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South Korea asks for Russia and China’s help

South Korea’s nuclear envoy Kim Gunn
RT | November 21, 2022

South Korea has turned to Russia and China for help in shutting down rival North Korea’s missile testing program, arguing that Pyongyang is threatening peace and stability across Northeast Asia and beyond.

Nuclear envoy Kim Gunn held a telephone call on Monday morning with the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to Seoul, Andrey Kulik and Xing Haiming, asking for “active cooperation” in persuading Pyongyang to refrain from “further provocations” and return to dialogue, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Kim argued that North Korea’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Friday violated UN Security Council resolutions and marked yet another dangerous saber-rattling incident from President Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Seoul made its appeal for help as its envoys prepared to lobby the UN Security Council for action at an emergency meeting on Monday in response to North Korea’s latest ICBM test. The South Korean diplomat “emphasized the need for the international community, including the United States, to unite and promptly take decisive countermeasures,” the ministry said.

As permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and China have the power to veto any resolutions that would punish North Korea for its strategic weapons tests. Russia has called in the past for de-escalation on the Korean Peninsula by both sides, meaning Pyongyang would halt nuclear-related tests and the US and South Korea would suspend their joint military exercises in the region. US officials have called that idea “insulting.”

Kulik warned last year that only diplomacy would bring peace to the peninsula. “We are convinced that step-by-step activities based on the principles of equality and a gradual and synchronized approach will make it possible to ensure the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and lay the foundation for a solid system of peace and security here,” the ambassador told TASS in an interview last December.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres issued a statement on Friday condemning North Korea for its latest ICBM launch. North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui responded on Monday by calling Guterres a “puppet of the US.” She defended North Korea’s weapons tests as a “legitimate and just exercise of the right to self-defense,” saying they came in response to “provocative nuclear war rehearsals” by the US and its allies.

November 21, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Troops Shell Zaporozhye NPP, Damaging Strategic Facilities: Official

Samizdat – 20.11.2022

Ukrainian troops subjected the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP) to massive artillery shelling, damaging strategic facilities, an adviser to the head of Rosenergoatom, a subsidiary of Russian state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, told Sputnik on Sunday.

“The Ukrainian military launched a massive strike directly at the station. Twelve rockets were fired. It is known that six of them hit the cooling system of reactors, two — hit the dry cask storage [of radioactive waste]. The consequences of the shelling cannot be determined yet since the risk of repeated attacks remains,” Renat Karchaa said.
None of the Zaporozhye NPP personnel were injured, according to Karchaa.

Located on the left bank of the Dnieper River, the Zaporozhye NPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe by number of units and output. During the military operation in Ukraine, launched by Russia on February 24, the nuclear plant and surrounding area went under the control of Russian forces and have since been shelled many times. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the attacks.

An international mission led by IAEA chief Rafael Grossi visited the plant from August 31 to September 5. IAEA observers have since been staying at the plant on a rotational basis. Following the visit by the mission, the IAEA published a report in which it confirmed the shelling of the ZNPP.

November 20, 2022 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Moscow Slams Dutch Court’s Politically-Motivated Verdict in MH17 Trial

Samizdat – 17.11.2022

The Russian Foreign Ministry has criticized The Hague District Court’s verdict in the MH17 case, stressing that the course and results of the trial in the Netherlands show that the proceedings were based on a political order to reinforce the version about Russia’s alleged involvement in the downing of the Malaysian plane.

Moscow expressed regret that the court in The Hague neglected the principles of impartial justice for the sake of political expediency and ignored the fact that all the conclusions of the prosecution are built upon anonymous testimonies.

The ministry pointed out that the court wasn’t even perturbed by the fact that the Ukrainian side refused to provide radar data or recordings of communication between air traffic controllers and the plane crew. The Dutch court also ignored documents that were declassified by the Russian Defense Ministry in 2018 concerning the missile, whose debris was found at the crash site.

The MoD declassified documents showing that the serial number found on debris from the Buk missile was cross-referenced with a log book, showing it was produced in 1986. The missile was then delivered to a military unit in Ukrainian SSR and had since not left Ukraine.

At the time, the ministry also stated that some of the videos provided to investigators showing the Buk system being transported from Russia to Donbass were manipulated.

Earlier on Thursday, The Hague District Court found three out of the four defendants in the case guilty. Two Russians, Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky, as well as Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko were given a life sentence in absentia, while Oleg Pulatov was acquitted.

The trio was ordered to pay compensation to the relatives of the 298 victims of the plane crash.

What Happened to Flight MH17?

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014 as the region was mired in a conflict with the new government following a coup earlier that year. As a result, all 298 passengers – mostly Dutch – and crew on board were killed in the crash.

Following the tragedy, Kiev and the then-self-proclaimed republics in the Donbass region blamed each other for the downing, with the latter contending that they had no military equipment that would allow them to shoot down an aircraft at that altitude. The United States and a number of European nations, for their part, rushed to allege that Russia was responsible for the incident – a claim that was made even before an official investigation was launched.

Shortly thereafter, the Netherlands set up a Joint Investigative Team (JIT) to probe the MH17 case, but left Russia out of the process despite the latter’s consistent offers to assist in the investigation.

The JIT’s probe concluded that the aircraft was downed by a Buk missile, allegedly launched from a Russian anti-aircraft missile brigade ordinarily stationed in the city of Kursk, not far from the Ukrainian border. At the same time, the Dutch-led team refused to share concrete evidence to corroborate the claims that Russia was responsible for the downing.

In 2019, JIT announced that international arrest warrants would be issued for four suspects, Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, on charges of murder, with a trial over the MH17 case beginning in the Netherlands in March 2020.

Moscow has repeatedly slammed JIT’s conclusions as “openly biased” and “one-sided” and emphasized that after being denied access to the formal probe, Russia had carried out its own investigation, which concluded that it was an older version of the missile made in 1986 and belonging to Ukraine that downed the ill-fated plane. Dutch investigators, however, ignored the information.

November 17, 2022 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia blasts efforts to drag it into conflict with NATO

RT | November 17, 2022

The reactions of Poland and Ukraine to a deadly blast on the border between the two states can only be seen as an attempt to trigger a direct clash between Russia and NATO, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a session of the UN Security Council, the Russian envoy blasted what he called “irresponsible statements made by the leaders” of Poland and Ukraine over the missile strike.

He noted that it did not take long for Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to blame the explosion in a Polish village on Moscow and to call for NATO to retaliate.

“I underscore that such claims are made by the person who cannot but be well aware that it had been Ukrainian air defense missiles that hit the territory of Poland,” Nebenzia stated. According to the diplomat, this was a “conscious attempt to drag NATO, which is waging ‘a war by proxy’ on Russia in Ukraine, into a direct confrontation with our country.”

He added that the response of the Polish government to the incident was not much better, as they “stated unapologetically from the very start that they had suffered an attack by Russia.”

Had it not been for evidence in the form of photos from the scene of the blast, “all facts would have been concealed from the public, and Russia would have been proclaimed the guilty side,” the diplomat said.

On Tuesday, two civilians were killed in a blast in the Polish village of Przewodow near the Ukrainian border. The Polish Foreign Ministry initially claimed that a “Russian-made missile” was behind the incident. Later, however, Polish President Andrzej Duda indicated that the projectile was probably a Ukrainian air defense missile.

The Russian Defense Ministry denied any involvement, saying its military experts had analyzed the photos from the scene and identified parts of the projectile “as elements of a missile from the S-300 air defense system used by the Air Force of Ukraine.”

While Western officials admitted that the missile was Ukraine’s, they claimed that ultimate responsibility rests with Russia, as the incident only took place due to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.

November 17, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Missile strike on Poland

By Gilbert Doctorow | November 16, 2022

Yesterday’s incident of missile strikes on the Polish side of the border with Ukraine which killed two has been denounced by the Russians as a ‘provocation.’ The logic of such an incident would be for Poland and its NATO allies to denounce Russia as the culprit, as the violator of the sanctity of NATO territory, and to threaten Russia with the invocation of Article Five of the Alliance, a declaration of war in all but name. Indeed, that is precisely what we heard from President Zelensky in his first statements about the incident, and he was seconded by leaders of the war-mongering jackal states in the Baltics.

In fact, so far the Polish reaction appears to be restrained. Their president, Duda, has called upon his compatriots to remain calm while an investigation is underway. Polish authorities would say only that fragments of the missiles recovered at the site show that they were “Russian made,” which by itself means very little since both sides to the conflict use “Russian made” military hardware.  Meanwhile, in far off Bali, Joe Biden responded to journalists’ queries, saying that examination of the trajectory of the missiles which struck farmland on the Polish side of the border with Ukraine made it ‘unlikely’ that they were launched from Russia. Of course, journalists did not ask the necessary follow-up question: so what does this known trajectory tell us about where in fact these missiles were fired from? And who is likely then to have fired them?

This morning’s Financial Times article on the subject adds speculation that possibly the missiles were part of the Ukrainian air defense system and were fired to bring down Russian cruise missiles attacking their energy infrastructure but “went astray.” In this same reporting, they do not bother to ask whether the fragments truly indicate ‘air defense’ projectiles or ground to ground missiles, which presumably would be manifestly evident from the large fragments seen in photographs from the site.

All of this prevarication and hesitancy on the part of the U.S. and Polish authorities in pointing fingers at the culprit for the attack in Poland is in direct contradiction with the longstanding pattern of U.S. and Western behavior in what we know were false flag incidents directed from Washington or London. In such cases, accusations against the Russia over the downing of Flight MH17, or against the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria over alleged chemical attacks on his own civilian population followed within minutes of the given incidents.

So I ask again, what happened yesterday in Poland and who is to blame?  To find a plausible answer, I suggest applying the time proven Roman guiding principle of investigation and ask cui bono, whose interests are served by what has happened? This is a simple, reasonable approach which regrettably has gone out of style in our days of Information Wars.

Cui bono points to the Kiev regime as responsible for the missile attacks on Poland, for the sake of finally bringing NATO openly into the fight on their side against Russia. Poland is not yet ready for war against Russia, and will be ready only many months from now when it receives major arms deliveries from the United States. The USA does not want an unplanned escalation from proxy war to war of the principals that could easily lead to a Russian nuclear attack on the homeland. It is only Mr. Zelensky’s regime that can hope for total chaos in order to survive the destruction of his country’s core infrastructure that is now well on the way, at last.

Of course, in Washington, in Brussels these considerations must be well understood by key personnel. The coming consultations over activating Article 4 of the Alliance treaty, officially recognizing a threat to their territorial integrity, revolve around formulating a determination of responsibility for the incident that avoids blaming the present darling of our solicitude, Ukraine, for attacking a NATO country.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Postscript:

16 November afternoon. The latest statements from Poland and the U.S. in the past hour or so are saying the missiles which landed in Poland were Ukrainian air defense missiles, not downed Russian cruise missiles. It is of course possible they were Ukrainian ground to air missiles (S300), but it is also possible they were ground to ground missiles (Tochka) fired by Ukrainian units for the reasons I mention in this article; both missile systems are “Russian,” that is to say they come from the common Soviet past of the two countries. Since the US has recorded the trajectory of the missiles by one of its spy planes on location near the border, they know from where the missiles were launched and whether air defense units were there. They also have the missile fragments from the crash site and can identify exactly what type they were if they so wish. No one from NATO is going to look into these matters, or announce their findings if they do; you can be sure of that.

For their part, the Poles are indicating that they will not activate Article 4 provisions of the Alliance after all. We may assume that knowing what they do, they would prefer to remove this whole incident from public discussion as quickly as possible.

The Russians say their attack on infrastructure came nowhere near the Ukrainian border with Poland, and that is completely believable: they want to avoid precisely what happened yesterday.

November 16, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia denies striking Poland

RT | November 15, 2022

Russia has not carried out any strikes against targets near the Polish-Ukrainian border, the defense ministry in Moscow said on Tuesday, following reports of a missile striking the village of Przewodow and killing two civilians.

Some Western media outlets and politicians have claimed that Russia is responsible for the incident. However, no evidence has been provided to support such assertions.

Missile fragments, photos of which were published by Polish media outlets on the scene, “have nothing to do with Russian weapons,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Statements by the Polish media and officials about the alleged ‘Russian’ missiles falling in the area of the village of Przewodow are “a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation,” the Russian military added.

Poland convened an emergency meeting of its national security council on Tuesday evening, after reports that at least two civilians were killed when one or more missiles struck the village in the Lublin region, just across the border with Ukraine.

While the AP reported that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland, citing an unnamed “senior US intelligence official,” the Pentagon declined to corroborate the claim.

“I can tell you that we don’t have any information at this time to corroborate those reports and are looking into this further,” Air Force Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters, when asked about the Przewodow incident.

Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller called on the media and the public “not to publish unconfirmed information.”

Officials from the Baltic states blamed Russia and claimed that Poland should invoke NATO’s Article 5 in retaliation. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky accused Russia of “terrorism” and said NATO needed to “act” against this “attack on collective security.”

November 15, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

RT sends request to UN over rape allegations

RT | November 15, 2022

RT has reached out to the UN special representative on sexual violence, Pramila Patten, to request a correction or retraction of a statement in which she accused the Russian Armed Forces of employing a deliberate “rape strategy” as part of its military campaign in Ukraine. Patten made the claim in October in an interview with the AFP only to admit she did not have any solid evidence to substantiate it a month later.

“The allegations Ms. Patten has brought forward are of a very serious nature, which have the power to shape public discourse around the events in Ukraine,” RT said in a statement, adding that her words were then “widely distributed amongst media outlets and social media, to create a misleading, if not entirely false, narrative.”

In October, Patten told the AFP that when “you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy.” Less than a month later, the UN official admitted that her words were based solely on some unverified reports disclosed to her in the presence of two Ukrainian officials. Speaking to Russian prank artists Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, also known as Vovan and Lexus, she recently said that it was “not her job” to conduct investigations anyway.

No evidence has since been provided to corroborate these claims. In its statement, RT asked Patten whether she “intends to issue a retraction – or at least a correction – of her original, misleading statement.”

“As a person holding such a public role with enormous responsibility, one would hope that Ms Patten seek to provide a true, verified testimony of her organization’s work,” the statement added.

RT also asked Patten’s office to provide some evidence to support her allegations in case the UN special representative believes a retraction would be “improper.” Neither Patten nor her office has commented on the request so far.

Moscow has previously denied the accusations made by Patten. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blasted the UN official’s claims as going “beyond the reach of reason.”

November 15, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Lavrov comments on claims of US urging Ukraine to negotiate

RT | November 15, 2022

Western media reports that the US government has tried to nudge Kiev towards engaging diplomatically with Moscow are mere rumors, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday. Even if true, the Ukrainian leadership appears to be ignoring the suggestions, he added.

“We’ve read reports citing anonymous sources,” Lavrov said, when asked about “signals” that Western nations are supposedly sending to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, urging him to negotiate with Moscow.

“There are rumors that the American administration has been telling Zelensky to be more pliable,” he added. “And there was clarification that this was not aimed at getting him to act constructively, but to counter objections from the parts of the West that doubt the need to supply additional arms to him.”

Last month, the Washington Post described communications between Washington and Kiev that supposedly went along the lines described by Lavrov. A proposed change of stance by Ukraine would tackle “Ukraine fatigue” among EU nations, according to the newspaper’s sources.

The Russian foreign minister highlighted the uncompromising public stance which Zelensky reiterated in a recorded speech, played at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. Lavrov, who is heading the Russian delegation to the event, said “the only conclusion” he reached after hearing the 20-minute message was that the Ukrainian president “so far takes no Western suggestions” about talks.

The Russian diplomat went on to describe Zelensky’s speech as “militant”, “Russophobic” and “aggressive”. Zelensky addressed the gathering as the “G19” in an apparent snub to Russia’s membership in the club of leading world economies, and demanded a number of concessions from Moscow before he would agree to negotiate. Lavrov described the demands as “unacceptable.”

November 15, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

‘Culture Block’ Is Leading to Ukraine Escalation (and risking WWIII)

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 14, 2022

Spot the problem here: First, the EU has lost Russia as a partner, yet the EU insists to maintain trade with China. Two, China, though, must bend to our EU ‘rules’ on how it configures its economy. Thirdly, China too, must accept to be ‘castigated’ by the likes of Olaf Scholtz and Charles Michel for ‘not having put an end to Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine’. Fourth, we, the EU, anyway do not intend to depend on you. And fifth, clean up your human rights abuses!

Wow! Well, the initial reaction might be a spell back at the Academy on the art of diplomatic discourse, as being one idea. Nonetheless, the sheer number of non-sequiturs to this stance is startling. Firstly, the rest of the world is not greatly interested in EU leaders’ woke thought-code (the Chinese simply cancelled EU Chief Michel’s proposed speech to a gathering in Beijing). Europe has lost Russia; It will likely lose China. And probably, it will find itself excluded from the colossus, free-trade area unfolding in Eurasia – as the blocs differentiate into separate trading spheres.

Where does this leave that bruited EU ambition to be a global player? … Perhaps the EU’s thought-code culture might be the problem to its ambitions.

You (the EU) have not thought this through: You are now a dependent appendage of the U.S. economy – a prop to maintaining America’s exalted spot in the global system – at a time when its predatory economic model of money-printing at zero interest has been holed by an iceberg (known as accelerating inflation). American industry needs a captive market in a world that is fast seceding into two separate spheres. You have ‘elected’ to fill that role.

Containing China is America’s explicit goal. And that means blocking the European continent from moving closer to Asia to form the world’s biggest free trade zone. Washington had to stop that (i.e. sabotage Nord Stream) in order to preserve Europe as a captive market, and what remains of dollar ‘privilege’.

As an American dependency, Europe is perceived as having conceded not only economic, but political agency too. Simply put, the EU has lost its cheap-energy business model with the ‘I stand with Ukraine’ woke thought and speech codes, and now finds that it is impotent politically. Why would ‘others’ deal with the courtiers, when they can go directly to the ‘Command’ in Washington?

Furthermore, the culture block the EU adopts prevents it from bringing the Ukraine war to a political end. Rather, what it does is bake-in escalation.

Here is the problem: You bought into liberal America’s notion of a coercive process of induced government dysfunctionality – that is to stay, the state of mass psychosis that any weaponised dysfunctional state of society can produce. And it’s been a success (on its own narrow terms).

The bigger message is that ‘induced dysfunctionality’ marching in lockstep, and using culture block tactics to suppress any dissenting opinions, can and does produce a society that can be ruled over (made compliant through unpleasantness and applied pain) – without having to govern (i.e. make things actually work).

And induced compliance has proved its use for implementing all sorts of other ideological schemes that the public would otherwise never accept.

Weaponised dysfunctionality was trialled during the recent pandemic. The public was persuaded to accept systemic degradation of the economy. Western leaders regularly have expressed a pleasant surprise at the degree of public compliance achieved during the lockdowns. Of course, it was only made possible by ‘woke mobs’ on social platforms impugning the motives of anyone questioning ‘the Science’, the scale of emergency, or the long-lasting toxic effects on the real economy. Cultural roadblock was imposed.

The same process is evident today: The EU is in (another) ‘emergency’ because it made a strategic misjudgement over its Russia sanctions. The political class thought the effects of EU sanctions on Russia offered a ‘slam dunk’ outcome: Russia would fold in weeks, and all would return to how it was before. Energy would flow freely to the EU again; things would go back to ‘normal’.

Instead, Europe faces economic melt-down from astronomic fuel costs.

Yet, some leaders in Europe – zealots for the Green Transition – quietly embrace this sanctions ‘failure’ and the resulting economic mayhem caused by spiking energy prices – weaponising it as a strategic asset to accelerate Green Transition. European authorities actively encourage this pathological approach, believing that the pain incurred will force compliance on their societies to embrace de-industrialisation, accept carbon footprint monitoring and the Green Transition; and too, to bear prospective monumental Transition costs.

Yellen explicitly celebrated the financial pain (dysfunctionality) precisely as serving to accelerate ‘The Transition’ (like it or not) – even were that to push the citizen out of employment, and to the cusp of society.

Here then, is the problem: Some in the EU political class may hope for an intensification of the war on Russia, seeing in it all sorts of benefits – in extending centralised control over member-states and facilitating new means of printing money (mutualised debt instruments) ostensibly to fund Ukraine.

Sure – but there are fears for societal breakdown in Europe too. The problem? The EU cannot bring Ukraine to a deal.

The point is that the EU has framed the Ukraine conflict in absolute victim-vein terms, in line with woke cultural tropes: A revanchist Russian leader, dreaming of former empire, illegally, and without provocation has invaded and seized territory from its neighbour, whilst committing heinous war crimes in so doing. The perpetrator must face a humiliating defeat – otherwise, if he gets an inch, he will take a mile. And the global order will be ‘toast’.

The ‘online mob’ has been steered, through ‘influencers’, to insist that U.S. Realist Camp’s support for a negotiated settlement is tantamount to taking Russia’s side: rushing to denounce all voices – from Bill Burns’ (then U.S. ambassador and now CIA chief) celebrated 2008 telegram ‘Niet means Niet’ warning that any NATO takeover of Ukraine means war; to Prof Mearsheimer, Kissinger, or Elon Musk – as dangerous ‘Putin apologists’. Musk now faces a security probe.

The logic is stark: This shrinks the Overton window to only those advocating the total defeat of Russia and an end to Putin’s ‘regime’ – even if it risks WWIII. It is the ‘slash and burn’ stance, favoured by the U.S. and allied EU neo-cons.

So, we have Washington saying it has no interests, per se, in Ukraine – beyond supporting Kiev in recovering its territory. The Biden Administration says it is guided by the wishes of the Ukrainian people.

Do you still not see the problem to which this logic takes us? It is a Potemkin Village position. All façade and nothing ‘behind’ or around it. The conflict in Ukraine is not itself ‘a unique thing’, but a ‘thing’ of two leaves. At one level, Ukraine is a ‘state’ among surrounding states; and at another level, it is itself an actor. A ‘player in events’ – an owner indeed, of a certain history.

What the Potemkin ‘approach’ does is to artificially free-up some sort of abstract ‘clearing in the wood’ amidst the density of trees, in which the visible thing – Ukraine – is to be positioned, and set before the western spectator public, stripped naked of surrounding context; stripped of history and of the fact of itself being a conscient player in an extended drama.

The Realists have been culture blocked. Their motives impugned.

The title to this play – ‘America has no fundamental interests in Ukraine, and is but an innocent, called up upon the stage by an act of brutal villainy’ – is an obvious fraud. As is the corollary that the EU must therefore support the ‘war’ as Ukraine is victim.

Plainly said, the U.S. is pursuing a bi-partisan geopolitical strategy to quash China’s meteoric rise and preserve America’s dominant role in the world order. Can there be any doubt about that? No, none. For two decades U.S. foreign policy has centred around its ‘pivot to Asia’.

Washington’s real interests in Ukraine thus must be understood not as a war of values – as the EU has it – but rather as a cruise-missile launched at China, not Russia. In gist, the ‘high road’ to collapsing Beijing is perceived in DC to pass through a weakened Moscow. The NATO response to Ukraine is intended as ‘a letter’ to China, concerning Taiwan. And the comprehensive sanctions on Russia are a missive to the rest of the world to not trifle with America’s absolute primacy.

But if this latter context is absolutely ‘off the table’, through culture block and the only agenda item being the sham Potemkin Village construct, then what is there to talk about?

The matter then must inexorably be settled by events – not talk. Who has the potential for escalatory dominance? Russia has many – and various – options. Ukraine has only one. Pushing more troops at the contact line and suffering heavy losses. What does the West have: WWIII?

Can you see now why your peace efforts have come to naught? Actually, President Xi explained the situation courteously, yet pointedly, to Chancellor Scholtz during the latter’s day trip to Beijing: Having lectured Scholz on the evanescent quality of Trust in any political relationship (a quality that Xi said should be nurtured), he emphasised the need for Europe to avoid an ideological approach to relations.

Rough Translation: You (Scholz) have destroyed your relationship with Russia; you have pursued a bloc-orientated ideological policy, and this has been to your disadvantage. Do not think you can do the same with China.

(Or with the rest of the world, Xi might well have added).

November 15, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

UN reparations decision is ‘plunder’ – Kremlin

RT | November 15, 2022

A Resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly, which urges Moscow to compensate for losses inflicted on Ukraine, aims to enshrine the theft of Russian funds blocked by the West, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

Peskov said that “organizers of this process are trying to complete the plundering of our gold and foreign currency reserves,” which he said were illegally frozen by Western countries over the Ukraine conflict.

“This is a formalization of this plundering under the guise of the United Nations,” he reiterated, adding that “Russia is categorically opposed to this.”

The official also reminded reporters that the resolution “is not legally binding.” “This is the way we are going to regard it,” he stated.

According to Peskov, Moscow will also “do its best” to thwart the confiscation of the assets that have been frozen by the West.

The comments come after the UN General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution calling for Russia to pay “war reparations to Ukraine.” The document was supported by 94 countries, with 73 UN members abstaining and another 14 voting against.

Commenting on the resolution, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, claimed that its provisions “cannot stand up to any criticism” from a legal point of view. “They are legally void – nothing more than an attempt to legalize what cannot be legalized in terms of effective international law,” he said, warning the document’s co-sponsors that it could trigger consequences that “may boomerang against themselves.”

After Russia launched its military operation against Ukraine in late February, the West has significantly ratcheted up sanctions against Moscow. Western countries have frozen around half of Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves, which amounted to around $640 billion before the large-scale hostilities broke out. Moscow has repeatedly claimed that these funds have been “essentially stolen” from Russia.

In recent months, various Western officials have spoken in favor of outright confiscating these Russian assets and for them to be used for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

November 15, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Washington Attempts To Bully India Into Cutting Ties With Russia

By Conor Gallagher | naked capitalism | November 13, 2022

For months the US has repeatedly tried to coerce India into cutting ties with Russia, thereby abandoning its national interests. New Delhi, however, continues to spurn American attempts to subject its economy to Washington’s dictates.

The latest fuss concerns the G7 price cap on Russian oil and EU and UK bans on shipping and related services for Russian crude. India continues to have no interest in joining the US-led initiative as it gets a steep discount on oil from Russia and wants to maintain the relationship with a long-time strategic partner. Indian Foreign Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was just in Moscow on Nov. 8 to discuss continued sales of oil. From the South China Morning Post :

India’s foreign minister hailed New Delhi’s “strong and steady” relationship with Moscow on Tuesday, during his first visit there since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar also declared India’s intention to continue to buy Russian oil, again disregarding the US appeal to allies and partners to isolate Russia from the global markets.

The G-7 plans are likely to send oil prices higher (despite US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claiming the opposite) and reduce tanker availability, both of which will threaten India’s energy security and hurt its economy as India is the third-largest consumer and importer of oil worldwide.

Russia has said it will not sell to any countries that participate in the price cap scheme, and Jaishankar has repeatedly stated that India cannot afford to buy oil at high prices – at least not without undermining its economic growth, which is forecast to be 6.1 percent in 2023, the fastest-growing major economy in the world. According to Energy Intelligence :

Russia emerged as India’s top crude supplier in October, shipping over 900,000 barrels per day or roughly a fifth of India’s demand. The two countries’ biggest concern is ensuring that Russian oil continues to flow after the Dec. 5 EU and UK bans and related G7 price cap.

But despite Jaishankar’s bullish stance in Moscow, India’s state refiners have not placed orders for crude lifting beyond Dec. 5 due to uncertainties about whether shipping and insurance will be available, Energy Intelligence understands. And a recent attempt by an Indian buyer to use the price cap in negotiations with a Russian seller prompted the latter to abandon the deal, market sources said.

The ongoing lack of clarity on the G-7 could be by design. Russian oil exports have already begun to dip, and Bruce Paulsen, a sanctions expert and partner at law firm Seward & Kissel, told American Shipper, “ If guidance on [price cap] compliance doesn’t come soon, some industry players may sit on the sidelines until they can determine that shipments under the price cap are safe.”

The US, in a neat sleight of hand, quit pressuring India to adhere to the price cap, and Yellen now says Washington is “happy” for New Delhi to continue buying as much Russian oil as it wants, including at prices above a G7-imposed price cap. But there are just a few caveats: India wouldn’t be able to use western insurance, finance, or maritime services to transport the oil.

“Russia is going to find it very difficult to continue shipping as much oil as they have done when the EU stops buying Russian oil,” Yellen told Reuters on Friday. “They’re going to be heavily in search of buyers, and many buyers are reliant on Western services.”

More from Energy Intelligence on why this amounts to a de facto price cap:

Indian refiners have the capacity to soak up another 600,000 b/d of Russian crude, provided it outcompetes the staple Mideast grades that are the lifeline of the country’s 5 million b/d refining base. But the availability of shipping and insurance — and payment channels — is key. From Dec. 5, tankers and shipping insurance linked to EU and G7 countries — which dominate oil shipping globally — will be barred from trading Russian crude unless those volumes are sold under the price cap, as yet undetermined.

About 90% of India’s liquids trade is shipped by foreign tankers, presenting challenges, independent energy analyst Narendra Taneja said. Insurance does not appear as problematic, and analysts say that Russian and Chinese firms can handle it.

This could leave Russia reliant on a shadow fleet of older tankers with opaque ownership that do not transact in dollars. According to Freight Waves :

Brokerage Braemar reported that 33 tankers previously handling Iranian or Venezuelan exports have carried Russian exports since April, mostly to China and secondarily to India.

Braemar defined the dark fleet as tankers that have carried Iranian or Venezuelan crude at least once in the past year. It put the current total at 240 tankers, mostly smaller and midsized, with 74% 19 years or older. Eighty of those vessels are very large crude carriers (VLCCs, tankers that carry 2 million barrels) that won’t fit in Russian ports but could be used for ship-to-ship transfers for Russian cargoes.

If the entire dark fleet switched to Russian service and were as efficient as the “mainstream fleet,” it would be more than enough to keep Russian exports flowing, but “vessels engaged in illicit trading are highly inefficient,” Braemar emphasized.

At the same time Washington is pressuring New Delhi to comply with the price cap, it is importing from India more vacuum gasoil, which is mostly used at refineries to produce other products such as gasoline and diesel. From Reuters :

Russia used to be a key VGO supplier to U.S. refiners before the Ukraine war broke out.

“Given that the U.S. is not buying Russian oil, they are looking for any and all alternatives,” said Roslan Khasawneh, senior fuel oil analyst at Vortexa…

U.S. and EU sanctions do not apply to refined products produced from Russian crude exported from a third country as they are not of Russian origin. In India, refiners boosted imports of discounted Russian oil to 793,000 barrels per day between April and October, up from just 38,000 bpd in the same period a year ago, trade data showed.

India joins a list of countries – including Saudi Arabia, Serbia, and Turkey – that are causing heads to explode in Washington for refusing to be bullied into submission.

This all must be coming as a shock in Washington as its Indo-Pacific strategy in recent years has always included a “like-minded” India helping to counter China and do the US’ bidding in southeast Asia. The possibility that India might pursue its own national interests didn’t seem to factor into the strategy.

The tension over the Russian price cap is just the latest in a series of disagreements between New Delhi and Washington. US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports deprive India of cheap Iranian oil, and force it to buy more expensive US energy exports. India is now the largest oil export destination for the US.

Similar to the way Washington is arming Greece and Cyprus in an effort to bully Turkey into breaking off its friendly ties with Russia, the US is doing the same in Pakistan to pressure India. The US has begun to accommodate Pakistan again after the ouster of former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan, who blames his loss of power in a no-confidence vote on the US.

In September, the U.S. State Department enraged India when it approved a $450 million deal to upgrade Pakistan’s F-16 fleet. Shortly after, the US ambassador to Pakistan created more tension during a visit to the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir, which he called by its Pakistani name instead of the United Nations-approved name “Pakistan-administered Kashmir.”

On Nov. 8 US State Department spokesman Ned Price lectured India on what are in its best interests:

We’ve also been clear that now is not the time for business as usual with Russia, and it’s incumbent on countries around the world to do what they can to lessen those economic ties with Russia. That’s something that’s in the collective interest, but it’s also in the bilateral interest of countries around the world to end and certainly over the course of time to wean their dependence on Russian energy. There have been a number of countries that have learned the hard way of the fact that Russia is not a reliable source of energy. Russia is not a reliable supplier of security assistance. Russia is far from reliable in any realm. So it is not only in the interest of Ukraine, it is not only in the interest of the region, of the collective interests that India decrease its dependence on Russia over time, but it’s also in India’s own bilateral interest, given what we’ve seen from Russia.

We’ll have to wait and see if the Indian people get the message because as of now the opposite is true. India’s Observer Research Foundation released poll results on Nov. 2 that showed that 43 percent of Indians regarded Russia as their country’s most reliable partner, which was far ahead of the US at 27 percent.

Washington would be hard pressed to explain how New Delhi scaling back its economic ties with Russia would be a good thing for India.

Fuelled by a surge in import of oil and fertilizers, India’s bilateral trade with Russia has soared to an all-time high of $18.2 billion over the April-August period of this financial year, according to the latest data available with the Department of Commerce. That makes Russia India’s seventh biggest trading partner — up from its 25th position last year. The US, China, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Indonesia remain ahead of Russia.

India, Iran, and Russia have also spent the past twenty years developing the International North-South Transport Corridor to increase trade between the countries, and it took on increased importance with the western sanctions on Moscow. From The LoadStar :

RZD Logistics, a subsidiary of Russian railway monopoly RZD, has begun regular container train services from Moscow to Iran to serve growing trade with India by transloading.

This is aimed at maximizing use of the alternative International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a Central Asia cross-border multimodal freight network helping the two strategic partners work around supply chain challenges created by western sanctions on Russia.

The inland-ocean leg involves an estimated transit time of 35 days, compared with about 40 with previous traditional shipping, according to industry sources.

©Peter Hermes Furian

In much the same way that US heavy-handedness is backfiring elsewhere, the pressure applied on India seems to only be encouraging New Delhi to find a way around the dollar. The Loadstar adds that the Reserve Bank of India is also implementing new regulatory guidelines to help exporters settle shipments in rupees, instead of US dollars that had run into sanctions-related bottlenecks:

The Federation of Indian Export Organizations has also been pressing government leaders to extend the alternative currency method beyond Russian markets.

“While the Russia-Ukraine war is a setback to our exports in the short run, we are looking to increase our exports to Russia once the rupee payment mechanism gets operationalised,” FIEO noted.

While India has been benefitting from the discounted Russian crude, it also wants to maintain good ties with Moscow to avoid pushing Russia closer to China and potentially Pakistan, India’s biggest rivals in Asia.

Pakistan is also now asking the Russian Trade Ministry to introduce a currency swap arrangement to strengthen economic ties between the two countries.

November 14, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Is the Anglo-Russian Fisheries Agreement about to end?

By Drago Bosnic | November 14, 2022

During the early (First) Cold War era, particularly the 1950-1970 timeframe, Soviet diplomacy tried easing tensions with the political West. This greatly contributed to the development of Anglo-Soviet relations in many areas, despite the overall geopolitical rivalry. It was at this time that a number of agreements were inked between Moscow and London, including the 1956 Fisheries Agreement, which is still in effect. It was signed in Moscow on May 25, 1956 by Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov and the UK Ambassador to the USSR William Hayter. On August 31, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR ratified the agreement.

The document contained only three articles. Article 1 read: “The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics agrees to grant fishing vessels assigned to the ports of the United Kingdom the right to fish in the waters of the Barents Sea along the coast of the Kola Peninsula between the meridians 36° and 37° 50′ E. along the mainland east of Cape Kanin Nos between meridians 43° 17′ and 51° E, as well as along the coast of Kolguev Island, outside three nautical miles from the low tide line both on the mainland and on the islands; these vessels are also granted the right to navigate and anchor freely in these waters.”

Additionally, the Protocol to Article 1 of the Agreement stated: “The permission given by the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to fishing vessels assigned to the ports of the United Kingdom to fish, sail freely and anchor in the waters specified in Article I of the Agreement, shall not be regarded as granting to such fishing vessels the right to fish, navigate and anchor in prohibited zones which may be established by the competent Soviet authorities within the waters covered by the Agreement.”

In turn, Article 2 stated: “When fishing vessels of the United Kingdom enter Soviet ports and protected waters in case of emergency, these vessels will be guided by the rules established by the competent Soviet authorities.”

The Fisheries Agreement was signed for a period of five years and entered into force on the date of the exchange of instruments of ratification, which took place at the end of 1956 in London. It was automatically renewed every five years and is still valid, since neither party announced its withdrawal. As per a special clause, Moscow or London are obligated to declare this no later than one year before the expiration of the specified term of the Agreement.

It should be noted that the UK was a fairly large player in the international fishing industry at the time, particularly in the cod and haddock fisheries. Obviously, having concluded the agreement with the Soviet Union, the UK intended to expand its fishing industry to the Soviet part of the Barents Sea. At the same time, it should be noted that the 1956 Fisheries Agreement did not affect the rights of Soviet fishing vessels in UK waters.

In this regard, on September 30, 1964 Moscow and London exchanged notes on the issue of Soviet fishing vessels’ presence and floating bases within the fishing borders. As per these notes, Soviet fishing vessels and floating bases were allowed to anchor, sail, transship fish and carry out other work that is auxiliary to fishing operations within the zone between 3 and 12 miles from the baseline, from which UK territorial waters are measured around the Shetland Islands north of a line drawn west from Ash Ness Lighthouse and a line drawn east from the southern tip of Bressay Point.

Over the years, the so-called “Khrushchev euphoria” resulting from possible closer cooperation with the political West, particularly the UK, was starting to die down, and Moscow then fully realized that UK ships, extracting a significant part of the marine life resources available in the Barents Sea, seriously undermined Russian reserves. However, for some reason, the USSR (later the Russian Federation) showed no intention of ending the 1956 Fisheries Agreement. Although there might be serious reasons for this that were never made public, the fact is that the UK continues to fish freely and virtually unchecked in the waters of the Barents Sea.

And yet, the economic consequences fade in comparison to possible security challenges for Russia, as foreign vessels fishing in the area of the Barents Sea could easily be working for UK intelligence services, collecting and passing sensitive information which could undermine the Russian military in the area. Given the current extremely tense relations between Moscow and London, this is completely unacceptable for Russia, as the UK is one of the most adamant supporters of the Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev. As Russian fishermen have long had little interest in fishing off the UK coast, Moscow will likely need to reassess the benefits of the agreement for itself, especially as waters around the Arctic are of prime strategic importance.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

November 14, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

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