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RFK Jr: Zelensky Could Have Avoided Conflict With Russia by Saying ‘No’ to NATO

Sputnik – 03.05.2023

WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a chance to avoid the conflict with Russia by simply refusing to join NATO.

“In 2019 actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky ran as the peace candidate winning the Ukrainian presidency with 70% of the vote. As Benjamin Abelow observes in his brilliant book, ‘How the West Brought War to Ukraine,’ Zelenskyy almost certainly could have avoided the 2022 war with Russia simply by uttering five words – ‘I will not join NATO,'” Kennedy said in a tweet.

According to Kennedy, Zelensky was forced to continue the dangerous path to NATO by neoconservatives in the Biden administration and by violent fascist elements within the Ukrainian government.

Moreover, Zelensky even allowed the United States to place its nuclear-capable Aegis missile launchers along Ukraine’s 1,200-mile border with Russia and thereby provoked Russia, the presidential candidate added.

Moscow launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. Russian and Ukrainian delegations have engaged in several rounds of peace talks since then, but the negotiations ultimately reached an impasse. Russia has insisted that it is open for talks with Kiev, even after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree prohibiting negotiations with Moscow in October 2022.

May 3, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Kiev’s counterattack unlikely to succeed due to excessive casualties

By Lucas Leiroz | May 3, 2023

Ukrainian plans to launch a counteroffensive look rather difficult to implement. At a meeting of Russian top military officials held on May 2nd, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu reported the official assessments on Ukrainian casualties during the last month. The government estimates that more than 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded in April. According to Shoigu, Kiev is unable to prevent its troops from suffering serious damage on the frontlines, “despite unprecedented military assistance by Western powers”.

The Russian data comes amid a scenario of collective skepticism about the possibility of Kiev reversing the military scenario of the conflict. More and more Western public opinion seems skeptical about a Ukrainian victory, considering that the territorial losses of Kiev’s troops are notorious and that the Russians are increasingly advancing towards the complete liberation of the territories reintegrated to the Federation. Now, with the release of this data about the number of casualties, the tendency is for this skepticism to increase, which complicates the Western war plans.

The big Western media outlets have been reacting to this situation through a kind of damage control – partially admitting that things are not going well in Ukraine, but suggesting that if more weapons are sent, the scenario could change. Some journalists use the rhetoric that there is a supposed counteroffensive plan to be implemented sometime this season, which would allegedly allow Ukrainian troops to achieve a major territorial advance, expelling the Russians even from peaceful territories such as Crimea. But the existence of data like this one revealed by the Russian Ministry makes it difficult to believe in the possibility of such a move.

Although the mainstream media tends to prevent the spread of information about Ukrainian problems, it will be difficult to stop the collective skepticism, as this is not the first time that numbers informing about the catastrophic situation of the Ukrainian forces have been revealed. On several occasions in recent months, reports on this subject have appeared. Included in the recent wave of leaked documents was a Pentagon assessment that between 124,000 and 131,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed by Russian forces. In estimates made by other intelligence agencies, there are even higher figures, with some reports giving statistics as high as 200,000 to 300,000 Ukrainian casualties. These reports circulate freely on the internet, so, as much as there are attempts by mainstream media to censor the data, the multiplicity of sources makes this work really difficult.

As expected, the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev continues to deny all these reports and claim its ability to carry on the fight. In February, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov stated that the number of deaths among the regime’s troops was lower than the number of deaths in the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria. According to official sources, the catastrophe in these two countries led to the death of 55,000 people, which shows how Reznikov is evidently lying, since even among the most openly pro-Ukrainian sources there is no belief in such a low number of casualties.

Similar declarations are also expected for the near future, especially responding to Shoigu’s statements. Kiev’s officials will try in every way to show that they have control over the situation of their troops and that their soldiers are in sufficient numbers for a counteroffensive – depending only on more Western weapons, thus justifying the “beggar” behavior for which Zelensky has already become known. At the same time, in Western countries governments will somehow have to convince their citizens that it is indeed prudent and necessary to continue sending arms to Kiev.

The wisest thing to do would be to admit the alarming numbers of Ukrainian casualties and stop the war machine behind the regime. Considering that it is an unwinnable conflict, negotiating peace is the best alternative for all sides. But neither Ukraine has the sovereignty to make such a decision, nor NATO has an interest in any possibility of peace. So, most likely, Ukrainian citizens will continue to die on the frontlines’ “meatgrinder”.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

May 3, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

The U.S. Proxy War Against Russia & China Is Increasingly Seen Globally As A Disaster Made By American And NATO Lies

Strategic Culture Foundation | April 28, 2023

It has become patently obvious to the world that the conflict in Ukraine is a dirty and desperate geopolitical confrontation, despite massive Western media efforts to portray it as something else more noble – the usual charade of chivalry and virtue to disguise naked Western imperialism.

The death and destruction in Ukraine is nothing but a proxy war by the United States and its NATO partners to defeat Russia in a strategic gambit. But the unspoken objective does not end with Russia. The U.S. and its Western imperialist lackeys are driven to push for confrontation with China too.

As if taking on Russia is not reckless enough! The Western powers want to double down on their warmongering with China. This is all because the underlying impetus is for Washington and its Western minions to promote U.S.-led dominance of the global order. Russia and China are the main obstacles to that path of would-be dominance, and hence we see this manic drive for aggression stemming from Washington, the executive power of the Western order.

It should be obvious that while the U.S.-led NATO axis has stoked the war in Ukraine to calamitous heights, this same axis is wantonly inciting tensions with China. This observation alone should be enough to condemn the criminality of Western powers.

This week saw the NATO powers deliver depleted uranium weapons to the Kiev regime, while the United States announced that it would be docking submarine nuclear warheads in South Korea, a move that infuriated China which pointed out that Washington was violating decades-old commitments to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Of course, such perverse provocation is par for the course as far as Washington is concerned. It is done deliberately in a conscious effort to exacerbate tensions and escalate militarism. Peace and security are anathemas to the U.S. (and its minions) whose whole ideological raison d’être is to aggravate war to gratify corporate capitalist addiction – a system that is increasingly bankrupt and dysfunctional, and hence the insane desperation for craving “war-fixes”.

In a scathing speech to the United Nations Security Council this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that the conflict in Ukraine cannot be properly resolved without an understanding of the geopolitical context. In other words, the war in the former Soviet republic which erupted last February has bigger causes than what the Western powers and their compliant news media would try to pretend otherwise.

Defense of Ukraine? Defense of democracy? Defense of international law? Defense of national sovereignty? These are some of the laughable claims made by Washington and its allies. One only has to consider the decades of total trashing of the UN Charter and democratic principles by the United States and its rogue partners in their pursuit of criminal wars to realize that their virtue-signaling over Ukraine is a vile joke.

Lavrov’s address to the Security Council was a stunning rebuke of the hypocrisy and criminality of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO powers, as well as the European Union. His speech was akin to the scene in the classic old movie The Wizard of Oz when the curtain was pulled back on the buffoonish villain for all to see. Any objective observer would agree with the Russian foreign minister’s excoriating survey of modern history and why the war in Ukraine has tragically manifested. Lamentably, if we fail to understand history and the real causes of conflicts, then we are condemned to repeat the horrors.

Ironically, Western leaders have at times revealed the bigger geopolitical agenda with their own misspoken arrogant words. U.S. President Joe Biden had previously blurted out a call for regime change in Moscow while his senior aides, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, have succumbed to the intoxication of their narcissism and hubris by saying that the purpose of the war in Ukraine is the “defeat of Russia”.

Other NATO senior figures, such as the stupid, conceited Polish leaders and their Baltic buddies, have also come out and stated that the war’s ulterior agenda is to vanquish Russia. The fascist skeletons of their Nazi-collusion past have resurrected their deathly rattles, uncontrollably.

As Lavrov’s address to the Security Council intimates, the systematic violation of the UN Charter by the United States and its Western partners is a deplorable continuation of the Nazi fascism and imperialist barbarism that was supposed to have been defeated in World War Two. The culmination of the constant, unbridled Western imperialist criminality and its state terrorism is the current war in Ukraine and the growing aggression toward China over Taiwan as a pretext.

In all of this, woefully, the Western public has been flagrantly lied to by their governments and media as to the real nature of the war in Ukraine. American and European citizens have been bilked for hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up a Nazi regime in Kiev whose function is to act as a NATO spear-tip against Russia, and ultimately China when the NATO powers feel they are done with Ukraine. (The latter is a futile ambition, as is becoming increasingly evident.)

Journalists and antiwar activists in the West who highlight the malfeasance over Ukraine are either sacked, vilified, censored, or sanctioned into poverty, or even imprisoned.

Nevertheless, the Western public and the rest of the world are increasingly becoming aware of the odious charade. By definition, charades are inevitably untenable.

The Global South – the majority of the 193 nations at the UN – has had it with Western capitalist hegemony and its outrageous neocolonialist privileges. The incremental dumping of the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency for trade is a testament to the historic shift towards a multipolar order in defiance of Western unipolar elitism. The nations of Africa, Latin America and Asia understand that the U.S.-led NATO war in Ukraine is a desperate last-ditch bid to preserve an imperialist global order which should have been eradicated after World War Two with the establishment of the United Nations, but which, regrettably, was not. Because the root cause of imperialism is the AngloAmerican-led Western capitalist order. The end of World War Two, as with World War One, was but a pause in the historical killing machine.

It is now increasingly evident in the light of leaked documents from the Pentagon that the war in Ukraine is a disaster. The Kiev regime is facing defeat at the hands of superior Russian forces even though that regime has been flooded with weapons by the United States and NATO. Great expectations of a Ukrainian victory that were widely predicted by Western leaders and media have been shown to be empty, contemptible lies.

The side-show of this war is a gargantuan racket. Western arms companies have raked in unprecedented profits, while the NATO-backed cabal in Kiev has skimmed off hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the same Kiev regime that is burning down Orthodox Christian churches, exterminating the Russian language, lionizing World War Two Nazi criminals, and locking up any critical opposition and media.

But the main takeaway is the lies that the United States and Western lackeys, including the entire media industry, have been telling about the proxy war in Ukraine. This war is an imperialist adventure that has been financially ruinous, has destroyed Ukraine, and is driving a dangerous all-out war with Russia and China that could turn into a nuclear armageddon.

We should not be surprised by such blatant lying and deception. President Joe Biden and his administration have been telling barefaced lies to conceal the corruption oozing out of Biden’s own family. Biden and his son Hunter have exploited Ukraine since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 for personal enrichment. The president has even reportedly got his senior aides to do his bidding to censor intelligence agencies and media from revealing to the public the corruption at the heart of his family. (Risibly, the truth is smeared as Russian or Chinese disinformation!)

The lies that Biden and his administration tell about personal corruption are indelibly coupled with the lies told about the proxy war in Ukraine.

It is increasingly clear that the American public, the European public, and the rest of the world have been duped in multiple ways. The phony war in Ukraine is exposing the deep, stinking well of corruption in this White House. There will be hell to pay.

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

West’s efforts to isolate Russia have failed – Lavrov

RT | April 29, 2023

The West has failed to isolate Russia, with the majority of the world still interested in maintaining good relations with Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. He also argued that the trend toward multipolarity is irreversible, whether former colonial powers like it or not.

Addressing the World Online Conference on Multipolarity on Saturday, Lavrov said that “Washington’s and its satellites’ efforts to reverse history, to force the international community to live by the invented ‘rules-based order’” are proving to be a fiasco, citing the “total failure” of the West “to isolate Russia.”

According to the foreign minister, a number of countries, which combined are home to 85% of the world’s population, have made it clear that they will not do the bidding of the former colonial powers.

The Russian diplomat said the fact that delegates from several dozen nations “from nearly every continent” attended the online forum shows just how much traction the idea of multipolarity has gained.

Lavrov noted that new global centers are emerging in Eurasia, the Indo-Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and that these nations are pursuing independent policies guided by national interests.

According to the foreign minister, developing nations have been steadily expanding their share in the global economy over the past three decades, while the role of the G7 nations has been diminishing.

He also hailed the fact that more and more countries have expressed interest in joining international groups “of the new kind,” such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Russia, Lavrov explained, champions a multipolar world order based on respect for the UN charter, and a “balance of interests” as opposed to a “balance of fear.”

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow will not abide by the “so-called rules” invented and imposed by “certain countries.”

Also on Friday, while addressing members of the SCO, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu claimed that the West is putting “unprecedented pressure” on independent countries to pit them against Russia and China, and undermine the rise of the multipolar world.

On Monday, Lavrov called for the expansion of Asian, African, and Latin American representation in the UN Security Council, arguing that the West is over-represented in the international body.

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Meeting of the Defense Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Delhi

By Gilbert Doctorow | April 28, 2023

One quite important event today in global politics is unlikely to receive coverage in The New York Times, The Financial Times, the BBC or Euronews.  I have in mind the meeting in Delhi of the defense ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The SCO is one of the two principal bodies that bring together the nations that are today challengers to the US-dominated world order. The other such body is BRICS.

Whereas BRICS is primarily an economic fraternity with focus on commercial relations among its members, meaning a platform of Soft Power, the SCO is primarily a Hard Power fraternity focusing on the security of its member states. It is also more limited geographically, concentrated on Eurasia. Its founding members were China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Today it also includes Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan. Among the states accorded “observer” status are Afghanistan, Mongolia and Iran. And at its edges as “dialogue partners” are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Egypt, Nepal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Turkey.

There were a couple of outstanding and newsworthy developments at the SCO gathering in India today. One was the speech delivered by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Several minutes from this speech were carried on Russian news channels and what we heard was Shoigu declaring that from the start of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine the Collective West was throwing all of its military assets against Russia.

The other noteworthy development was the side meeting of Shoigu and his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu. They were shown on television walking side by side to that meeting. Russian news tells us that Li used their meeting to extend an invitation to Shoigu to visit him in Beijing, and that Shoigu accepted.

The impact on the other SCO member states, observers and dialogue partners of these close and fast developing relations between the Russian and Chinese defense ministries cannot be overstated. Today they were all direct witnesses of this fact.  Among other things, this spells the end of opportunities for Central Asian states to play Russia off against China in obtaining favors, as Western media believed they were doing. It completely vitiates all efforts by U.S. Secretary of State Blinken over the past several months to pressure these same Central Asian countries into loosening or breaking ties with Moscow. These states are now all caught between a rock and a hard place.

The drama of the Russian-Chinese entente also will bear on the future conduct of India and Pakistan.  Here, too, the options for playing games or fence sitting are fast disappearing. For their part, Iran and Saudi Arabia will surely be among the countries taking great comfort in the bloc forming between the states they rely on to pursue a foreign policy independent of diktat from Washington.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

April 29, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine looking to grab more of Russia’s oil revenues

RT | April 28, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine will have to accept Chinese mediation when spring offensive fails

By Ahmed Adel | April 28, 2023

In a phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky on April 26, Chinese President Xi Jinping identified negotiations as the only way to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, something that the Ukrainian president has been resistant to.

“Dialogue and negotiation is the only possible method,” Chinese media quoted Xi as saying in his first known conversation with Zelensky since the Russian special military operation began. The Chinese president also stressed that Beijing “will persistently seek peace and synergistically promote negotiations.”

For his part, Zelensky, who for many months has expressed interest in speaking with Xi, said he had “a long and meaningful phone call” with the Chinese president that lasted for an hour. “We discussed a full range of topical issues of bilateral relations. Particular attention was paid to the ways of possible cooperation to establish a just and sustainable peace for Ukraine.”

“There can be no peace at the expense of territorial compromises,” he added, suggesting that perhaps Xi is wasting his time.

None-the-less, after the conversation with Xi, the Ukrainian president signed a decree which appointed former Minister of Strategic Industry Pavel Ryabikin as Ambassador of Ukraine to the People’s Republic of China. This insinuates that the comments from the Chinese leader did not spoil relations between the two countries.

The long absence of a Ukrainian ambassador to China does demonstrate the traditional attitude that Kiev had towards the Asian giant. Now, despite relations improving, Kiev is giving provocative ultimatums on conditions for peace talks when Beijing is searching for peace.

It is recalled that Xi made a state visit to Russia in March and met President Vladimir Putin. During the visit, Xi and Putin affirmed their alignment across many issues, such as dealing with American provocations.

In addition, the Xi-Zelensky call comes only days after the Chinese Ambassador in Paris sparked controversy by suggesting that the Baltic states had no status under international law following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, something which authorities in Kiev could have interpreted as also being aimed against them. This was ultimately rejected by Beijing though, with authorities saying that the ambassador’s comments were his own personal opinion and not official policy.

Beijing announced that China’s Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs, former Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Hui, will lead a special delegation on crisis settlement in Ukraine. The establishment of a special Chinese delegation to resolve the crisis in Ukraine is a very important step, particularly because Li Hui is an experienced diplomat who has served as China’s ambassador to Russia for many years. On the other hand, people should not harbour any illusions as Washington will likely prevent Kiev from achieving peace with Moscow under Chinese stewardship.

For her part, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow had taken notice of Beijing’s will to enable negotiations with Ukraine following the phone call between Zelensky and his Chinese counterpart.

“We note the readiness of the Chinese side to make efforts to establish the negotiation process,” Zakharova said during a press conference on April 26. She noted that negotiations under current conditions are unlikely and highlighted that Kiev is the one rejecting initiatives by Moscow.

Despite these difficult conditions, China started positioning itself as a peacemaker in the conflict in early 2023 after releasing a proposal for a discussion-based solution to the war. However, the proposal has been completely rejected by Kiev and their Western backers as it included no provision for Russia to withdraw its troops.

Xi also received criticism from the West for attempting to position himself as a mediator whilst visiting Moscow but not having spoken with Zelensky at that point. At the same time, when considering the timing of the call between the two leaders, it suggests that Xi believes there is a possibility for progress, even if Zelensky is attaching stringent demands.

With China successfully reconciling Iran and Saudi Arabia, the country’s decisionmakers also feel confident that they can tackle an even bigger challenge considering Russia and Ukraine are in direct conflict, unlike the two Middle Eastern countries.

Because Ukraine believes it can prevail against Russia on the battlefield and in the spring offensive, there should be no expectations for peace negotiations to begin soon. Evidently though, Beijing said that they are going to take concrete steps in the direction of mediation, a major step in China demonstrating that it is a Great Power with global influence. Once Ukraine’s spring offensive fails, Kiev will have no choice but to reach out to Beijing to help mediate a peace agreement.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russian fuel exports surge despite sanctions – Bloomberg

RT | April 27, 2023

Russia is on course to record its highest seasonal export rate of petroleum products in seven years despite Western oil sanctions that took effect in February, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing tanker tracking data from Vortexa.

According to the report, shipments of clean petroleum products, including diesel-type fuel, amounted to 1.9 million barrels a day during the first three weeks of April. If that rate continues for the remainder of the month, it will be the highest for this time of the year since at least 2016, calculations show.

The new data follows multi-year highs reached in March, when shipments were at their highest since the start of 2016.

Russian diesel-type fuel exports were targeted by an EU embargo on seaborne petroleum products that came into force in early February, along with a G7 price cap on the same products. In response, Moscow announced it will cut output by 500,000 barrels a day between March and December.

Despite the sanctions, data shows that Russia has successfully redirected fuel shipments. Most of the country’s petroleum products in April have been shipped to Türkiye as well as North African countries, including Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya.

Russia has also boosted exports to South American countries, most notably Brazil. According to a recent report by Reuters, Russia’s share of Brazilian diesel fuel imports is set to reach 53% in April, compared to just 0.2% a year ago.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Russia cannot lose its UNSC seat despite Western and Ukrainian attempts

By Ahmed Adel | April 27, 2023

The US has a strong ambition to add its allies to the United Nations Security Council to weaken Russia’s influence across the world, or if this fails, to render the organisation useless, akin to the old League of Nations. However, even more dangerous than the US seeking more allies in the UNSC are the initiatives to abolish Russia’s right of veto and take away its status as a permanent member. Kiev raises this suggestion at almost every session of the UN General Assembly.

In this sense, new challenges are being created, especially as UN Secretary General António Guterres stated that the majority of UN member states see the need for reforming the UNSC. Such suggestions must be treated with suspicion though as the US wants to take advantage and weaken not only Russian influence, but also Chinese.

Guterres and the US are clearly trying to push their closest allies, such as Germany, Australia, and Japan, where unsurprisingly American military bases are located, into the UNSC. There are also other countries, such as Turkey, which regularly raise the issue of UNSC reform and complain that the fate of humanity should not depend on five countries – China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US.

However, Turkey’s suggestion is problematic as the UNSC would be inundated with permanent membership requests from dozens of middle powers who have equal or greater power than Turkey, such as Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Realistically, at this current junction, an expanded permanent UNSC could only include Brazil and India, the former because it is the most important country in Latin America and the latter because it is on a rapid path towards Great Power status.

None-the-less, Moscow, just like Washington, is in favour of reforming the UNSC, but with significantly different views. While the US and its allies are pushing reforms as a possible way to limit Russian influence, Moscow believes that the Security Council should to be expanded, but to achieve a more equitable world and to not empower Western aggression.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained that the composition of the UNSC should be strengthened by Asian, African, and Latin American countries, which are not represented in the UNSC, with the exception of China in regards to Asia. Therefore, in Moscow’s view, the UNSC should not be expanded only so that the West and its closest allies, such as Japan, can get additional seats. Moscow wants to balance the UNSC because the West has three of five permanent seats despite comprising only a minority of humanity.

It is clear that Lavrov has strategically put the West in a difficult position because if they veto the expansion initiative, it will lead to a backlash from countries like India which believe they have earned a right to a permanent seat in the UNSC. At the same time, Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart must be cautious on expansion so that the UNSC does not transform into a political branch of NATO.

The UN Charter does not provide for a reform procedure, and this especially applies to the UNSC, which is the most important body of the organisation. By recklessly expanding the body, the contradictions and conflicts of interest, which already hinder the UNSC in its current format, would elevate.

Therefore, in the current geopolitical situation, it will be very difficult to reform the UNSC in such a way as to objectively consider the interests of all participants in the process. A permanent UNSC membership is a privilege and not something to lightly contemplate expanding upon.

There is also no legal basis to exclude Russia from the UNSC, limit its status and deprive it of veto rights. The entire architecture of the UN was originally built on the fact that the five great powers, the winners of the Second World War, assumed the role of guarding the global world order. The founding states cannot exclude each other because if one or two pillars are thrown out, the UN would collapse.

If Russia was somehow excluded, it would mark the destruction of the entire system based on international law, on the UN Charter, and would call into question the existence of the UN itself. Russia, however, is a permanent member of the Security Council and has veto power. This practically means that Russia, if the Charter is applied, can only be expelled if it does not exercise its veto power. Therefore, it is impossible to deprive Russia of that right, despite constant Ukrainian attempts.

Hypothetically, there are two scenarios in which Russia could lose its seat in the UNSC – first, if it excludes itself and second, if the UN ceases to exist as an organisation. It is recalled that the Soviet Union was foolishly excluded from the League of Nations, the forerunner of the UN, but that organisation ceased to exist. The same fate would befall the UN if Russia was expelled.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO Could Send Troops to Western Ukraine if Kiev’s Spring Offensive Fails – Here’s Why

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 26.04.2023

Mainstream reporting related to the so-called “Pentagon leaks” about the DoD’s sobering assessment of the real state of the NATO-Russia proxy conflict in Ukraine has brought the “do or die” pressure facing Kiev into focus. Without a decisive victory, Kiev may be pushed into ceasefire talks, says international affairs expert Mark Sleboda.

Anonymous Biden administration officials told US media this week that the White House is “quietly preparing” for the contingency of Ukrainian forces failing to gain any significant ground against Russia during Kiev’s much-hyped spring offensive, and for the reputational blow this might have for Washington via-a-vis other allies and clients. Administration officials reportedly also fear that a failed or stalled offensive could result in attacks on the White House at home both by hawks pushing for even more aid to Kiev, and doves arguing that the Ukrainian Army’s failure would prove that Russia can’t be ejected from Crimea, Donbass, and its new territories.

Officials are reportedly mulling pushing Zelensky into a “ceasefire” to enable Kiev to retool and reequip for a resumption of the conflict at a later date, with measures meant to prod the Zelensky government into accepting including “NATO-like security guarantees,” EU economic support, and more military aid.

“I think this is actually one in a series of articles that have come out in the last few weeks, including the so-called ‘Pentagon Leaks’ which I think most Russian analysts believe are just another narrative management tool,” Mark Sleboda said, speaking to Radio Sputnik’s The Final Countdown radio show on Tuesday.

The latest piece in the MSM hyping the prospects of a possible Ukrainian defeat isn’t the first, Sleboda recalled, pointing to another recent legacy media piece from last week warning that a “breakthrough” in the conflict may not come at all in 2023, and that observers should lower their expectations of Ukraine advancing more than 30 km.

“So [there’s a] lowering [of] expectations, lowering the bar for success. Now we have twin articles coming out of Politico, but also The New York Times coming out within 24 hours of each other. And the Times tells us that ‘Ukraine’s spring offensive comes with immense stakes for future of the war’ and that without a decisive victory, Western support for Ukraine could weaken and Kiev could come under increasing pressure to enter serious peace talks to end or freeze the conflict,” the observer noted.

Characterizing the expected Ukrainian offensive as “the most telegraphed offensive in history,” Sleboda said that naturally, reality “cannot possibly” live up to the hype as far as objectives are concerned.

“And again, the mainstream media, The Washington Post, The New York Times have done features about how Russia has been, for the last half year, building up extensive layered trench networks, fortified concrete fortifications, pillboxes, tank obstacles like dragon teeth, etc., and very extensive minefields laid out in advance… We have seen the Kiev regime go on the offensive before against Russian troops that weren’t even half as well dug-in in Kherson. And it’s now acknowledged that Russian forces withdrew, but without taking any significant casualties. They withdrew tactically to avoid being enveloped, but they inflicted crippling casualties because the Ukrainian forces were charging across open steppe into superior artillery, rocket systems, and air dominance,” the analyst said.

Russia could afford to give up territory in the past because they’re “fighting a different type of conflict,” according to Sleboda, prioritizing force preservation and attrition warfare meant to “grind down the Kiev regime’s military and now effectively NATO as well, because NATO is 100% supplying the regime at this point.”

‘Talking Smack About Crimea’

Among Kiev’s formal priorities is a long-promised attack on Crimea. That’s a fantasy, Sleboda believes, since even without a Kherson-Zaporozhye “land bridge” linking Crimea to the Russian mainland, the peninsula is just too tough a nut to crack.

“Of course, they talk a lot of smack about Crimea, which is ridiculous, because Crimea is a peninsula, geographically a very difficult target to attack, very heavily defended with a 95% pro-Russian population. It’s ridiculous,” the observer stressed. The reality, he added, is that even officials like Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley have recognized that Kiev has no chance of “retaking” the peninsula.

“It’s perfectly obvious from the articles being put out today that now they don’t believe they could even get to that administrative border, nowhere close to it. I don’t believe so either. They may push Russian forces back a bit. But they talked about it in The New York Times back in December even, that the Biden administration, speaking through their stenographers anonymously, said ‘we don’t think that they can take Crimea, but we need to have the Russians believe Crimea is under threat to improve the Kiev regime’s negotiating position in future negotiations.’ They think they can get Russia to withdraw from Kherson and Zaporozhye and be satisfied with just the Donbass and Crimea. That’s their thinking. That’s why they don’t consider Bakhmut strategic, unlike Zelensky, who is trying to hold on to it all, because the US has written the Donbass off. They know that it’s an overwhelmingly pro-Russian area, that Russia has invested an enormous amount of political capital with the referendums there, but they think they can still get them to give up on Kherson and Zaporozhye, which also held referendums, by the way,” Sleboda said.

Sleboda pointed to the Times’ admission that the 12 new Ukrainian combat brigades of 4,000 troops apiece formed for the spring offensive – which are expected to be ready by the end of the month, are “raw recruits with a small core of experienced veteran soldiers,” and that they are equipped with handfuls of more modern NATO tanks and armored vehicles accompanied by much older equipment, and facing a big disadvantage in artillery and control of airspace.

Even the debate over deliveries of the much-vaunted F-16 fighters to Kiev is “all political,” according to the observer, because it takes years to train to use them, and Washington may prefer to save them, along with the ATACMS missiles long demanded by Kiev, for a possible war against China in the Pacific.

‘New Domino Theory’ and Danger of WWIII

Pointing to the “new domino theory” that’s being pushed by neocons and neoliberals in Washington on the need to prop up Kiev at all costs, or face Taiwan “falling” to China, Sleboda fears that if push comes to shove and Kiev suffers a major defeat on the battlefield, NATO may be tempted to intervene directly in the crisis to prevent its global defeat.

“I believe that if the Kiev regime suffers a catastrophic defeat and NATO can’t filter more weapons useful to them through them, they might consider what I’ve talked about for maybe half a year now – sending US and Polish troops, maybe Romanians, the Baltics, the Brits – a new ‘coalition of the willing’ as ‘peacekeepers’ into western Ukraine. To tell you the truth Russia would probably yell and scream, but they don’t really want to occupy West Ukraine because unlike East Ukraine, they really do hate Russia over there. It would be very hostile guerilla territory. That’s the part of Ukraine that sided with Nazi Germany in World War II and is resurrecting all of that type of anti-Russian, Banderite fascist glorification today,” Sleboda said.

Ultimately, the main issue of concern for the analyst is Odessa – the strategic, majority Russian-speaking seaport. “If the Kiev regime loses that, then they’re a landlocked little rump state, and the US [has] got the 101st Airborne just across the border in Romania exactly to step across as a tripwire force into Odessa. And that’s the scenario that keeps me up at night. That’s the World War III scenario, as far as I’m concerned [it] is a possible direct NATO-Russia fight over Odessa because I do not believe for a second that Russia would allow Odessa to become a US naval base,” Sleboda summed up.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Why are ‘sensitive US nuclear technologies’ in Ukraine?

By Drago Bosnic | April 26, 2023

When talking about various reasons as to why Russia launched its counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe the points usually revolve around historical and strategic/geopolitical aspects of the Ukrainian conflict. And while those points certainly stand regardless, there are other crucial reasons, almost entirely overlooked or even censored by mainstream media. One of those is the aspect of NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) weapons in Ukraine, all of which fall under the category of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

The topic of “biological research facilities“, as infamous neocon warmonger Victoria Nuland ever so euphemistically put it, received a significant amount of attention from media around the world, while the mainstream propaganda machine tried suppressing it. On the other hand, by far the most overlooked aspect of the Ukrainian conflict has been the covert transfer of US nuclear technologies to the Neo-Nazi junta. CNN, the infamous US neoliberal mouthpiece, was the first major mainstream propaganda outlet that broke the story last week.

According to the report, Washington DC has “sensitive nuclear technologies” in at least one (former) Ukrainian nuclear power plant (NPP). CNN claims that “the US has already warned Russia not to touch them”, citing a letter Department of Energy (DoE) allegedly sent to Moscow’s Rosatom corporation. CNN supposedly reviewed the letter (dated March 17) in which the director of DoE’s Office of Nonproliferation Policy, Andrea Ferkile, told Rosatom that the Zaporozhye NPP in Energodar “contains US-origin nuclear technical data that is export-controlled by the United States Government”.

Firstly, the idea that Russia is in any way intimidated by a third-rate US bureaucrat who allegedly “ordered it not to touch anything” is simply absurd. Secondly, both Washington DC and its Kiev puppets are parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which means that transferring “sensitive nuclear technologies” to the Neo-Nazi junta is a direct violation of that agreement. Worse yet, the US is now (supposedly) threatening Russia through a director of its Office of Nonproliferation Policy, an institution that was supposed to prevent “sensitive US nuclear technologies” from ever reaching Ukraine.

This blatant hypocrisy is only matched by the sheer magnitude of US irresponsibility and WWIII brinkmanship for even considering the possibility to transfer such technologies to an unstable, genocidal and deeply corrupt regime in the middle of a direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed superpower next door. What’s more, CNN admits that the “sensitive US nuclear technologies” in question “could be used in a way that undermines US national security interests”. Once again, this is disturbingly similar to US claims about the so-called “biological research labs”.

“It is unlawful under United States law for non-authorized persons, including, but not limited to, Russian citizens and Russian entities such as Rosatom and its subsidiaries, to knowingly and willfully access, possess, control, export, store, seize, review, re-export, ship, transfer, copy, manipulate such technology or technical data, or direct, or authorize others to do the same, without such Russian entities becoming authorized recipients by the Secretary of the US Department of Energy,” the alleged letter reads.

Once again, the US is trying to enforce the self-proclaimed exterritoriality of its laws. However, in the case of Russia, this practice is not only legally void, but is also impossible to implement, especially after the city of Energodar and the Zaporozhye oblast (region) where the NPP is situated voted to join Russia last year. Obviously, CNN’s motivation to report the story was anything but altruistic, as it revolved around an attempt to portray US “demands” to Russia as anything more than a laughing matter to Moscow.

However, what surely isn’t a laughing matter is the seriousness of Russia’s approach to the situation. And for good reason, given the fact that the Kiev regime boasted about its intentions to acquire nuclear weapons nearly a decade before the start of the SMO (special military operation). As early as March 2014 and as late as February 2022, the Neo-Nazi junta has been openly declaring its intention to get WMDs, specifically nuclear weapons, to say nothing of the constant grumbling of many Kiev regime politicians about how they “made a big mistake for giving up on nuclear weapons in 1994”.

This only shows their lack of knowledge on the subject, as Ukraine itself never actually had nuclear weapons, because all those deployed there were Russian-made/controlled. However, this doesn’t stop the Neo-Nazi junta from claiming this Soviet/Russian legacy as its own, despite rabidly Russophobic disdain for all things Soviet. Another important segment of Russian legacy they were happy to harness is its world-class missile technology that Kiev is using to produce strike weapons with possible nuclear warheads to target major Russian cities, including Moscow.

Although Russian air defenses have been successful in downing such missiles, the Neo-Nazi junta could still use other Soviet legacy assets to target the Eurasian giant. Or worse yet, these could be provided by the US/NATO or any of its vassals and satellite states. The fact that the Kiev regime never publicly renounced its intention to acquire nuclear weapons that could be used to arm such missiles is quite telling. It’s also yet another confirmation that Russia’s SMO was the only way to prevent the Neo-Nazi junta from going ahead with its plans. And even if such guarantees were ever given, with the diplomatic scandal surrounding EU/NATO lies about the Minsk agreements, Moscow could hardly ever take them seriously.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

April 26, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Nuclear Power, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

West turning Ukraine into ‘radioactive landfill’ – embassy

RT | April 26, 2023

Russia has condemned the UK’s decision to send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, saying the move marks an “all-out escalation” after the British Defence Ministry confirmed the radioactive weapons were already in Kiev’s hands.

Moscow’s UK embassy issued a statement on Tuesday after senior official James Heappey acknowledged that the British DU munitions had arrived on the battlefield, to be fired from Challenger 2 tanks also supplied to Ukraine.

“James Heappey’s comments are a grim testament to the ruthlessness of the Anglo-Saxons’ policy of all-out escalation of the ‘proxy conflict’ they themselves unleashed in Ukraine,” it said. “He cynically stated that London is not monitoring the deployment of these weapons and has no obligation to eliminate the consequences of their use following the end of the conflict.”

“It has by now become self-evident that the West intends this country to become not only an anti-Russian military “shooting range,” but also a radioactive landfill – with all the ensuing grave consequences for the health of local residents and the environment in the region.”

The embassy went on to say that the British government would be responsible for the effects of the “toxic ammunition” and could not escape accountability by passing them off to Ukrainian forces.

In an interview with RT last week, Russia’s envoy to Britain, Ambassador Andrey Kelin, warned that DU munitions will be a “terrible thing… for the agriculture and for the people” of Ukraine, saying radioactive residue could contaminate the country’s water and soil “for at least six generations.”

Both UK and US officials have disputed the purported health hazards associated with DU shells – which use a dense uranium core to improve their armor-piercing capabilities – and deny allegations that the weapons were linked to a spike in cancer and birth defects in Iraq.

Heappey has claimed depleted uranium carries only “low” health and environmental risks, pointing to a 2007 government study. He later added that the Defence Ministry would make no effort to track where Ukrainian forces use British-supplied DU rounds, and had “no obligation” to assist clean-up efforts after the conflict.

However, according to Doug Weir, an expert with the Conflict and Environment Observatory, uranium munitions generate “chemically toxic and radioactive DU particulate” when they strike hard targets, adding that the dust poses “an inhalational risk to people.” Other recent research has also indicated the weapons could produce “adverse health outcomes” given the “chemotoxic and radiotoxic” properties of DU.

Moscow has urged foreign powers to cease all weapons shipments to Ukraine, arguing the aid would not deter its military aims but only prolong the conflict. After the UK announced its decision to supply depleted uranium rounds to Kiev last month, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Western nations would like to “see Ukraine completely destroyed” and are acting with “absolute recklessness, irresponsibility and impunity.”

April 26, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

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