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Denials of Washington’s Links to Murder of Russian General Igor Kirillov Highly-Suspect

By Henry Kamens – New Eastern Outlook – December 31, 2024

The mysterious assassination of General Igor Kirillov raises suspicions of a covert connection between U.S. biolabs, Ukraine, and the broader geopolitical interests of the West, highlighting potential motives linked to sensitive military research.

Maria Zakharova, speaking for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confidently dismissed U.S. State Department claims of no involvement in the killing of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, Russia’s chief of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops. Zakharova had accused the U.S. of creating and funding the Kyiv regime, supplying it with weapons, and failing to condemn its terrorist acts. The suspicious timing of such assassinations can be compared to historic high-profile killings before major events, from WWI to operations in Afghanistan.

Such assassinations, often aimed at demoralizing Russia and targeting those Kyiv considers war criminals, which Ukraine defends as legitimate wartime tactics, raise many questions. Knowing Kirillov’s access to sensitive documents and possessing many of the same and similar materials, I can offer some insights into the “likely motives” behind him and his deputy being blown up in Moscow.

Peter Daszak, Spooky Guy with a Checkered Past

A very spooky guy with a Ukrainian father, Peter Daszak, is President of EcoHealth Alliance, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting wildlife and public health from the emergence of disease. It should come as no surprise that this person is connected with BSL 3 labs Worldwide, Ukraine, Georgia and China.

This was also one of the main players at Lugar Lab, Tbilisi, Georgia too, at least when it comes to bat research and diseases transmitted between animals and humans (zoonosis). It is claimed Daszak is a fellow traveller with the Bat Lady from Wuhan, China. Coincidence or not, the British zoologist and president of EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak provides much revealing information in a video that was originally taken on Dec. 9, 2019, three weeks before the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announced an outbreak of a new form of pneumonia.

EcoHealth Alliance presents itself as a nonprofit that protects the world from the emergence of new diseases and predicts pandemics. Since 2014, Daszak’s organization has received millions of dollars of funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which it has funneled to carry-out research on bat coronaviruses.

There are other suspects to investigate: Daszak was named by the World Health Organization as the sole U.S.-based representative on a team sent to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a team that also includes Marion Koopmans, Hung Nguyen, Fabian Leendertz, and Christian Drosten. This is more than coincidence, especially since many believe COVID is not naturally occurring, and if made in a lab, nature is not picking up where lab workers left off.

Too many ducks are lining up, COVID-19 pandemic. On February 9, 2020, Newt Gingrich invited Daszak as a special guest along with Anthony Fauci on Newt’s World to discuss the coronavirus and how it could potentially evolve into a global pandemic.

A lizard loving kid!

As one source describes, Dasak is not very honest, and the cover face, poster boy, for disguising military research and experiments. He started out in zoology, e.g., a lizard loving kid, who studied reptiles and then was able to help his wife get a job at the CDC in Atlanta, he tagged along unemployed with her and “suddenly” got a job coordinating virus research among seven (7) USAID and DoD universities.

Coincidence or not, Daszak described during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2011,

“Our research shows that new approaches to reducing emerging pandemic threats at the source would be more cost-effective than trying to mobilize a global response after a disease has emerged”.

As the NYT reported, in October 2019, when the federal government “quietly” cut off funding to the ten-year-old program called PREDICT, operated by United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s emerging threats division, much to the dismay of experts like Daszak, He was worried that shutting PREDICT down, could “leave the world more vulnerable to lethal pathogens like Ebola and MERS that emerge from [unexpected places], such as bat-filled trees, gorilla carcasses and camel barns.”

These disease sources can be considered as Red Herrings, and there is still great speculation that many of these Especially Dangerous Pathogens, EDPs, were manipulated in labs, and not only one country may be involved.

Daszak said, “PREDICT” a USAID project, was an approach to heading off pandemics, instead of sitting there waiting for them to emerge, and then mobilizing” in reaction.  But in reality it was to seek out potential bio weapons.

EcoHealth also claims that it looks at the nexus between emerging viruses and how they affect public health, and what is underlying that … and it is claimed that “almost” all emerging disease are linked to some underlying drivers, some cause that’s related to people: travel and trade and building roads into forests around the world,

We have this unprecedented population growth. We’re doing things on the planet that we never used to do. We’re building roads into the remotest forests and what we do is we come into contact with wildlife species and pick up those artists. What we do at EcoHealth is to look at the relationship between people and animal, and the environment, and how that [leads] to pandemics and [then] we try and do something about it.

Peter Daszak plays a central role in discussions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. According to an expert collaborating with independent scientists investigating military labs, Daszak is widely viewed as a key figure of suspicion, allegedly disguising his self-interest as humanitarian work. Despite potential conflicts of interest due to his close ties with Wuhan and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Daszak headed up a WHO group in Wuhan and another group under the Lancet to investigate the virus’s origins.

General Igor Kirillov’s death is most likely connected to sensitive documents reportedly involving Ukraine, Georgia, and the Lugar Lab in Tbilisi. These documents, (still classified and under investigation, detail a joint Georgian-U.S. military research project on diseases potentially affecting Georgian and Ukrainian military recruits. The project, primarily funded by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in collaboration with the CDC and other institutions, outlines research objectives, budgets, and criteria for participant selection. Specific pathogens of interest, such as anthrax, are noted for their military relevance.

The WHO’s decision to appoint Daszak to monitor COVID-19 outbreaks in China has been criticized as politically motivated. Articles by Henry Kamens (NEO) and Jeffrey Silverman (Veterans Today ) support the allegation that that Kirillov’s death and the likelihood of U.S.-Ukrainian collusion in bio weapons research are not coincidental.

Silverman, whose work often focuses on Georgia’s unique geopolitical dynamics, has participated in RT documentaries on U.S. biolab activities and foreign policy. These documentaries have faced bans and restrictions on platforms like Facebook, reflecting their controversial nature, and bans for those who share the link with others.

The nexus between Daszak, the Lugar Lab, and broader U.S. geopolitical strategies are more than speculative. The closed-source verification and personally being involved with undisclosed documents, especially some of the actual documents which resonate within the context of broader Russian criticisms of Western intervention and bio­­-weaponization of animal diseases, (Zoonosis).

Peter Daszak a British zoologist and president of EcoHealth Alliance, which researches emerging diseases and zoonotic pathogens has too many links to controversial funding for bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, raising questions about his role in the origins of COVID-19 and the covert development of new bio weapons for offensive purposes, at various BSL3 labs as being funded and operated by the US government in blatant violation of the 1972 bio weapons treaty.

It is clear that what Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov had access to, as confirmed by others, and his knowledge and role in sharing of these documents may have been the main motivation for his murder.

Kirillov “most likely” had a treasure trove of either highly classified or sensitive information about the links of these labs to the acquisition, development, and potential use of weapons of mass destruction, including but not limited to highly resistant strains of anthrax.

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Syria’s new leadership receives Ukrainian FM in Damascus

The Cradle | December 30, 2024

Syria’s de facto ruler Ahmad al-Sharaa, better known as former Al-Qaeda chief Abu Mohammad al-Julani, and the country’s new Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaybani hosted Ukraine’s top diplomat in the capital, Damascus, on 30 December.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha arrived in the capital at the head of a high-level delegation, which included President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s special envoy.

“We seek to cooperate with the new Syrian administration in several areas. We share with Syria the suffering from unjust regimes,” Sybiha was quoted as saying. “We are ready to help Syria in collecting evidence and investigating the crimes of the former regime and Russia.”

“Russia and Assad regime are partners in committing atrocities in Syria. We believe that relations between our two countries will witness great development,” he added.

The foreign minister went on to say, “If you can expel the Russians from your lands, you will ensure your security and the security of neighboring countries.”

Shaybani said during the meeting that his country is “turning the page” on the era of the former government of Bashar al-Assad, stressing that there will be a “strategic partnership” between Damascus and Kiev.

Sharaa’s organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as the Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda’s offshoot in Syria), appointed a transitional authority following the collapse of the Syrian army and the fall of Damascus on 8 December after an 11-day shock offensive that took the region by surprise.

Over the past few years, Ukraine has provided crucial support to HTS and other extremist factions under its command – who were based in Syria’s northern Idlib governorate before the assault that ended the Assad government.

HTS militants and fighters from ISIS and other extremist groups have also been deployed in Ukraine to fight Russian forces.

Before the launch of the offensive on 27 November, Ukrainian drone experts had been training and equipping extremist militants in Idlib.

The Russian military intervened in Syria in 2015 in support of Assad’s government, helping the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) turn the tide against several groups who had taken over large swathes of the country – including the Nusra Front, which became HTS.

Moscow and the former Al-Qaeda branch have established a line of contact since Assad’s government fell in early December.

“Russia is an important country and is considered the second most powerful country in the world. There are deep strategic interests between Russia and Syria. All Syrian weapons are Russian, and many power stations are run by Russian expertise,” Sharaa said on 29 December. “We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way some people would like.”

Russia has said that the future of its presence in Syria will depend on the outcome of talks with the country’s new authorities following the transitional period.

December 30, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s ‘Second Front’ in Africa: Zelensky ‘Will Bite Dust’ There

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 30.12.2024

The Kiev regime, unable to defeat Russia on the battlefield, has opened a “second front” in Africa by aligning with terrorist groups in Mali and Niger, both of which have already severed diplomatic ties with Ukraine, said the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Ukraine’s opening of a “second front” on the African continent is “a desperate move aimed at media sensation, with no clear vision and strategy,” Professor Alexis Habiyaremye, Research Chair in Industrial Development at the University of Johannesburg, told Sputnik.

Context for Ukraine in Africa

It is unclear what Ukraine’s strategy in Africa is “beyond participation in destabilization” of the continent, he said, mentioning the Confederation of Sahel States, which are “led by a vision of sovereignty that is stronger than Ukrainian hatred and racism.”

“African countries are motivated by the determination to wrest their full independence from the neocolonial Western powers, while Ukraine is acting erratically based on anger and frustration. [Volodymyr] Zelensky and his agents will certainly bite the dust in Africa,” Habiyaremye stressed.

Ukrainian intelligence services “have unashamedly claimed to collaborate” with terrorist groups in Africa, “hoping to destabilize Russian security partners, and by doing so, to discredit Russia,” the analyst added, pointing to “the blanket impunity granted to Ukraine by its Western backers.”

Why is the Effort Fruitless?

The professor singled out the Sahel region, where he said the Kiev regime relied on “French logistics and American satellite technology” to help “terrorists ambush troops of Malian Armed Forces.”

“By allying itself with terrorists to attack African countries, Ukraine has squandered any possible goodwill it could hope to get from Africa and the rest of the Global South. It is therefore unlikely to achieve anything of significance as it tied its lot with that of the terrorists,” Habiyaremye concluded.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova earlier stated that Mali’s and Niger’s decision to sever diplomatic relations with Ukraine indicates the African countries’ growing understanding of the terrorist nature of the Kiev regime.

December 30, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran expects boom in trade after gaining EAEU’s observer status

Press TV – December 29, 2024

Iran expects a major boom in trade ties with members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) after the country gained observer status in the bloc and just months before the two sides enter into a free trade agreement.

Iran’s trade minister Mohammad Atabak said on Sunday that observer membership in the EAEU will enable Tehran to increase its presence in the bloc’s meetings and exchange more trade and economic information with its members.

Atabak made the remarks after returning from an EAEU Supreme Council meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he signed the agreement for Iran to become an observer member in the bloc on December 26.

During the meeting, EAEU members also gave their final endorsement to a free trade agreement signed between Iran and the bloc last year. The agreement, which has been ratified by parliaments of both Iran and five EAEU members, will officially come into effect in the next two months after Iran’s Guardian Council, which vets legislation passed by parliament, approves the deal.

Atabak said that the free trade deal with the EAEU will eliminate tariffs on nearly 87 percent of Iranian exports to members of the bloc, namely Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia.

He expected that trade between Iran and the EAEU would increase several times with the implementation of the free trade deal.

“The Eurasian region is a very good market for Iranian goods. Iranian technical and engineering companies can also expand their activities in these countries,” he said.

The minister said that Iran is planning to hold a major trade exhibition in Tehran in the coming months to showcase its economic and trade potential to EAEU countries.

December 29, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service: US, UK special forces directing attacks on bases in Syria

Press TV – December 28, 2024

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) says US and British special services are plotting a series of terrorist attacks on Russian military bases in Syria, following the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad’s government by militant groups earlier this month.

“British intelligence agencies are working out plots to stage a string of terrorist attacks against Russian military installations in Syria. The schemes seek the recruitment of Daesh Takfiri terrorists, who new authorities in Damascus have set free in the aftermath of Assad’s downfall,” the press office of the SVR said in a statement on Saturday.

The statement noted that the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden, and the British leadership intend to prevent the establishment of stability and security across Syria.

“In a broader sense, they are pursuing the goal of maintaining a state of chaos” in West Asia,” the press office stated.

The SVR highlighted that the US and Britain seek to maintain their dominance and achieve their geopolitical objectives in the region “based on the odious concept of a rules-based order.”

“However, the fiendish plot is challenged by the presence of Russian forces on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, which still majorly contributes to the preservation of regional stability,” the Russian intelligence agency said.

The statement also indicated that the United States plans to continue the occupation of Syria’s oil-rich regions east of the Euphrates River under the pretext of fighting Daesh terrorists, emphasizing that Washington has no intention of withdrawing from those areas.

Back on December 13, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Moscow had established direct contacts with the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in a bid to maintain its military bases in the Arab country despite the fall of the Syrian government.

Russia hopes to keep its military bases in Syria as they are important in the fight against terrorism, Interfax news agency quoted Bogdanov as saying.

The senior Russian diplomat noted that contacts with HTS were “proceeding in a constructive fashion.”

Bogdanov said Russia hopes the group will fulfill its pledges to “guard against all excesses,” maintain order, and ensure the safety of diplomats and other foreigners.

December 28, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia making military advances as Ukraine insists on “Christmas” propaganda while refusing to negotiate

By Uriel Araujo | December 28, 2024

A recent Newsweek story comments on the advances Russia has made across the border of the Moscow-controlled land, in the towns of Velyka Novosilka, Pokrovsk, Shevchenko, and Vuhledar, as reported by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think-tank. Russian forces took Dachenske around December 22, and, the next day, made advances in Novovasylivka and Ukrainka, which reportedly was seized on the 24th.

Russian strikes have been badly damaging the Ukrainian power grid, a problem which, as I wrote, is aggravated by Ukrainian corruption, which has been destroying its energy infrastructure. Besides that, we know there is an ongoing battle over numbers in Ukraine, with Zelensky disputing Western intelligence agencies death figures for Ukrainians amid a conscription crisis.

On December 24 Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko stated that Moscow is ready to seek some degree of compromise in negotiations with Ukraine, but that it will adhere strictly to the conditions laid out during the March 2022 Istanbul talks. The Istanbul talks, she added, “laid the very foundation, the basis of our approaches.” Earlier this month, the press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov, said that Russia is seeking not just a truce (in Ukraine) but rather peace – which can come “after our conditions are met.”

The Istanbul negotiations were of course the talks that “could have ended the war in Ukraine”, according to Samuel Charp (RAND Corporation scholar) and Sergey Radchenko (a Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Europe). The treaty being discussed back then would have declared Ukraine to remain a neutral state, and would put an end to NATO membership plans. We now know that by April 2022 those very negotiations were making a lot of progress when both the UK and the US pressured Zelensky into abandoning them, which he did, thereby aborting what could have been a successful peace plan.

The Western media in general has made so much about Christmas having “not prevented” Russia from continuing its aforementioned advances that it is worth delving into this issue, for it reveals other less mentioned aspects of the crisis. Biden, for one, has condemned an “outrageous” Christmas attack, and Zelensky talked about timing having been a “conscious decision” by Moscow. Such statements are part of a war of narratives, of course. Just two days earlier Ukraine struck residential buildings in a major drone attack in the Russian city of Kazan. In addition, recently, Ukraine intelligence services have admitted to being behind the terrorist attack that killed senior Russian General Igor Kirillov, by means of a bomb blast in a residential area in Moscow.

Still on the Christmas angle, most Westerns do not realize this, but it should be noted that in the predominantly Christian Orthodox Eastern Slavic world, Christmas is celebrated not on December 25 but rather on January 7. This is due to them adopting the Julian calendar for liturgical purposes rather than the Western Gregorian calendar: December 25 thus falls around two weeks later. This is so despite most Orthodox Slavic countries employing, outside of church cycles, the “international” Gregorian calendar for everyday civic life.

In fact, last year (2024) was the very first time Ukraine celebrated Christmas according to the Western Gregorian calendar, that is, on December 25, at least officially. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky changed the law in July of that same year, so as to further “abandon Russian heritage” – which does not make much sense, since the Julian calendar is also traditionally used by the Orthodox Churches in Greece, Romania, the Levant and most of Eastern Europe. In other words, the official holiday in Ukraine used to coincide with the date as observed in the Church.

Today, in practice, most Ukrainians just anticipate the Christmas commemorations, making it last until January 7 (which is December 25 on the Julian calendar). In his Christmas message last year, Zelensky said that (now for the first time) “we all celebrate Christmas together. On the same date… as one nation.” This is clearly a state attempt to interfere in religious life, as part of a cultural westernization campaign.

In line with that same spirit, the newly created independent church called the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) also changed its Christmas date to December 25 (of the Western Gregorian calendar). The OCU is a partially recognized Eastern Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which came into being (as an “autocephalous”, that is, independent church) in 2019.

The traditional Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) has been banned by the Ukrainian government, in accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Sphere of Activities of Religious Organizations.” Even the US Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed its concern about the measure, with US Ambassador saying on 7 October that the US is concerned by the law’s potential to collectively punish entire religious communities which is rather ironic considering the role played by the US in the whole “autocephaly affair” from the beginning, the topic being a divisive issue within the Orthodox world.

The UOC, one of the largest denominations in the country, has indeed been the target of a crackdown, with holy sites having been seized (even years before 2022) and clergymen being judicially harassed. This is part of the very civil rights issue which relegates Russian minorities to “second class” status, according to Nicolai N. Petro, a professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island. All of that is hardly surprising considering the fact that neo-Nazism and the far-right have played a large part in the (US-backed) 2014 Maidan ultra-nationalist revolution in Ukraine. They still are major players in shaping national politics to this day, which often causes diplomatic problems with neighboring Poland.

The way the narrative about these issues is often pushed forward in the West (simply omitting the facts I mentioned above) can hardly be described as anything other than Western propaganda war and that pretty much is the case with regards to the Russian advances “on Christmas”.

Be it “on Christmas” or not, the fact is that a Ukrainian military victory remains a scenario outside of the realm of realistic options as Russia keeps on making further advances. When such is the case, peace talks and cease-fire talks must follow, for humanitarian reasons and out of pragmatic realistic decision-making. While the aforementioned civil rights issue (including religious persecution and the campaign against Orthodox churches) plus the matter of NATO expansion remain out of the subject of any talks, there will hardly be any progress in the political and diplomatic sphere.

Uriel Araujo, PhD is an anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

December 28, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Convicted US spy worked on ‘genetic screening’ of Russians – FSB

RT | December 27, 2024

US national Eugene ‘Gene’ Spector, who was found guilty of espionage earlier this week, had been collecting “biomedical” data in the country, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said. The authorities believe these materials could have been used by the US government to develop a genetic screening system for analyzing Russia’s population.

Over the past several years, there have been a number of high-profile cases in which Russian security services have accused American citizens of espionage. Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Moscow and Western nations have also increasingly expelled each other’s diplomats, claiming they are spies.

In a press release on Friday, the FSB alleged that the “American national, acting in the interest of the Pentagon and a commercial organization affiliated with it, gathered and handed over to a foreign party various biotechnological and biomedical data, including classified materials, with the aim of creating a high-speed genetic screening system of Russia’s population by the US.”

On Monday, a court in Moscow sentenced Spector to 15 years in prison as well as a 14 million-ruble ($135,000) fine.

The former chair of the board of Russia’s Medpolymerprom Group, a supplier of disposable medical items, was handed the punishment in conjunction with his previous sentencing for acting as an intermediary in a bribery case. In 2022, the US citizen of Russian origin was sentenced to 3.5 years behind bars after being found guilty of providing an aide to former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich with free trip vouchers from 2015 to 2016. The judge ruled at the time that Spector had thus remunerated the woman for promoting the products of several pharmacy companies.

Last August, a court separately ordered his arrest on suspicion of espionage, though the details of the case were not made public.

Earlier this year, Russia and the US exchanged a total of 26 individuals held in several countries, in the largest prisoner swap of this kind since the end of the Cold War. Among those sent to the US were Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan – both of whom had been convicted of espionage in Russia. In return, ten Russian nationals who Washington accused of being intelligence agents and cybercriminals were sent to Moscow.

In September, Moscow declared six British diplomats persona non grata, claiming that their activities in the country “showed signs of intelligence and subversive work.” The UK Foreign Office dismissed the accusations as “completely baseless.”

December 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Biden Orders ‘Surge’ of Weapons to Ukraine in Response to Major Russian Attack

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 26, 2024

Russia launched a major missile and drone barrage targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The attack followed a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian residential building. President Joe Biden said he was outraged by the Russian attack and ordered the Pentagon to continue to surge weapons to Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Russia fired an estimated 170 drones and missiles at Ukrainian energy infrastructure, causing several deaths, widespread damage, and power outages. “The purpose of this outrageous attack was to cut off the Ukrainian people’s access to heat and electricity during winter and to jeopardize the safety of its grid,” Biden said in response.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the attack on Twitter, and said blackouts remain. “ Over 70 missiles, including ballistic ones, and more than a hundred attack drones. The targets are our energy infrastructure. They continue to fight for a blackout in Ukraine,” he wrote. “Our defenders managed to shoot down more than 50 missiles and a significant number of drones. Unfortunately, there have been hits. As of now, there are power outages in several regions.”

Biden subsequently ordered a “surge” of military support for Kiev. “In recent months, the United States has provided Ukraine with hundreds of air defense missiles, and more are on the way.” He continued, “I have directed the Department of Defense to continue its surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, and the United States will continue to work tirelessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in its defense against Russian forces.”

The Russian attack on Ukraine follows a series of provocations by Kiev. Ukraine has used long-range Western missiles to hit targets deep into Russian territory, fired drones at civilian targets in Russia, and assassinated a Russian general.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin may target Ukraine’s decision-making centers if Kiev continues to order “terror” attacks. “We select targets for strikes on the territory of Ukraine, proceeding solely from threats to Russia. These may be military facilities and defense enterprises.” The diplomat added, “Decision-making centers in Kiev can also quite be such targets.”

December 27, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Lavrov warns Israel against ‘sowing a storm’ in Syria

RT | December 26, 2024

Israel should refrain from solving its geopolitical problems at the expense of war-torn Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has cautioned. Reckless actions by the Jewish state could erode the security framework in the Middle East, he warned, during an online press conference on Thursday.

Lavrov stressed that Russia insists on Syria remaining an independent country following the demise of former President Bashar Assad, reiterating that Moscow maintains contact both with Damascus and other regional partners. “The disintegration of Syria must not be allowed,” he said.

In light of this, the minister urged Israel, which has established a so-called ‘buffer zone’ in internationally recognized Syrian territory, “to understand its responsibility in these collective [stabilization] efforts and refrain from ensuring its security at the expense of others.”

“One cannot expect to destroy all military facilities in a neighboring country and then live in peace and harmony forever. This is like sowing a storm that will inevitably come back to haunt those who engage in such actions.”

After Assad’s removal and subsequent asylum in Russia, Israel has launched multiple airstrikes across the border, targeting Syrian airbases, weapons depots, and other military facilities to prevent arms from reaching “the wrong hands.” West Jerusalem claimed to have destroyed 70-80% of its neighbor’s strategic military capabilities, with the Syrian navy essentially being eliminated as an operational force.

According to Lavrov, another facet of Syria’s well-being hinges on the situation in the oil-rich eastern part of the country. The US, the minister charged, has “illegally occupied a significant part of the territory, including areas with major oil fields and fertile lands,” adding that revenues from the export of these resources is being funneled to “separatist structures” that the Americans have created in the country.

He also addressed remarks by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who recently vowed to “bury” Kurdish militants – whom Ankara considers terrorists – in Syria if they fail to lay down their arms. “We understand the legitimate concerns of the Turkish leadership… regarding security along the border,” Lavrov said, adding that Türkiye’s “legitimate security interests must be ensured in a way that preserves Syria’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and unity.”

Earlier media reports claimed that Türkiye and the new leadership in Damascus were considering a joint military operation to expel Kurds from border areas if they failed to integrate with the Syrian military. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not rule out that Ankara could proceed with such an action, while urging both sides to resolve their differences peacefully.

December 26, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia shot down Ukrainian F-16 – official

RT | December 26, 2024

One of the F-16 jets donated to Ukraine by NATO has reportedly been downed while attempting to launch missiles at Russia’s Zaporozhye Region.

Preliminary information from the front line was reported on Thursday by Vladimir Rogov, the co-chair of Russia’s Coordinating Council for the Integration of New Regions.

“The F-16 aircraft was in position to launch a missile strike on the region, and it was shot down,” Rogov wrote on Telegram.

Several European NATO members delivered a “small number” of the US-made fighters to Ukraine in July. Advertised by Kiev as a game-changer in challenging Russian air superiority, the planes ended up never being used in air-to-air combat.

A number of F-16s were reportedly used to defend against incoming Russian missiles in August, but one of the jets was lost. A Ukrainian lawmaker later revealed that it had been shot down by a Patriot air defense battery, which was also donated by NATO.

Private Russian company Fores has offered a reward of 15 million rubles ($170,000) to whoever shoots down the first Ukrainian F-16.

Zaporozhye is one of the four former regions of Ukraine that joined Russia after a referendum in September 2022. Around 70% of the region is under Russian control and was the target of Kiev’s 2023 “summer counteroffensive.”

December 26, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

McCarthyism, European style: The elite crackdown on Ukraine dissent

Experts lambasted as Kremlin mouthpieces turned out to be right 

By Eldar Mamedov | Responsible Statecraft | December 12, 2024

As the war between Russia and Ukraine is framed by the ruling politicians and commentators in Europe and America as part of a purported global struggle between democracies and autocracies, the quality of democracy in the West itself has taken a hit.

The dominant voices advocating for Ukraine’s victory and Russia’s defeat, both defined in maximalist and increasingly unattainable terms, are intent on snuffing out more thoughtful and nuanced perspectives, thus depriving the public of a democratic debate on the existential questions of war and peace.

In a familiar pattern throughout the West, respected academics who correctly predicted the quagmire Ukraine and the West now find themselves in have been smeared and delegitimized as Kremlin mouthpieces, subjected to harassment, marginalization and ostracism.

The situation is particularly alarming in Europe. While the Ukraine debate in the U.S. is, to a worrying extent, shaped by pro-militarist think tanks, such as the Atlantic Council, hawkish politicians and neoconservative pundits, a countervailing movement consisting of pro-restraint voices has been growing. They include Defense Priorities, the CATO Institute, publications like The Nation on the left, and The American Conservative on the right, and academics like Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, and Jeffrey Sachs, among others. There is more space for alternative voices in American discourse.

In Europe, by contrast, foreign policy debates tend to simply echo the most hawkish voices inside Washington’s Beltway.

Sweden is a particularly telling illustration of that trend. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Swedish government and political class swiftly moved to join NATO. Yet, as one of the leading Swedish international relations scholars Frida Stranne told me in an interview, “No proper debate was held on the key questions, like whether Russia’s aggression against Ukraine indeed was such an immediate security threat for Sweden that it had to ditch the neutral status it enjoyed even during the Cold War?” (I can testify myself, from my work as a senior foreign policy adviser in the European Parliament in early 2022, that even some members of the then-ruling Swedish social-democratic party were aghast at the government running roughshod over alternative views on NATO).

Further, in a conversation with me, Stranne, while acknowledging that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “an egregious breach of international law,” pointed to U.S. policies since 2001, such as the invasion of Iraq, noting that they “have helped to undermine international legal principles and set the precedent for other countries acting ‘preemptively’ against perceived threats.”

In the same interview, she also warned that “a refusal to countenance a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine is leading the world perilously close to the brink of a major military conflict between NATO and Russia.”

While such points are routinely made by fairly mainstream scholars in the U.S., in Sweden they triggered a vicious campaign against Stranne and made her nearly untouchable by the media and in foreign policy circles. Leading media outlets vilified her as a U.S. hater and a “Putinist.”

Germany is another example of how enforced groupthink led to a marginalization of dissenting perspectives in political debates. What is particularly noteworthy is the speed and radicalism with which the hawks in think tanks, media, and political parties managed to redefine the debate in a country previously known for its now-defunct Ostpolitik, a policy of pragmatic engagement with the Soviet Union and later Russia.

One of Germany’s most prominent foreign policy experts, Johannes Varwick of the University Halle-Wittenberg, has long defied the trend and advocated for diplomacy. In December 2021, together with a number of high-ranking former military officers, diplomats and academics, he warned that a massive deterioration in relations with Russia could lead to war — due, in part, to the West’s refusal to take seriously Russia’s security concerns, chiefly related to the prospects of NATO’s eastward expansion.

Yet such views earned Varwick accusations of “serving Russian interests.” As a result, as he told me in an interview, his “ties with the political parties and ministries responsible for conducting Germany’s foreign and security policy were severed.”

Experts in neutral countries were not spared marginalization as well. Austrian Prof. Gerhard Mangott, one of the most eminent experts on Russia in the German-speaking world, pointed to a “shared responsibility” of Russia, Ukraine, and Western countries for the failure to resolve the post-2014 Ukrainian conflict peacefully. Such analysis, as Mangott told me, led to his “prompt excommunication by the German-speaking scientific community which turned quickly to political activism and became party to the war.”

The tragic irony, of course, is that these ostracized voices have proved to be correct in most respects about this war.

When, despite his warnings, the Russian invasion of Ukraine did occur, Varwick, who condemned it as illegal and unacceptable, called for further efforts to find a realistic negotiated solution to the conflict. As he told me, this should “firstly include a neutral status for Ukraine with strong security guarantees for the country. Secondly, there would be territorial changes in Ukraine that would not be recognized under international law but must be accepted as a temporary modus vivendi, and thirdly, the prospect of suspension of some sanctions in the event of a change in Russia’s behavior must be on offer.”

In March 2022, both Ukraine and Russia were close to a deal broadly along these same parameters. It did not work, because, among other reasons, the West encouraged Ukraine to believe that a military “victory” was possible. The role of then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in undermining the talks is now generally acknowledged. What is, however, particularly striking is that Johnson recently himself admitted that he saw the war in Ukraine as a proxy war against Russia — a claim made by Stranne and the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi in their 2023 book, in Swedish, “The Illusion of American Peace,” for which they were lambasted for purportedly pushing Russian narratives.

Fast forward to late 2024, and, faced with growing difficulties on the battlefield, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is now signaling that he could go along with some of the elements outlined by Varwick; namely, accepting some de facto territorial losses to prevent even bigger ones should the war continue.

Today, Ukraine is farther away from achieving anything remotely resembling a military victory than at any point since February 2022. Contrary to the expectations in the U.S. and EU, sanctions neither tanked Russia’s economy nor changed its policies in the ways the West sought.

In the West itself, political forces that urge negotiations to end the war are ascendant, as evidenced by the election of Donald Trump as president in the United States and the rise of anti-war parties in Germany, France and other EU countries. Public opinion surveys consistently show a preference of the majority of Europeans for a negotiated end to the war.

The reality is, irrespective of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, a modus vivendi between the West and Russia will have to be reestablished to ensure, in Varwick’s words, “their coexistence in a Cold War 2.0 without a permanent escalation.” Restoring an open democratic debate about this vital issue is long overdue.

Listening to the experts who have a proven track record of correct analysis would be a necessary first step.

Eldar Mamedov is a Brussels-based foreign policy expert.

December 26, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia to launch new gas pipeline to China – deputy PM

RT | December 25, 2024

Russia has begun developing a new gas pipeline to China via Kazakhstan that will have a planned annual capacity of 45 billion cubic meters (bcm), Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak told the broadcaster Russia 24 on Wednesday.

China will receive 35 bcm of gas per year via the conduit, while the remainder will go to Kazakhstan.

The official highlighted the project’s strategic importance during discussions on bilateral energy cooperation.

“The process has been launched,” Novak said, adding that it includes technical and economic feasibility studies and negotiations to finalize the framework of the agreement.

As part of the deal, Kazakhstan, which will host part of the pipeline’s infrastructure, is set to receive up to 10 bcm of gas annually.

Kazakh Energy Minister Almasadam Satkaliyev confirmed the country’s interest in the project, emphasizing its benefits for the country’s energy supply. “Kazakhstan fully supports this project [that] will [supply] our northern regions,” he told journalists on Tuesday.

China is Russia’s biggest trade partner and the economic cooperation between the two nations has been steadily increasing despite unprecedented Western sanctions on Moscow. Bilateral turnover is expected to surpass $200 billion by the end of the year, Russian Ambassador to China Igor Morgulov said back in October.

Russian energy major Gazprom reported a new daily record for gas deliveries to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline earlier this month. Under a bilateral agreement, Russia will supply 38 bcm of gas annually to the Asian country via the pipeline starting in 2025.

December 25, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

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