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Washington doubles down on Iranian drone delivery claim

Samizdat – August 31, 2022

Iran has delivered two types of combat drones to Russia this month, the White House said on Tuesday. Moscow had previously dismissed such reports.

“What we’re assessing is that Russia has received both Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series UAVs from Iran over the course of several days in August,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

“Russian aircraft loaded the UAV equipment at an airfield in Iran and subsequently flew from Iran to Russia,” Jean-Pierre added.

The statement came after the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed US officials and intelligence, that the first drone shipment from Iran to Russia was carried out earlier this month. The Kremlin insisted that the report was false.

It was not the first time US officials warned that Moscow might receive battle UAVs from Tehran to boost its forces amid the military operation in Ukraine.

In July, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan claimed that Washington has evidence that Iran was preparing to deliver “several hundred” drones to Russia.

However, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby clarified later that month that the authorities had “seen no indications” of the delivery or purchase of Iranian UAVs by Russia.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry accused Sullivan of “distorting the truth.”

Both Mohajer-6 and Shahed drones can be used for surveillance and carrying out airstrikes.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Independence Day: Is Ukraine Killing her Own People?

By Peter Koenig | Dissident Voice | August 26, 2022

On 24 August Ukraine celebrated her Independence Day. It also marked the dubious anniversary of 6 months of war; a war that could have been drastically shortened, tens of thousands of lives saved and peace installed hadn’t it been for the relentless western / NATO provocations, and billions worth of western weapons deliveries to Ukraine. The west pretends these killer weapons are destined to create Peace, and would you believe the media are able to make most of the western world population believe in this nonsense.

It is literally George Orwell’s 1984: “Peace is War and War is Peace;” Orwell’s classical Doublespeak, a language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the truth.

On that very day, the NYT brazenly reports, without any evidence whatsoever, that on “Ukraine’s Independence Day, a Russian attack killed at least 22 people and wounded 50, at a train station in eastern Ukraine, near Dnipro.”

The NYT continues, “But despite the missile strike, one of the deadliest on Ukraine’s railways in recent months, Ukraine stood defiant as the country celebrated its separation from the Soviet Union.” In a slickly produced address earlier in the day, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared Ukraine “reborn” six months after Russia invaded.

Such are the flagrant lies dished out to not only the American people. The European media are equally corrupted. At times even more so.

It gradually emerges that public support for western interference – western support of Ukraine – is fading by the day.

According to a Reuters / Ipsos poll, released on 23 August, still 53% of US adults agree that Washington should support Kiev, “until Russian forces are withdrawn from territory claimed by Ukraine.”. Those with doubts to continue pumping weapons into Ukraine, amount to 37%, and 18% oppose such “aid” altogether. Some 28% are undecided.

Forty percent of Americans now agree with the statement that “the problems of Ukraine are none of our business, and we should not interfere,” comparing with 31% when the same question was asked in April 2022.

The awakening might indicate that fewer and ever fewer people believe the mainstream propaganda – and especially the Zelenskyy statements. The truth of who is killing whom, and the truth about the corrupt and shamefully criminal Ukraine President, is slowly but surely seeping through the veil of deception.

In the case of the attack on the railway station, there is no doubt that the assault was launched by Ukraine’s forces on her own people, killing 22 of them and injuring at least 50. The figures are not verified. They are the ones reported by the “distinguished” NYT (25 August 2022).

Similarly, The Guardian reports (29 July 2022) that according to the Russian Defense Ministry, 40 prisoners were killed and 75 wounded in the attack on the prison in the frontline town of Olenivka. The prison was struck by Ukrainian forces with US-made Himars rockets. Yet, Ukraine was blaming Russia with the attack on its own people and with US-made weapons.

It would be hard to make believe more ludicrous statements. Yet, by telling half-truth or full-lies relentlessly and repeatedly the western media (still) gets away with murder among most of its listeners. But – the Times Are a-Changing.

Russia from the beginning has followed – and keeps following – a strict policy of avoiding civilian casualties as best as possible.

These attacks on Ukraine’s own people are certainly not carried out by Russian forces, but rather by Ukrainian military, and/or their associated Nazi Azov Battalions.

They also killed without scruples tens of thousands of pro-Russian Ukrainians in the Donbass and north-eastern Ukraine areas, since the US/western instigated 2014 Maidan Coup.

No doubt, the attacks were sanctioned by Zelenskyy. He follows clear instructions from NATO and the – unelected European Council. That the EC under Ursula von der Leyen is an unelected and tyrannical executing branch of the Deep State or the Dark elitist Cult, is no longer a secret. Madame von der Leyen is a member of the WEF’s (World Economic Forum) Managing Council.

Similarly, the relentless attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, the largest in Europe, are constantly blamed on Russia, or even on President Putin personally by the western media.

Again, the contrary is true. In order to prevent another Chernobyl-type nuclear disaster (26 April 1986), or worse, Russian troops have been occupying the Zaporozhye Plant, since March 2022. They were worried, and rightly so, about a nuclear annihilation of much of western Europe and Russia. Finally, on 19 August, Russia has shut down the plant, to limit the worst of a potential disaster.

Moscow has warned that the continuing attacks could ultimately render the power plant inoperable and might even result in a major disaster, similar to Chernobyl. Kiev and some Western officials, however, have accused Russia of shelling the plant, despite the fact that it is controlled by Russia’s own troops.

As unquestioned western support is waning, western media ever so often report the Zelenskyy Government’s accusations of Russia, but finish with the paraphrased observation that “it is difficult to verify the facts” – an own skin-saving-statement.

The next Biden Administration promised shipment of war material is of the order of an estimated US$ 3 billion. Is it part of the roughly US$ 50 billion already approved US war support to Ukraine – or is it apart?

Nobody keeps track. In any case – even western media report that about 70% of the war material sent to Ukraine ends up on the black market. Only about 30% reaches the front-line – and Ukrainian soldiers who are totally unprepared to handle the sophisticated western weaponry.

It is high time that the truth comes out – and the majority of the people see beyond the propaganda, see the most flagrant war crimes committed by Zelenskyy’s Ukraine – and stop supporting this war.

The sooner the west stops sending weaponry and tanks and most sophisticated war materiel to Ukraine, the sooner Peace may return.

If only PEACE were part of the Great Reset’s Agenda – and part of the UN Agenda 2030 – and part of Klaus Schwab’s “4th Industrial Revolution” – meaning the digitization, robotization, and absolute control of everything and every surviving human being. But PEACE, as we are still thinking humans conceive of it, is not part of the Reset Agenda.

But we are many and they are few. We may replace the Reset with the Peace agenda.

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America.

August 27, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Only 1 in 3 UN members back new anti-Russia resolution

Samizdat | August 26, 2022

Ukraine’s latest proposal to condemn Russia has attracted the backing of just 58 out of 193 UN member states, a far cry from the number that symbolically supported Kiev in the General Assembly in March.

Kiev’s envoy to the UN Sergey Kislitsa heralded the proposed resolution on Wednesday, following the Security Council meeting convened on Ukraine’s independence day. The session featured a video address by President Vladimir Zelensky, for which the council had to override protocol requiring in-person appearances, and a series of statements by Western governments denouncing Russia.

Moscow’s envoy Vassily Nebenzia provided the counterpoint by introducing evidence of Ukrainian atrocities into the record and even naming Kiev’s western backers as accomplices in specific instances.

Kislitsa’s resolution also fell short of the support Kiev had back in March, right after the start of the Russian military operation. At the March 2 General Assembly session,141 member countries – or 73% of the UN – voted for a nonbinding resolution to condemn Moscow.

This week, however, that support stood at 30%, with no African, Persian Gulf or BRICS countries on board – and only two Latin American governments, Colombia and Guatemala, standing with Ukraine.

August 26, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Siemens Energy Has Trouble Selling Off Turbine Business in Russia

Samizdat – 26.08.2022

MOSCOW – Siemens Energy might not be able to sell its turbine business to Russian company Inter RAO as its local subsidiaries, Siemens Gas Turbine Technologies (SGTT) and Siemens Energetika, fall under a recent law banning sale of shares to investors from unfriendly countries, newspaper Kommersant reported Friday, citing sources.

Siemens Energy’s two subsidiaries in Russia were put on the ban list tentatively, according to the report.

Negotiations between Siemens and Inter RAO were conducted even before the publication of the decree, and the parties were planning to sign an agreement in the coming weeks, according to the newspaper. Although Inter RAO has already submitted a request to the government to exclude SGTT from the list of companies subject to the ban, there is a possibility that the deal will be frozen.

Siemens Energy announced in its third quarter financial report on August 8 that it had started the restructuring of its business activities in Russia, which are expected to be completed by the end of 2022. In the third quarter, Siemens’ losses from the gas and electricity segment amounted to 200 million euros ($199.5 million).

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on August 5 that specifically bans the sale of foreign shares in strategic Russian companies, primarily in the energy sector, unless authorized by the Russian government.

SGTT is a joint venture between Siemens AG which owns 65% and Russian energy equipment manufacturer Power Machines that owns 35%. SGTT produces, sells and does maintenance service of gas turbines with a capacity above 60 megawatt for the Russian and CIS markets. According to the company, the localization level of the 2000E gas turbine, one of the most popular in the Russian market, reaches 52%.

August 26, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Inhumane acts committed by Azov terrorists will be made public in International Tribunal

Samizdat – 25.08.2022

Washington is afraid that crimes committed by Ukraine’s Azov neo-nazi regiment will come to light during the international tribunal for war criminals in Mariupol, the Russian Embassy to the US said.

The Russian embassy noted that the upcoming tribunal against Ukrainian war criminals, which is being prepared by the DPR authorities, will hold Ukrainian Neo-Nazis accountable.

“We have taken note of another groundless accusation against our country related to the Tribunal over Ukrainian war criminals. The upcoming Trial is aimed at bringing justice to war criminals, among which there are Nazis from the Azov Regiment. Washington is clearly afraid of making public the evidence of the inhumane acts committed by the members of this terrorist organization,” a statement read.

“The International Tribunal in Mariupol can shed light on the true essence of the Kiev regime, of which the United States diligently creates a bright and heroic image. American citizens will finally learn that in reality, their government is helping those who purposefully kill and torture the Russian people of Donbass and Ukraine,” it said.

The embassy said Russia fully complies with the Geneva Conventions and guarantees Ukrainian captives proper conditions of detention.

Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) leader Denis Pushilin earlier said that the suspected war criminals captued by the Donbass militias would face an international tribunal, which is to be held in Mariupol. He noted that the DPR authorities would not delay the trial, adding that the Foreign Ministry is working to invite the international community to take part in the tribunal.

Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) leader Denis Pushilin earlier said that the suspected war criminals captured by the Donbass militias would face an international tribunal, which is to be held in Mariupol. The politician stated that among suspects are neo-Nazis and some troops who committed atrocities in Donbass over the past 8 years.

He noted that the DPR authorities would not delay the trial, adding that the Foreign Ministry is working to invite the international community to take part in the tribunal.

August 25, 2022 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Is Russia limiting gas flows to Europe?

Gas pipelines form Russia to Europe (Welt)
Swiss Policy Research | August 2022

Is Russia limiting gas flows to Europe? The surprising answer is: no.

Many people in Europe and the US seem to believe that Russia, in response to Western sanctions, has been limiting gas flows to Europe. Yet this is not the case.

There are currently five major pipelines that supply – or could supply – Russian gas to Europe: Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II through the Baltic Sea to Germany; the Jamal pipeline through Poland to Germany; the Soyuz and Brotherhood pipelines through Ukraine; and the TurkStream pipeline through the Black Sea and Turkey to Southeast and Central Europe (see the map above).

All of these pipelines are currently out of service or run at limited capacity, though not because of Russian retaliation, but because of Western sanctions or political decisions:

  • The Jamal pipeline is closed because Poland has terminated the operational agreement with Russia (after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to become independent of Russian gas).
  • The Soyuz pipeline – which accounts for about one third of the gas delivered through Ukraine – has been closed by Ukraine after LPR forces took control of the gas compressor station.
  • Nord Stream I runs at limited capacity because Canadian and EU sanctions have prevented the repair and return of a Siemens gas compressor turbine.
  • Nord Stream II was completed in late 2021 but has never entered service due to US political pressure on Germany; Germany canceled certification of the pipeline on February 22.
  • TurkStream – which in 2014 replaced the South Stream project – remains operational, but because of EU sanctions, Bulgaria has denied euro payment to the Russian Gazprom Bank. In contrast, Hungary has defied EU sanctions and continues to receive gas through TurkStream.

There is also a widespread misconception that Russia demanded “payment in rubles” to retaliate against Western sanctions. Yet this is not the case, either. Instead, after Western sanctions against the Russian central bank froze about $300 billion in Russian foreign exchange reserves, Russia decided that euro and dollar payments for gas have to be made to an account at Russian Gazprom Bank and will then be converted into rubles by the Russian central bank (to avoid seizure by the US/EU).

Why is Russia not (yet) actively limiting or stopping gas flows to Europe? Simply because Russia is interested in earning revenue from gas exports, being seen as a reliable supplier, and avoiding further escalation of the Ukraine conflict and direct confrontation with NATO countries. However, Russia did put pressure on Kazakhstan to prevent Kazakh oil exports via Turkey instead of Russia.

Why then is Europe jeopardizing its own gas supply through sanctions against Russia? The initial goal likely was to cripple Russian export revenues and the Russian economy. Yet this has largely failed as international oil and gas prices have risen to record highs. Thus, Russian oil and gas revenue has actually increased since the outbreak of the Ukraine war (though tech sanctions are still biting).

However, the Western response can only really be understood from a US perspective, not from a European perspective. From a US perspective, cutting off Russian gas flows to Europe is a means to isolating Russia, pressuring Europe into supporting the US proxy war in Ukraine, and forcing Europe to switch to American or Arab LNG gas supplies. The most obvious example of this strategy is the Nord Stream II pipeline, which the US blocked despite a German-Russian agreement.

More broadly, the US role in Ukraine is to be seen in the context of the US strategy in Eurasia. Back in June, former US Secretary of State and former CIA director, Mike Pompeo, explained in a speech at the Hudson Institute: “By aiding Ukraine, we undermined the creation of a Russian-Chinese axis bent on exerting military and economic hegemony in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East. This would further devastate the lives of Americans and our economy here at home. () We must prevent the formation of a Pan-Eurasian colossus incorporating Russia, but led by China.”

In spite of reduced Russian gas flows, most European countries – including Germany – will still reach their gas storage target levels for the winter season, though at significantly higher market prices. This has already led to some bizarre situations, such as Germany’s largest fertilizer producer having to halt production, while fertilizer shortfalls are being replaced by imports from Russia, which have been exempted from sanctions.

August 24, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

West should end its support to Kiev to escape devastating consequences – military expert

Prolonging the conflict in Ukraine is the worst alternative for all sides

By Lucas Leiroz | August 24, 2022

Recently, some American pro-war activists wrote a letter entitled “U.S. must arm Ukraine now, before it’s too late”, in which they advocate an increase in aid to Kiev so that the situation of the conflict is reversed. The authors believe that the conflict is at a turning point and that aid must be provided now in order for Russia to be defeated. However, military experts disagree with this argument and say that there is no reason to try to prolong the fighting.

Despite all the difficulties the Western world has faced as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, many people still insist that aid to Kiev must continue – and increase – until Moscow is defeated. The main rhetoric of the pro-war militants is that Russia would not just win the conflict in Ukraine but would expand its operation to other countries in Europe, which is why it needs to be defeated now – which they consider possible by sending arms to Kiev. 

“For the U.S. and NATO, that time is now — and the place is Ukraine, a large country whose population understands that its choice is either defeating Putin or losing their independence and even their existence as a distinct, Western-oriented nation. With the necessary weapons and economic aid, Ukraine can defeat Russia. If it succeeds, our soldiers are less likely to have to risk their lives protecting U.S. treaty allies whom Russia also threatens. What does defeat for Putin look like? The survival of Ukraine as a secure, independent, and economically viable country”, the authors of the open letter asking more weapons to Ukraine say.

In fact, this rhetoric is absolutely unfounded in all its points. First, there is no reason to believe in an expansion of the Russian special military operation to NATO countries. Moscow just started military incursions into Ukraine because Kiev left no other alternative with its continuous policy of killing Russian citizens, but there is currently no equivalent situation in other countries. However, more important than that is to note the lack of realism on the part of the pro-Western militants in believing in the possibility of “defeating” Russia, despite the current stage of the conflict.

Russia did not mobilize all of its military power to attack Ukraine, but the small portion of the Russian forces sent to the operation was efficient in annihilating Ukrainian main bases of resistance. At the current stage of the conflict, there is no possibility of reversing the military situation. Kiev is defeated and only postpones the inevitable decision to surrender because it continues to receive Western weapons, guaranteeing a kind of “survival”, prolonging the battles indefinitely, even without a chance of victory.

This is the assessment of any expert who analyzes the case honestly and without ideological emotions. For example, Douglas Macgregor, war veteran and former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, believes that the sending of weapons will not bring any positive change to Kiev due to the human capital deficit, both quantitative (with the low number of active Ukrainian soldiers), and qualitative (considering the tactical and operational inability of these fighters to reverse the conflict and even their lack of instruction in using the weapons they receive from the West).

With that, the weapons would only serve to prolong, not to effectively change the current military situation. He also claims that even if Kiev were to achieve major victories, the absence of human capital would not allow it to rebuild its troops after the long battles, while Russia, whose current combat mobilization represents only a small fraction of its military potential, would have the ability to recover quickly and thus regain the positions eventually lost.

“The hard truth is the introduction of new weapon systems won’t change the strategic outcome in Ukraine. Even if NATO’s European members, together with Washington, D.C., provided Ukrainian troops with a new avalanche of weapons, and it arrived at the front instead of disappearing into the black hole of Ukrainian corruption, the training and tactical leadership required to conduct complex offensive operations does not exist inside Ukraine’s 700,000-man army. In addition, there is an acute failure to recognize that Moscow would react to such a development by escalating the conflict. Unlike Ukraine, Russia is not currently mobilized for a larger war, but it could do so quickly”, he says. 

Macgregor claims that the letter written by the pro-war militants “reinforces the failure” of Ukraine. For him, the conflict is at a decisive moment, in which it must be ended, not prolonged. He still believes that the reasons that led to this conflict – NATO’s incursions on the Russian border – were disastrous and unnecessary and that Western countries should give up further provocations against Moscow. The best solution, he says, is to support the Austrian model of neutrality as a solution for Ukraine before the country is completely destroyed.

“Ukraine’s war with Russia is at a decisive point. It is time to end it. Instead, the authors of the letter seek to reinforce failure. They are demanding a deeply flawed strategy for Ukraine that will lead in the best case to Ukraine’s reduction to a shrunken, land-locked state between the Dnieper River and the Polish border (…) Expanding NATO to Russia’s borders was never necessary and has become disastrous for Europe. The longer the war with Russia lasts the more likely it becomes that the damage to Ukrainian society and its army will be irreparable. Neutrality on the Austrian model for Ukraine is still possible”, he adds.

In fact, this opposition of opinions reflects the old debate between realists and warmongers. Anyone who really understands war and military strategy knows that there is no other solution than the neutralization of Ukraine and the end of Western expansionism. Those who think through liberal idealism, however, advocate fighting “to the last Ukrainian”.

Prolonging the conflict is not good for either side: it increases the destruction in Ukraine, perpetuates the suffering of the people, raises the expenses of western countries and forces Russia to mobilize a greater part of its military forces.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

August 24, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

NATO Abandons Diplomacy, Says No Longer ‘At Peace’

By Bas Spliet | The Libertarian Institute | August 23, 2022

At the end of its annual summit in Madrid in late June, NATO adopted a new strategic concept. The guidance document is the eighth of its kind since the founding of the alliance in 1949. It radically breaks with the three previous post-Cold War security briefs, however, which observed that “the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace” because “the threat of a conventional attack against NATO territory is low.” In the eyes of NATO, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed that calculus, claiming that the military organization can no longer discount the possibility of an assault on sovereign NATO states. Continuing the same cryptic language, the new strategic concept concludes that the Euro-Atlantic area now is “not at peace,” in spite of no NATO member being in a state of war with Russia.

Behind this word play, a more dangerous policy change has been codified in the document. Since the adoption of the Harmel Report in 1967, NATO has always officially included diplomacy in one form or another (with political dialogue and strategic partnership being interchangeable labels) as one of its “core” or “fundamental” tasks. The “NATO 2030” report from November 2020, for instance, unequivocally stated that “NATO should continue the dual-track approach of deterrence and dialogue with Russia.”

In the new strategic concept, the core tasks have been purged of the need for diplomacy, except for one or two throw-away lines about “meaningful and reciprocal political dialogue” about arms control issues buried in the middle of the text. Rather, in addition to its original function of deterrence and defense, NATO now fully embraces “crisis prevention and management,” which it has spearheaded since the 1990s with its legally dubious and morally questionable interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya; and “cooperative security,” referring to NATO’s enlargement in Eastern Europe and its Partnership for Peace cooperation with countries in ever further-away regions, including the Black Sea, the Middle East, North Africa, and even the Indo-Pacific, which the British have been pushing to include in a “global NATO.”

Russia was the first country to sign up for the Partnership for Peace program back in 1994. The new NATO doctrine, however, states that Russia can no longer be considered a partner “in light of its hostile policies and actions.” The strategic concept ignores the fact that NATO’s enlargement and new core tasks, which the alliance adopted after the Cold War in an effort to justify its continued existence, have likewise long been seen as hostile in Moscow, nor does it offer any reflection on how the new policies might have contributed to the current unpeaceful “strategic environment.” Instead, it hails the “historic success” of NATO’s expansion in terms of space and substance and insists that the alliance “does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to the Russian federation.”

The logic behind this reasoning is that NATO’s enlargement, or its Partnership for Peace program for that matter, is an outflow of the West’s innocent and well-meant efforts to spread its values of liberal democracy around the world. New member states joined the alliance in a voluntary capacity, after all. In a sense, this logic holds true. It is difficult to see how extending a war guarantee to East European and Balkan nations contribute to the security of Western Europe, let alone the United States. And from Clinton to Bush and Obama, NATO’s Open Door policy has been couched in a Wilsonian rhetoric of the United States as a benign hegemon. Joe Biden, too, steered last year’s NATO conference in Brussels in the direction of proclaiming a global fight between democracy and authoritarianism.

What proponents of this Wilsonian liberalism fail to realize, however, is that their benevolent actions might antagonize other nations. Now, NATO apologists, like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, argue that if the alliance had not expanded eastward, Vladimir Putin would have been even bolder in his imperial ambitions. But as John Mearsheimer pointed out back in 2014, there is virtually no evidence that Putin aimed to incorporate Crimea before the Maidan coup. Rather, his offensive foreign policy in Ukraine since 2014, culminating in the 2022 invasion, is one of reaction to NATO creeping up to Russia’s borders. Bringing Ukraine into the NATO fold has long been a big fat redline for Russia, and we crossed it.

First of all, West-European officials promised the Soviets after the fall of the Berlin Wall that NATO’s borders would not move “one inch” eastward. But then all former Warsaw Pact countries and even some former Soviet Republics were incorporated in the 1990s and early 2000s. In addition to the evidence the National Security Archive assembled on this issue a few years ago, recent archival research has once again confirmed these broken promises.

Next, in 2008, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned American diplomats that further NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, would constitute a “potential military threat.” William J. Burns, who is now the CIA chief but at the time served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia, translated Lavrov’s message succinctly in a diplomatic cable: “Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement redlines.” He further gave voice to the opinion of State Department experts, who warned that “the strong division in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war.” The Bush administration ignored these warnings and pushed for the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine at a summit in Bucharest, where the alliance codified that “these countries will become members of NATO.” Ultimately, war followed in both countries, in Georgia in 2008, and in Ukraine in 2014. In the process, Russia annexed Crimea and supported a separatist war in the Donbass, which dragged on in protracted fashion until the 2022 invasion.

After 2014, Ukraine started to become a de facto member of NATO, which bolstered the Ukrainian regime to take a tough stance against Russia. In 2017, Trump decided to sell “defensive weapons” to Kyiv. Other NATO countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training its military and teaming up with it in joint air and naval exercises. In June 2021, a British destroyer sailed through the Black Sea in an effort to shore up support for Ukraine, precipitating a diplomatic stand-off with Russia. NATO was undeterred, however, because a total of 32 countries participated in a major naval exercise in the Black Sea one month later.

In response, Russia decided to engage in coercive diplomacy, much like the Obama administration had done to get Iran to sign on to the 2015 nuclear deal. Putin amassed troops on the Ukrainian border, demanding guarantees that no offensive missiles would be installed in Eastern Europe and Ukraine not to join NATO. When the crisis was not solved diplomatically, Russia invaded Ukraine. Up until recently, there was hardly any diplomatic intercourse between Washington and Moscow in order to resolve the conflict. The UK’s Boris Johnson, too, “urged against negotiations” during a trip to Kyiv in April. Other NATO members, such as France, Germany, Italy and Hungary, have warmed to negotiations. But as long as there is no bigger push to re-establish diplomacy as a core task of the military alliance, Wilsonian rhetoric is likely to continue to make the world unsafe.

Bas Spliet is a historian and PhD candidate at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He writes about a variety of topics from a historical angle. Find all his work on (Re)writing history, his Substack website. You can e-mail him at Bas.Spliet@UAntwerpen.be.

August 23, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Israel Conquers the World

Fealty to Israeli and Jewish interests is the new normal

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 23, 2022

I have to confess a certain liking for Russian President Vladimir Putin. No, it’s not over his actions in Ukraine, nor his authoritarian tendencies domestically. It is due to the fact that he sometimes articulates the hypocrisy of foreign countries and leaders in a pithy and take-no-prisoners fashion. He has lately been brave enough to compare and contrast what the Russian military has been accused of in Ukraine with what Israel has been doing to Gaza. He has done so by asking a series of questions that together demonstrate the hypocrisy of Washington and of some Europeans over what constitutes war crimes or crimes against humanity. The questions were “First, are there any sanctions against Israel for the murder and destruction of innocent Palestinian women and children? Second, are there any sanctions against the United States for killing and destroying lives of innocent women and children in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Cuba, Vietnam, and even stealing their diamonds and gold? And third, were there any sanctions against the US and France over the killing of Muammar Gaddafi and the destruction of Libya?”

Russia, of course, has been on the receiving end of sanctions and boycotts and even official theft of the money that it had in US and European banks. It has also had to deal as well with military support provided by NATO to the Volodymyr Zelensky regime in Ukraine. Last month the US Senate unanimously passed a ridiculous nonbinding resolution declaring Russia to be a “state sponsor of terrorism,” which, if endorsed by the White House, would inevitably lead to still more sanctions and increasing aid to Zelensky and his corrupt cronies in an openly declared attempt to weaken Russia and bring down Putin. It would also mean that a future functional diplomatic relationship between Moscow and Washington would become impossible. Implicit in Putin’s questions is the clear accusation that there is a double standard on what constitutes national security. The West supports military resistance by Ukraine against Russia but does not support the right of the Palestinians to defend themselves when attacked by Israel, as took place on August 5th, an unprovoked attack that killed inter alia 17 Palestinian children.

The Russian Foreign Ministry followed-up with a statement first posted on its Egyptian Embassy social media accounts. The statement included a screenshot of a tweet Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid posted April 3rd on the claimed killing of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, attributed by Lapid and the western media to Russian forces. Lapid declared “It is impossible to remain indifferent in the face of the horrific images from the city of Bucha near Kiev, from after the Russian army left. Intentionally harming a civilian population is a war crime and I strongly condemn it.” The Russian post observed how one might “Compare Yair Lapid’s lies about [Ukraine] in April and attempts to place blame and responsibility on [Russia] for the deaths of people in Bucha brutally murdered by the Nazis with his calls in August for bombing and strikes on [Palestinian] land in the Gaza Strip. Isn’t that a double standard, complete disregard and contempt for the lives of Palestinians?”

The point about a double standard is particularly relevant as Ukraine, which claims to be enduring a brutal Russian assault replete with war crimes, has openly endorsed Israel’s bombing and shooting of the unarmed Palestinians. Two weeks ago, Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Korniychuk expressed his full support for Tel Aviv, saying “As a Ukrainian whose country is under a very brutal attack by its neighbor, I feel great sympathy towards the Israeli public. Attacks on women and children are reprehensible. Terrorism and malicious attacks against civilians are the daily reality of Israelis and Ukrainians and this appalling threat must be stopped immediately.”

Korniychuk’s odd, and manifestly false, comment takes reality and turns it upside down. But nevertheless, to be sure, Israel’s recent bloody assault on Gaza did not earn it much favor from a global audience that has become tired of the Jewish state’s belligerency and self-serving flood of disinformation. A number of human rights organizations and even some churches responded by declaring Israel to be an “apartheid state.” Some critics of the Israelis have also been pleased to observe that ordinary voters in the US Democratic Party in particular have moved away from knee-jerk support of Israel and have accepted that it is racist and undemocratic. Even a considerable number young Jews, many of whom have protested against the Israeli automatic resort to gunfire and bombs in suppressing the Palestinians, have broken with their parents over the issue of what constitutes the legitimate “right” of Israel to “defend itself.”

Israel is far from defeated, however, and it has struck back in the time-honored fashion, using the Jewish diaspora and its vast wealth to buy up or leverage the media, to corrupt politicians at all levels, and to propagate a narrative that always depicts Jews sympathetically as perpetual victims. That narrative relies on the so-called holocaust and the slogan “never again” to generate the moral authority and outrage that makes the entire otherwise unsustainable imposture work.

What might be plausibly described as an International Jewish Conspiracy directed from the Israeli government’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and from the think tanks, banks and investment houses on Wall Street and K Street is working hard to make it illegal to criticize Israel and is enjoying considerable success. Israel’s recent and continuing slaughter of Gazans and West Bank villagers has not induced the thoroughly controlled governments and media outlets that the Jewish state dominates that there is anything seriously wrong going on between the Israelis and Palestinians, only business as usual.

Israel appears to be winning its war against the Palestinians (and let’s not forget the Iranians) where it matters most, among the power brokers in both the US and elsewhere. Witness for example the reaction of the US government to the killing of the Gazans. President Joe Biden declared that Israel has a “right to defend itself,” the standard line also parroted by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Thirty-four congressmen meanwhile signed on to a letter calling on the United Nations to disband a UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Israel following recent controversial remarks by one of the commission’s members. The COI was set up to investigate possible Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied territories and Gaza.

The signatories particularly objected to what the always vigilant Anti-Defamation League has described as anti-Semitic statements by COI member Miloon Kothari, an Indian human rights expert and investigator. In a podcast Kothari observed that Israel routinely “practiced apartheid and settler colonialism against the Palestinians,” before rejecting criticism of his commission as the work of the Jewish lobby that controls the media, saying “We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs,” adding that “a lot of money is being thrown at trying to discredit the commission’s work.”

Jewish power particularly in the anglophone world was also on display recently in Canada. The painfully politically correct Justin Trudeau regime has succumbed to the example set by Germany and several other European states in enshrining the official Jewish organizations’ perpetual victim narrative in the Canadian Criminal Code, s. 319. Henceforth

(2.1) Everyone who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, willfully promotes antisemitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust

  • (a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or
  • (b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

So, from now on in Canada, if you question the claimed facts surrounding the approved so-called holocaust narrative you can be sent to prison for two years. So much for free speech or the right to challenge disinformation.

Finally, in Britain, the two contenders for the position of Prime Minister replacing the disgraced Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, were boasting of their pro-Israel credentials over the very weekend when Israel was killing more than fifty Palestinians, including 17 children, while wounding scores more. Truss and Sunak played the Israel/Jewish card big time, with Truss asserting that “The UK should stand side by side with Israel, now and well into the future. As Prime Minister, I would be at the forefront of this mission.” Truss has also hinted that she would follow the Zionist stooge Donald Trump’s lead in moving the British Embassy to Jerusalem and she has supported a Free Trade Agreement between the UK and Israel, which would primarily benefit the Israelis. She has also declared that any criticism of Israel is rooted in anti-Semitism, a popular line that is also being extensively promoted in the United States.

The two dominant parties in the UK’s parliamentary system are the Conservatives (Tories) and Labour. Both parties have organized “Friends of Israel” groups that have as members a majority of parliamentarians, including more than four out of every five Tories, who currently form the government. Recently, the Labour Party ousted leader Jeremy Corbyn because he dared to express sympathy for the Palestinians and replaced him with Keir Starmer, who is as close to Israel and the powerful British Jewish community as, well… choose your metaphor. For what it’s worth, Truss, Sunak and Starmer all support a hard line against Russia in Ukraine and also advocate putting extreme pressure on Iran, Israel’s declared regional enemy. They also all support using the British veto in the United Nations to protect the Jewish state against critics.

In 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon angrily admonished his colleague Shimon Peres, who was arguing that Israel should heed US calls for a cease fire, saying “I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” It now appears that the US, Canada, and Great Britain, joined by other anglophone states like Australia and New Zealand, are riding on the same horse when it comes to sacrificing actual national interests to pander to a foreign nation which can rightly be regarded as both a habitual war criminal and manifestly racist. The British and Canadian politicians on both sides of the aisle have now become like their American counterparts in allowing themselves to be corrupted by money and media influence, making an uncritical and near total commitment to Israel the defining issue in any political campaign for high office.

Modern Jewish power as a global phenomenon is a cancer that was in a certain sense made in America and has spread worldwide. But, fortunately, the smearing of critics as anti-Semites is beginning to wear thin. As Chris Hedges observed in March 2019 “The Israel Lobby’s buying off of nearly every senior politician in the United States, facilitated by our system of legalized bribery, is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. The lobby’s campaign of vicious character assassination, smearing and blacklisting against those who defend Palestinian rights… is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. Twenty-four state governments’ passage of Israel Lobby-backed legislation requiring their workers and contractors, under threat of dismissal, to sign a pro-Israel oath and promise not to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact.”

It should also be a fact that Americans are beginning to rally against their government being manipulated by the unregistered insidious agents of a foreign government, but that will have to wait presumably. For the moment, Israel and its fifth column have key elements in both government and in the public space in their iron grip. It might require something like a revolution to loosen that.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

August 23, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Space Force wants to disrupt Russia-China space cooperation

Both Russia and China have been responding to the US militarization of space by enhancing their own capabilities, both separately and jointly.

By Drago Bosnic | August 22, 2022

Close strategic partnership between Russia and China has been the mainstay of their relationship for decades. The US has been trying to disrupt this successful partnership ever since, especially as Russia started regaining its strength, but the incessant belligerent actions of the imperialist thalassocracy have pushed the two (Eur)Asian superpowers even closer. This cooperation is manifold, but its space component is particularly concerning for the US, as it has serious security implications. The Pentagon is worried that the US “might not be able to match the united financing and know-how” of Moscow and Beijing.

“The two countries’ space cooperation, including in the military realm, has become inextricable since 2018 and works against U.S. interests,” said Kevin Pollpeter, senior research scientist at the CNA think tank’s China Studies Division. “I don’t think we can separate China and Russia. I just don’t think that’s possible,” Pollpeter said in response to a question from Air Force Magazine following a panel discussion on China-Russia space cooperation at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

“While the countries do not have completely overlapping security concerns, they do share a strong desire to counter U.S. leadership, including in outer space,” he said. “What we need to do is, we need to mitigate whatever problems that relationship may cause for us. The two countries’ military space cooperation includes the areas of ballistic missile defense, space debris monitoring, and satellite navigation. The resulting exchange has included technology transfer, weapons sales, combined exercises, and compensating measures,” Pollpeter added.

In 1989, the US imposed sanctions on China, targeting Beijing’s defense and space industry. China looked to Russia for the necessary technology transfers and by 1997, the two countries started regular cooperation in space. Russia had the know-how, but its space industry was faced with severe funding shortages.

“… a number of embargoes that took place made [China] increasingly more reliant on Russia as a potential source of technology, particularly for dual use and defense,” said Pollpeter. “… China started looking more to Russia, and Russia started looking more to China for help with supporting their own space program.”

China also began cooperating with Russia on ballistic missile defense after the US unilaterally withdrew from the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty in 2019. In the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia would assist China in creating a ballistic missile early warning system. At the time, Putin said that China was perfectly capable of creating such a system itself, but that it would take longer, so Russia decided to aid Beijing in enhancing its strategic security in light of aggressive US moves in the Asia-Pacific region.

“There appears to be some sort of technology transfer going on,” Pollpeter added. “There’s been joint exercises – the Aerospace Security 2016 and 2017 involved joint air and missile defense planning and coordination.”

According to Pollpeter, another area of cooperation, space debris monitoring, “may sound innocuous,” but he claims “it has security implications.”

“If you have a space debris monitoring system, then you actually have a space domain awareness or space surveillance system,” he said. “This very much has a military role in helping China and Russia better monitor U.S. movements up in space.”

The US Space Force is particularly concerned about how “little is known about the satellite navigation cooperation between the two nations.” According to Pollpeter, other than the fact that there are compatibility and interoperability between the Russian and Chinese equivalents to GPS, the GLONASS and BeiDou navigation systems, nothing else is known about the security component of this cooperation. What is supposedly known is “the presence of augmentation stations in each other’s countries and performance monitoring,” Pollpeter claims.

“What they really want to do, then, is demonstrate that in a world where the U.S. and China could come into military conflict, they have an alternative,” he said. “They don’t have to rely on BeiDou exclusively. They also have the Russian system.”

As China doesn’t publicly discuss its space defense capabilities, Pollpeter claims it’s currently unknown which level of cooperation have Moscow and Beijing reached in this regard.

“A lot of it’s so opaque that when you get into something like counterspace, they’re not going to discuss that,” he said. “What China is developing is a capability that really is designed to threaten the United States space architecture from the ground all the way up to geosynchronous orbit.”

Existing agreements indicate close Chinese and Russian cooperation on launch vehicles, rocket engines, space planes, lunar and deep space exploration, remote sensing, electronics, space debris, satellite navigation and communication. Pollpeter thinks the US Space Force cannot halt the China-Russia cooperation, but it could do more to mitigate its effects.

“There’s really little we can do to separate the two countries, especially [on] the space side,” he said. “The distrust and, let’s say, to some extent, animosity of both countries towards the U.S. sort of precludes, at this point, that any of those efforts can be successful.”

As the US state-run space sector kept falling behind, private companies, the most prominent certainly being SpaceX, started closely cooperating with the US military. Both Russia and China have been responding to the US militarization of space by enhancing their own capabilities, both separately and jointly. While China started deploying pilotless spaceplanes, Russia is building land-based laser weapons to counter US space threats and is also launching its own spacecraft to track US space assets.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

August 22, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia blames Ukraine for deadly Moscow blast

Samizdat | August 22, 2022

The car bombing outside Moscow on Saturday night, which took the life of journalist Darya Dugina, was orchestrated and carried out by Ukrainian secret services, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has said.

Dugina was killed while returning from a conservative family festival held in Moscow Region. She was the daughter of anti-Western author and political commentator Aleksandr Dugin. Like her father, she was known for her vocal support of the Russian military operation in Ukraine.

In a statement on Monday, the FSB said that Ukrainian national Natalya Vovk, born in 1979, carried out the bombing.

According to the FSB, Vovk arrived in Russia with her teenage daughter on July 23 and rented an apartment in the building in Moscow where the victim also lived.

Vovk and her daughter attended the ‘Tradition’ festival on Saturday, where Dugin was giving a lecture and his daughter was present, the FSB said.

Investigators stated earlier that a bomb was planted under the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado SUV Dugina used to leave the event. According to the FSB, Vovk detonated the bomb remotely, killing Dugina as she was driving on a highway. She then left with her daughter for Estonia on Sunday.

The FSB added that Vovk used a car with a license plate from the Donetsk People’s Republic when entering Russia, but replaced it with a Kazakhstan license plate when driving in Moscow, and a Ukrainian license plate when crossing into Estonia.

August 22, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US taunts Russia to escalate in Ukraine

An UAV hit the roof of the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol, Crimea, August 20, 2022
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | AUGUST 21, 2022

In military terms, the crude, locally assembled drone dropping a country-made bomb or two on unguarded sites in Crimea are at best pin pricks in the big picture of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. But it can be profoundly consequential in certain other ways. 

For a start, this escalation has Washington’s approval. A senior Biden  administration official told NatSec Daily the US supports strikes on Crimea if Kiev deems them necessary. “We don’t select targets, of course, and everything we’ve provided is for self-defence purposes. Any target they choose to pursue on sovereign Ukrainian soil is by definition self defense,” this person said.

But Washington knows — and Moscow knows — that like any sophistry, this one too is a clever argument but inherently fallacious and deceptive. The New York Times has interpreted the drone attack on Crimea as a challenge to the leadership of President Vladimir Putin. The Times wrote that the Crimea attacks “put domestic political pressure on the Kremlin, with criticism and debate about the war increasingly being unleashed on social media and underscoring that even what the Russian government considers to be Russian territory is not safe.” 

The Times claimed that “as images of antiaircraft fire streaking through the blue Crimean sky ricocheted through social media, the visceral reality of war was becoming more and more apparent to Russians — many of whom have rallied behind the Kremlin’s line, hammered home in state media, that the “special military operation” to save Ukraine from Nazi domination is going smoothly and according to plan.” 

The paper quoted a prominent establishment think tanker in Moscow acknowledging that the Crimean attack is a “serious” development insofar as “People are beginning to feel that the war is coming to them.” The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed in a nationwide address on Saturday, “One can literally feel in the air of Crimea that the occupation there is temporary, and Ukraine is returning.” 

Once again, while Russia is steadily winning the ground war in Ukraine, the US is determined not to lose the information war. In Washington’s reckoning, in this Internet Age, the war is to be ultimately won in the Russian people’s minds. Therefore, this studied escalation by Washington puts Moscow in a dilemma, since if it is unanswered, Zelensky may target the 19-km long Crimean Bridge connecting the Taman Peninsula of Krasnodar in mainland Russia with the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea.  

In fact, it is a near certainty. The point is, the Kerch bridge is “Putin’s bridge” in the Russian people’s consciousness. While formally opening the bridge to car traffic in May 2018, Putin was quoted as telling the workers, “In different historical epochs, even under the tsar priests, people dreamed of building this bridge. Then they returned to this in the 1930s, the 40s, the 50s. And finally, thanks to your work and your talent, the miracle has happened.” 

Therefore, there is no better way to puncture the halo around Putin than by despatching at least a bit of the Kerch bridge to the bottom of the Black Sea. Meanwhile, from the US perspective, Kiev’s drone attacks on Crimea already serve three purposes. 

First, this is meant to be a blow to the Russian morale. Indeed, Putin’s towering popularity within Russia has become an eyesore for the Biden Administration. Putin’s masterly navigation of the Russian economy out of crisis mode is an incredible feat that defied all logic of power in the American calculus — inflation is steadily falling (in contrast with the European countries and the US); the GDP decline is narrowing; foreign reserves are swelling; the current account is on the plus side; and lo and behold, the Biden Administration’s so-called “nuclear option” — Russia’s removal from the SWIFT messaging system — failed to cripple foreign trade. 

Second, both Washington and Kiev are desperately scrambling for “success” stories to distract attention. The Times playing up the story speaks for itself. In reality, Russia’s Donbass offensive has created a new momentum and is steadily grinding the Ukrainian forces. Within the week, Russian forces will have encircled the lynchpin of the Ukrainian defence line, Bakhmut city, which is a communication hub for troop movements and supply logistics in Donbass. Russian forces have reached the city outskirts from the north, east and south. The fall of Bakhmut will be a crushing defeat for Zelensky. 

On the other hand, even two months after Zelensky promised a “counteroffensive” on Kherson near Crimea, it is nowhere in sight. Even his most ardent votaries in the western media feel let down. To be sure, there is growing disenchantment in Europe. 

The Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, undoubtedly the smartest European politician today (with an economy registering over 6% growth when the rest of the continent is mired in recession), told German magazine Tichys Einblick in an interview last week that this war marked the end of “western superiority.” Interestingly, he named Big Oil as “war profiteers” and singled out that Exxon doubled its profits, Chevron quadrupled, and ConocoPhillips’ profits have shot up manifold. (Of course, all three are American companies.) Orban’s message was clear: America has weakened the EU. This thought must be troubling many a European politician today. 

Third, Washington has thrown down the gauntlet in a measured way. But there is no way the war can be brought into the drawing rooms of the average Americans the way Times says is happening in Russia. Twenty  Americans were killed in Kharkiv two days ago in a high-precision Russian missile strike, but there aren’t going to be any body bags returning to Arlington Cemetery; nor does it make headlines in the cooperative American media. 

The US plans to go further up on the escalation ladder. Escalation is the Biden Administration’s last chance to stall a Russian victory. The American strategic thinker and academic John Mearsheimer has written that the risk of a disastrous escalation is “substantially greater than the conventional wisdom holds. And given that the consequences of escalation could include a major war in Europe and possibly even nuclear annihilation, there is good reason for extra concern.” 

Moscow’s preference is to avoid any escalation, since the special military operation is achieving results. Whereas, it is the US that is in some visible despair, and in immediate terms, Russia’s plans to hold referendums in Kherson and Zaporozhye in September must be stalled. Herein lies the danger.

The US’ current build-up over Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant points toward a hidden agenda to intervene in the war at some point directly. Kiev’s attempt to arrange a nuclear explosion in Zaporozhye can only be seen in this light. Moscow seems to anticipate such an eventuality.

Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu disclosed yesterday that Russia has begun mass production of Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missiles and is already deploying them. The US lacks the capability to counter Tsirkon, which is estimated to be 11 times faster than Tomahawk with far superior target-penetration characteristics. Shoigu may have given a stark warning that Russia will not be cowed down if there’s a NATO intervention in Ukraine. 

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

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