia responds to Western asset seizure

RT | April 26, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a decree establishing a mechanism for temporarily taking over foreign assets. In its first practical application, the Federal Property Management Agency was put in control of Russian subsidiaries of Fortum and Uniper, energy companies based in Finland and Germany, respectively.

The decree allows for temporary state takeover of assets deemed to be “of paramount importance for the stable functioning of the Russian energy sector,” the agency said in a statement. Germany’s Uniper SE held a 83% stake in Russian energy generation and distribution company Unipro, while a Finnish state-owned company Fortum Oyj controlled over 98% of its local subsidiary, with a total power generation capacity of 11,2 and 4.7 gigawatts respectively.

The move will “ensure the uninterrupted operation of companies significant for the national economy and eliminate the risks of the political position of a number of unfriendly countries influencing” the security of Russia.

Original owners are considered to have temporarily lost control of the property, but not forfeited it outright. The measure “helps preserve the investment climate in Russia and reduce the outflow of capital from the country,” the agency added.

The decree also establishes a legal framework that enables the Kremlin to take over more foreign assets should other countries seize Russian private or government property in their jurisdictions, or threaten national, energy, or economic security of Russia.

Germany and Poland have so far seized an estimated $22 billion in assets belonging just to two Russian companies, Gazprom and Rosneft, according to media estimates. In June 2022, Berlin took over Gazprom Germania GmbH. In November, Warsaw confiscated Gazprom’s 48% stake in the EuRoPol GAZ joint venture, owners of the Polish portion of the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

The Polish subsidiary of Novatek, which dealt in liquefied natural gas and other hydrocarbons, was also seized. Its assets were put up for sale earlier this month.

In September last year, Germany seized Rosneft’s stake in three major oil refineries, accounting for 12% of the country’s total refining capacity. Rosneft’s complaints against the move were dismissed by German courts. A law enacted by the Bundestag on April 20 may allow outright expropriation of Russian assets by Germany.

The US government has sought to seize Russian state and private assets frozen under the Ukraine-related sanctions and turn them over to the government in Kiev, a move that critics have said would change the very nature of sanctions from an instrument of pressure to purely punitive.

April 25, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »