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US gives NATO countries ‘green light’ to provide fighter jets to Ukraine

RT | March 6, 2022

US Secretary of State Tony Blinken told CBS News on Sunday that Washington has given a “green light” to NATO members to supply Ukraine with fighter jets, and that the US would work to replace any jets sent to Kiev. Blinken spoke after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged US lawmakers to intervene in the ongoing conflict with Russia.

Asked whether NATO members could begin sending planes to Ukraine, Blinken said “that gets a green light.” The US’ top diplomat then said that Washington was already working with Polish officials to “backfill” any aircraft they send to Ukraine – meaning the US would replace every Polish aircraft given to Kiev with an American one.

Supporting the delivery of jets to Ukraine occupies a middle ground for the US between active intervention in Ukraine and purely economic retaliation against Moscow. The government in Kiev has made no secret of its desire for the US to intervene militarily, with President Zelensky urging American lawmakers on Saturday to enforce a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine. Such a measure would see the US and any willing NATO allies commit to shooting down Russian aircraft, something Moscow has explicitly said it would perceive as an act of war.

The US and NATO have ruled out a no-fly zone, and repeatedly stated that they would not send troops to Ukraine.

However, delivering fighter jets to the Ukrainians has not proven simple thus far. The European Union pledged warplanes to Ukraine late last month, but faced two significant hurdles: first finding jets that Ukrainian pilots could fly, and then finding countries willing to deliver them from their airports.

The Ukrainian Air Force uses Soviet-designed MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-24, Su-25, and Su-27 jets in combat roles, and with the Su-25 used by Bulgaria and the MiG-29 used by Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia, the jets would need to be sourced from these countries.

Shortly after the EU’s announcement, Poland stated that it wouldn’t send jets to Ukraine nor allow its airports to be used for deliveries. Bulgaria and Slovakia then stated that they wouldn’t take part in any deal, effectively killing off the EU’s arms supply plans.

However, Blinken’s statement on Sunday suggests that the plan may have been revived, but by the US and Poland rather than the EU. Blinken did not give any indication how soon Polish planes could be on their way to Ukraine, but said that discussions between Washington and Warsaw were “active.”

March 6, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia claims Ukraine destroying evidence of US-funded bioweapons program

Bacteriological laboratory at the Lvov Regional Laboratory Centre in Lvov, Ukraine, November 9, 2020 © Getty Images / Markiian Lyseiko
RT | March 6, 2022

As Russian troops entered Ukraine, the government in Kiev ordered the“emergency destruction” of pathogens including plague and anthrax at US-funded laboratories near the Russian border, the Ministry of Defense in Moscow claimed on Sunday. Earlier rumors that the Russian military was targeting US-run biolabs were written off as conspiracy theories, but the ministry has promised to back up its claims with documents.

“We have received documentation from employees of Ukrainian biolaboratories on the emergency destruction on February 24 of especially dangerous pathogens of plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases,” read a statement from the ministry.

The statement accused the “Kiev regime” of conducting an “emergency cleansing” to hide evidence of the supposed biological weapons program, which the ministry claimed was funded by the US, and involved the production of “biological weapons components” at at least two laboratories in the cities of Poltava and Kharkov, both of which have seen intense fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in recent days.

The documents published by the ministry purportedly include an order from the Ukrainian Ministry of Health to destroy the pathogens, and lists of the germs in question.

RT can not independently verify the authenticity of these documents. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that they are currently being analyzed by radiation, chemical and biological protection specialists.

“In the near future we will present the results of the analysis,” the ministry said, adding that it believes the documents will prove that Ukraine and the US were violating Article 1 of the UN Biological Weapons Convention. The US, Ukraine and Russia are among more than 180 parties to this treaty, and under Article 1 of the agreement, all parties agree “never under any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile, acquire, or retain” biological weapons.

As of the moment of this article’s publication, Washington has not commented on the ministry’s claims, and neither has Kiev.

In the initial days of Russia’s military offensive last month, claims circulated online that Russia was targeting western-funded biolabs with missile strikes. These allegations were never verified and were derided by western sources as conspiracy theories, although the Pentagon has publicly stated that it works with the Ukrainian government to “consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern in Ukrainian government facilities,” for “peaceful research and vaccine development,” according to the US embassy in Kiev.

March 6, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Why Biden needs new policy advisers on Russia

By Scott Ritter | RT | February 7, 2022

Joe Biden’s current crop of senior policy aides, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, have helped create one of the most significant foreign policy crises in modern history. It’s time for a new slate of advisers.

Despite having served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for decades, US President Joe Biden is not an expert on Russia. His Senate experience, which includes providing critical support for NATO expansion, when combined with the leading role he played in managing Ukraine policy under the administration of President Barack Obama, have slanted Biden’s world view of Russia, married as it is to the very policies that Moscow is currently challenging. Biden shared a worldview with fellow Senate hawk John McCain, who once quipped that “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country,” clearly not understanding just how important a gas station is to economies dependent upon fossil fuels for their very survival. Biden has called Putin a “killer,” showing little regard for either fact or diplomatic norms.

But perhaps the most egregious display of the lack of fundamental appreciation Biden has regarding Russia and its role in global geopolitics is comments made by the US president to the press following his June 17, 2021 meeting with Putin in Geneva. He was asked if he had taken away anything from his talks with the Russian president that indicated, as the reporter put it, “that Mr. Putin has decided to move away from his fundamental role as a disrupter, particularly a disrupter of NATO and the United States?” Biden responded with an answer that underscores just how little he understands of Russia, Russian policy, and the geopolitical realities of the present day.

“I think that the last thing he [Putin] wants now is a Cold War. Without quoting him – which I don’t think is appropriate – let me ask a rhetorical question: You got a multi-thousand-mile border with China. China is moving ahead, hellbent on election, as they say, seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world and the largest and the most powerful military in the world. You’re in a situation where your economy is struggling, you need to move it in a more aggressive way, in terms of growing it. And you – I don’t think he’s looking for a Cold War with the United States,” Biden said.

Less than eight months later, it is the United States that stands accused of pursuing a “Cold War” agenda, one that has brought Beijing and Moscow together in unprecedented fashion, united by the perceived threat posed by the US and its allies. In a comprehensive joint statement issued following the meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday, Russia and China called on all states “to protect the United Nations-driven international architecture and the international law-based world order” as opposed to the “rules-based international order” being promulgated by the Biden administration. This is a shot across the bow of the US and its allies, informing them that their continued efforts to breathe relevance into archaic structures imposed on the world in the aftermath of the Second World War will not go unchallenged.

President Biden is facing a new policy debacle, one that has massive geopolitical consequences. The US cannot afford to emerge from the current situation having had its bluff called by both Russia and China; nor can it prevail by going all in, initiating a conflict where neither it nor its allies are positioned to prevail. As the principal architects of the “rules-based international order” posture that dominates US foreign policy today, neither Biden nor his two principle foreign policy advisers, Blinken and Sullivan, are either ideologically or intellectually capable of changing course, preferring to run the ship of state aground in defense of their so-called “principles.”

All three individuals have had their global vision vis-a-vis the US and Russia shaped by a collective of ersatz Russian experts, led by the likes of Michael McFaul, Anne Applebaum, Susan Glasser, Masha Gessen, Steven Hall, John Sipher, and their ilk – people whose ignorance of the reality of Russia is only surpassed by their singular focus on the person of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as the personification of evil. Any influence such individuals – former diplomats, academics, intellectuals, and spies – have on current policy formulation and implementation, however, is indirect; none of them have a seat in the rarified air of policy formulation and implementation as directed from within the White House.

If the US is to have any hope of being able to emerge from its current policy journey with an outcome that differs from the fate enjoyed by the Titanic, it will need a cohort of genuine Russian experts who have the access necessary to advise the president at a time and place that makes such advice a part of the deliberations that occur before policy is acted on. Any such counsel, if previously offered, was disregarded in favor of the “rules-based international order” focus being marketed by Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan. At some point, however, Joe Biden as the chief executive must realize he is promulgating failed concepts. While it might be too much of an ask to have him cashier the architects of this policy debacle, the president would do well to raise the stature, so to speak, of the few voices of reason that are part of his inner circle.

For anyone hoping that the US military establishment would rise to the occasion, guess again. There was a time when US general officers were schooled in the art of combined arms warfare as practiced in Europe against a Soviet-style enemy; those days are gone. The current crop of generals, led by Mark Milley, have made a career out of fighting (and losing) low-intensity conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and, in the process, overseeing the transformation of the US military from a world-class fighting force to a bloated edifice unable to meaningfully project power into anything other than permissive counterinsurgency conflicts. Milley’s “feel” for large-scale conventional conflict is purely theoretical, as reflected in his recent briefing to Congress about his assessment of alleged Russian invasion plans regarding Ukraine.

There was a time when the US military produced the finest Russian Foreign Area Officers (FAOs) imaginable, experts on Russian language and culture who were able to provide sound advice to senior policy makers, military and civilian alike. These officers were well-grounded in the realities of what war with Russia (back then, the Soviet Union) could entail, having served several tours in combat and combat support units that were focused on just that task. The training was more than just academic – these officers went on to serve in utilization tours that put them on the frontline of the Cold War, either at the US Military Liaison Mission in Potsdam, East Germany, where they kept close tabs of the Soviet Group of Forces, Germany, or as military attaches in Moscow or other Warsaw Pact capital cities. The pinnacle of the FAO experience was to be assigned as the defense attache in Moscow. Here, one oversaw intelligence collection in support of national security objectives and provided direct advice to the US ambassador, the joint chiefs of staff, and the White House.

Today, the Russian-Eurasian Foreign Area Officer program is but a shadow of its former self, producing officers who are more political than military. Alexander Vindman, an Army Eurasian FAO who testified during the first impeachment hearings against then-President Donald Trump, is an example. So, too, is Brittany Stewart, the military attache to the US Embassy in Kiev who, during a tour of the Donbass region, was photographed wearing a patch bearing the “Ukraine or Death” skull insignia of a Ukrainian brigade. So shallow is the field of available expertise that the current defense attache to Moscow, Rear Admiral Philip Yu, is a China FAO with virtually no experience in US-Russian military affairs.

Contrast this with the defense attache assigned to Moscow during the August 1991 coup, Army Brigadier General Gregory Govan. He had served two tours of duty in Potsdam, and three total tours of duty in Moscow as an attache. When either the US ambassador or senior policy makers in Washington, DC had questions about the Soviet military, they picked up the phone and called a genuine expert. Moreover, Govan was no ideologue – his article on the “Spirit of Torgau” captured his deep appreciation of history and culture which made his advice more powerful.

Defense attaches are but one part of a larger diplomatic presence run out of the US Embassy in Moscow that is overseen by the ambassador. During Govan’s tenure, the US ambassador was Jack Matlock, a career diplomat and one of the most experienced and knowledgeable Russian experts in the State Department.

Admiral Yu, by contrast, reports to John Sullivan, a political appointee under Donald Trump with significant government experience, primarily as a lawyer, but no real expertise on Russia. In short, at one of the critical moments in US-Russian history, Washington has a politically appointed lawyer as ambassador, advised by a naval officer whose specialty is China. Recognizing the political role played by ambassadors, the State Department backstops them with career foreign service officers who serve as the Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM). Jack Matlock’s DCM was James Collins, like Matlock a top-level Russian expert. Sullivan’s DCM is Bartle Gorman, whose background is diplomatic security.

With the US Embassy in Moscow unable to provide anything more substantive than a current events update, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, secretary of state, and national security adviser trapped in their own ideological prison, the burden of providing genuine expertise on matters pertaining to Russia falls on the shoulders of three individuals – Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary for political affairs; Eric Green, the special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia and Central Asia on the National Security Council; and William Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

While Nuland’s credentials are not to be scoffed at – she has served as a diplomat for more than three decades, during which she acquired solid expertise in European, NATO, and Russian affairs – her role in the 2014 Maidan revolution has limited her utility as someone able to interface with her Russian counterparts effectively and, as such, diminishes her functionality as an adviser. Moreover, Nuland is cut from the same ideological cloth as Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. Her utility in terms of being able to guide Joe Biden away from a potential conflict with Russia is, at best, indirect – because she so closely mimics the policy positions of Blinken and Sullivan, her advice is muted.

One source of potential policy dissent is Eric Green, a career foreign service officer possessing considerable experience in Russian affairs, including as the State Department’s director, Office of Russian Affairs, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, and the minister-counselor for political affairs at the US Embassy in Moscow. Green already has the ear of the president, having sat in on every phone call between Biden and Putin, as well as being present during the June 2021 Geneva Summit. Ostensibly Jake Sullivan’s subordinate, Green’s ability to provide advice about potential diplomatic off-ramps regarding the current crisis is real, as is the balance he can provide given the non-political nature of his service history.

The person with the greatest potential to alter the course of the Biden administration’s suicidal Russia policy is, titularly speaking, the least qualified: William Burns, the director of the CIA. However, Burns possesses a resume that is more conducive to back-channel diplomacy than covert operations. Indeed, the title of his 2019 memoir as a diplomat, ‘The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal’, is self-explanatory in this regard. Biden has already made use of Burns’ service, dispatching the CIA director to Moscow in November 2021 to help dampen down tension between the two nations.

Confronted with a looming policy disaster which threatens to undermine US relations with NATO, Europe, and the world at a time when his administration seeks to assert the perception, if not reality, of leadership, it is likely that President Biden will be turning more and more to William Burns to fix the problems created by the incompetence of his secretary of state and national security adviser. Burns may very well find that he is ably backstopped at the National Security Council by Eric Green, whose expertise should supplant the ideological approach taken to date by Jake Sullivan.

Whether Joe Biden will avail himself of the expertise of Burns and Green is yet to be seen. One thing is certain – the journey on which the US is being taken on the advice of Blinken and Sullivan can only lead to embarrassment and ruin. Hopefully President Biden is wise enough to recognize this and bring in those who can help find a diplomatic path towards peace.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, served in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991 to 1998 served as a chief weapons inspector with the UN in Iraq. Mr Ritter currently writes on issues pertaining to international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.

March 6, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The War on Humanity…

By Eamon McKinney | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 5, 2022

The current situation in Ukraine has once again invigorated the lying Western media and sent them into an anti-Russian frenzy. For the last two years the media has been enthusiastically pushing the genocidal Covid narrative on behalf of the Globalist faction. Whatever doubtful credibility they had prior to Covid they have destroyed with their relentless lies. With an astonishing lack of self-awareness they are now pushing the anti-Russian narrative like the unprincipled mindless hacks that they are. Ignoring both facts and context they are relentlessly promoting war propaganda to justify this hostility to their own beleaguered populations.

The unfortunate reality is that despite unprecedented distrust in the media that propaganda works. Anti-Russian sentiment is rising throughout the West. We have witnessed the same phenomena with the rabid anti-China narrative emanating from Western governments and their client stenographers in the media. The message is clear, unless you are a pliant puppet of the Anglo-American empire, then obviously you are evil and must be destroyed.

The truth of course is deeper, the real war the Globalists are fighting is against the citizenry of every country on earth. As the Covid atrocity is being rapidly exposed the repression of the people is the only option open to the New World Order Davos cabal. As has always been the case, a war abroad is the best excuse to impose tyranny at home. The Western Neo-liberal governments of America, Canada, Australia and most of Europe cannot afford to be removed from power. The full anger of the people will be unleashed full power against those who imposed the Genocidal Covid lie upon them. Trudeau, Macron et al will be held to account (one way or another) for their pivotal roles in this atrocity. They cannot allow that to happen, they have too much to lose.

The tragic and unnecessary conflict in the Ukraine can be viewed as the “Great Reset War”. Although targeted towards Russia for media purposes, its real objective is the further subjugation of the peoples of their own countries. The Western Neo-liberal agenda is failing on every front, economically, socially and morally. The Cabal has destroyed the once prosperous and free societies that they governed. The dystopian future that they have planned for the world is now plain for all to see. It has been on display in Canada and Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe. It is a prospect that should alarm everybody.

“The Great Reset” is the Cabal’s way of ensuring that the same Globalists who plunged the world into chaos are still in charge after the coming inevitable collapse. The Green agenda and the 4th industrial revolution are about de-industrialising the world and destroying successful industrial competitors such as Russia and China. Not surprisingly, neither Russia or China, along with India and Iran are going along with this insidious plan. They are not alone, many countries from Africa, South America and Asia are also gravitating more towards the Russian/Chinese orbit. All have good reasons to be distrustful and angry at the Empire. The Cabal is weak and failing, it has created powerful enemies who are formidable obstacles to the New World Order and the Great reset. Expect this to embolden other countries to resist the Empire’s plans.

The Empire doesn’t care about the Ukrainians anymore than they care about the people in their own countries. It is about maintaining control over humanity. President Putin is not in essence fighting the Ukraine, he is fighting the N.W.O. And that is everyone’s fight. The battle being waged by the West is for the minds of the Western people so they can justify the imposition of further tyranny. Until recently, President Putin has demonstrated incredible restraint, despite the incessant lies and aggression he has pursued peace and diplomacy. This has not been reciprocated, it has been meet with more lies and provocations. It has been faced with only two options, capitulate or resist, he has resisted. Russia’s fight is the fight of all peoples who value freedom and resist tyranny.

We are all Russians now.

March 5, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Russia hits back on “sanctions from hell”

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 5, 2022 

An innocuous tweet from Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organisations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov earlier today in the afternoon said that he met with the EU Coordinator at the Vienna talks on Iran nuclear issue Enrique Mora and “raised a number of questions which need to be duly addressed now in order to ensure smooth civil nuclear cooperation with Iran.” 

A couple of hours later, he again tweeted, “The #ViennaTalks continue. I had today a useful meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran for Economic Diplomacy Mr. Mehdi Safari.” 

Other reports suggest that Russia has put forth a new demand at Vienna that its trade, investment and military cooperation with Iran would not be hindered by US sanctions. Russia seeks written guarantees in this regard at the highest level from the Biden administration. Apparently, Russia put forth this demand a couple of days back. 

A few hours ago in the evening, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed this development. Disclosing this at a press conference in Moscow, Lavrov explained that against the backdrop of the latest western sanctions, Russia wants to have a “very clear answer” from the US in the context of bilateral Moscow-Tehran relations and the Iranian nuclear deal. 

In Lavrov’s words, “We need guarantees these sanctions will in no way affect the trading, economic and investment relations contained in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for the Iranian nuclear program. We have asked the American counterparts, who rule the roost here, to provide us with guarantees at least at the level of the secretary of state [that] the current process launched by the United States will by no means affect our right to free and full-fledged trading, economic, investment, military and technical cooperation with Iran.” [Emphasis added.] 

Furthermore, Lavrov also openly backed Iran’s remaining demands, saying that Tehran’s expectations are “quite fair.” Whether Lavrov spoke in consultation with Tehran, we don’t know. 

The development comes as the 8th round of negotiations on the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the United States’ return to the fold of that multilateral agreement is nearing completion. The negotiators are working on a draft final document. Iran and the IAEA also agreed today on a roadmap with the UN nuclear watchdog to resolve all outstanding questions about the country’s nuclear program by late June, which removes one big stumbling block. 

Lavrov calmly pointed out that the sanctions on Russia create a “problem” from Moscow’s perspective. He noted sarcastically, “It would have all been fine, but that avalanche of aggressive sanctions that have erupted from the West — and which I understand has not yet stopped — demand additional understanding by lawyers, above all.” 

So, Lavrov insisted: “We want an answer — a very clear answer — we need a guarantee that these [US] sanctions will not in any way touch the regime of trade-economic and investment relations which is laid down in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.” 

On Iran’s part, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had told EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell only yesterday, “I am ready to fly to Vienna when the Western sides accept our remaining red lines… We are ready to finalise a good and immediate agreement. Most of Iran’s requests have been considered.” 

But today, the most anxious person to clinch the deal at Vienna is none other than President Joe Biden himself. After derailing the Russia-Europe energy relationship, Biden is witnessing that the prices for gas are skyrocketing in Europe, and Washington has no solutions to the grave situation that is developing. The spot market price for gas has zoomed to 8 times the price at which Russia had been supplying Germany. (Russia has announced that w.e.f Thursday, it has shut down the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline which is the trunk route transporting gas to German market.) 

On the whole, the situation in the energy market is becoming very complicated, as western oil companies which had invested in Russia are forced to quit due to the sanctions. These include big players such as BP which has a 20-percent stake in Russian giant Rosneft, Shell with 27.5 percent stake in the Sakhalin-II LNG facility and a 50 percent stake in the Salym Petroleum Development, ExxonMobil (Sakhalin-1) and so on. 

Apart from the impairment these companies will suffer running into tens of billions of dollars, their exit will also strain Russia’s ability to maintain such high production levels and continue to meet its commitments under the OPEC+ agreement. Now, the already-tight global market for crude – which saw Brent crude top $115 per barrel in early Thursday trading – can ill-afford these downstream hits from the sanctions against Russia. Evidently, crude prices still have nowhere to go but up from here. Expert opinion is that if oil price touches $125 per barrel, US economy slides into recession. 

Russia has not so far made any direct indications that it will restrict energy exports, though the rhetoric is heating up. Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov warned on Friday that western companies, including energy firms, that are ditching Russia will be considered pushing their Russian subsidiaries to “deliberate bankruptcy,” which under Russian law draws criminal prosecution. 

To solve Europe’s problem of high prices, Biden recently swallowed pride and mentioned buying cheap Iranian oil as a response. Western analysts opine that Biden is in a mood to appease the “Iranian hawks” at Vienna. That is to say, US desperately needs both a lucrative energy deal and Iranian cooperation in Vienna. Israeli observers are apprehensive that the Biden administration might go ahead with easing or lifting restrictions on Iranian oil exports even without signing the Vienna agreements! 

One big reason behind this panic is that the Biden administration is profoundly concerned about the strong growth of motor fuel prices in the US lately. But on the other hand, any visible US appeasement of Iran at this critical stage will be a sign of weakness, and, surely, Biden will come up for trenchant criticism in the domestic opinion. 

Indeed, Lavrov has factored in all these developments while demanding that “at least” Antony Blinken should give a written guarantee. Moscow is paying back for Blinken’s boorishness. Of course, it will be a devastating loss of face for Biden to cave in publicly. Of course, the most awful thing will be that it is not only precedent setting  but makes a complete mockery of America’s weaponisation of the dollar! 

Europeans too must be wondering what is going on. They have passively sacrificed self-interests vis-a-vis Russia on the basis of Biden’s demands! Nord Stream 2 stands abandoned!

This is going to be a catch-22 situation. For, Russia’s green signal is an imperative for the JCPOA deal to be approved within the framework the joint commission of Iran and the international quintet (Russia, Britain, Germany, China and France.) Besides, Iran will surely expect a formal approval for any deal from the UN Security Council. 

On the other hand, if the negotiations at Vienna get prolonged, Iran’s enrichment activities at the accelerated pace will continue and a point of no return may be reached very soon, in a matter of weeks at the most, which will put the Biden administration in an even bigger bind, as the spectre of a nuclear Iran haunts West Asia and Europe. 

To be sure, the blowback to the US sanctions has begun. This is of course only the beginning. Trust Russia to go further and further up on the escalation ladder. Russia would have no conceivable reason to cooperate with the US from now onward. (See my blog Ukraine sparks EU, US rush to  Iran deal, March 1, 2022)

However, if the chronicle of Russian-American relations is anything to go by, trust Biden to start making entreaties using back channels to Moscow.

Actually, in response to a question at a press briefing in Moscow today evening about the current state of Russia-US relations in view of the developments in Ukraine and the pressure of sanctions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked cryptically that “We are maintaining certain channels of a dialogue with the United States.” He didn’t elaborate. 

March 5, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Russia claims it obliterated Ukraine foreign weapons depot

RT | March 5, 2022

A long-range precision strike on a military depot in the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr has destroyed a warehouse storing West-supplied weapons, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed in its latest update on Saturday.

The warehouse was located on a military base in the northwest of Ukraine, the spokesman for the ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said. The site had been used to store the American and Anglo-Swedish Javelin and NLAW man-portable anti-tank systems shipped to Ukraine in the run-up to the ongoing crisis.

Konashenkov claimed the number of Ukrainian military infrastructure targets destroyed during the operation had now surpassed 2,000. Russian troops and the allied forces of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, Ukraine’s breakaway provinces, which Russia recently recognized as independent states, have also made progress since the start of the conflict, he said.

The major general announced a temporary ceasefire for the cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha in the east, which will be in operation from 10am to 4pm local time. He said Russian and Ukrainian forces had agreed on establishing humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to evacuate from the two cities.

Russia invaded Ukraine nine days ago, citing the growing threat posed by NATO’s creeping expansion, and what it claimed was continued Ukrainian violence against the breakaway regions to justify its offensive. Western nations have condemned it as an unprovoked act of aggression and imposed harsh sanctions intended to cripple the Russian economy.

March 5, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia blocks Facebook

The ban comes in retaliation to the platform’s efforts “to restrict access to Russian media”

RT | March 4, 2022

Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor imposed a blanket ban on Meta’s Facebook social media platform on Friday. The decision was taken in response to Facebook blocking access to Russian media outlets, the watchdog said in a statement.

“Since October 2020, we have reordered 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media and information resources by Facebook,” the statement reads.

“In recent days, the social network has limited access to the accounts of the Zvezda TV channel, the RIA Novosti news agency, Sputnik, Russia Today, Lenta.ru, and the Gazeta.ru news outlets.”

Meta blocked access to accounts belonging to RT and Sputnik in the EU earlier this week, accusing the outlets of serving as a “propaganda arm.” Over the past week, Western private-owned tech giants and multiple government entities took action against Russian state-funded and state-affiliated outlets.

Google, for instance, restricted access to content by outlets owned by the government media holding Rossiya Segodnya on Google Discover and Google News. The holding blasted the move as “information manipulation.”

The renewed push against Russian state-affiliated media, which has been repeatedly targeted in the West for years already, comes amid the offensive in Ukraine that was launched by Moscow last week. Russia said it was the only option to end the bloodshed in Ukraine’s east, where the Kiev forces have been struggling with the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk for some eight years already.

Donetsk and Lugansk split from Ukraine after the 2014 Maidan coup, which ousted the country’s democratically-elected government. The new Kiev authorities launched a military operation to quell the unrest, leading to years of low-intensity warfare in the region.

March 4, 2022 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Putin: Crazy Like a Fox

By Scott Ritter | Consortium News | March 2, 2022

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine goes on, the world wonders what the reason was behind such a precipitous act. The pro-Ukraine crowd has put forth a narrative constructed around the self-supporting themes of irrationality on the part of a Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his post-Cold War fantasies of resurrecting the former Soviet Union.

This narrative ignores that, far from acting on a whim, the Russian president is working from a playbook that he initiated as far back as 2007, when he addressed the Munich Security Conference and warned the assembled leadership of Europe of the need for a new security framework to replace existing unitary system currently in place, built as it was around a trans-Atlantic alliance (NATO) led by the United States.

Moreover, far from seeking the reconstitution of the former Soviet Union, Putin is simply pursuing a post-Cold War system which protects the interests and security of the Russian people, including those who, through no fault of their own, found themselves residing outside the borders of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In this age of politicized narrative shaping, which conforms to the demands of domestic political imperatives as opposed to geopolitical reality, fact-based logic is not in vogue. For decades now, the Russian leadership has been confronting a difficult phenomenon where Western democracies, struggling to deal with serious fractures derived from their own internal weakness, produce political leadership lacking in continuity of focus and purpose in foreign and national security relations.

Consistent Leadership

Whereas Russia has had the luxury of having consistent leadership for the past two decades, and can look to another decade or more of the same, Western leadership is transient in nature. One need only reflect on the fact that Putin has, in his time in office, dealt with five U.S. presidents who, because of the alternating nature of the political parties occupying the White House, have produced policies of an inconsistent and contradictory nature.

The White House is held hostage to the political constraints imposed by the reality of domestic partisan politics. “It’s the economy, stupid” resonates far more than any fact-based discussion about the relevance of post-Cold War NATO. What passes for a national discussion on the important issues of foreign and national security are, more often than not, reduced to pithy phrases. The complexities of a balanced dialogue are replaced by a good-versus-evil simplicity more readily digested by an electorate where potholes and tax rates matter more than geopolitics.

Rather than try to explain to the American people the historical roots of Putin’s concerns with an expanding NATO membership, or the impracticalities associated with any theoretical reconstitution of the former Soviet Union, the U.S. political elite instead define Putin as an autocratic dictator (he is not) possessing grandiose dreams of a Russian-led global empire (no such dreams exist).

It is impossible to reason with a political counterpart whose policy formulations need to conform with ignorance-based narratives. Russia, confronted with the reality that neither the U.S. nor NATO were willing to engage in a responsible discussion about the need for a European security framework which transcended the inherent instability of an expansive NATO seeking to encroach directly on Russia’s borders, took measures to change the framework in which such discussions would take place.

Russia had been seeking to create a neutral buffer between it and NATO through agreements which would preclude NATO membership for Ukraine and distance NATO combat power from its borders by insisting the alliance’s military-technical capabilities be withdrawn behind NATO’s boundaries as they existed in 1997. The U.S. and NATO rejected the very premise of such a dialogue.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine must be evaluated within this context. By invading Ukraine, Russia is creating a new geopolitical reality which revolves around the creation of a buffer of allied Slavic states (Belarus and Ukraine) that abuts NATO in a manner like the Cold War-era frontier represented by the border separating East and West Germany.

Russia has, by redeploying the 1st Guards Tank Army onto the territory of Belarus, militarized this buffer, creating the conditions for the kind of standoff that existed during the Cold War. The U.S. and NATO will have to adjust to this new reality, spending billions to resurrect a military capability that has atrophied since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Here’s the punchline — the likelihood that Europe balks at a resumption of the Cold War is high. And when it does, Russia will be able to exchange the withdrawal of its forces from Belarus and Ukraine in return for its demands regarding NATO’s return to the 1997 boundaries.

Vladimir Putin may, in fact, be crazy — crazy like a fox.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.

March 4, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Russian MoD responds to Zaporozhskaya nuclear power station incident

RT | March 4, 2022

The spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, Major General Igor Konashenkov, issued an official statement on Friday morning concerning the shootout and fire that had occurred at Ukraine’s Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant earlier the same day.

“Last night, an attempt to carry out a horrible provocation was made by Kiev’s nationalist regime on the area surrounding the station,” he announced, claiming the Russian troops patrolling the territory had been attacked by a Ukrainian sabotage group.

According to the spokesman, the Ukrainian forces had attacked Russian soldiers at about 2am local time, opening heavy fire from the training facility next to the power station in order to “provoke a retaliatory strike on the building.”

The Russian patrol had neutralized the group’s firing points, but the saboteurs had then set fire to the training facility as they retreated, Konashenkov said. The blaze was put out by the Ukrainian State Emergency Service’s firefighters. “At the moment of provocation, no staff members were at the facility,” he noted.

In response to the Russian Ministry of Defense’s statement, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky denied the provocation claims and accused Russian forces of having staged the attack.

The mayor of the nearby town of Energodar had originally reported that the fire had been caused by Russian shelling, and that the blaze had engulfed the power plant itself, but the emergency services dismissed the latter claim.

It was reported on Monday that the facility had been captured by Russian forces, and that staff were keeping operations going and monitoring radiation levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency has offered assurances that there has been no change in those levels in the wake of the incident.

Russia began its military offensive in Ukraine last week, claiming its invasion was aimed at “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” the government in Kiev and stopping what it called the “genocide” in the two breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. Ukraine has accused Moscow of an unprovoked offensive, with the US and its NATO allies following suit and imposing severe economic sanctions.

March 4, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Nuclear Power | , | Leave a comment

On Ukraine, Biden’s State of the Union address was just ‘good vs. evil’

By Scott Ritter | RT | March 3, 2022

Biden’s simplistic “good versus evil” pronouncements on the Russian-Ukraine conflict did little to prepare America for the consequences of declaring economic warfare against the Russian state.

It wasn’t surprising that Russia’s ongoing military incursion into Ukraine topped the list of issues addressed by US President Joe Biden in his first State of the Union (SOTU) address, delivered on March 1, 2022, to a joint session of Congress.

Biden pitched the Ukraine crisis as a defining moment in modern history, a problem that could only be resolved with American leadership, both at home and abroad. His job during his address was to convince both domestic and foreign viewers alike that he was the man for the job.

He repeated the time-tested mantra that held that Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, constituted a threat to democratic principles at home and abroad. This was especially true, he said, when it came to Ukraine.

There was nothing new in what Biden told his audience – the same words and themes had been deployed many times over in the past week. He pushed the same buttons – Putin as the personification of “autocratic oppression,” leading a Russia addicted to power, hell-bent on forcefully absorbing the nation of Ukraine into the Russian orbit.

He likewise pulled at the heartstrings of America, talking about Ukraine’s embattled leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the heroic resistance of his people in the face of overwhelming Russian power. The United States stood fully behind them, Biden said. This sentiment was shared by many in the audience as the president spoke. They held small Ukrainian flags or wore the nation’s blue-and-yellow colors. But this support, he said, had its limits – the US, he declared, would not send a single soldier to Ukraine to fight for its cause.

The fact was, Biden was abandoning it to its fate. While praising the courage and leadership of the Ukrainian president, he said, “Let me be clear, our forces are not engaged and will not engage in conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine. Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO allies in the event that Putin decides to keep moving west.”

There is no evidence that Russia intends to “keep moving west.” And while Biden spoke of the important leadership role played by the US in Europe, the fact remains that Europe is a veritable prisoner to the whims of any US president, whose pronouncements take on the weight of law whenever they are uttered.

Neither Europe nor the United States, it seemed, would be intervening on behalf of Ukraine against Russia. Zelensky and Ukraine were on their own, their only choice for national relevance being to commit suicide on the international stage while the West, from the safety of their homes and offices, cheered them on like bloodthirsty Romans watching gladiators do battle in the Colosseum.

The major takeaway from Biden’s SOTU address? Ukraine will lose this war, and the West will do nothing to stop that fact.

While Biden lionized Ukraine and its beleaguered president, he failed to explain to the American people why there was a war, beyond the sophomoric argument that “Putin did it.” No talk of America’s role in the Maidan back in 2014, no discussion of the role played by Ukrainian right-wing ultra-nationalists in oppressing the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, no mention of the shelling of the breakaway Donbass region, no discussion of the role that NATO expansion played in creating an untenable security situation for the Russian state.

Simplistic jingoism plays well in atmospheres such as televised political addresses, where a captive audience is compelled to rise and applaud made-for-TV pronouncements lest they be singled out for public criticism by a fawning, vindictive corporate media. The cheer-fest the SOTU has become would give any Brezhnev-era meeting of the Presidium a run for its money when it comes to mindless standing ovations.

But it was here, in the orgy of self-congratulation that is the interplay between president and Congress where America’s weakness in its conflict with Russia was exposed. As united as everyone seemed to be about sacrificing Ukraine on the altar of Russia-bashing, it was clear Congress was deeply divided from Joe Biden on issues of domestic policy, especially when it came to the economy of the US. While the US president may not want to engage Russia in a shooting war in Europe, he has embarked on a great global crusade to destroy it economically. And the tepid response the political opposition gave to his pronouncements underscores the reality that the US is not prepared for the consequences of his declaration of open economic war with Russia.

Let there be no doubt: Russia will win the shooting war in Ukraine. This outcome is inevitable, given the reality that Ukraine has been abandoned by its erstwhile partners in the West. Yet the conflict between Russia and the West won’t end when the last bomb explodes on Ukrainian soil, but when, in the mindset of the US and its European partners, the Russian economy is destroyed and Putin is humiliated and diminished as a political force, domestically, regionally, and globally.

Here, the US president did the American people a great disservice, selling them a feel-good struggle in which Ukraine is promoted as the glorified martyr and Russia demoted as the evil oppressor. A bloodless conflict – from the US perspective, at least – that will be won simply by shutting down the Russian economy by remote control. It won’t be that simple.

Russia has yet to respond to the US-led economic war being waged against it. When it does, rest assured that these sanctions Congress so enthusiastically applauded will prove to be a double-edged sword – one that will cut into a US economy still reeling from the consequences of the Covid pandemic. When that time comes, President Biden could find that many of those politicians who rose to their feet to cheer on the sacrifice of Ukraine will turn on him.

War, it is said, is but an extension of politics by other means. Given the deep partisan political divide that exists in the US when it comes to the economy, it is clear neither Biden nor the American public is ready for what is about to happen when the consequences of their anti-Russian hysteria finally comes home to roost.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector.

March 3, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

How JFK Would Have Handled the Ukraine Crisis

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | March 3, 2022

There is no doubt that President Kennedy would have handled the Ukraine crisis totally different from the way that President Biden has handled it. Unlike Biden, Kennedy would have resolved the situation so that there never would have been a Russian invasion of Ukraine, which would have meant that all the death and suffering being wreaked in that country today would never have occurred.

Kennedy had a unique ability to step into the shoes of his adversary to determine why he was taking a particular position or course of action. In the case of Ukraine, he would have easily realized that all that Russia wanted was a guarantee that Ukraine would not be admitted into NATO. He would have understood Russia’s reasoning that admitting Ukraine into NATO would have entitled the Pentagon and the CIA to install their bases, missiles, weaponry, tanks, and troops along Russia’s border. He would have understood why Russia would find that unacceptable.

Therefore, Kennedy would simply have issued the guarantee that Ukraine would never be admitted into NATO. He would have concluded that that would be a preferable outcome compared to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, which he would have known would have entailed massive death and destruction of innocent people. He also would have known that there would be a grave risk that such a war could turn into a nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. He would not have believed that such a risk would be worth taking. In his mind, it would have been much more preferable to simply issue the guarantee, no matter how much pressure he would have been getting from the Pentagon and the CIA to do the opposite.

How do we know that this would have been how Kennedy would have resolved the crisis? Because that’s how he resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After the debacle of the CIA’s invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the Pentagon and the CIA were constantly exhorting Kennedy to initiate a full-scale military invasion of Cuba. They maintained that the communist regime in Cuba posed a grave threat to “national security.” The Pentagon even presented him with a plan called Operation Northwoods, which was false-flag operation designed to give Kennedy a pretext for ordering an invasion of Cuba.

The Cubans knew that the Pentagon and the CIA were hell-bent on invading the island and effecting regime change. Thus, once Kennedy discovered that the Soviets had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, he began trying to figure out why they would do that. He concluded that the missiles were intended to deter a U.S. invasion of Cuba or, in the case of an invasion, to enable the Cuban regime to defend itself. He also learned that the Soviets were chagrinned that the Pentagon had installed nuclear missiles in Turkey pointed at the Soviet Union.

Thus, to resolve the crisis, Kennedy simply issued a double guarantee to the Soviets. He guaranteed that the U.S. would not invade Cuba and he guaranteed the removal of the Pentagon’s missiles in Turkey. In return for that double guarantee, the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba and took them home. The crisis was over.

Needless to say, the Pentagon and the CIA were livid. They looked on Kennedy as an incompetent coward who had guaranteed the permanent existence of a grave threat to national security. One member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff compared Kennedy’s actions during the crisis to those of Neville Chamberlin’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich. He called Kennedy’s resolution of the crisis the biggest defeat in U.S. history.

By that time, Kennedy didn’t care what the Pentagon and the CIA thought because he held the entire military-intelligence establishment in deep disdain. Unlike Biden, he was willing to confront and oppose the fierce anti-Soviet and anti-Russian animus that characterized the national-security establishment. In fact, in his Peace Speech at American University the following year, he effectively announced an end to the Cold War and the establishment of a peaceful and friendly relationship with the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, unlike Kennedy, Biden lacks the intestinal fortitude to oppose the fierce anti-Russia animus that still characterizes the U.S. military-intelligence establishment. As we have seen in the Ukraine crisis, Joe Biden is no John Kennedy.

March 3, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s space agency hits back at US

RT | March 3, 2022

In a tit-for-tat move against restrictions slapped on it by the international community due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, Russia’s space agency announced on Thursday that it would be imposing counter-sanctions.

According to the agency’s director, Dmitry Rogozin, Roscosmos will halt shipping RD-181 rocket engines to the US and maintaining the 24 engines that are currently owned by the country.

“In this situation, we can no longer provide the US with the best rocket engines in the world. Let them fly on something else – their brooms,” he stated live on Russian television.

Rogozin also announced that he had written to Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, the head of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), announcing that Russia would cease conducting joint scientific experiments on the International Space Station.

What he described as the hostile and destructive actions of the DLR had curtailed crucial joint space projects, Rogozin said. He pointed to the shutdown of the German eROSITA wide-field telescope aboard the Russian observatory, which had led to the collapse of a unique scientific project to create a map of the entire sky in the Röntgen (X-ray) spectrum.

“German colleagues who took such steps to politicize our relations will end up with nothing,” he opined.

Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine last week, claiming it was forced to do so to stop Kiev’s armed forces from attacking the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, and in order to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country.

The West has almost universally condemned Russia for what it called its unprovoked aggression. The sanctions that have since been imposed on Moscow in retaliation target a lengthy list of Russian authorities and are intended to seriously impact the Russian economy. The UN has adopted a resolution condemning Russian actions in Ukraine and demanding Russia immediately withdraw its troops.

March 3, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

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