West ‘stomps’ on Russian-drafted resolution for Gaza ceasefire
The Cradle | October 17, 2023
A Russian-drafted resolution for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza failed to pass at the UN Security Council (UNSC) on 16 October.
China, Russia, Gabon, Mozambique, and the UAE voted in favor of the resolution, while the US, UK, France, and Japan voted against it. Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, Malta, and Switzerland all abstained from voting.
The text of the resolution called for an immediate humanitarian truce, the release of prisoners, access to aid, and the safe evacuation of civilians.
Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, condemned the UNSC failure to pass the resolution and slammed the “selfish intention of the western bloc,” which he said “basically stomped” on international calls for de-escalation and an end to violence.
He added that the resolution was needed to respond to the “unprecedented exacerbation” of the calamity inside the Gaza Strip, where Israel has continued to bomb 2.2 million Palestinians trapped inside and prevent the entry of humanitarian aid.
Washington’s representative, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, denounced the resolution for failing to condemn “Hamas terrorism.”
“By failing to condemn Hamas, Russia is giving cover to a terrorist group that brutalizes innocent civilians. It is outrageous, hypocritical, and indefensible. We cannot allow this Council to unfairly shift the blame to Israel and excuse Hamas for its decades of cruelty,” she said.
The failed resolution came the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin held phone calls with the presidents of Iran, Syria, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The Israeli side was in particular informed of the essential points of telephone correspondences that took place today with the leaders of Palestine, Egypt, Iran, and Syria,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
Close to 3,000 Palestinians have been killed and about 10,000 wounded due to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
The Rafah crossing with Egypt, the only entry for humanitarian aid to Gaza, has remained shut despite multiple reports of an agreement between Egypt and Israel, which Tel Aviv has denied.
“The process of opening the crossing is a joint Palestinian-Egyptian process, subject to clear working mechanisms, and requires prior coordination, which has not happened until now [due to] lack of coordination, in addition to the intense bombing to which the crossing was subjected by the Israeli occupation forces,” Salama Marouf, director of the media office of the Hamas-led government in Gaza, said on Tuesday.
Israel has bombed the aid route several times over the past few days, including on 16 August.
Any talk of truce “comes in the context of the psychological warfare waged by the Israeli occupation,” Marouf added.
Hungary PM Orbán meets with Putin in Beijing
BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | OCTOBER 17, 2023
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing on Tuesday to discuss ongoing bilateral agreements between the two nations.
The pair were snapped shaking hands in the Chinese capital — the first photographed handshake between Putin and an EU leader since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
Orbán told the Russian president that “Hungary has never sought to confront Russia” and has always and will continue to “pursue the goal of building and expanding the best communication,” reported Russia’s state-run news agency TASS.
“In Europe today, one question is on everyone’s mind: Will there be a ceasefire in Ukraine? For us Hungarians, too, the most important thing is that the flood of refugees, the sanctions, and the fighting in our neighboring country should end,” Orbán posted on X following the meeting.
Budapest has maintained relatively close relations with Moscow and faced the wrath of the European Union for steering its own course through the conflict in Ukraine and refusing to present a united front with other EU leaders.
Orbán’s administration has long opposed the provision of arms to Kyiv, which it claims is prolonging the conflict and increasing the death toll, and has advocated for an immediate ceasefire and peace talks.
The rendezvous exerts further pressure on Brussels, which requires Hungary’s approval for proposed budget reforms in order to unlock further funding for Ukraine.
“Given the fact that in today’s geopolitical conditions the opportunities for maintaining contacts and developing relations are very limited, it can only cause satisfaction that our relations with many European countries are maintained and developed. One of these countries is Hungary,” Putin told Orban.
The meeting was criticized by U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman who accused Orbán of “pleading for business deals” while Russia continues its aggression in Ukraine.
“Hungary’s leader chooses to stand with a man whose forces are responsible for crimes against humanity in Ukraine, and alone among our Allies,” he posted on X.
This interpretation of the meeting was questioned by the Hungarian prime minister’s political director, Balázs Orbán, who claimed that Budapest was “fed up” with Pressman’s “hypocrisy.”
“If the question is who’s doing business with the Russians, the Americans should turn down the volume. They are buying more than twice as much nuclear fuel alone as they used to, and we have a whole list of them,” he added.
“Since your president refuses to talk about ending this war, someone has to,” quipped Koskovics Zoltán, a geopolitical analyst at the Budapest-based Center for Fundamental Rights.
Both leaders arrived in Beijing at the invitation of Chinese President Xi ahead of an international forum on China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Earlier on Tuesday, Orbán met with the Chinese leader to discuss the strengthening of Hungarian-Chinese relations.
“Connectivity instead of decoupling: This is the Hungarian model. Our aim is to strengthen Hungarian-Chinese relations. This is good for Hungary and good for the European economy,” he said in a statement.
Putin offers solution to stop further bloodshed in Israel-Gaza conflict while Zelensky fears losing US support
By Drago Bosnic | October 17, 2023
As hostilities in the latest Israel-Gaza conflict escalate, the threat of a wider confrontation in the Middle East is getting likelier by the day. It’s safe to assume that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) haven’t launched a ground operation in Gaza yet due to possible direct Iranian involvement, as well as the greater engagement of Hezbollah in the north of the country. According to the Jerusalem Post, the main reason for the postponing of the offensive is precisely the latter. The Northern Command is forced to keep the best IDF troops in the area to ensure combat readiness on the Lebanese border in case Hezbollah gets more directly involved. The Lebanon-based Shia movement has tens of thousands of soldiers and a massive stockpile of various rockets and missiles that could do significant damage to the IDF. Israel simply cannot afford to ignore Hezbollah, as the group already defeated it once in 2006, the only such occurrence in the history of IDF.
The Jerusalem Post itself cited sources saying that “while a number of factors seem to have caused a delay, one factor has been a growing concern that Hezbollah is waiting for the moment that most IDF ground forces are committed to Gaza to open a full front with the IDF in the north”. This fact alone is forcing Israel to keep most of its military assets in the relative vicinity of the border with Lebanon. It could be said that Hezbollah is already providing significant support to Hamas just by being able to tie up so many IDF troops. Iranian involvement in this is implicit, as Tehran has been one of the main backers of Hezbollah since the group’s very inception. This is forcing the Israeli leadership to exercise caution and restraint, as a direct Iranian intervention remains a possibility. Such speculation is not without merit, as Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian already implied that Tehran might get involved:
“Conferred with my counterparts from Tunisia, Malaysia and Pakistan. Underlined the need to immediately stop Zionist crimes & murder in Gaza & to dispatch humanitarian aid. I stressed that time is running out for political solutions; probable spread of war on other fronts is approaching unavoidable stage.”
On the other hand, most high-ranking Israeli officials are adamant that the Gaza operation must be launched. For instance, Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom Tzipi Hotovely even compared the current airstrikes with the bombing of Dresden during WWII, when Western Allies leveled the German city, killing tens of thousands of civilians in the process. Israeli F-16I “Sufa” fighter jets have already dropped thousands of bombs on Gaza (primarily the US-made JDAMs – Joint Direct Attack Munitions), resulting in thousands of deaths and serious injuries among civilians there. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the death toll among Palestinians now stands at over 3,000. For its part, Israel reported that over 1,400 Israeli civilians died so far, with at least 4,100 wounded. The figures are certainly even worse as of this writing.
Such casualties are disastrous, especially given that the conflict started just ten days ago. Since then, the world has effectively split into three groups. Apart from those that express open support for either side, the largest part of the globe has opted for neutrality. This also includes superpowers such as Russia. Namely, Moscow was among the first to call for the end of hostilities before they escalate to include all regional and perhaps even global actors. In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin (the first since the conflict started), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel would proceed with the Gaza offensive despite Moscow’s warning that it would lead to massive casualties and possibly cause a strong reaction of the Muslim world, particularly Iran and its allies. Putin urged Netanyahu to engage in talks on the peaceful settlement of the conflict.
On the other hand, the United States is looking to use the crisis to escalate against Iran, as Washington DC warhawks were quick to blame Tehran for the surprise attack launched by Hamas. US President Joe Biden will visit Israel this week, coming mere days after State Secretary Antony Blinken. Biden recently denied reports about a possible deployment of American troops, calling it “unnecessary, as Israel has one of the finest fighting forces”. And while he stated that “it would be a mistake [for Israel] to occupy Gaza”, he supported the notion that Hamas must be eliminated entirely and warned Iran not to get involved. By directly supporting the upcoming ground operation by the IDF, Washington DC is risking (almost certainly intentionally) a wider conflict that might include several Arab states and Iran. In fact, Israeli forces already hit targets in Syria and Lebanon.
In the meantime, the Kiev regime is in panic mode as the global spotlight has moved away from Ukraine. Namely, the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky tried to get the attention of Western audiences to himself by pompously announcing a “solidarity visit”. However, Israel flatly refused, as the “time is not right”. Zelensky is likely terrified of the prospect that he will have to share hundreds of billions in so-called US “aid” with Israel. It’s no secret that the latter is a priority for Washington DC, while the Kiev regime and the Ukrainian people as a whole are routinely seen as “cheap cannon fodder” that should only be “dying for a NATO mission.” The words of the infamous warhawk Lindsey Graham that “the best money the US ever spent because the Russians are dying” show this only works for America if its actual allies are under attack.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Russia warns US over space facilities used to help Ukraine
RT | October 16, 2023
Western space satellites being used to aid Ukrainian forces could become legitimate targets for Russian strikes, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow warned on Monday.
Speaking to reporters, the ministry’s director for nonproliferation and arms control, Vladimir Ermakov, claimed that the US and its allies are helping Ukraine in ways which go “beyond the harmless use of space technologies.”
“Obviously, the United States and its allies are not fully aware that such activities actually constitute indirect participation in armed conflicts,” Ermakov stated. He cautioned that Western “quasi-civilian infrastructure” in space could “quite logically become the targets of a retaliatory strike.”
Funding for commercial satellite imagery services was included in a $1.2 billion US military assistance package for Ukraine approved in May. Images obtained from commercial satellites were believed to have been used by Kiev to launch missile attacks on the Russian city of Sevastopol in Crimea last month.
Ermakov argued that the West had exposed space activities and socio-economic processes on Earth to “unjustified risks,” and stressed the need to preserve space for research and peaceful purposes.
To that end, the diplomat announced that Russia had submitted draft resolutions on space technologies and promoting peace to the UN General Assembly’s First Committee, which deals with disarmament issues.
“We call for a refusal to use civilian space infrastructure for undeclared purposes, including for interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states and participation in armed conflicts,” Ermakov said.
Meanwhile, Kiev is reportedly looking for an alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink, which has provided communications services to the Ukrainian armed forces throughout the conflict with Russia. The billionaire recently revealed that he had effectively thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea last year by refusing to allow Kiev’s forces use Starlink to guide drones.
One Ukrainian commander told the El Pais newspaper last month that the US and Ukraine had several satellite communication projects “underway,” but stressed that the details were “state secrets.”
Former Ukrainian Official Says Counter Offensive Is a ‘Disaster’
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 15, 2023
A former adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the summer counteroffensive has failed. He went on to say Kiev will never achieve its war aims of recapturing the Crimean Peninsula and restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders.
In an X post on Saturday, Oleksiy Arestovych, a former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine, said Kiev made “made a number of mistakes” during the summer counteroffensive. He continued, explaining that Ukraine has gained no territory since the end of February. Arestovych described the situation on the battlefield as a “disaster.” He noted that Ukraine wasted “so many lives and resources” and lost a “strategic position in the world.”
Aresrovych argued, as Western officials have, that Ukraine suffered a major defeat in Bakhmut, causing Kiev to lack the troops and equipment needed for the offensive. He went on to write that this mistake created a second mistake.
The former aide believes Zelensky has now compounded the error in Bakhmut by failing to establish more defensive lines. Throughout the summer, Ukrainian troops were sent into entrenched Russian defensive positions in southern Ukraine. Kiev suffered heavy losses, and morale among Ukrainians has dipped.
In the post, he placed the blame on Zelensky. “The decision to redirect military efforts and build strategic-scale defense lines and areas could not be made by the military leadership (this is above its level of responsibility) but only political,” he wrote.
Arestovych went on to blast Zelensky for making a series of mistakes, and he said Kiev would be unable to reach its war goals. “Behind the strategic mistakes in the field loom strategic mistakes in public administration, foreign and domestic policy – corruption, the real prospect of reducing aid to Ukraine, tightening the screws within the country, the destruction of relations with its closest neighbors – these are all direct results of non-military decisions made, or the right political decisions not made.” He continued, “[The Zelensky administration doesn’t] even want to tell the people the truth – there will be no borders in 1991, and there will be no Crimea in the near future, but there will be defense, blood, sweat, tears.”
He assesses that the war has now entered a stalemate phase. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow’s forces are gaining territory. “Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast,” he said on Sunday. “This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Avdiivka.”
Aresrovych made the post as he is under investigation for making comments that promote violence against women. He denied the allegations.
Russia asks UN Security Council for ‘immediate’ ceasefire in Gaza, Israel
Press TV – October 15, 2023
Russia has asked the United Nations Security Council to vote Monday on a draft resolution that called for an “immediate” ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and Israel, blaming the United States for the unfolding situation in the Middle East.
On Saturday, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s Deputy UN Ambassador, said no changes had been made to the text since it was given to the council on Friday and that he expected the vote to be scheduled for 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT) on Monday.
Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia presented the draft resolution which also demands the secure release of all hostages, and “strongly condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism.”
The draft resolution, given to the 15-member council during a closed-door meeting on the situation in Gaza, also calls for humanitarian aid access and the safe evacuation of civilians in need.
“We’re convinced that the Security Council must act to put an end to the bloodshed and restart peace negotiations with a view to establishing a Palestinian state as it was supposed to do so long ago,” Nebenzia said on Friday.
He also blamed the United States for bearing “responsibility for the looming war in the Middle East,” and criticized European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen for “turning a blind eye to the Israeli air force attacks on civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”
According to Nebenzia, there were positive responses to the draft resolution among some member states.
Meanwhile, Chinese Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun said that “there is an emerging consensus on the humanitarian concerns,” adding “We are open to all efforts which will help cease the fire, help de-escalate the tension.”
A UNSC resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the US, Britain, France, China, or Russia. The United States has traditionally shielded its ally Israel from any Security Council action.
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm last Saturday, penetrating deep into the territories occupied by the Israel regime, by carrying out large-scale air, land, and sea strikes.
The operation was a reaction to the recurring desecration of the al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied al-Quds as well as intensified Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Following the surprise operation, some 1,300 were killed and more than 3,400 wounded in Israel. Hundreds of others, including senior Israeli military officials, are held as war prisoners in Gaza.
Israel also responded with intensive air strikes on civilian targets in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 2,329 Palestinians in Gaza and wounding 9,714 others, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The regime has also laid a siege to Gaza, leaving the city, home to more than 2.3 million Palestinians, without water, electricity, and internet.
Tel Aviv is making preparations to launch a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, after telling Palestinians living in the densely populated territory to move out of the area, something the UN had called “impossible.”
More than 420,000 people have been displaced within the Gaza Strip. A total of 270,374 out of 423,378 internally displaced people are now in UN shelters and schools while at least 15 hospitals have been damaged by Israeli shelling and airstrikes.
So far, several Western countries have refrained from calling for an outright ceasefire, claiming that Israel has “a right to defend itself” after the Hamas operation.
A strategic nightmare sneaks into Washington’s political agenda
Global Times | October 14, 2023
A simultaneous war with China and Russia is a strategic nightmare that sober American strategists such as Henry Kissinger have been warning the US to avoid at all costs, and it is also a topic that some US media outlets have become more and more fond of talking about in recent years. At least from the publicly available information, Washington has never previously addressed it as a formal political agenda, supposedly aware of its seriousness and the terrible risks it carries. But the publication of a report by a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel titled America’s Strategic Posture crossed this “red line” on October 12.
The central point of the 145-page report is that the US must expand its military power, particularly its “nuclear weapons modernization program,” in order to prepare for possible simultaneous wars with China and Russia. Notably, the report diverges completely from the current US national security strategy of winning one conflict while deterring another, and from the Biden administration’s current nuclear policy. It is not a fantasy among the American public, but a serious strategic assessment and recommendation in the service of policymaking.
The 12-member panel that wrote the report was hand-picked by the US Congress from major think tanks and retired defense, security officials and former lawmakers. This report makes us feel that a “strategic nightmare” is sneaking into the US political agenda, but has not drawn due concern and vigilance in Washington, and to a large extent, the American elite group represented by the panel is actively working to make this nightmare come true.
A look at the specific recommendations of this report will send shivers down the spine of those who retain any basic rationality. The report recommends that the US deploy more warheads, and produce more bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missile submarines, non-strategic nuclear weapons and so on. It also calls on the US to deploy warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and to consider adding road-mobile ICBMs to its arsenal, establishing a third shipyard that can build nuclear-powered ships, etc.
What depths of insanity is the US sinking to? The US’ military spending accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s total defense expenditures, and it has been growing dramatically for several years, with military spending in 2023 reaching $813.3 billion, more than the GDP of most countries, but even that is not enough for these politicians. Such a report full of geopolitical fanaticism and war imagery, whether or not it actually ends up as a “guide” for Washington’s decision-making, is dangerous and needs to be resisted and opposed by all peace-loving countries.
According to some American media, the report ignores the consequences of a nuclear arms race. In fact, the report doesn’t seem to consider this at all and doesn’t suggest any measures other than nuclear expansion to address this issue. In other words, it is a reckless approach. Both China and Russia are nuclear powers, and everyone knows that provoking a confrontation between nuclear powers is a crazy idea. Even promoting a nuclear arms race under the banner of “deterrence” is a disastrous step backward in history. Washington’s political elites, who lived through the Cold War, cannot be unaware of this. However, the fact that such an absurd and off-key report is being presented in all seriousness by the US Congress is both surreal and unsurprising. It is in line with the distorted political atmosphere in Washington today.
The motives behind this exaggeration of threats and creating a warlike atmosphere are highly suspicious. The recent outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict caused a sharp increase in US defense industry stocks, while American defense industry companies have also been the biggest beneficiaries of the long-standing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The military-industrial complex, like a geopolitical monstrosity, parasitically clings to American society, manipulating its every move, pushing Washington step by step to introduce and even prepare for ideas that were once considered “impossible.” The prosperity of the American military-industrial complex is built upon blood and corpses, and carries a primal guilt. Serving the interests of the American military-industrial complex is unethical.
The reality is that such rhetoric is becoming increasingly politically acceptable in today’s Washington. The idea of “preparing for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China,” once a fringe fantasy, has gradually made its way into Washington’s agenda, which is deeply unsettling. If Washington were to adopt even a small portion of the recommendations in this report, the harm and threats it could pose to world peace would be immeasurable and would ultimately backfire on the US itself. There is an old Chinese saying: “Those who play with fire will perish by it.” This is something that is worth Washington’s careful consideration.
Partnership with Russia in Hungary’s national interest – FM
RT | October 15, 2023
Budapest will stick to agreements with Russia in the energy sphere despite Ukraine-related sanctions and pressure from EU peers, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told RT on Friday, on the sidelines of the annual Russian Energy Week forum. The official stressed that his country will always put its national interests first and that energy cooperation with Russia is among its key priorities in this regard.
“Our national interest is to definitely have reliable, mutually respectful cooperation with Russia. Without Russian energy we would not be able to guarantee the safe supply of energy for our country,” he stated, adding that, for Hungary, the supply of energy “is not a political issue or an ideological issue, but a physical one.”
The official noted that his country is in constant contact with Moscow “to make sure our cooperation continues according to our existing contracts.” Hungary continues to buy Russian gas under the 15-year contract with energy major Gazprom signed in 2021, which provides for the supply of 4.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually. The country is also buying Russian oil via pipelines that run through Croatia and Ukraine, having secured an exemption from the sanctions imposed by Brussels on Russian crude oil imports last year.
Another large part of Russian-Hungarian cooperation is the work on new reactors for Hungary’s Paks-2 nuclear power plant under a contract with Russia’s Rosatom. According to Szijjarto, the construction process has already started.
“The cut-off walls are now under construction – that gives us hope that by the beginning of the next decade we will be able to connect the two new blocks to the grid, which will increase the nuclear capacity from 2,000 megawatts to 4,400 megawatts,” he said, adding that the project will make Hungary’s power production “more competitive, safer and more environmentally-friendly.”
Szijjarto conceded that the project faced much pressure, especially with the EU continuously pitching the Russian nuclear industry as a potential candidate for sanctions. However, according to the foreign minister the EU is unlikely to go through with these threats.
“We made it very clear that we will not agree to any sanctions package which will include the nuclear industry… because for us it would be totally against our national interests if the nuclear industry was under sanctions. And since the US has bought 416 tons of uranium from Russia during the first half of this year, I think no real arguments are there for the EU to put the Russian nuclear industry under sanctions… that would be a huge hypocrisy.”
Szijjarto reiterated previous statements that the West’s anti-Russia sanctions policy has failed, and urged the collective EU to help Russia and Ukraine bring the conflict to an end instead of heaping more punitive measures on Moscow.
“The EU is struggling when it comes to economy and when it comes to competitiveness, it’s obvious – there are figures – China has already overtaken us when it comes to share of global GDP. So, the EU should make the decisions in order to improve competitiveness… and sanctions [against Russia] have contributed to the loss of competitiveness, for sure… Instead of imposing sanctions and delivering weapons, we should start discussions about peace,” he stated, warning that circumstances for peace talks will become less favorable as time passes by.
US must prepare for war with China and Russia – Congress
RT | October 13, 2023
Washington needs to urgently update and expand both its nuclear arsenal and the conventional military in order to face the combined might of Moscow and Beijing, the congressional Strategic Posture Commission argued in its final report published on Thursday.
“The United States and its allies must be ready to deter and defeat both adversaries simultaneously,” the commission said. “The US-led international order and the values it upholds are at risk from the Chinese and Russian authoritarian regimes.”
While the commission has not identified any specific evidence of Russia and China working together, “we worry… there may be ultimate coordination between them in some way, which gets us to this two-war construct,” a senior official involved in the report told Reuters, on condition of anonymity. The current US national security strategy calls for defeating one major adversary while deterring another.
The commission argued that the combined threat from China and Russia will become acute as early as 2027 so “decisions need to be made now in order for the nation to be prepared.” The 131 findings and 81 recommendations in the report amount to the need for massive expansion of both the conventional armed forces and the Nuclear Triad.
The report demands more of the B-21 stealth bombers and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. The B-21 is still in development and is expected to enter service by 2027 at the earliest. The first two Columbia-class subs are under construction and are expected in 2030. The US Navy has planned to order 12, to replace the 18 Ohio-class boats currently in service.
“Amid all of the Commission’s recommendations to increase the number of strategic and tactical nuclear systems, there is almost no mention of cost in the entire report,” which “does not seem to acknowledge any limits to defense spending,” the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has said in response.
At a press event announcing the report, the commission’s vice-chair, retired Republican Senator Jon Kyl, argued that higher military spending is a small price to “hopefully preclude” a possible nuclear war and that President Joe Biden and Congress need to “take the case to the American people” to spend more money.
According to FAS, however, the commission’s recommendations are “likely to exacerbate the arms race, further constrict the window for engaging with Russia and China on arms control, and redirect funding away from more proximate priorities.”
The only reason the commission did not argue for an immediate expansion of the US nuclear stockpile “is that the weapons production complex currently does not have the capacity to do so,” FAS noted, adding that there is no need for a nuclear arms race so long as the US has enough submarines to present a credible deterrent to a first strike by an adversary.
MEPs call for change of EU policy on Ukraine
RT | October 12, 2023
Ukrainian lives are being sacrificed by the “totally corrupt” elite in Kiev to which the EU recklessly sends billions of euros, several members of the European Parliament said at an event on Wednesday hosted by the think-tank Voice of Europe.
“We must stop this tragicomedy for Europe, for Ukraine and for Russia. We must try to find a path to prosperity again, and the first step is peace,” MEP Thierry Mariani of the French National Rally (RN) party argued at the roundtable, held in the central hall of the European Parliament in Brussels.
“Ukraine must remain a bridge” between Russia and Europe, Mariani added. He also pointed out that the current conflict has roots in 2013, when the EU tried to push Kiev to renounce a free trade deal with Russia and sign the Association Agreement with Brussels. This led to the Maidan demonstrations and the February 2014 coup.
Maximilian Kra of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) said he had traveled around Ukraine, describing it as “a beautiful country with very decent people.”
“I’m afraid that these decent people of Ukraine are now being sacrificed for the interests of the Kiev elite,” who own millions in real estate in southern France, Kra said. He also voiced fears that the US may ask the EU to foot the bill for the Ukraine conflict, now that Washington’s attention has been preoccupied by Israel.
“That’s what I’m afraid of. And I can tell you that this is already happening. Because Germany has already promised $1 billion to Ukraine, while the US will allocate only $200 million,” he said.
Marcel de Graaff of the Dutch Forum for Democracy (FvD) argued that Ukraine needs to make peace with Russia as soon as possible.
“I speak very directly because they have already lost. They are now sacrificing people up to 70 years old at the front. They no longer have reserves. They are losing right now,” said de Graaf.
He also described Ukraine as “the most corrupt country in the world,” now being given “tens of billions of euros” by the West. “I heard that [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky’s mother-in-law bought a villa in Egypt for several million dollars, and we are still wondering where our money is going. This is a totally corrupt civilization,” de Graaf added.
One major problem, according to the Dutch MEP, is that all trust has been lost between Russia and the West after the revelations by former German and French leaders that the Minsk Agreements were a ploy to buy Kiev time to prepare for war.
Kra brought up that Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk had presented the German Bundestag a “smart” peace plan based on Minsk II, a proposal that would have seen the rebel republics of Donetsk and Lugansk rejoin Ukraine with broad autonomy.
“At the time, no one knew that Minsk II was a fake, as Merkel later stated,” Kra added, referring to former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s December 2022 admission.
Henri Malos, president of Voice of Europe and host of the roundtable, also lamented the demise of the Minsk Agreements, which he said offered security and sovereignty for both Russia and Ukraine.
Peculiarities of Russian television reporting on the Hamas-Israeli war
By Gilbert Doctorow | October 11, 2023
A couple of days ago, I mentioned how Russian state television news was providing viewers with information about aspects of the ongoing armed conflict between Hamas and Israeli armed forces that you would not find in Western media during the first days of reporting. In particular, it was immediately evident from the news briefings on Vesti that Russian emphasis was on the military side rather than on the humanitarian catastrophe side.
BBC, Euronews, CNN have all focused attention on the slaughtered Israeli citizens and the apparent savagery of the Hamas fighters including today’s revelations about the hundred or more men, women and children who were killed in a Hamas raid on a kibbutz in the South of Israel. Russian news from day one showed pictures of the latest generation Israeli tank destroyed by a grenade dropped by a drone and of Hamas fighters approaching Israeli shores from the sea on paragliders. On two successive Evening with Vladimir Solovyov shows, images of the destruction to Israel’s billion dollar wall around Gaza and similar engineering feats by the insurgents as they moved deep into Israel proper. Solovyov’s panelists also provided expert analysis of the military threats Israel faces from the neighborhood if the war in Gaza escalates.
Why is this difference in what is reported important? Because coverage of the slaughter of civilians by Hamas fighters and interviews with relatives of those taken captive to Gaza as hostages plays into the hands of the Hamas strategists: it places enormous pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to proceed with a land invasion of Gaza which will result in many thousands of deaths among Israeli Defense Force soldiers as well as deaths of civilians in Gaza that may be an order of magnitude higher. The violence of an Israeli invasion may be so shocking as to justify outside Palestinian forces, namely Hezbollah in Lebanon and Arab fighters in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen to send contingents of armed men to join the battle on the side of Hamas in Gaza.
The Western reporting has provided a wealth of material for those who would denounce the Hamas fighters as “sub-human.” However, considering the great sophistication of the Hamas methods to overcome Israeli technical devices at the border and the wall itself intended to prevent such a raid from the enclave, considering the 5,000 or more missiles sent by Hamas into Israel that overwhelmed the “Iron Dome” Israeli defenses, it is unreasonable to speak of the executions and hostage taking as spontaneous or expressions of raw anger by Arab youths. No, it had to be planned in advance and handed over to disciplined fighters for implementation with a certain military objective in mind: namely to provoke the Israeli government and draw it into the lair of urban, guerilla warfare in Gaza.
A couple of days ago, in my geopolitical analysis of the conflict, I mentioned that the dispatch of a U.S. naval force led by the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford to the waters adjacent to Israel was likely intended to intimidate Iran and possibly to prepare for an American attack on Iran under accusations that Teheran had aided and guided the Hamas attack. However, the Biden administration has now stated clearly that it has no evidence Iran was involved in preparing the Hamas action. This confirms what the supreme religious leader of Iran said yesterday in a public speech, namely that the Palestinians themselves are fiercely independent and that they alone prepared the assault on Israel. He insisted that in the West people under-appreciate the skills and determination of Palestinians. It is only individual American politicians like would-be Republican candidate for the presidency Nikki Haley and the ever saber rattling Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who are calling for Iran to be attacked now.
Based on the information about the military capabilities of pro-Hamas forces in the neighborhood aired on the Solovyov show last night by first quality Russian experts, it is far more likely that the United States military presence is intended for use against Hezbollah in Lebanon than against Iran. This organization is now said to be the strongest pro-Palestinian force in the region with tens of thousands of fighters, with advanced military equipment including perhaps one hundred thousand missiles ready for use against Israel at any time. Israel’s last incursion into Lebanon to crush Hezbollah in 2006 ran into serious difficulties when enemy strength surprised them. Some fifty Israeli tanks were said to have been destroyed then. There is no question that Hezbollah has become more powerful since. Its war hardened forces received battlefield experience very relevant to the present Hamas-Israel conflict when they fought in the civil war in Syria.
One of the Russian experts who spoke at length about the situation in Israel on Sunday night was Yevgeny Satanovsky, who is a professor attached to two centers of Near East studies in Moscow. He appeared in the past on Russian television talk shows when the subject was Russian-Turkish relations but his core specialty is in fact Israeli politics and the economy. It was difficult to follow Satanovsky’s remarks in detail because he was speaking as if to academic friends over a cup of coffee and there was a lot of jargon. But his appraisal of the Israeli military’s degraded state was clear enough. The deplorable discipline within their army compounded the initial problems from the intelligence failures of Mossad. The common denominator both in intelligence and in military command was hubris, undeserved self-confidence, lulled by technological superiority over the enemy. But just as Hamas outfoxed Israeli intelligence by returning to 19th century methods of communications, couriers and face to face meetings in place of electronic means that Israel can intercept, so fairly rudimentary bulldozers were sufficient to break through the Israeli wall and a combination of firearms and drones neutralized the sensors and cameras protecting Israel from Gaza raids.
Said Satanovsky, the Israeli military has suffered an additional debilitating flaw, namely the succession of second quality generals who rose to the premiership of Israel over the past thirty years and the politicization of military ranks. He blamed in particular the 2005 decision by then prime minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw all Israeli presence from inside Gaza and to secure the enclave from its perimeter.
For those who want to know more about who Satanovsky is, he has a large entry in the Russian language edition of Wikipedia. Suffice it here to say that he calls himself an atheist as well as a “Russian Jew,” and for several years at the start of the new millennium he helped to create the Russian Jewish Congress and served as its president for three years. He has a teaching affiliation with the International Center of University Instruction on Jewish Civilization in the Jewish University of Jerusalem.
I mention this aspect of the man’s past and present because it brings us to the special relationship that Russia has with Israel. More than one million Soviet and Russian Federation Jews emigrated to Israel. These included people from every walk of life, including some scandalously wealthy crooks who evaded Russian justice for crimes including murder and are not extradited. Since the start of the Special Military Operation, their numbers have risen with the arrival in Israel of Russia’s ‘fifth column’ personalities in the entertainment industry, in finance, in government. With the Hamas attack some of those, like the billionaire banker Mikhail Fridman, took the first plane out of Israel for Moscow this past Sunday, as reported in a feature article of The Financial Times. The scoundrel who assisted Yeltsin’s fraudulent election in 1996 and then stayed on in power to enrich himself, serving in a succession of high positions, Anatoly Chubais, also slithered out of Israel the same day, but not to Moscow, where he would face arrest. Their compatriots in Russia snigger over the cowardice and selfishness of these high visibility characters.
Of course the vast majority of Russian settlers in Israel are normal, hard working folks and it is they to whom the Vesti journalists turn now for first-hand accounts of the impact of the Hamas attack. They can be doctors receiving the wounded at hospitals or officials in the mayor’s office of one or another Israeli city. You will not see them on CNN.
On the other side of the coin, Russia has and needs excellent relations with the Arab world. Fifteen per cent of the Russian population is Muslim, with their cultural and religious center in Kazan, some 860 km southeast of Moscow, in a wealthy oil-producing region. Chechnya is also a Muslim center in the Russian Federation and its leader Ramzan Kadyrov is well known in the Middle East. More to the point, Russia is a highly valuable partner of Saudi Arabia in Opec+ in which they jointly set production targets and price targets for the global oil industry. And Russia has close relations with the United Arab Emirates, particularly financial arrangements. The UAE dirham is now used as a currency for settling import-export transactions by Russia. Of course, Russia is closely aligned with Iran as a fellow member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and, as from 1 January 2024, BRICS. The close ties to Syria need no explanation, since Russia singlehandedly saved the government of Bashar Assad from the radical fundamentalist fighters that Washington was arming. The closeness of Russian ties with Iraq was in full evidence yesterday during the state visit of the Iraqi prime minister to Moscow. Russian companies Lukoil, Gazpromneft and others have already invested $16 billion in production assets in Iraq.
The official position with respect to the war now raging between Israel and Hamas was stated yesterday on television by President Putin: it can be solved only with implementation of the UN resolution on creation of a fully sovereign Palestine state, i.e. the “two state solution” that has been so long discussed but never brought to fruition. However, what will follow the creation of such a state is equally important and remains terra incognita: which world powers will guarantee the security of these two states?
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
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From the Archives
A century of deceit: World wars and Zionist militarism
By Brandon Martinez | Press TV | April 3, 2014
Some studies estimate that close to 1.5 million Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of the brutal American invasion and occupation of their country in 2003.[1] Millions more Iraqis have become refugees and orphans with no future prospects for prosperity or stability. Most of the critical infrastructure of the country was bombed into rubble and dust. American depleted uranium weapons have caused cancer rates in some Iraqi cities to skyrocket, permanently destroying the genes of future generations of Iraqis who are being born with horrific birth defects and diseases.
The culprits responsible for this genocidal campaign to subdue and enslave the Iraqi people are not the CEOs of American oil companies as some disingenuous commentators on the Left have claimed. President George W. Bush’s foreign policy in the Middle East was not his own nor that of the oil lobby, but was the brainchild of the neoconservative conspirators behind the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and other Zionist-oriented think tanks that dominated the Washington Beltway. … continue
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