Russia Hits Energy Infrastructure Supporting Ukraine’s Military-Industrial Complex
Sputnik – 17.09.2024
Russian forces carried out strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities that supply the military-industrial complex, the Ministry of Defense has reported. Weapons and ammunition depots were also hit.
“Operational-tactical aviation, unmanned aerial vehicles, missile forces, and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces have struck energy facilities that support the activities of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, as well as weapons, ammunition, and logistics storage sites, along with concentrations of enemy personnel and military equipment in 145 areas,” reads the ministry’s report.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, air defenses also shot down a US-made HIMARS rocket and 36 drones over the past day.
In June, Volodymyr Zelensky stated that nine gigawatts of energy generation capacity had been destroyed in Ukraine, which amounts to 80% of thermal power generation and a third of hydropower production.
In turn, Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko specified that the country has lost half of its generating capacity, which would not be enough to survive the winter, and that electricity imports would be insufficient to cover the deficit.
In early September, the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council published a forecast by Yuriy Korolchuk, an expert from the Ukrainian Institute of Energy Strategies. According to one scenario, Ukrainians could be left without heat and light for up to 20 hours a day during the upcoming winter. This could happen if strikes on energy infrastructure continue, combined with other conditions. In the expert’s optimistic forecast, power outages could last up to 12 hours per day.
Ukraine avoids using Western tanks on the battlefield fearing to lose them
By Ahmed Adel | September 17, 2024
The Wall Street Journal newspaper writes that the Ukrainian Armed Forces avoid using tanks supplied by NATO countries because they fear their destruction or capture. At the same time, the AP reports, citing US officials, that the US will lose the possibility of providing Ukraine with $5.8 billion in military aid at the end of September if Congress does not authorise the Pentagon to use funds from the PDA program.
“Tanks were once the king of the battlefield. But the proliferation of drones in Ukraine means the large, noisy vehicles can be spotted and targeted within minutes. That has seen dozens of cutting-edge Western tanks used only sparingly in the battle they were meant to shape, while others have been damaged, destroyed or captured,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
According to the newspaper, the armoured vehicles supplied to them are in the field many kilometres away from the front line, as there is a high risk of losing them in the Russian Army’s attacks.
Meanwhile, General James Rainey, who heads the US Army Futures Command and is responsible for modernisation projects, called for urgent modernisation of US armoured units.
“In the near term, we absolutely need to urgently make some adjustments to maintain the survivability of our armored formations,” Rainey told the newspaper.
In August, Military Watch magazine reported that Ukraine had lost about 20 M1A1 Abrams tanks out of 31 delivered by the US in the past six months.
“The latest loss brings the total losses of M1A1 Abrams tanks in Ukraine close to 20, out of just 31 of the vehicles delivered, with all losses occurring within the past six months. With unconfirmed reports indicating that the Abrams was destroyed using a handheld anti-tank missile system, likely a Kornet, the destruction of the latest vehicle stands out from all other recent kills which were all achieved by drone strikes or by precision guided artillery,” the magazine revealed.
Forbes magazine reported earlier this month that Kiev lacks modern military equipment to form new brigades to replace front-line units as part of the rotation.
“In practice, these brigades are desperately short of modern weaponry. And that could become a serious problem for the Ukrainians as the new but poorly equipped brigades replace older but better equipped brigades as the latter brigades finally rotate off the line of contact—after 18 months of non-stop fighting, in some cases,” the Forbes article said.
The Kremlin, for its part, has repeatedly said that arms supplies to Ukraine prevent the achievement of a peace agreement and directly involve NATO countries in hostilities. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the US and NATO are participating in the conflict, including not only supplying weapons but also training Ukrainian military personnel on the territory of the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and other countries.
However, US supplies could begin drying up since Republicans and Democrats in Congress must agree on a new budget bill before September 30. If not, the federal government could suspend work in early October, meaning there will be a shutdown.
“About $5.8 billion in presidential drawdown authority (PDA) will expire,” the report said. However, officials cited by AP expressed hope that lawmakers would extend powers to fund their programs for a year.
“Delays in passing that $61 billion for Ukraine earlier this year triggered dire battlefield conditions as Ukrainian forces ran low on munitions and Russian forces were able to make gains. Officials have blamed the monthslong deadlocked Congress for Russia’s ability to take more territory,” the report added.
Yet, even if the funding is passed and Ukraine receives a new stream of weapons, they will make little difference to the outcome of the war. The Abrams was heralded as a game-changer that would overcome the power of Russia’s T-90M tanks, but this proved to be a false dawn, just like the F-16 fighter jets and Stryker armoured vehicles, among many other weapons that have failed to stop Russian forces from capturing more territory.
Due to these weapons, including Western tanks, failing to have the expected effect against Russian forces, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on September 11 that he held talks with his Ukrainian counterparts Andrii Sybiha and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about launching long-range missiles into Russian territory. Several experts have warned that a direct clash between Russia and NATO, both of which have nuclear arsenals, would have unpredictable consequences for the world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned NATO the very next day that Ukrainian attacks with NATO weapons on Russian territory would mean that NATO countries were at war with Russia. Direct NATO involvement, Putin stressed, changes the very essence of the conflict.
Although Ukraine launching Western long-range missiles will certainly change the nature of the war, as already stressed, it just points to the utterly desperate situation the Kiev regime finds itself in. Yet, despite this evident desperation, there are still no legitimate signs that Zelensky is prepared to begin peace negotiations with Russia.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Ukraine war turns into Russian roulette
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | September 16, 2024
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with the US President Joe Biden in the White House on Friday with the question of the use of long-range missiles by Ukraine to hit deep inside Russia on their agenda of conversation. But there were no announcements, nor was there any joint press conference.
Starmer later told the media that the talks were “productive” but concentrated on “strategy” rather than a “particular step or tactic”. He did not signal any decision on allowing Kiev to fire long-range missiles into Russia.
Starmer said no final decision had been taken on the Storm Shadow missiles and hinted that further developments may follow at the gathering of the UN General Assembly later this month. “We’ll obviously pick up again in UNGA in just a few days time with a wider group of individuals,” he said.
One reason for such extreme secrecy is that the US and UK are intensely conscious of the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s explicit warning on Thursday that any use of western long-range missiles to strike Russia “will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine. This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically.”
Putin added in measured words: “This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries –- are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”
Admittedly, Putin has given similar warnings before also, but did not follow through even when western weaponry was used by Ukraine with impunity to invade Russia recently. So much so that Biden was plainly dismissive about the latest Kremlin warning, saying, “I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin.”
On its part, Moscow estimates that although no official decision on the matter has been announced, it has already been made and communicated to Kiev, and that Moscow would have to respond with actions of its own.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, Moscow’s point person on the diplomatic track, was quoted as saying on Saturday, “The decision has been made, the carte blanche and all indulgences have been given (to Kiev), so we [Russia] are ready for everything. And we will react in a way that will not be pretty.”
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the country’s security council, went a step further saying that the West is testing Russia’s patience but it is not limitless. He said Ukraine’s invasion already gave Russia formal grounds to use its nuclear arsenal.
Medvedev warned that Moscow could either resort to nuclear weapons in the end, or use some of its non-nuclear but still deadly novel weapons for a large-scale attack. “And that would be it. A giant, grey, melted spot instead of ‘the mother of Russian cities’,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app, referring to Kiev.
Putin, in his remark on Thursday once again rejected the Anglo-American sophistry that it is Ukraine that will be using any western long-range missiles and not NATO. He pointed out that the Ukrainian army “is not capable of using cutting-edge high-precision long-range systems supplied by the West. They cannot do that. These weapons are impossible to employ without intelligence data from satellites which Ukraine does not have. This can only be done using the European Union’s satellites, or US satellites – in general, NATO satellites…
“most important, the key point even – is that only NATO military personnel can assign flight missions to these missile systems. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this. Therefore, it is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is about deciding whether NATO countries become directly involved in the military conflict or not.”
Interestingly, neither Washington nor London has so far refuted Putin’s above explanation and, curiously, it has been expunged altogether from British press reports — fearing, perhaps, that public opinion might militate against such direct involvement by the UK in a war against Russia in a combat role!
Moscow anticipates that the US-UK ploy may be to test the waters by first (openly) using Britain’s Storm Shadow long-range air-launched cruise missile, which has already been supplied to Ukraine. On Friday, Russia expelled six British diplomats assigned to the Moscow embassy in a clear warning that Uk-Russia ties will be affected. Russia has already warned the UK of severe consequences if the Storm Shadow were to be used to hit Russian territory.
What makes the developing situation extremely dangerous is that the cat-and-mouse game so far about NATO’s covert involvement in the Ukraine war is giving way to a game of Russian roulette that follows the laws of Probability Theory.
That is to say, although Russia cannot be defeated or evicted from the territories in eastern and southern Ukraine that it annexed, Washington and London regard that the final outcome of this random event cannot yet be determined before it occurs; it may even be any one of several possible outcomes, and the probability cannot be ruled out that the actual outcome might even be determined by chance.
Apparently, Biden believes that Russia’s current battlefield dominance is a random phenomenon and possible outcomes range from an annihilation of Russian military power to a large-scale disruption of life in Russia and a possible collapse of Russia — at a minimum, the weakening of the Russian hand in any future negotiations. Simply put, the war is now about Russia rather than Ukraine and long-range missiles can be a game changer.
Thus, Biden, with no political constraints working on him anymore, is escalating the war to create new facts on the ground before his presidency ends in January, which may create conditions for permanent NATO military presence on Ukrainian territory and present Russia with a fait accompli.
Such a strategy built on the quicksands of probability is akin to a game of Russian roulette — an act of bravado. Indeed, Biden’s options to support Ukraine are shrinking with each escalation, As the Wall Street Journal puts it, “With only four months left in the Biden administration and little hope of Congress approving additional funding for Ukraine no matter who wins the presidency, the White House is debating how best to help Kyiv given its limited toolbox.”
Equally, Europe’s interest in the war is also waning. European politics is becoming unpredictable with the ascendancy of the far-right in Germany, the crisis of leadership in French politics, the relative decline of EU’s economy vis-a-vis global rivals due to limited innovation, high energy prices and skills gaps, etc. and, of course, the overarching economic crisis in Europe with no end in sight, as brought out starkly in the recent report by Mario Draghi.
Basically, Biden is pre-setting the trajectory of the war beyond next January so that even after his retirement, his policy approach aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia remains on track. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Saturday that Washington is working on a “substantial” round of further assistance for Kiev. He confirmed a meeting this month between Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Zelensky.
Sullivan noted that Biden is working to put Ukraine in the “best possible position to prevail” during his final months in office. The bottom line is that Biden’s war strategy is attenuating as “escalation management” while NATO transitions as a direct party to hostilities.
US has declared war on free speech – Russia
RT | September 15, 2024
The US crackdown on Russian media amounts to a declaration of war on free speech, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday. She described the new sanctions against RT and other news outlets as “repressions unprecedented in scale.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced new sanctions against RT on Friday, accusing it of engaging in “covert influence activities” and “functioning as a de facto arm of Russian intelligence.” Earlier in September, Washington imposed sanctions on RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and three other senior RT employees over alleged attempts to influence the 2024 US presidential election.
“The US has declared war on freedom of speech throughout the world, turning to open threats and blackmail against other states in an effort to set them against the domestic media and establish sole control over the global information space,” Zakharova said, promising that the punitive measures Washington was using to target Russian media would not go unanswered.
She added that accusations of attempts to influence the elections are a mere “witchhunt” and “spy-o-mania” done to manipulate public opinion and protect its citizens from any information that is inconvenient for them.
The head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), James Rubin, told reporters on Friday that the “broad scope and reach” of RT was one of the reasons many countries around the world did not support Ukraine. The GEC has funded propaganda games aimed at children and forced Twitter to censor pro-Russian content. Rubin admitted last year that he wanted to use the GEC to shut down Russian media outlets around the world.
“We are going to be talking… in Latin America, Africa and Asia… to try to show all of those countries that right now broadcast – with no restrictions or control – RT and allow them free access to their countries,” Rubin said, arguing that RT’s presence has “had a deleterious effect on the views of the rest of the world about a war that should be an open and shut case.”
Reacting to the new restrictions, Simonyan argued that Washington’s claims about RT collaborating with Russian intelligence are a “classic case of projection.”
“The idea that you can’t achieve results without being part of the intelligence service has exposed them for what they are,” she said.
An Act of War! Putin’s Final Warning as NATO Prepares to Attack Russia
By Glenn Diesen | September 14, 2024
President Putin has warned that the long-range precision missiles considered to be used against Russian territory will make NATO directly involved in the war. These missiles supplied by the US and UK can only be operated with the involvement of American and British soldiers, and the missiles will be guided by the satellites of NATO countries. The dishonest discussion in the West about NATO’s decision to escalate in such a reckless manner is deeply troubling given that nuclear war is at stake.
Incrementalism: From Proxy War to Direct War
These long-range missiles represent the end of the proxy war and the beginning of a direct NATO-Russia war. Since the Western-backed coup in 2014, NATO and Russia have been fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. On the first day after the coup, the new government in Kiev installed by Washington created a partnership with the CIA and MI6 for covert war against Russia.[1] By definition, a proxy war is when two or more powers do not fight directly in battle but fight through a third-party country. From 2014, the proxy war was defined as NATO supporting Kiev and Russia supporting the Donbas rebels who opposed the legitimacy of the post-coup government installed by Washington.[2] In the words of Ukraine’s General Prosecutor, who was eventually fired by Joe Biden, Washington was treating Ukraine as a colony and demanding the right to approve all new government appointments.[3]
When Russia became a direct participant in the conflict by invading Ukraine in February 2022, the proxy war became even more dangerous as NATO involved itself in the war planning and supplying the weapons, ammunition, training, mercenaries, intelligence and target selection for Ukraine to fight Russia. Yet, NATO was fighting Russia indirectly through a proxy. Over the next 2,5 years, the lines between proxy war and direct war became increasing blurred. This line will now be eliminated as NATO’s war against Russia becomes a direct war as the long-range missiles supplied by the US and UK are also operated by the US and UK.
How did we end up with the US and UK attacking Russian territory without any serious debate in the West? Incrementalism or salami tactics involve cutting off thin slices gradually. With small incremental steps, no one action appears to be so outrageous that it justifies a major response, yet over time the aggressor has pushed through all red lines with minimal opposition. The US used such tactics to mitigate Russian opposition and to alleviate concerns among European allies for NATO expansion, the missile defence system, and the proxy war in Ukraine. NATO incrementally sends more powerful weapons and become increasingly involved in the war. Any negative reactions from their own public or Russia are sought to be mitigated by imposing restrictions on the use of these weapons, but these restrictions are then incrementally removed.
In the beginning of the war, the US was apprehensive about sending tanks and Biden warned that sending F16s could trigger World War 3.[4] Where has the incrementalism taken us today? American illegal cluster ammunition is used to bomb civilian targets in the Russian city of Belgorod, and NATO has provided the intelligence and weapons for the invasion of the Russian region of Kursk where civilians are kidnapped and executed. German tanks manned by soldiers with fascist insignia on their uniforms are yet again fighting in Kursk, and the main objective was most likely to seize the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. NATO does not criticize Ukraine when it attacks Russia’s early nuclear warning system or nuclear power plants, and instead praises the invasion of Kursk for having humiliated Putin.
NATO’s self-delusion: Ukraine’s “right to defend itself”
The argument that Ukraine has the right to defend itself is a very deceptive counterargument as nobody has disputed that Ukraine has this right. The question is how deeply NATO can be involved before the thin line between proxy war and direct war is crossed. The US is illegally occupying Syria, and nobody would disagree that Syria has the right to defend itself. But does Russia have the right to bomb American and British cities under the guise of helping Syria defend itself? What would the US have done if the situation was reversed, and Russia was attacking American cities through Mexico as a proxy?
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer argued: “We don’t seek any conflict with Russia. That’s not our intention in the slightest”.[5] This is probably true, Britain merely wants the right to strike Russia with missiles without Russia responding. When the US and UK sabotaged the Istanbul peace agreement in 2022, the Israeli and Turkish mediators explained that the Americans and British saw an opportunity to fight and bleed Russia as a strategic rival by fighting with Ukrainians. As American political and military leaders keep reminding us, this is a great war as NATO can weaken Russia without using its own troops. The question is how deeply involved NATO can become before we ask the very uncomfortable question: does Russia also has a right to defend itself?
Putin’s argument is reasonable and deserves to be discussed seriously, yet we no longer have reasonable discussions in the West as any empathy or understanding for the Russian position is castigated as treason. Every discussion is simplified and dumbed-down to either supporting “us” or “them”, and support for “us” entails repeating a ridiculous script that ignores reality and ends up with self-harm. If we want to avoid nuclear war, we should begin to take the security concerns of our adversary more seriously instead of shaming any effort to do so.
How will Russia Retaliate Against a NATO Attack?
Russia can pursue either horizontal or vertical escalation. Horizontal escalation is more restrained by retaliating in other areas by for example supplying air defences to Iran, making arms deals with North Korea, sending Russian warships to the Caribbean, sending advanced weaponry to NATO adversaries, or even providing intelligence for strikes on for example US occupation troops in Syria and Iraq.
However, a direct attack by NATO on Russia will likely pressure the Russians to respond directly with vertical escalation irrespective of the risk of a nuclear exchange. F16s and other weaponry that will be used against Russia have been placed in Poland and Romania as these are considered “safe spaces” as long as NATO is not directly involved in the war. NATO drones operating over the Black Sea and providing targeting data to Ukraine seem like an obvious target. NATO satellites that are used to guide missile attacks on Russia can also be destroyed. Attacks with tactical nuclear weapons in Western Ukraine would also be a powerful retaliation that send a strong message without attacking NATO directly.
It appears that NATO has deluded itself with incrementalism as it now plans to attack Russia without expecting any significant retaliation. Whenever Russia responds it is portrayed as occuring in a vacuum, thus Russia is presented as both weak for not responding to red lines and aggressive for acting unprovoked. Russia responded to the coup and covert war in 2014 by taking back Crimea; Russia responded to NATO’s sabotage of the Minsk peace agreement and the refusal to give security guarantees by invading in 2022; and Russia responded to the sabotage of the Istanbul agreement in favour of sending weapons by annexing Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhya and Kherson.
What was previously recognised as possibly triggering World War 3 is now dismissed as Russian propaganda as NATO is merely helping Ukraine defend itself. The Western political-media elites continue to argue that Russia has threatened retaliations in the past that did not materialise. Russia’s restraint is thus interpreted as weakness, and NATO continues to escalate until Russia responds sufficiently.
The problem is that Russia has been restrained because any response could result in a rapid and uncontrolled race up the escalation ladder that results in a nuclear exchange. As NATO takes the world to the brink of world war, should we not at least have a sensible discussion about what is being done instead of hiding behind meaningless slogans such as “Ukraine has the right to defend itself”?
Moscow to Respond if West Lifts Restrictions on Deep Strikes Inside Russia – Nebenzia
Sputnik – 13.09.2024
UNITED NATIONS – The NATO countries will be in direct war with Russia is they lift the restrictions on the use of long-range weapons to strike deep inside Russia and Moscow will take “relevant decisions”, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said on Friday.
“If the decision to lift the restrictions is really taken, that will mean that from that moment on NATO countries are conducting direct war with Russia. In this case, we will have to take, as you understand, relevant decisions with all the consequences for this that the Western aggressors would incur,” Nebenzia said during a meeting of the UN Security Council.
The Russian ambassador also said that the US is responsible for pinning all the blame elsewhere but it will not be able to succeed because “there is intelligence from US and EU satellites.”
The UN Security Council meeting was requested by Russia and focuses on the issue of Western supplies of weapons to the Kiev regime.
Blinken alleges RT engaged in ‘covert info ops., military procurement’
Al Mayadeen | September 13, 2024
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused on Friday state media organization RT of possessing cyber capabilities and engaging in covert information, influence operations, and military procurement.
Blinken told reporters that the United States is imposing sanctions on three entities and two individuals over Russia’s alleged “covert influence operations in the media domain, including interference in Moldova’s democracy, and its upcoming elections.”
In response, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova mockingly told Sputnik she suggests “treating Blinken’s actions as a blockchain.”
‘There will be a response’
The news website’s Deputy Director of English-Language Information Broadcasting Andrey Kiyashko, Digital Media Projects Manager Konstantin Kalashnikov, and numerous other employees were also added to the sanctions list.
Zakharova said on Tuesday that Russia will respond to US sanctions targeting Russian media and all its other adversarial actions.
“They (US) will have to understand that no action against our country will remain unanswered,” Zakharova said on the Solovyev LIVE show.
US authorities charged Kalashnikov and her fellow colleague Elena Afanasyeva with money laundering conspiracy and Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations.
The US State Department also implemented stricter regulations for Rossiya Segodnya (RT) and its subsidiaries, deeming them “foreign missions.” With this measure, the organization is obligated under the Foreign Missions Act to notify the department of all employees working in the US and disclose all their owned properties.
US authorities also announced restrictions on issuing visas to individuals believed to be “acting on behalf of Kremlin-supported media organizations.” However, the Department of State did not reveal the names of the individuals subject to the new restrictions.
Demoralization is deepening Ukraine’s armed forces as its situation in Donbass deteriorates
By Dmitri Kovalevich | Al Mayadeen | September 12, 2024
The economic situation in Ukraine has deteriorated sharply in recent months. According to Bloomberg News on September 4, the Western countries have begun to reduce their financial support to the government in Kiev, while the IMF is ‘recommending’ that the government devalue the currency at a faster rate, cut interest rates, and strengthen tax-raising efforts to fill the country’s budget gap.
This occurred just ahead of a planned visit by Kiev regime head Volodymyr Zelensky to New York to attend the 79th session of the UN General Assembly, which opened on September 10. While in New York, Zelensky will meet with U.S. government officials, and he says he wants to visit both camps in the current U.S. presidential election. Diplomatic niceties aside, a key reason for the visit is to press for more funding and more weapons for the regime’s key role as a proxy for the NATO countries’ war against Russia.
Former MP and right-wing nationalist Igor Mosiychuk is sure that the U.S. government will opt for caution over its continued military aid to Kiev because so much of that aid is being lost in battle or being destroyed by Russia’s missile defense before it arrives in the battle theatre. The degree of destruction of U.S. and other Western weaponry makes for a very big public relations problem for those arms manufacturers. It is hardly to the credit of their military technology that even their most modern and advanced weapons—tanks, armored personnel carriers, missile systems—are routinely being destroyed by Russia and otherwise not coming close to tipping the military balance.
Mosiychuk writes, “My sources in this delegation [the one traveling to Washington] say that there will be no large-scale assistance announced for the near future. That is, military supplying will continue as is. That’s because of the failure to defend Pokrovsk and because so much of the equipment that was thrown into the Kursk incursion has been destroyed,” the online Politnavigator reports on September 3.
Pokrovsk is a small city that is a key supply and transport depot for the war being prosecuted by Ukraine and its Western backers in the Donbass region. It lies some 80 km west of Donetsk city.
Of note recently is the inadvertent confirmation in early September that the British government of the day did, indeed, press Kiev to abandon the peace negotiations with Russia that took place in Istanbul in March and April 2022. Then-British prime minister Boris Johnson was caught out in an interview recently by the two, notorious Russian pranksters Vladimir ‘Vovan’ Kuznetsov and Alexei ‘Lexus’ Stolyarov, as reported on September 4 in Britain‘s Daily Mirror.
Today, Johnson is saying that Ukraine needs an even-harsher, compulsory military conscription and it needs more young men to fill the trenches and other defensive works along the front lines of the war. There are too many older soldiers and not enough young ones in Ukraine’s armed forces, Johnson says. “They haven’t called up many of their young people yet,” he said, referring to Ukraine’s age of military service being 25 (already lowered from 27 to 25 amidst huge controversy in April 2024).
The exchange by Johnson with the two pranksters was cringeworthy for many reasons, not least for the claim by Johnson that he wishes he could lead a legion of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine but lacks the military training to do so. He came much closer to reality when he cautioned against the entry of NATO-country soldiers into Ukraine. “I normally have a very high and healthy appetite for risk, but I think that would take risk to a new level and we don’t need to do that.” He added his view that while Zelensky might have accepted the loss of Donbass and Crimea at the negotiations in Istanbul in April 2022, that would be politically impossible today.
Zelensky is now actively requesting that the NATO countries supply long-range missiles capable of striking deep inside Russia. A formal request to the G7 countries to that effect was adopted by the Ukrainian legislature (Verkhovna Rada) on September 3.
Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik believes that behind the request for more advanced missile and missile-defense weaponry is a desire to drag NATO directly into the conflict with Russia, as Ukraine cannot prevail by itself. “The path to victory considered possible in Ukraine is to draw as many of our Western allies into this war as possible. By themselves, long-range missiles will not solve anything, but they can help achieve a balance of power for a couple of weeks, maybe for a month,” he said.
He added, importantly, “Given that Ukraine cannot fire these missiles on its own, that it also needs training and assistance with guidance, programming, and reconnaissance, the use of such missiles deep into Russian territory will create an excuse for Russia to strike back not only at Ukrainian territory but also at certain military bases of Western countries, for example in Poland or Romania. This raises the hope that the West will then get directly involved in the war.”
Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Dubynskyy writes that if the U.S. fails to permit the Kiev regime to strike Russia with more advanced missiles when President Biden meets with Zelenskyy in New York, this will be the sunset of Ukraine’s military campaign and the start of peace talks.
Who pays for Ukraine’s costly war?
Lesya Zaburanna, a member of the Verkhovna Rada’s budget committee, said on Aug. 30 that potential creditors are demanding that her committee and the Ukraine legislature as a whole look for more sources of military funding from within their own country. The war is becoming more and more expensive not only for the governing regime in Kiev Ukraine regime but also for its Western masters. “Both the IMF and a number of our partners are urging us to look for more internal resources [to pay for budget deficits],” the legislator said. That ‘internal resource’ is none other than the civilian population, to be robbed even further through higher taxes and service fees.
The price of drones for the Ukrainian military, for example, has gone up since September 1. Drones (UAVs—unmanned aerial vehicles) have come to play a significant, nay crucial, role in this NATO proxy war. Significantly fewer of them are available on the open market due to export restrictions introduced last year by China for drones capable of military use. China has recently eased export restrictions for drones serving civilian purposes but further tightened restrictions for drones capable of military tasks.
As reported by Ukraine’s Strana news outlet on August 29, the commander of the tactical aerial reconnaissance group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Robert Brovdi, says military radios and electronic warfare systems are also being further restricted. According to Strana, the entirety of Ukraine’s arsenal of military drones is purchased from manufacturers in China.
Brovdi believes that restrictions on drone supply will push Kiev into negotiations. “I think that these restrictions will be one of the components of sitting us down to the negotiating table, but not at all on parity terms,” he says.
As it turns out, the West is unable to quickly establish mass production of military drones. According to a report in Al Jazeera in January 2024, “Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows China has delivered some 282 combat drones to 17 countries in the past decade, making it the world’s leading exporter of the weaponised aircraft. By comparison, the United States, which has the most advanced UAVs in the world, — has delivered just 12 combat drones in the same period, all of them to France and Britain. The U.S., however, still leads in the export of unarmed surveillance drones.”
Similar, extreme shortages apply also to artillery shells for Ukraine. Recently, South Africa blocked its supply of ammunition to Poland in order to prevent it from reaching Ukraine, as reported in the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita. Warsaw had ordered 155-mm shells from German defense giant Rheinmetall, to be manufactured by Denel Munition, a subsidiary of the company in the Republic of South Africa.
The Czech Republic buys another portion of shells for Ukraine, in its case from Turkey. But it is significantly increasing its price for resale to Kiev, as was reported by the supplier company Czechoslovak Group at the end of August. According to the company, Turkish manufacturers sell the shells for 2,700 US dollars equivalent, but the company itself takes 500 dollars on top because it “provides a rather complicated service adding significant value”.
Deteriorating war front in Donbass region
It is a rare Ukrainian military officer, politician or expert of late who has not been panicking about the collapse of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbass and the rapid advance of the Russian armed forces in the region. Ukrainian military and Telegram channels note that the Russian armed forces are steadily taking towns and villages in Donbass and there is none of the total destruction that took place in the heavily fortified cities of Bakhmut and Avdeevka, which fell in 2023 and 2024, respectively. (The towns and cities of Ukraine-controlled Donbass were heavily fortified in the years following 2015, when Ukraine was supposed to be implementing the Minsk 2 peace agreement it signed with the pro-autonomy movement in Donbass on February 15, 2015 then proceeded to sabotage. (The ‘Minsk-2’ agreement, text here in Wikipedia, was endorsed by no less than the UN Security Council on February 17, 2015.)
Oleksiy Arestovich, a former advisor to the office of the Ukraine president, calls the pace of Russian advances in and around Pokrovsk an operational crisis for the AFU; it is demoralizing the entire Ukrainian military. “Rumors are growing among the troops (and this is the worst part) that the Donetsk region is simply being surrendered by quiet agreement with the Kremlin. Such rumors are signs of very serious demoralization,” he says.
Roman Ponomarenko, a cadre of the former, neo-Nazi ‘Azov Battalion’ (today fully integrated into the Ukraine armed forces and national guard) talks about the same thing, stressing that forcibly conscripted Ukrainians do not want to fight. “For now, it looks like our front in Donbass has collapsed. The defense by the Ukrainian Armed Forces is disorganized, the troops are tired and weakened, and many units are demoralized. The replenishments do not help, due to their inexperience and limited training. In fact, they only complicate the combat work of the existing units. The Russians are not breaking through deeply because their troops are as exhausted as ours. But they retain a significant, quantitative advantage in numbers and weaponry. They have unlimited supplies of ammunition, and therefore, their offensive continues. We cannot stop it yet.”
Igor Mosiychuk has also spoken about the demoralization of the Ukrainian troops. “My friends who are fighting confirm to me that what is happening now among the troops is just a horror—personnel issues, defensive strategy, the movements and rotations of units—it’s just a horror.”
He also notes that in Pokrovsk, where the Russian army is approaching, many Ukrainian citizens, including those from Kiev, are now hastily registering to obtain Russian passports.
Demoralization in the Ukrainian army is caused not only by the fact that most of the army is made up of recruits conscripted against their will in a dubious ‘fight for democracy’. The fact is that neither officers nor soldiers understand the logic of the Ukrainian command’s actions, for example, its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. To many of them, military decisions seem irrational and have led to unnecessary deaths, and all this plays a role in the army’s decomposition.
Towns and small cities in Donbass where fortifications have been built since 2014 (the year of the far-right coup in Kiev) are suddenly being abandoned and military units are being transferred for an offensive in Kursk, only to be exposed to crushing air strikes there due to the lack of fortifications. In the summer of 2023, Ukrainian troops were sent head-on into a highly publicized ‘counter-offensive’ against carefully prepared Russian defense lines; large numbers were killed or taken prisoner.
Periodically, the Ukrainian command orders groups of commandos to go on raids for public relations purposes, from which many do not return. The purpose of such raids is beyond the comprehension of many military strategists. Soldiers are tasked with staging a ‘breakthrough’ of a small group to a deserted coastline in Crimea, planting a flag and taking a photo, and then leaving, if possible. The cost of a brief video with accompanying photos is human lives.
A captured Ukrainian commando, Oleksandr Lyubas, who survived a failed raid on Crimea, told a court in Russia in early September, “Our training was on scooters, so that disembarkation and advancing could go quickly. There were scooters everywhere. All of us were trained, but the training didn’t last long, maybe three days. We trained in Vilkovo, Odessa region, and were then tasked with entering Crimea, putting up a flag, making a speech and then moving away.”
The timing of such operations, as military leaders have noted in various interviews, is also unclear to the soldiers. The chosen dates are not based upon what can be most effective but, rather, to coincide with some visit somewhere by a Western leader, or when a major international event is to take place.
The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Rubicon’ warns that if the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not demonstrate significant successes in the near future, skeptical assessments in the Western press of their activities will only gain momentum. It says that in today’s post-modern society, keeping a public’s attention on something for two and a half years is an extremely difficult task and not to be trivialized. This is what the Western governments and media have been trying to do through the ‘serialization’ of information, as in a television series. Loyal media presents to its readers or viewers a series of loosely connected stories, each of which they try to ‘sensationalize’ to maximize public attention. Totally absent are analytical reports, offering a strategic forecast for the future.
In 1914-1917, during World War I, discontent and unrest in the Russian army of the day often arose precisely because offensives and operations were carried out at the wrong time and lacked military logic or visible purpose. They were staged solely at the behest of the allies (Great Britain and France) and treated as a ‘working off’ of the Western loans undertaken by the Tsarist government of the day.
A retired colonel of Ukraine’s SBU (secret police) and military expert, Oleh Starikov believes that in two months’ time, there will be “some kind of capitulation”, and this will lead to big changes in Ukraine’s political landscape. “November will be the end of the war, but what the new beginning will be, I cannot say. It will be the beginning of ‘something’, but no one knows what, exactly. Ukraine will be different; the structure of society and the elites of society will be completely different. Those elites who are now in the Verkhovna Rada will no longer be there. Whether that is for the better or worse is a separate conversation, but for sure Ukraine will be different.”
Thus is Ukraine entering a period of strong political and economic turbulence. This is a direct consequence of its complete dependence—economic and military—on the United States and on the outcome of its presidential election in November.
In the meantime, Western leaders and bankers are advising Ukraine to catch ever-more people with its military conscription and ship them off to the front while raising taxes on everyone and looking for yet more financial resources to repay loans for the whole imbroglio.
There is a joke circulating in Ukraine that for a cow to give more milk while eating less, it needs to be fed less and milked more. This is a rather ironic summary of what Western imperialism is holding out for the future of Ukraine.
Ukrainian (Western-backed) drone terrorism in my southeastern Moscow district
Eva Bartlett | September 13, 2024
Starting early Tuesday, September 10, Russian air defense shot down 144 Ukrainian drones in 9 regions, including 72 drones above Bryansk Region and 20 above Moscow Region, according to the Ministry of Defence.
Three drones managed to hit three different apartment buildings in the Ramenskoe district, one impact tragically killing a 46 year old woman and injuring at least three other civilians. These were completely civilian, residential, areas. Ukraine sending drones to strike there was pure terrorism.
Just over one week prior, on September 1, Russian air defense shot down or intercepted 158 drones, some of those again in the Ramenskoe region.
From my nearby district just after 2:15am Tuesday, I heard the first air defense blasts targeting drones, followed by several more until daylight.
On Wednesday, I went to the area within Ramenskoe district where the drones impacted. Irina Medvedeva, a friend’s sister, was in an apartment next to one of the buildings struck. She witnessed the first explosion which killed Zinaida Akhmetovna.
While there, we met a man who had come from Kursk (which Ukraine started attacking last month) for a week of quiet. He said he would go back to Kursk, in spite of Ukraine’s continued (failed) attacks on the city, spoke of how the people there support their army and said Russia would defeat the Ukrainian terrorism.
Related links here: https://t.me/Reality_Theories/20594
Russian ‘Force Majeure’ on Resource Exports Could Clobber Western Economies: Here’s Why
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 12.09.2024
President Putin has asked the government to consider restrictions on the export of strategic materials like nickel, titanium and uranium in response to unfriendly countries’ actions. Sputnik asked investment experts specializing in resource markets how these restrictions would impact the world economy. In short: it wouldn’t be pretty for the West.
Investors and market experts are buzzing over the Russian president’s instructions to Prime Minister Mishustin to whip up a report on measures Russia could take to limit the export of certain strategic minerals in response to Western sanctions policy, with uranium stocks enjoying an immediate price surge, and observers warning of shortages and hefty price increases for strategic metals if were to Moscow move forward with restrictions.
Along with nickel, titanium and uranium, Putin hinted that “other” resources may be affected, while emphasizing that restrictions should be considered so long as “this does not harm us.”
A resource superpower, Russia is endowed with substantial reserves of virtually all the primary commodities required to keep a modern economy functioning.
- The country possesses up to 12% of the world’s oil reserves, 32% of its natural gas, 8% of all untapped uranium, and 11% of the planet’s coal.
- Russia accounts for 25% of global iron reserves, 33% of nickel, 15% of zinc and titanium, 11% of tin, 10% of lead and rhodium, 8% of chromium, 7% of copper, 3% of cobalt, 2% of bauxite and about 1% of gallium, plus substantial amounts of beryllium, bismuth, and mercury. Russia also has about 12% of global potash (used in an array of areas, from agriculture and industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals).
- Up to 23% of the world’s gold, 12% of silver, up to a fifth of platinum group metals, and as much as 55% of diamonds are buried under Russia’s soil.
- Russia is also a potential world leader in the production of rare earth minerals (which are used in an array of modern high-tech devices, communications systems and advanced weaponry). While it only accounts for about 2% of rare earths production today, Russia has the second-largest reserves, constituting up to 28.7 million metric tons, and has committed to major investments in production and processing. Known rare earths possessed by Russia include samarium, europium, gadolinium, lanthanum, neodymium, promethium, and cerium.
World’s Dependence on Russian Resources
Russia’s detractors have often played up its resource exports as a sign of the country’s lagging development or low place in the global hierarchy of ‘developed vs. underdeveloped’ nations. However, the partial breakdown in ties with Western countries after 2022 showed that while Russia can definitely survive without Western technological and consumer goods, the same cannot be said of the West when it comes to Russian oil, gas, uranium, fertilizers and other materials.
The US, for instance, continues to rely on Russian uranium to fuel its nuclear power plants, vowing to wean itself off its dependency only by 2028. Europe, having largely cut itself off from Russia’s cheap and dependable pipeline-delivered natural gas, is currently buying record volumes of Russian LNG amid shortages of US and Gulf-sourced supplies. Furthermore, major Western agricultural producers including the US, Germany, France and Poland have carved out special exceptions for themselves to allow the continued purchase of Russia’s world-class nitrogen fertilizers, which are energy-intensive to produce.
“The pain” of a Russian freeze on strategic resource exports “would be felt by both the US and the EU, and all countries listed as ‘unfriendly’ to Russia, as they would have to source the required elements from third country suppliers, and that would entail an appreciable price increase for the commodity, and the extended supply chain costs that entails,” Paul Goncharoff, general director of consulting firm Goncharoff LCC, told Sputnik, commenting on Putin’s proposal.
“In this case, most if not all alternative suppliers would be countries listed as ‘friendly’ to Russia. This is a value-added benefit for those countries,” Goncharoff added.
“In every instance the end user pays this mandatory unlegislated tax bill in the form of even higher inflation,” Goncharoff said, hinting that the higher commodity prices would add to the pain already being experienced by producers and consumers in many Western countries as a consequence of the two-and-a-half-year-old hybrid war against Russia.
The US and Europe should expect a 15-20% bump in the costs of its strategic resource imports if Moscow moves ahead with the restrictions, especially since Russia is in a unique position globally in the production of high-quality nickel, aviation-grade titanium, and enriched uranium, says Maxim Khudalov, chief strategist at Vector X, a Moscow-based investment and brokerage firm.
For instance, while Russia today accounts for ‘only’ about 8% of total global nickel output, it accounts for about 20% of the production of “high-grade nickel used to produce high-quality stainless steel and nickel-containing alloys, which are needed for space, aviation and defense technologies,” Khudalov explained.
The same goes for high quality titanium, Khudalov said, pointing out Russia’s titanium giant VSMPO-AVISMA in Sverdlovsk region is “unique in the world” as far as its ability to produce vast amounts of aviation-grade titanium is concerned.
Finding a replacement supplier would take time, including running a gauntlet of quality and safety testing and recertification which could take years, and in the case of aviation-grade titanium be required to meet strict temperature, bending, pressure load and other requirements, the expert noted.
“In an airplane, you can’t just say ‘well, I don’t like this supplier of an element used for the wing, I’ll take it from somewhere else.’ Nothing of the kind. If you replace the element used in the wing, you change the airplane, and have to retest it, because it’s no longer safe for civilian use,” Khudalov explained. “The conclusion here is that it is very difficult to replace Russian supplies in the aviation industry, requiring significant recertification efforts.”
If Europe loses access to Russian aviation-grade titanium, that would add to Airbus’s production costs, affecting the aviation giant considerably in its high-stakes rivalry with Boeing.
Meanwhile, higher nickel costs would mean higher prices for virtually all of Europe’s high-tech products, from electronics to specialized mechanical engineering products, Khudalov said, emphasizing that “all of this will become more expensive in Europe and again allow their American ‘friends’ to grab the remainder of their markets.”
“In this sense, Europe is more vulnerable than the US, because the US, with all its capabilities, can afford to increase production costs, at least because their energy is cheap. Europe cannot afford any increase in production costs and will objectively lose,” Khudalov said.
In the case of enriched uranium, the situation is even more complex, according to Khudalov, because it is a restricted resource typically exported to a specific customer for a specific use, and planning for the replacement of suppliers is a long and painstaking process, since nuclear power plants can’t simply be turned on and off at will.
“The French are the second player after Russia in uranium enrichment, but Russian enrichment technology is head and shoulders above anyone else in the world, and our enrichment costs are 35-40% cheaper than anywhere in the world. So if a country is forced to switch to French-sourced material, it will have to pay a very hefty premium,” Khudalov emphasized.
In that sense, France could meet increased US demand over time, but not overnight, since it would have to ramp up its own enrichment capacity.
“The US themselves were planning on disconnecting from our uranium starting in 2028. Well, we could ‘help them’, so to speak, to implement their decision by making deliveries more regulated,” Khudalov suggested.
Short-Term Losses, Long-Term Win
Russia, over the short term, could lose a bit of its export revenues if resource exports to the West were suddenly curtailed, Khudalov noted.
“But on the other hand, what do we need export revenues for? Generally speaking, the whole point of international trade for us is to sell raw materials in exchange for technology. Western countries have refused to supply us with technology basically going back to 2014. Then the question is: why do we continue to supply them with strategic raw materials? To get some green pieces of paper which they then seize from us? This is a rather strange position. Therefore, here it is turning out that since they limit our access to technology, we are starting to limit their access to raw materials,” Khudalov said.
“It can’t be said that all these possible restrictions on the Americans and the Europeans are critical and would kill their industry. It won’t. But it will add very serious difficulties, first and foremost of an organizational nature, because they would have to look for a supplier of comparable quality, and of course, pay a price they’re not accustomed to paying. Because when a force majeure occurs on the market, and for them this would constitute a force majeure, any normal businessman will be obliged to take advantage of their status as an alternative supplier. Most of the alternative suppliers are located in China, with whom the Americans are in the process of kicking off a global trade war,” the observer stressed.
“The cherry on the cake is that the president’s proposal sounded like a proposal to limit the supply of strategic metals to unfriendly countries, but probably implies no restrictions for friendly countries. In that case, we would deliver a nice pass to China, whose entire industry is aimed at producing high-tech equipment, and would effectively get a 15-20% advantage on the cost of strategic materials over Western competitors,” benefiting Beijing in its push to put “pressure on Europe and the US in all markets” globally, Khudalov said.
Russia, meanwhile, will be able to reorient its strategic metals exports to other major alternative markets as well, including India, according to the expert.
Putin issues new warning to NATO
RT | September 12, 2024
Ostensibly removing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons would mean direct involvement of the US and its allies in the conflict with Russia and would be met with an appropriate response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
The West has sent Ukraine long-range missiles such as Storm Shadows and ATACMS, which Kiev has so far used against Crimea and Donbass.
In the past several days, however, the US and UK have suggested they might allow these weapons to be deployed deep in Russian territory.
“We are not talking about allowing or prohibiting the Kiev regime from striking Russian territory,” Putin said on Thursday. “It is doing so already, with unmanned aerial vehicles and other means.”
Ukraine lacks the capability to use Western-provided long-range systems, Putin added, noting that targeting for such strikes requires intelligence from NATO satellites, while firing solutions can “only be entered by NATO military personnel.”
“This will mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries are fighting against Russia.”
“If this decision is made, it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the US and European countries, in the conflict in Ukraine,” the Russian president said. “Their direct participation, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.”
With that in mind, Putin added, Russia will “make the appropriate decisions based on the threats facing us.”
Some limitations on the use of Western-supplied weapons were originally put in place to allow the US and its allies to claim they were not directly involved in the conflict with Russia, while arming Ukraine to the tune of $200 billion. Kiev has been clamoring for the restrictions to be lifted since May.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy have hinted that the restrictions might be lifted this week, citing the alleged delivery of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia as the pretext. Iran has denied sending any missiles to Russia, calling the accusations “psychological warfare” by countries heavily involved in arming Ukraine.
Putin has previously warned NATO members to be aware of “what they are playing with” when discussing plans to allow Kiev to strike deep inside Russian territory using weapons provided by the West. Speaking with major news agencies on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in June, the Russian president said Russia would respond by shooting down the weapons in question and then retaliating against those responsible.
One of the possible responses Putin mentioned at the time was arming Western enemies with long-range precision weapons.
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NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
Blog Roll
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- US lawmaker admits American people footing bill for Trump’s failed aggression against Iran
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- Sanctions are collective punishment: immoral and self-defeating
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- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
