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Kiev’s NATO-Backed Counteroffensive Is The West’s Most Important Military Campaign Since WWII

More Than Meets The Eye

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 11, 2023

Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive has captivated the world’s attention as everyone watches to see whether it’ll push Russia out of the territory that Ukraine claims as its own. Progress on that direction would likely lead to continued Western support, while the failure to fulfill expectations might lead to the aforesaid being curtailed and ceasefire talks commencing. Either outcome is important, but what many observers have overlooked is the historical significance of this campaign.

The Unexpected Proxy War

It’s the first time since World War II that the West has conventionally fought a military peer, albeit indirectly in this case since they’re fighting Russia via their Ukrainian proxy. The US envisaged transforming that former Soviet Republic into a platform for threatening Russia through conventional, hybrid, and unconventional means with the aim of coercing it into never-ending concessions. The goal was to strategically neutralize then Balkanize it in order to facilitate doing the same to China afterwards.

While Ukraine was cooperating with NATO to this end prior to the start of Russia’s special operation, including through the secret hosting of that bloc’s bases as well as joint biological and nuclear weapons programs, everything was supposed to accelerate after its planned reconquest of Donbass in early 2022. President Putin narrowly preempted his opponents’ first move once he concluded that the West didn’t want to resolve their problems through peaceful means after they rejected Russia’s security requests.

Mutual Surprises Lead To A Stalemate

The fast-moving events that were set into motion caught both sides by surprise. The West didn’t really expect a large-scale intervention, predicting instead that Russia would likely concentrate its forces in Donbass in the unlikely scenario that it got involved, but they still secretly dispatched plenty of anti-air and -tank missiles to Ukraine ahead of time just in case. Likewise, Russia didn’t expect such formidable resistance from Ukraine, but the West was also surprised that Russia didn’t collapse due to sanctions.

Neither side has thus far been able to defeat the other as a result of the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that Secretary-General Stoltenberg finally admitted in mid-February has been going on this whole time. His bloc continued pumping Ukraine full of increasingly higher quality arms and training more of its troops to NATO standards exactly as it planned to do had Donbass been reconquered, while Russia partially mobilized its trained reservists and ramped up its military-industrial production.

The New York Times Spills The Beans

Instead of settling for the present stalemate by seeking to freeze the Line of Contact via a Korean-like armistice, the West saw the opportunity to put its proxy war plans against Russia into action ahead of schedule. Had Donbass been reconquered by Ukraine last spring like NATO envisaged, then Kiev would have been armed to the teeth and extensively trained for years prior to provoking a crisis over Crimea, but the decision was made to test it now since it’s partially ready and the pretext already exists.

The New York Times (NYT) hinted at this motivation in their recent article titled “As Ukraine Launches Counteroffensive, Definitions of ‘Success’ Vary”, which revealed that “Essentially, the United States and its allies will be looking at the counteroffensive for evidence that their plan of remaking the Ukrainian army into a modern force that fights with NATO tactics, and that can use complex maneuvers and advanced equipment to allow a smaller force to defeat a larger one, is sound.”

The West’s Reality Check

The influx of over $165 billion worth of military support to Ukraine from NATO proved too tempting of an opportunity for the bloc’s most hawkish decisionmakers to pass up in terms of finally testing their arms and strategies against a peer competitor. Considering the likelihood of Russia entrenching itself even deeper into those territories that Ukraine claims as its own and recalling the neck-and-neck NATO-Russian “race of logistics”, the decision was made to test it now instead of face greater difficulties later.

The NYT reported that expectations are tempered as a result of this newfound context: “Privately, U.S. and European officials concede that pushing all of Russia’s forces out of occupied Ukrainian land is highly unlikely. Still, two themes emerge as clear ideas of ‘success’: that the Ukrainian army retake and hold on to key swaths of territory previously occupied by the Russians, and that Kyiv deal the Russian military a debilitating blow that forces the Kremlin to question the future of its military options in Ukraine.

The outlet then proceeded to indicate some tangible benchmarks for “success” such as “retaking some parts of the Donbas or pushing Russia out of agricultural and mining areas in southeastern Ukraine”, “Seizing the nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia”, and/or “cut[ting] off, or at least squeez[ing], the so-called land bridge.” These moderate goals are a far cry from the maximalist one that’s officially being pursued by NATO and Ukraine, which shows what a reality check the past 15 months of fighting have been.

NATO’s Utter Humiliation By Russia

Even worse for them is that Russia didn’t just destroy a sizeable amount of their so-called “wunderwaffen” over the past few days, but even released videos proving its accomplishments, thus utterly humiliating NATO. The bloc’s most hawkish decisionmakers were so eager to receive large-scale battlefield data from their Ukrainian proxies’ fielding of NATO equipment against the West’s Russian peer competitor that they arrogantly overlooked all the signs that this risked tremendously backfiring.

It was wrongly thought after Russia’s pullbacks in Kharkov and Kherson Regions late last year that the entire front would collapse if it was pushed strongly enough by NATO-trained Ukrainians fielding some of that bloc’s most famous equipment during the planned counteroffensive over half a year later. This assessment ignored the particularities of those two situations and assumed that Russia was incapable of learning from its prior shortcomings, which directly led to the West’s disaster over the past few days.

That’s not to say that Ukraine’s counteroffensive might not achieve some success despite the enormous physical costs that this would certainly entail, but just that global perceptions about Western power have just been shattered after Russia shared videos of it destroying their “wunderwaffen”. If more sober-minded decisionmakers had the final say in whether the counteroffensive should go ahead, they might have calculated that it’s better to preserve the illusion of dominance than risk having it dispelled.

Great Power Competition

It might have been inevitable in hindsight that the greenlight would be given to Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive, however, when remembering that the US has been planning to test its new proxy war model against a peer competitor since at least December 2017. The National Security Strategy that was released at the time declared that “great power competition has returned”, specifically identifying China and Russia as the two that the US must actively contain.

Despite Trump continuing to arm Ukraine and impose sanctions against Russia during his tenure, he appears to have sincerely wanted to strike a deal with the Kremlin in order to then focus entirely on containing China, but he was thwarted by his permanent bureaucracy. Upon Biden coming to power, the Democrats’ plot to have Kiev reconquer Donbass as part of their grand strategic plan to contain Russia before China was once again back in play, which would have happened earlier had Hillary won in 2016.

The Biden Administration’s Gamble

The West didn’t expect Russia to stop them, let alone intervene far beyond Donbass in the unlikely scenario that it got involved, and then they wrongly predicted that it would soon collapse under sanctions. They were wrong on all three counts, which led to them being pulled by rapidly accelerating mission creep into waging a proxy war against Russia a lot earlier than they planned. Instead of being satisfied with their test data and freezing the conflict, they want even more at a much larger scale.

The most hawkish decisionmakers downplayed Russia’s proven military improvements since its pullback from Kherson last November and authorized the counteroffensive for this purpose since they were convinced that Ukraine’s NATO-trained and -armed forces would smash through the entire front. They couldn’t resist the chance to finally test their arms and strategies against a peer competitor at this scale after NATO poured over $165 billion worth of military aid into their proxy these past 15 months.

Concluding Thoughts

Awareness of these real motivations explains why the counteroffensive is the West’s most important military campaign since World War II, which was the last time that they conventionally fought a military peer. Even though they’re only doing so by proxy right now, they’re still receiving the large-scale data that they require in order to fine-tune their plans ahead of possibly waging a direct war against one. What the West has learned over the past few days, however, is that they shouldn’t take victory over Russia for granted.

June 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Counteroffensive Runs Into Defensive Wall

By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 10.06.2023

Over the course of the past few days, Ukraine has thrown two of its best-trained, best-equipped mechanized brigades into offensive operations against entrenched Russian defenders in the Zaporozhye sector of the front lines.

These two brigades had been hand-picked for this job, having been equipped with modern Western tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, supported by Western-supplied artillery, and using NATO-specific tactics shaped by NATO-provided intelligence and NATO operational planning. In short, these two brigades represented a top-level NATO-level capability, the epitome of the nexus between Ukraine and the Collective West in their ongoing war to destroy Russia.

They failed.

As the world comes to grips with the imagery of destroyed US-manufactured M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and German-made Leopard 2A6 tanks abandoned and burning on the Ukrainian steppe, the harsh truth regarding the futility of its larger designs—the strategic defeat of Russia—is starting to sink in.

The reality, however, is that Ukraine was never going to achieve its stated objective of punching through the Russian defenses to sever the land bridge connecting Crimea with Russia proper. This was pie-in-the-sky thinking promulgated by Ukraine’s Western supporters to motivate the Ukrainians into committing the equivalent of mass suicide to inflict similarly prohibitive casualties among the Russian defenders.

The Western hope was that Russia would become demoralized by these casualties and accept a negotiated end to the conflict on terms acceptable to both Ukraine and its Western allies.

So far, Ukraine and its Western allies have failed.

The genesis of this failure can be traced to two things. First, the low-opinion Ukraine and their NATO allies had regarding the combat capabilities of the Russian army, and in particular those forces deployed in the Zaporozhye region, and second, the unrealistic expectations assigned to NATO training and equipment that had been provided to the Ukrainian forces assigned the task of breaking through the Russian defenses.

The area selected by Ukraine and its NATO partners as the focus of effort for the counteroffensive was held by the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division, part of the 58th Combined Arms Army. The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank with close ties to US and NATO, claimed that the troops of the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division “are predominantly comprised of mobilized recruits and volunteers and are therefore likely to face some problems with poor training and discipline.”

Moreover, it accused at least one of the subordinate regiments—the 70th motorized rifle regiment—of performing poorly during the initial phases of the Special Military Operation in 2022.

It is therefore reasonable to believe that NATO and Ukrainian military planners, using intelligence assessments that highlighted perceived command and control weaknesses and poor morale among the Russian forces which, when combined with poor past performance, believed that the Russian defenses in the Zaporozhye sector manned by the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division would collapse under the weight of a NATO-style assault, allowing Ukrainian forces to penetrate deep into the Russian defenses.

While the fighting in Zaporozhye is not yet finished, the initial results on the battlefield show that, contrary to the expectations of Ukraine and its NATO partners, the men of the 42ndGuards Rifle Division performed their tasks in a professional manner, decisively defeating the Ukrainian assault forces. The 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment has been singled out as performing very well under difficult circumstances. The same can be said of the 291st Motorized Rifle Regiment and the 71st Motorized Rifles Regiment, along with special forces soldiers from the 22nd Spetsnaz Brigade. Analysts from ISW, in assessing the initial successes of the Russian defenders, noted that “Russian forces appear to have executed their formal tactical defensive doctrine in response to the Ukrainian attacks.”

This, of course, should have taken no one by surprise, since the individual in command of Russian forces in the Zaporozhye area is Colonel General Alexander Romanchuk, the man who is responsible for conceiving modern Russian defensive doctrine. In April 2023 Romanchuk, who at that time was serving as the Rector of the Combined Arms Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (the equivalent of the United States Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth), co-authored an article titled “Prospects for Improving the Efficiency of Army Defensive Operations.”

In the article, Romanchuk noted that the main mission of a defending force “is to neutralize the initiative of the advancing enemy, i.e., to bring him to the state of impossibility to continue advancing with deployed forces. Ultimately, this allows you to reduce his activity and seize the initiative by going over to a decisive counter-offensive to defeat the enemy with shock groups.”

This represents a restatement of Soviet-era doctrine. Indeed, Romanchuk draws upon the defeat of German offensive operations in the vicinity of Lake Balaton in March 1945 as representing an ideal implementation of this doctrine, underscoring “a bold maneuver of the reserves… especially artillery, the skillful use of anti-tank reserves, vigilant detachments of obstacles and the arrangement of fire ambushes” by the Russian forces in defeating the German attack.

Romanchuk, however, did not simply reiterate old doctrine in his paper. Instead, he emphasizes the concept of “dispersed forces” in building a defensive scheme capable of prevailing on the modern battlefield. “A dispersed defensive operation should become a logical response to a superior enemy,” Romanchuk writes.

Such an operation “is based on the retention of important areas, objects and transport hubs in separate most important directions,” and is “characterized by an even distribution of forces and resources in areas, and decentralized use of formations and military units of the armed forces and special forces.”

Romanchuk then went on to describe the ideal deployment scheme for these “dispersed forces” — one which focuses on three separate “zones of defense responsibility” separated by distances of between 8 and 12 kilometers. These gaps are covered by Russian artillery. The first “zone” is the “cover” zone, whose task is to define the main axes of the enemy’s advance. The next “zone” is the “main line of defense”, which is designed to halt enemy attacks using obstacle belts and fire power (artillery and air strikes). The last “zone” is the “reserve”, which is responsible for mounting counterattacks designed to push the attacking forces back to their original positions.

Romanchuk’s doctrine was the blueprint for the Russian defensive scheme employed in Zaporozhye. Indeed, Romanchuk was pulled from his teaching position at the Combined Arms Academy and put in command of the Zaporozhye sector. In other words, the place chosen by NATO and Ukrainian intelligence as the “weak spot” in the Russian defensive scheme was designed by Russia’s top specialist in defensive combat and placed under his direct command.

NATO and Ukraine gambled that Russia lacked the military capacity to successfully implement its own military doctrine, believing that Russian command staffs lacked the communications necessary to coordinate the complex operations necessary to implement this doctrine, and that the Russian forces—especially those who were recently mobilized—lacked both the training and morale needed to perform well under stressful combat conditions.

They were wrong on both counts.

NATO and Ukraine’s poor assessment of Russian military capability mirrored their own exaggerated assessments of Ukrainian units tasked with attacking the Russian defenses in Zaporozhye, namely the 33rd and 47th Mechanized Brigades. Both units were the recipients of modern NATO equipment, including Leopard tanks (the 33rd) and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (the 47th). The officers and men of both units had been provided with the best training NATO could provide regarding modern combined-arms operations, including weeks of specialized training in Germany which focused on platoon, company, and battalion tactics and operations integrating firepower and maneuver while undertaking offensive operations.

The Ukrainian troops, working side by side with their NATO instructors, started by using computer simulations to introduce them to the complexities of the modern battlefield, before moving to the field for realistic hands-on training using the very NATO-provided equipment they would use against the Russians.

US “experts” like Mark Hertling, a retired US Army general believed that the combination of advanced western military equipment and superior NATO-style tactics “will allow Ukraine’s emerging combined-arms teams to conduct high-tempo maneuver” capable of overwhelming the Russian defenders in Ukraine.

He was wrong.

Hertling and his active-duty NATO brethren would have done well to listen to the words of General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, when speaking before a Swedish defense conference this past January.

“The scale of this war [i.e., the Russian-Ukraine conflict] is out of proportion with all of our recent thinking,” Cavoli noted.

The takeaway from this revelation is that NATO is neither trained nor equipped to fight the kind of fight they are demanding Ukraine execute against Russia.

The sad truth of the matter is that there are no NATO forces capable of successfully executing the offensive tasks that have been assigned to Ukraine. No one doubts the courage and commitment of the Ukrainian forces which have been thrown against Colonel General Romanchuk’s defensive barrier. But courage and commitment cannot overcome the reality that NATO lacks the ability, both in terms of equipment and doctrine, to successfully defeat Russia in a force-on-force confrontation, especially one which has Russia playing to its doctrinal strength (defensive operations) while NATO seeks to do something (an assault against prepared defenses) that it has no experience in doing.

Moreover, NATO and the Ukrainian high command threw the Ukrainian brigades into the teeth of the Russian defensive buzzsaw without adequate fire support, meaning that the Russians were free to maximize their superiority in artillery and air power to neutralize and destroy the Ukrainian attacking forces before they could generate the momentum expected from “high-tempo maneuver.”

The end result: Russian reality trumped NATO theory on the battlefield, and it is Ukraine’s military that once again paid the heaviest price. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that this situation will change anytime soon, if ever, a fact that bodes poorly for the future of Ukraine and NATO going forward.

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

Russia’s Release Of Captured Ukrainian Fighters To Hungary Sent Three Messages

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 10, 2023

The Russian Orthodox Church’s press service revealed late last week that Patriarch Kirill mediated an unusual prisoner transfer. According to their statement, “at the request of the Hungarian side, a group of Ukrainian war prisoners of Transcarpathian background, who participated in active service, was transferred to Hungary.” The Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister later said that Kiev wasn’t informed of this ahead of time, which prompted all sorts of speculation about this event.

Some background context is in order before going any further. Most Westerners might not be aware of it, but Hungary is very worried about the human rights of its co-ethnics in Ukraine, who found themselves in that former Soviet Republic as a result of post-World War II border changes. What’s now known as “Zakarpattia Oblast” had been part of Hungarian Civilization for over a millennium up until the interwar period when it was first part of Czechoslovakia before being given to Ukraine by the Allies.

Kiev began to crack down on all its minorities after the Western-backed spree of urban terrorism popularly known as “EuroMaidan” overthrew that country’s government in 2014. Ethnic Hungarians’ linguistic rights were rescinded, including the freedom for members of this community to study in their native language. They were then conscripted by Kiev to fight in the NATO-Russian proxy war that broke out 15 months ago despite the majority of them wanting to be left alone to live in peace with everyone.

Having brought the reader up to speed about this group’s background, they can now better understand why they were transferred to Hungary instead of Ukraine. The Hungarian news portal Telex published a detailed analysis here about their speculative legal status at the time that they entered that country. It suggests that Russia released them from their formal status as prisoners of war so they could travel to Hungary as civilians, where they might have been given citizenship to prevent their return to Ukraine.

That’s a sensible enough interpretation, but whatever their legal status may or may not have been at the time of transfer, this very event itself sent three very strong messages. Recalling the Russian Orthodox Church’s statement, this was done at the behest of the Hungarian side, though it’s unclear how Budapest became aware that its co-ethnics were captured by Russia. More than likely, Moscow informed it of this upon learning their identities, after which Budapest requested the transfer.

Hungary thus sent the first message by showing that it sincerely believes that its co-ethnics in Ukraine are exploited as cannon fodder. The second one was sent by Russia and concerns its tacit agreement with this assessment, which explains why it presumably contacted Hungary after learning that it had captured some of its co-ethnics. Both countries then sent the final message to Ukraine by carrying out this transfer and showing the world that they don’t trust Kiev to protect minorities within its borders.

Those captured Hungarian minority fighters never wanted to participate in this conflict but were forced against their will to do so since Kiev refused to give them exemptions from conscription, which is why they fear for their lives if they’re sent back since they know they’ll be thrown back to the frontlines. Their personal experiences attest to the fact that it isn’t so-called “Russian propaganda” to claim that Kiev violates its minorities’ human rights.

Extrapolating from this, the only reason why Ukraine won’t exempt minorities from conscription and consequently counteract Russia’s aforementioned accusation in part is that it desperately needs as many fighters as possible. This insight implies that there’s a very high casualty rate, which in turn corroborates Wagner chief Prigozhin’s infamous claim that his forces turned the Battle of Artyomovsk into a meat grinder for Kiev.

This unusual transfer therefore exposes the dark truth that the Mainstream Media has hidden from the world since the start of this conflict if those who hear about this event actually take the time to dwell on all its dimensions. Russia and Hungary sent three very clear messages regarding the true state of affairs for Ukraine’s minorities, who are exploited as cannon fodder in a conflict that they never wanted to participate in but are forced against their will to fight on pain of imprisonment or worse.

June 10, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

US & NATO’s Ultimate Goal is to ‘Take Over Ukrainian Land, People and Resources’

By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 10.06.2023

Shortly after the fabled Ukrainian counteroffensive finally started, it became increasingly apparent that NATO military equipment and training won’t be enough for the Kiev regime forces to penetrate Russian defensive lines.

With the Ukrainian offensive now underway, Kiev so far has virtually nothing to show in the way of gains, whereas images of wrecked Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles used by Ukrainian troops have already started circulating on social media.

Even though the United States and its allies have been generously supplying Ukraine with armaments and military vehicles during the ongoing conflict, it appears that Ukrainian forces are “institutionally and operationally unable to successfully absorb the wide and inconsistent variety of equipment and weaponry” while “under fire and duress,” said US Ret.Lt.Col Karen Kwiatkowski.

“This is the fault of the US and NATO which seeks to ride the back of Ukrainian patriotism in order to both confront and harass Russia, with an aim to take over Ukraine’s land, people and resources once there is little Ukraine left – in a kind of mini-Marshall Plan, this time completely and wholly managed and conducted by US and international crony capitalists, like Black Rock,” Kwiatkowsky, a former US Department of Defense analyst, told Sputnik.

She suggested that the United States and Britain were likely the ones who actually needed Kiev to launch this counteroffensive and that it would seem “as if Western governments see Ukraine little more than a snuff film, for their entertainment and profit.”

“Clearly, what Ukraine needs is to find a way to get out from under the US political cycle and NATO’s organizational expansion obsession, and make peace,” Kwiatkowsky mused, postulating that such a deal would likely entail the separation of the “Russian side of the former Ukraine” from the “Ukrainian side.”

She did point out, however, that so far the US and the UK politicians have been quick to suppress any attempts by the Ukrainian side to “make peaceful signs or noises.”

Meanwhile, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and former CIA station chief Phillip Giraldi has observed that some Western media outlets have been trying to make it look like the Ukrainian counteroffensive is succeeding and that Kiev regime forces are “overrunning the Russian positions.”

Commenting on this development, Giraldi suggested that politicians in the US, the UK and Germany “need to be able to speak positively about what is occurring” in Ukraine, since the public in their respective countries is starting to turn against the conflict “as it grinds on and on consuming hundreds of billions dollars worth of equipment.”

He further suggested that people in the United States, Britain and Germany are none too thrilled about their governments directly backing the regime in Kiev, which he described as “a regime that nearly everyone concedes is hopelessly corrupt.”

“There is talk here in Washington that the Ukrainian generals might depose Zelensky and enter into negotiations with Moscow,” Giraldi added.

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

Where Do 2024 US Presidential Candidates Stand on Ukraine?

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 09.06.2023

Over a dozen US presidential candidates have tossed their hats into the 2024 ring. Sputnik has analyzed what the contenders’ attitude to Washington’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine is.

The Russo-Ukraine conflict remains one of the focal points of the 2024 election campaign. Republican and Democratic hopefuls are striving to rally support from the American public which appears to have grown impatient with the overseas standoff.

Despite roughly a half of Americans still backing the provision of military aid to Ukraine, a marked drop in the public’s willingness to pay a cost in terms of higher energy price, inflation, and plummetting living standards has been registered by pollsters over the last several months. Per Brookings, the realization that there is no end in sight for the conflict has seemingly become sobering to US voters.

Do US presidential candidates – who are polling at 1% or above in recent Ipsos polls and thus having a chance of coming out on top – meet the American people’s expectations when it comes to the Ukraine conflict?

Democratic Party

Joe Biden

Incumbent US President Joe Biden has repeatedly stated that he would support the Kiev regime for the long haul. The Biden administration is the most vocal advocate of fuelling the unfolding standoff and imposing a “strategic defeat” on Russia. To that end, Joe Biden has announced over $100 billion worth of Ukraine aid packages since the onset of the conflict.

“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never,” Biden told a crowd in Warsaw, Poland, on February 21, 2023.

During his June 8 meeting with UK Prime Minister Sunak, the US president signaled his readiness to continue providing the Kiev regime with weapons together with London. Simultaneously, Team Biden is stirring up the waters of the Pacific by beefing up US military presence in close proximity to China. Biden is continuing to go all in on the dual standoff with Moscow and Beijing, even though this policy is backfiring both on the US and its European allies.

Marianne Williamson

Marianne Williamson, the author of “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles” (1992), former “Spiritual Leader” for the Church of Today and political candidate, has called for closing over 800 US military installations in over 80 countries in her May 27 Substack op-ed denouncing them as “nothing more than a continuation of the excessive militarization of American foreign policy.” She also condemned Washington’s “imperialistic ventures”, “actions regarding NATO, and putting Aegis missiles in Poland”, as exacerbating the situation vis-à-vis Russia.

Still, that does not mean that the US is “responsible” for the Russo-Ukraine conflict, “nor does it mean that our larger interests, the interests of the people of Ukraine or the interests of the rest of the world, are best served by our withholding support from Ukraine now,” insists Williamson. In short, the author is advocating further arming the Kiev regime.

Robert Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late US attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy, formally launched his presidential campaign on April 19, 2023. In contrast to his Democratic rivals, Kennedy does not support the US proxy war in Ukraine.

In his lengthy May 3 tweet, RFK pointed out that it was US neocons, who crossed all “red lines” and dragged Russia and Ukraine into the conflict:

“[Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky almost certainly could have avoided the 2022 war with Russia simply by uttering five words — ‘I will not join NATO’; But pressured by neocons in the Biden White House, and by violent fascist elements within the Ukrainian government, Zelensky integrated his army with NATO’s and allowed the US to place nuclear-capable Aegis missile launchers along Ukraine’s 1,200-mile border with Russia.”

“[US neocons] wanted war as part of their strategic grand plan to destroy any country such as Russia that resists American imperial expansion,” RFK Jr. reiterated on May 25 on Twitter.

Republican Party

Donald Trump

Former US President Donald Trump has made it clear that as president he would stop the Russo-Ukraine conflict in 24 hours after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

“When I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours,” Trump said in a CNN town hall on May 11, adding that both Moscow and Kiev have their “weaknesses” and “strengths.”

Trump avoided answering the question, which country he would prefer to win: “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people. I want everybody to stop dying,” the former president told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

Ron DeSantis

In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wrote: “While the US has many vital national interests, becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”

In April, DeSantis reiterated his stance: “It’s in everybody’s interest to try to get to a place where we can have a ceasefire,” told Nikkei Asia. “You don’t want to end up in a [Battle of] Verdun situation, where you just have mass casualties, mass expense and end up with a stalemate.”

The Ukraine issue was not even mentioned in DeSantis’ campaign launched on Twitter in May.

Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ramaswamy, an American entrepreneur and politician, also stands for ending the Ukraine conflict. On June 6, Ramaswamy outlined his foreign policy vision in a Twitter post, condemning President Joe Biden’s Ukraine support for “pushing Russia into a closer military alliance with China.”

The politician proposes “a Korean war style armistice agreement” between Russia and Ukraine, “which would cede most of the Donbass region to Russia”; suspend any US military assistance to the Kiev regime; establish “a permanent moratorium on Ukraine joining NATO”; lift sanctions against Russia; withdraw NATO troops from Ukraine and close all their bases in Eastern Europe; and accept Russia into the security infrastructure of Europe.

In return, per Ramaswamy, Russia should cease all sorts of technical military cooperation and security partnerships with China; withdraw its nuclear weapons and delivery capabilities from Kaliningrad and Belarus; pull out Russian security specialists from Latin America; and re-enter into the New START Treaty.

“I’ve offered a clear & specific path to end the war in Ukraine now while dismantling the Russia-China alliance. No other GOP candidate has touched this with a 10-foot pole,” Ramaswamy summed up.

Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, has taken a stance which is the polar opposite: “This is bigger than Ukraine,” she stated during the CNN town hall on June 4. “This is a war about freedom and it’s one we have to win.”

Haley said if Russia is allowed to achieve its stated goals of demilitarization and de-Nazifying of Ukraine, a world war would be round the corner:

“China says Taiwan’s next, we better believe them. Russia said Poland and the Baltics are next, if that happens, we are looking at a world war. This is about preventing war.”

The former UN ambassador fell short of specifying the sources behind her claims of Moscow and Beijing’s plans of “invading” Poland, the three Baltic nations and the island which the People’s Republic of China has always considered its inalienable part.

Mike Pence

Former US Vice President Mike Pence’s stance on Ukraine aligns him with his fellow party member, Nikki Haley. Still, instead of predicting a world war in case Russia wins, Pence has suggested that Washington is fighting for “freedom” in Ukraine. The ex-veep has also subjected Trump and DeSantis to criticism over their attitude to the Ukraine conflict.

Having filed the paperwork to run on June 5, he expressed willingness to support the Kiev regime during Wednesday’s CNN town hall in Iowa:

“I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal, and I know who needs to win the war in Ukraine,” Pence said. “And it’s the people fighting for their freedom and fighting to restore their national sovereignty in Ukraine. And America – it’s not our war, but freedom is our fight. And we need to give the people of Ukraine the ability to fight and defend their freedom.”

Tim Scott

US Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has signaled strong support for arming Kiev since the beginning of the Russo-Ukraine conflict. According to Scott, Biden has done “a terrible job” articulating to the Americans “what is America’s vital, national interest in Ukraine”, which, according to the presidential candidate, is “degrading the Russian military.” Judging from Scott’s words, he expects Russia to attack the US one day.

“The more we degrade the Russian military, the less likely there is to be an attack on our sovereign territory,” Scott told NBC News on May 22. “And it protects our NATO partners. I think that we should be in Ukraine. I believe that the truth is simple, that degrading the Russian military is in America’s best interest. And the more we do that, the faster we get it done, the better off the entire world is.”

Chris Christie

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie launched his presidential nomination campaign with a June 6 town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire. Prior to that, Christie called Trump a “coward” and “a puppet of Putin,” over the former president’s stance on the Ukraine conflict.

Speaking to GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on May 11, Christie claimed that Washington should have done more to support the Kiev regime from day one of the conflict and insisted that the US should remain a global leader in providing weapons to Ukraine.

“In the end, we are in a proxy war right now with China, whether we like it or not, and their support of Russia in Ukraine is proof of that,” claimed the former New Jersey governor. “We have to make sure we send a very clear message, not only to the Chinese, but to our own allies that America’s not going to be a cut and run country.”

Doug Burgum

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is another Republican presidential contender advocating support for Kiev. When the Russo-Ukrainian conflict erupted, he expressed solidarity with the Kiev regime, stating that “the United States and its allies must stand together in support of Ukraine and hold Russia accountable for its unprovoked attacks.”

Still, Burgum views the conflict as a chance for the US to step up energy production in the first place (which is quite understandable given that North Dakota is one of the top oil-producing states in the US):

“This international crisis underscores the importance of US energy security and increasing American production so we can sell energy to our friends and allies versus buying it from our enemies,” he stated on February 24, 2022.

He reiterated his stance on Wednesday while announcing his 2024 bid: “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin only dared to invade Ukraine because our allies in Western Europe are all dependent on Russian energy,” Burgum claimed.

Who’s Commanding Most Support?

Biden has gotten the most backing among Democratic and Democratic leaning voters with a staggering 60%; while 20% support Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and 8% would vote for author Marianne Williamson, according to SSRS Political and Election Polling, released on May 25. However, pollsters warn about a decline in Biden’s nationwide approval over the past six months from 42% in December 2022 to 35% on May 25, 2023.

To date, former President Donald Trump has commanded the largest support in the Republican 2024 primary polls, as per Project FiveThiryEight survey aggregator. The national average support as of June 8 indicates that Trump got 53.8%; DeSantis (21.3%); Mike Pence (5.4%); Nikki Haley (4.5%); Ramaswamy (3.5%); Сhris Christie (less than 3%); Tim Scott (2.2%); and Doug Burgum (1%).

June 10, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine hits flood shelter with UK-supplied missiles – Kherson official

RT | June 10, 2023

Ukrainian forces have attacked several temporary shelters for people evacuated in the wake of the breach of the Kakhovka dam, the acting governor of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, said on Saturday morning, sharing pictures of the devastated facility.

The strike on the shelter on the left bank of the Dnieper River was carried out around 5am local time, allegedly using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles, Saldo said in a statement. There was at least one casualty, a woman, according to preliminary information.

The Black Sea village of Zhelezny Port also came under “fierce shelling” overnight, with a local hotel hosting the evacuees “destroyed,” according to the official.

The acting governor shared several pictures of the heavily damaged facility, as well as a video of a villa engulfed in flames.

“The targeted strikes are being carried out with British missiles, delivered to the Kiev regime to unleash ‘peace’ on civilian infrastructure,” Saldo wrote.

Earlier on Friday, one person was killed and another injured after several rockets hit a children’s summer camp in the same area. According to Saldo, first responders discovered the debris of Storm Shadows at the scene.

The Russian-held Kakhovka dam in Kherson Region was destroyed early on Tuesday morning. Several people were killed, while thousands more were exposed to flooding.

Kherson authorities declared a state of emergency across the entire territory controlled by Russia. Saldo said that a total of between 22,000 and 40,000 people were located in the disaster area.

Moscow and Kiev have traded accusations over who is to blame for the incident, which triggered mass evacuation efforts on both sides of the Dnieper River. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov accused Ukraine of “deliberate sabotage” in a bid to deprive Crimea of drinking water and deflect attention away from Kiev’s botched counteroffensive in Donbass.

June 10, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Kiev’s Alleged Proof That Russia Blew Up The Kakhovka Dam Doesn’t Stand Up To Scrutiny

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 9, 2023

The Ukrainian secret police claimed on Friday to have intercepted a call between two Russian soldiers where one of them allegedly admitted that their side blew up the Kakhovka Dam. That person explicitly denied that Kiev was responsible and instead said that it was a false flag attack by Russia’s own troops that supposedly went awry, which would explain their losses downstream. They also said that the flooding killed thousands of animals in a nearby safari park.

Nobody should believe the account that was shared in this recording since it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. For starters, it’s already suspicious enough that the three talking points made in the recording – that Ukraine wasn’t responsible, Russia staged a false flag that didn’t go according to plan, and thousands of animals also died – perfectly align with Kiev’s official narrative. The chances that one of their opponents echoed all three points in a single secretly recorded conversation is highly unlikely.

The second reason why this is dubious is because it was shared a day after Foreign Minister Kuleba angrily rejected Turkiye’s pragmatic proposal to form a multilateral committee for investigating the Kakhovka Dam’s destruction. Kiev would have certainly known that refusing to participate in a truly neutral investigation into this war crime would make their side look guilty, which explains why they fabricated this recording in order to desperately divert attention towards Russia instead.

And finally, the global media attention that this recording just generated serves to drown out the discussion that Tucker Carlson sparked in the first episode of his new show on Twitter where he informed the 110 million people who watched it about a damning Washington Post report from December. Ukrainian Major General Andrey Kovalchuk not only admitted to plotting the exact same terrorist attack that happened half a year later, but even to testing its viability with US-supplied HIMARS missiles.

The content, timing, and context within which the Ukrainian secret police just shared their alleged proof that Russia blew up the Kakhovka Dam are all questionable in and of themselves, let alone when taken together. No honest observer would extend credence to this recording, which is arguably fabricated for the reasons that were explained. Those who sincerely want to know the truth about what happened should pressure Ukraine to join Turkiye’s proposed UN-led multilateral investigation committee.

Kuleba’s innuendo that the deck would be stacked against Kiev in the event that it participates in a UN-led investigation is discredited by the fact that this global body has consistently taken its side in every one of its disputes against Russia since the start of the special operation. Unlike UNGA votes where countries can be bribed or pressured to influence the political outcome of this process, however, no such trickery can take place in an evidence-driven investigation where Russia participates as an equal party.

Ukraine knows that Turkiye’s proposal would prove that it blew up the Kakhovka Dam exactly as Kovalchuk admitted to the Washington Post that Kiev had been plotting to do since late last year, which is why it refuses to join and instead fabricated this “evidence” as its excuse. Nevertheless, Russia, Turkiye, and other UN members can still proceed with this investigation even without Ukraine if they have the will to do so, but the West might claim that it’s “illegitimate” so long as Kiev isn’t involved.

In the court of public opinion, however, Ukraine comes off as guilty by refusing to participate in a truly neutral investigation into this war crime. Having its infamously corrupt secret police share a suspicious recording that coincidentally echoes all three of Kiev’s talking points and then claiming that the case is closed on this issue isn’t something that someone who’s innocent would do. Anyone who claims otherwise has an agenda in gaslighting others in order to cover up for Kiev’s culpability in this war crime.

June 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

EU fears ‘pro-Russian’ votes in key states – Politico

RT | June 8, 2023

“It would be a disaster” if Ukraine-skeptic leaders were elected in Austria and Slovakia, a European Commission official told Politico on Tuesday. The EU reportedly fears that a swing to populism in both countries could jeopardize future sanctions against Russia, as well as the bloc’s military aid to Kiev.

Austria’s center-right government is unpopular, and concerns about immigration and the rising cost of living have made Herbert Kickl’s right-wing Freedom Party the most popular political faction since late last year. Legislative elections are scheduled for next autumn at the latest.

Similar concerns in Slovakia have seen former Prime Minister Robert Fico surge in popularity. With just three months to go until parliamentary elections, Fico’s Direction – Slovak Social Democracy party is leading in the polls, as the country labors under an unelected government of technocrats.

“It would be a disaster” if both men were to take office, an anonymous “senior [European] Commission official” told Politico, referring to Kickl and Fico’s stance toward Russia.

Politico evidently agrees with the European Commission, and has published multiple articles in recent days describing the Austrian politician as “a pro-Russian, anti-American conspiracy theorist,” and his Slovakian counterpart as a spreader of “Russian disinformation.”

Both potential prime ministers are vehement opponents of immigration, particularly from Islamic countries. When it comes to Ukraine, Kickl has declared NATO as responsible for the conflict as Russia and considers Austria’s backing of EU sanctions on Moscow to be a violation of the country’s neutrality. In March of this year, Kickl and his Freedom Party colleagues walked out of parliament during an address by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

Slovakia is a member of NATO and has given Ukraine armored personnel carriers, howitzers, and its entire fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets since last February. Fico, who served two stints as prime minister in the last two decades, has said he would cut off this military aid.

Until now, Hungary has been the only EU member to consistently oppose sanctions on Russia, with Viktor Orban’s government usually agreeing to the bloc’s restrictions only after carving out concessions for Hungary. Budapest is currently holding up the EU’s eleventh sanctions package over Ukraine’s blacklisting of several of its companies as “war sponsors,” while simultaneously blocking a $542 million tranche of EU military aid to Kiev.

Were Kickl and Fico to take office, Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia would form a powerful political bloc, and could exert significant pressure on Brussels to change its Ukraine policy.

June 8, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Kakhovka dam has been destroyed and the Dnieper River is flooded: How will this affect the military conflict?

By Vladislav Ugolny | RT | June 8, 2023

On Tuesday night, the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP), now part of southern-western Russia and formerly on Ukrainian territory, was partially damaged and 11 of its 28 spans were destroyed. Torrents of water from the reservoir rushed downstream through the broken dam and into the Dnieper River. This has led to a humanitarian disaster affecting residents of both banks of the river, significantly impacted the environment, and altered the deployment of military forces in the region.

Who benefits most from the catastrophe and how will it impact on the ongoing conflict?

Prerequisites for disaster

The Kakhovka HPP has been under the control of Russian troops since day one of the offensive, in February 2022. Along with the Antonov automobile and railway bridges, it was one of the key points used for their advance and positioning in the then southern part of Ukraine. Later, the bridge over the dam was used for supplying troops in Kherson and Nikolaev regions.

After receiving long-range weapons from NATO, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) attacked the routes to prevent Russian use of them. On the night of August 12, 2022, the AFU fired at the hydroelectric dam using rocket artillery. The bombing of the dam was confirmed at the time by Vladislav Nazarov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Operational Command South. It was applauded by Western experts and the Ukrainian media.

While the former were busy assessing whether the shelling guaranteed the Russian Army’s isolation, the latter tried to outdo each other with “humor.” One of Ukraine’s main propaganda outlets, the “Trukha” Telegram channel (with over 2.7M subscribers) joked about “inflatable ducks.” However, after the destruction of the dam, their narrative changed and the post was deleted.

On December 29, The Washington Post, citing Ukrainian General Andrey Kovalchuk, reported that the Ukrainian army had conducted test strikes on the floodgates of the HPP with HIMARS launchers – apparently, to see whether this would cause a rise in water levels downstream. The plan was to flush Russian crossings with a torrent of water from the damaged dam.

This is in fact what exactly happened on June 6. However, the Russians had departed from the right bank by that time. In November of last year, Moscow retreated from the area due to the AFU’s constant strikes and the risk of the collapse of the Kakhovka HPP.

The constant shelling didn’t just damage the structure of the hydroelectric power plant. It also made maintenance increasingly difficult, and this played a part in the catastrophe. Since Ukraine became independent in 1991, the Dnieper reservoir cascade (a series of HPPs along the Dnieper River) has not been sufficiently funded, which led to multiple negative assessments of the HPP’s condition, in particular by the US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE).

The final contributing factor was the water level in the Kakhovka reservoir. It rose from 14 meters in February to 17.5 meters in early June due to Ukraine opening the floodgates of the Dnieper HPP, located upriver in Zaporozhye. Previously the reservoir water level rarely exceeded 16.5 meters. Moreover, Ukrainian shelling prevented staff of the Kakhovka HPP from undertaking repairs and regulating water discharge.

The current situation 

Novaya Kakhovka and the surrounding villages under Russian control were the first to suffer from the destruction of the hydroelectric power plant. After assessing the situation, the local authorities implemented a flood emergency evacuation plan. However, many residents refused to evacuate and stayed in their flooded homes. By the morning of June 7, the water level in Novaya Kakhovka began to subside.

In the coastal villages located downstream, the situation was more severe. The village of Korsunka is completely flooded, and Dneprani, Krynki, and Kazachiyi Lageri are partially submerged. Floodwaters also reached Alyoshka, an important city for the Russian army. A state of emergency has been declared in the part of Kherson region controlled by Moscow. Currently, seven people have been reported missing.

The flood has also affected territories controlled by Ukraine. The city of Kherson was partially flooded, and over a thousand people have been evacuated. According to the Ukrainian authorities, the floodwaters began subsiding on Wednesday morning

The Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant is currently completely submerged. This poses a further threat to the HPP, especially as Ukrainians continue discharging water into the Kakhovka reservoir. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has claimed that Kiev is responsible for the catastrophe, and that the Kakhovka HPP shows signs of deliberate sabotage by Ukraine, undertaken due to the failure of its much-hyped counteroffensive.

Putin himself has decried the “barbaric act of destroying the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant in Kherson region,” which, according to the Russian President, has led to a “massive ecological and humanitarian catastrophe” downstream.

Ukraine blamed Russia for the disaster, accusing it of terrorism and a cynical attitude towards people in territory it controls in the Kherson region.

The humanitarian aspect

For the past six months, active battles have been raging in the territories affected by the current flood. As a result, both Russia and Ukraine regularly carried out civilian evacuations. Many internally displaced persons and refugees moved to other Russian regions from the flood plain. However, it represents yet another calamity for the local population and has made moving very relevant for the few people who have remained in their homes.

Consequently, the emergency response measures have been rather limited. After more than a year of battles, both sides have become accustomed to accommodating refugees and this new challenge hasn’t taken them by surprise.

Eventually, the water will recede and destroyed homes will again be accessible. However, returning will be difficult, even for those who are willing to risk living under constant shelling. To support refugees and motivate them to leave the war zone, Russia is issuing housing certificates and providing a one-time payment of 100,000 rubles for evacuees (about $1,200 at the current exchange rate).

Major damage has been done to the region’s water supply in the territories both under Ukrainian and Russian control. The authorities have already imposed restrictions in Krivoy Rog, a large Kiev-controlled city that receives its water from the Kakhovka reservoir.

Crop irrigation is also endangered across a large area, but the full extent of the damage from this disaster is yet to be expertly assessed.

Threat to the ZNPP

Another danger is the imminent drop in the water level of the Kakhovka reservoir, should the HPP collapse completely. Some believe that this could disrupt the cooling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) reactors – a process that relies on water from Kakhovka.

However, Russian experts do not believe that the ZNPP is endangered since the cooling pond is isolated from the reservoir from which it collects water. There is enough water to cool the two operating reactors. If additional volumes of water are needed and the water levels in the reservoir drop (which has not been observed yet), the pipes can be extended.

Officials assess the situation in a similar way. “The Zaporozhye NPP has not been impacted in any way as a result of this undoubtedly unfortunate event. The cooling system is not endangered,” said Renat Karchaa, adviser to the head of Rosenergoatom. He noted that specialists use “other technical means” to compensate for the decrease in the water levels of the Kakhovka reservoir.

The failed battle for the Dnieper river islands

After the withdrawal of the Russian Army from Kherson and the establishment of the front along the Dnieper River, both sides engaged in artillery duels. Ukraine’s army was in a more favorable position because of its location on the higher bank. However, the Russian side had the advantage of superior firepower and air forces.

Moreover, sabotage and reconnaissance groups became active at this section of the front. Small groups from both sides crossed the river on combat missions, and this led to collisions on the islands formed by the Dnieper delta.

The Russian side did not initially bother to establish full control over the islands, which was a difficult task due to the swampy terrain and high water levels. As a result, the AFU got the upper hand and gradually advanced. This worried the Russian units positioned in the area and several military correspondents.

All these efforts by both armies came to a halt on June 6. The islands in the Dnieper delta were flooded, and both sides hastened to evacuate their troops. At the same time, artillery units attempted to impede the evacuation of the enemy. This confusion might suggest that neither Moscow or Kiev really planned to destroy the dam and create a deluge.

The potential landing operation and the ‘Priazovsk Battle’

In addition to the local battles for the islands, which mostly resembled minor tactical operations, this section of the front was considered one of the main potential directions for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. According to some pundits, the AFU planned to carry out several landing operations across the river to constrain Russia’s “Dnieper” unit.

This strategy could have been used by the Ukrainians to pressure Russian troops positioned next to the “Vostok” unit, which controls the section of the front from the Kakhovka reservoir to Ugledar in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The main attack of the Ukrainian counteroffensive was projected to be inflicted on the “Vostok” to draw it into the so-called “Priazovsk Battle,” aimed at cutting off the land corridor to Crimea and Russia’s access to the Sea of Azov.

If Ukraine chose to attempt to cut through the defense of the “Vostok” unit and attack Melitopol or Berdyansk, a flanking strike by the “Dnieper” unit from Crimea and Kherson regions would pose significant danger. In order to avoid this and delay Russian reserves, the Ukrainians likely planned on conducting several landing operations.

The Ukrainian army, however, has no successful experience of conducting large-scale landing operations. The attempts to seize the Kakhovka reservoir in the summer of 2022 ended badly for them. Additionally, Ukrainian engineering units have no track record in implementing pontoon crossings in combat conditions, and small maritime vessels cannot be used to supply a large number of troops.

All this makes it highly unlikely that the Armed Forces of Ukraine could carry out a landing operation that could force the Russian Armed Forces to retreat from the coastal line. However, such a maneuver could assist the advance in the Zaporozhye region.

In present conditions, a landing operation is even less likely to take place until the water recedes. The problem isn’t just that the Dnieper has become wider, but that a large strip of the coast has essentially become a swamp, with the water level less than a meter deep.

In addition, mines earlier placed by both sides to halt the enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups are now floating about in the waters. Washed away into the river, they may end up in unexpected places downstream.

In military terms, this is a great loss for Russia as many of the defensive positions, including the first line of defense, were flooded and the Russian army will have to hastily restore them after the situation returns to normal.

Who is to blame?

There’s currently no logical argument that the destruction of the Kakhovka HPP was directly beneficial for either side. The actions of the militaries on the Dnieper Delta islands and officials in coastal settlements indicate that the events took both Ukraine and Russia by surprise. These factors, along with the lack of any video footage depicting the explosions alleged to have destroyed the hydroelectric power plant on June 6, indirectly confirm the version that the disaster was the long-term consequence of Ukraine’s HIMARS strikes on the dam. This is supported by satellite images taken from May 31 to June 4, showing part of the dam having been damaged by water pressure.

The only mystery remains as to why the Ukrainians raised the water level in the Kakhovka reservoir to a record high, thereby increasing pressure on the HPP, while maintenance personnel couldn’t do their jobs properly due to strikes from Kiev’s forces.  One of the versions is that the entire Dnieper reservoir cascade has become worn out and the Ukrainians were attempting to save their hydroelectric power plants, since their destruction could lead to serious consequences for Kiev.

Meanwhile, further destruction of the Kakhovka HPP is probable due to increasing water pressure and regular shelling which prevents access for repair crews. If this activity continues, the consequences are likely to become even more serious.

Vladislav Ugolny is a a Russian journalist born in Donetsk.

June 8, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

RFK Jr. Reveals Terrible Truth About Ukraine Pentagon ‘Concealed From Americans’

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 08.06.2023

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has characterized the Russia-US proxy war in Ukraine as an “abattoir” that has killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian troops for a geopolitical goal which has “nothing to do with Ukraine.”

“What we’re doing in Ukraine now is just a massive assault on Ukrainians. We have trapped Ukraine in a proxy war against [Russia] and they are being devoured by the geopolitical machinations of neocons in the White House who have this comic book depiction that a lot of Americans have swallowed about what is happening,” RFK Jr. said, speaking to Canadian psychologist and media commentator Jordan Peterson.

Explaining what separates his position on Ukraine from that of the incumbent, Joe Biden, RFK Jr. said that although he understood many ordinary Americans’ support for Ukraine out of “compassion” and as a “humanitarian mission,” in reality, “every step we have taken, every decision we have made appears to have been intended to prolong the war and to increase the bloodshed.”

RFK Jr. recalled Joe Biden’s slip of the tongue that the US’s real goal in Ukraine was to cause regime change in Moscow – an aspiration which he recalled neoconservative advisors in Washington have been pushing for “decades” now.

“Zbigniew Brzezinski… their doyen and philosopher said that US strategy should be to suck Russia into a series of wars in little countries where we can then exhaust them. Lloyd Austin, who is president Biden’s defense secretary, in April 2022 said our purpose in being in Ukraine is to degrade the Russian army, to exhaust it and degrade its capacity to fight anywhere in the world. Well that is the opposite of a humanitarian mission. That is a war of attrition, and that’s what it’s turned out to be. We have now turned Ukraine into an abattoir that has devoured 350,000 young Ukrainians. They are lying about how many people have died, they’re concealing it from us – the Pentagon’s concealing it from the American people. Ukraine is concealing it from their people… We have turned that poor little nation into a killing field for these idealistic young kids in order to advance a geopolitical agenda that has nothing to do with Ukraine,” RFK Jr. said.

The candidate also characterized the conflict as a “money-laundering scheme” for the US military-industrial complex.

Asked what he would do as president to bring the Ukrainian crisis to a close as president, RFK Jr. said the solution was “obvious,” and that he would work to achieve it on “day one.”

“The Russians have wanted to settle this from the beginning and they’ve been very clear about what they want. They want NATO to make a pledge to not come into Ukraine, which we should have done. We shouldn’t have put NATO into fourteen countries [in Eastern Europe, ed.]. We told the Russians when they dismantled the Soviet Union in 1991 and they moved 400,000 troops out of East Germany, and they allowed NATO to reunify Germany under NATO – and they said ‘our condition for doing that for this tremendous conciliation that we’re making is that you never move NATO to the East’. And George Bush told them ‘we will not move NATO one inch to the East’. And in 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out the plan which is that we moved it not one inch but a thousand miles to the East, 14 nations and then we put AEGIS missile systems in Poland and Romania which are nuclear capable. So they’re a few minutes from Russia – they can decapitate the entire Russian leadership if we wanted to start a preemptive war. That is inexcusable,” RFK Jr. said.

The candidate pointed out that Washington wouldn’t let a foreign power do anything similar in the Western Hemisphere, recalling that his uncle, John F. Kennedy “didn’t live with that” during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the USSR and the USA were brought to the brink of war over Soviet missiles in Cuba, and US missiles in Turkiye.

RFK Jr also briefly delved into the roots of the Ukrainian crisis, recalling that Washington “overthrew the democratically government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014,” and “spent $5 billion – CIA, through USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, to violently overthrow that government – which was democratically elected. So we destroyed this democracy and put in our own government which we now know the neocons in the White House – Victoria Nuland selected two months before in a telephone [call]. We handpicked the new government before the coup. We put a new government in that immediately makes a civil war against the Russian population of Donbass, killing 14,000 of them, that bans the Russian language and then starts training with NATO.”

RFK Jr. is running as peace candidate in the 2024 race for the Democratic nomination for president. This week, his campaign’s press team told Sputnik that in addition to working to resolve the Ukrainian crisis, the politician would seek to sign new arms control treaties with Moscow if elected.

Kennedy’s stance on foreign policy, plus his attacks against White House Medical advisor Anthony Fauci and fierce criticism of mandatory coronavirus vaccinations, have led to mainstream media censorship and smear campaigns against his campaign. The Biden campaign has indicated that it will not hold primary debates against Kennedy and Marianne Williamson, the other Democrat who has thrown her hat into the 2024 race so far. Kennedy has characterized this no debate policy as a grave mistake on Biden’s part, saying it’s not only undemocratic, but would leave the incumbent vulnerable against his prospective Republican rivals, particularly former president Donald Trump.

June 8, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Deaths confirmed in frontline dam rupture

RT | June 8, 2023

At least five people were killed and 41 were injured in the wake of the breach of the Kakhovka dam, the mayor of the city hosting the damaged structure has said.

“Reports came today that out of the seven people, who were grazing cattle, five died. We are in the process of evacuating the other two,” Novaya Kakhovka Mayor Vladimir Leontyev reported during an interview on Thursday.

The mayor previously advised that seven people were missing in the wake of the frontline dam breach, which occurred early on Tuesday morning. Ukraine and Russia accused each other of destroying it and exposing thousands of people living downstream near the Dnieper River to flooding.

Novaya Kakhovka is located on the left shore of the river and is controlled by Russia, while Ukraine controls the opposite side of the Kherson region. Ukrainian officials said there were some fatalities after the flooding on the right shore as well.

Water levels in the city rose by 12 meters after the dam was breached, before starting to slowly recede by Tuesday evening. Russian authorities estimated that 14 settlements were in the impact area. In addition to the direct damage to buildings, infrastructure and fields, the incident caused the draining of a water reservoir, which was used to feed a canal transporting fresh water to Russia’s Crimea.

Kiev claimed that Russian troops blew up the dam to prevent a possible amphibious operation across the Dnieper in Kherson Region. Ukrainian officials say that charges were planted inside the dam, which the Russian Defense Ministry has denied.

Moscow in turn blamed the Ukrainians, citing their record of shelling the strategically important facility. A Ukrainian general last year confirmed to The Washington Post that Kiev’s forces used US-supplied rocket artillery to hit one of the dam’s floodgates as a dry run for future attacks, should the military deem it necessary to cause a flood.

June 8, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Top 5 completely absurd lies about Russia since SMO started

By Drago Bosnic | June 8, 2023

Russophobia and anti-Russian propaganda run very deep, particularly in the political West. For centuries, various European invaders have been portraying Russia in the worst possible light. Over time, this became extremely intricate and even found its way into the mainstream. However, more recently, particularly since the start of the special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine, Russophobic propaganda became completely absurd. Choosing the top 5 of these certainly wasn’t an easy task, as the amount of ludicrous claims is absolutely mind-boggling. From the “Ghost of Kiev” and “the last stand of the Snake Island defenders” to pickle jar air defenses and the “Goat of Kiev”, you get a pretty good idea of just how laborious such a task could’ve been. However, in terms of being completely devoid of any logic, here are the top 5, in chronological order.

Russia destroys its own Nord Stream pipelines

According to the “free press”, on September 26, 2022, Moscow was extremely bored with all the windfall coming from rising natural gas prices, so it decided to blow up its Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines after spending the previous 17 years building them. Interestingly, Russia decided to do this only a day after Poland and Norway opened the Nord Stream’s primary competitor, the Baltic Pipe, running through Denmark and bringing in gas from the North Sea. Obviously, in order to make the task more difficult, but also more fun, Russia decided to conduct the attack within the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of Denmark and Sweden, instead of its own.

For months, various “conspiracy theorists” kept claiming that Russia didn’t actually destroy its own pipelines. However, the “free press” had “conclusive evidence” that the “cartoonishly evil Kremlin”, previously accused of “weaponizing” its vast energy reserves against the European Union, decided to destroy it and help the US profit immensely from the EU’s weaning off Russian natural gas. US President Joe Biden openly threatening to destroy Nord Stream, as well as Victoria Nuland’s snarky boastfulness about the pipelines becoming “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea” mean absolutely nothing and are just Russian propaganda.

The destruction of its own pipelines came approximately a month after some in the EU suggested using the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to increase Russian energy imports and also “coincided perfectly” with the manifold surge in US LNG shipments to the EU, which surpassed Russian natural gas deliveries for the very first time. This resulted in even the usually compliant Brussels bureaucrats complaining that the US is engaged in war profiteering.

Russia blows up the Crimean Bridge

On October 8, the “evil dictator Putin” was sick and tired of seeing the Crimean Bridge whole, so he decided to blow it up. Unfortunately, the men he entrusted this task with failed and managed to “only” partially damage the bridge which is crucial for Russian logistics. Once again, in order to make it more fun, Putin ordered the saboteurs to try and reach Crimea through Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia, then go through southern Russia and reach the bridge from the east. Repeated snarky remarks by Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak who boasted about the attack, as well as similar statements from the Kiev regime’s Defense Ministry and even Zelensky himself were just another piece of Russian propaganda and they could never in any way implicate anyone else.

Russia wants to irradiate itself by attacking the Zaporozhye NPP

After Russian forces took over the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP), “evil Putin” realized that his troops there didn’t have much to do, so he decided to order the nearby Russian artillery unit to start shelling their own comrades in the NPP. Apparently, this was the only way to extract the sensitive US nuclear technologies from there, as Russia lacks such advanced high-tech due to its extremely underdeveloped nuclear energy industry. According to undeniably truthful reporting by the “free press”, Russian shelling is ongoing as President Putin wants to make sure his forces there also get irradiated in case of a catastrophic detonation of one or all reactors. The only reason this hasn’t happened yet is the chronic lack of shells and the poor precision of the Russian artillerymen.

Russia regularly attacks itself with drones

The escalating drone attacks across western parts of Russia, including the capital city of Moscow, clearly cannot be the fault of its neighbor to the southwest. Which begs the question of where do these mysterious unmanned flying machines come from? Once again, the only logical conclusion could be President Putin’s unrelenting boredom. Because Moscow is too safe, this significantly amplifies the monotony, resulting in the Russian president’s orders for repeated attacks on the capital city. This is also a good way to make sure Russian air defense units in and around Moscow have something to do. However, Putin might have gone a bit too far recently, as he ordered a drone strike on the Kremlin and possibly on himself. The “free press” reports that this might have something to do with his rapidly deteriorating physical and mental health, as clearly indicated by the way Putin sits and places his hands.

Russia blows up its own dam in order to flood itself

On the morning of June 6, Russia realized it has had enough of the Kakhovka dam being too whole, so it decided to blow it up. The “evil Kremlin” went ahead with this plan after realizing it would result in catastrophic flooding of the areas under its control and also endanger hundreds of defensive positions of the Russian military. In addition, the water supply for Crimea is now at risk, once again clearly implying that Putin had every reason to order the destruction of the dam, as Crimeans were obviously too bored with all the water they’ve been getting since the Northern Crimean Canal was reactivated. Another important piece of evidence pointing to Moscow is that this also endangers the Zaporozhye NPP, which Russia clearly wants to destroy in order to irradiate itself (see point four).

However, although several Kiev regime’s top officials, such as Major General Andriy Kovalchuk, stated they’ve been planning to attack Kakhovka and even conducted “test strikes”, this is obviously just Russian propaganda by rabidly pro-Kremlin outlets such as the Washington Post. Interestingly, some Western analysts and experts, particularly those from the “free press” such as CNN and NBC have suggested this might have something to do with Russia finally acknowledging that the Normandy landings were much more important than the Eastern Front during the Second World War, as the event “coincided” with the 79th anniversary of the D-Day.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

June 8, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

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