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War in Ukraine shattering ‘superiority’ of US-made weaponry: Responsible Statecraft 

Al Mayadeen | May 29, 2024

While critics claim that technologically complex US weapons produce unreliable systems in limited quantities because of cost, a report by Responsible Statecraft proves otherwise, stating that the failure of US weapons in Ukraine is much due to the military’s lack of adequate testing.

Successive “game-changing” systems like the Switchblade drone, the M-1 Abrams tank, Patriot air defense missiles, the M777 howitzer, the Excalibur guided 155 mm artillery round, the HIMARS precision missile, GPS-guided bombs, and Skydio drones with artificial intelligence were all transferred to Ukraine. That is when the show of strength began.

For instance, the $60,000 limited-quantity Switchblade drone didn’t work against armored targets, and Ukrainian troops chose instead $700 Chinese commercial models bought online, RS reported.

The $10 million Abrams tank kept malfunctioning and was soon taken out of combat. Russia was able to capture at least one, which they added to a display of NATO weaponry in a Moscow park alongside an M777 howitzer and other items. This stands as a plain display of mockery toward the US and its so-called military superiority.

The M777 cannon, known for its accuracy, proved to be too vulnerable in rough conditions. Its barrels frequently wore out and needed replacement in Poland, while its 155 mm ammunition has been suffering from short supply.

May 29, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine striking targets deep inside Russia with Western weapons – AFP

RT | May 29, 2024

Ukraine has used Western weapons against targets inside what it recognizes as Russian territory on multiple occasions, Agence France Presse (AFP) has claimed.

Some senior Western officials have urged nations that donate longer-range munitions to Ukraine not to ban their use deep inside Russia, while others have publicly objected to the idea. A restriction against such strikes has notably been imposed by the US, the main supplier of arms to Kiev. Washington has said the ban is meant to prevent an escalation of the conflict, and has made no indication that it will be lifted.

On Tuesday, the news agency cited several experts, who believe that donors should not be concerned, because several other Russian red lines have supposedly been crossed without consequence.

”Western weapons have already been used on several occasions against Russia’s territory, most recently against the southern town of Krasnodar, several Western sources said,” the report claimed.

AFP offered no details on those incidents or the weapons involved. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has publicly stated that Ukraine “has the right” to hit targets in Russia with UK-made arms.

Last week, a Ukrainian intelligence source claimed that the country had targeted an early warning radar station based in Russia’s Krasnodar Region on May 22, and later another site in Orenburg Region.

Both locations have roles in nuclear deterrence. Their primary task is to detect an incoming missile and give the military enough time to launch a retaliation before nuclear weapons hit Russian territory.

The claim was given some credence by Dmitry Rogozin, a former senior Russian military official and now a lawmaker. He said it could be false, but if true, it means that Washington “has hired a reckless bandit, who is trying to damage… a key element of our system of strategic nuclear forces combat control.”

According to public statements by the Russian leadership, the country does retaliate when its red lines are crossed in the Ukraine conflict. After Kiev damaged the Crimean Bridge with a truck loaded with explosives in 2022, Moscow added Ukraine’s power grid to its list of military targets.

This year’s campaign of Ukrainian kamikaze drone raids on Russian oil facilities resulted in retaliatory missile strikes against Ukrainian thermal power stations. As of this week, all of them were either destroyed or damaged, according to Yury Boyko, a senior Ukrainian energy official.

May 29, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

US may have secretly approved attack on Russian nuclear radar — Austrian military

RT | May 29, 2024

A reported Ukrainian attack on a Russian early-warning radar installation may have been approved by the US and poses the risk of a nuclear escalation, an analysis published by the Austrian armed forces has warned.

Ukrainian sources claimed last week that Kiev had delivered a strike at a Voronezh-DM site in Russia’s southern Krasnodar Region, near the city of Armavir. The alleged operation is significant, considering that the facility is part of Russian nuclear deterrence, according to the explanation penned by Colonel Markus Reisner and posted by the Austrian military on Sunday. The website regularly shares work by the historian and military expert.

It is unlikely that attacking the radar station had direct military value for Kiev, Reisner argues. One could speculate that disabling it would reduce the amount of intelligence that Russia collects on Ukrainian launches of US-donated ATACMS ballistic missiles, he said. But the station is designed to detect intercontinental ballistic missiles that fly at altitudes much higher than the tactical weapons used by Ukraine.

The expert suggested that the alleged attack may have been a US-sanctioned response to Moscow’s reminders that it could use non-strategic nuclear weapons under certain circumstances. Senior Ukrainian and Western officials have called those statements a form of blackmail. Earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin ordered tactical nuclear exercises in the Southern Military District, which borders Ukraine. Moscow said this was in response to increasingly hostile rhetoric by Western officials.

”If this is indeed the case, two further conclusions can be drawn: first, the situation in Ukraine is extremely serious and, second, the war over Ukraine has escalated again,” Reisner wrote. Such an attack could qualify for a nuclear retaliation, the colonel added.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine says that its nuclear arsenal may be used in four scenarios, one of which is “enemy action against critical Russian government and military facilities, the disabling of which would prevent a nuclear response.”

Over-the-horizon radar stations, such as the Voronezh-DM, are meant to detect ICBM launches and inform the national leadership, at which point it make a decision on whether to fire back.

The Russian Defense Ministry has so far not commented on the alleged attack.

Washington was previously accused of brinkmanship in its stand-off with Russia. Investigative journalist Seymor Hersh has claimed that the US was behind the 2022 bombings of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany. The US government has rejected the allegations, but Moscow has said it found them credible.

May 29, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

EU disunited over $7-billion weapons delivery to Ukraine – Borrell

RT | May 28, 2024

There is still no agreement on a $7 billion (€6.6 billion) EU military aid package for Ukraine, the bloc’s foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell has said, according to remarks made to the press that were published on Tuesday.

The remarks follow a meeting this week of EU foreign and defense ministers focusing on the Ukraine conflict.

According to Borrell, there are “seven legal acts to be approved” in order to mobilize the billions in military aid under the Ukrainian Assistance Fund.

“This has not been possible [for] quite a long time because there is not [an] agreement for the consensus needed,” he explained.

“You know that we need unanimity – unanimity [has] not [been] there for months,” he admitted.

According to Politico, diplomats had hoped to have the new package ready ahead of this week’s meetings in Brussels but this didn’t happen due to resistance from Hungary.

Budapest has been a vocal critic of unbridled Western support for Ukraine and has refused to provide any military aid to Kiev, either directly or through the EU. Hungarian officials have repeatedly called for a ceasefire, insisting that EU sanctions against Russia have failed to undermine its economy and have instead boomeranged against the bloc.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday that his government remained committed to blocking the €6.6 billion military aid package, despite the “ruckus” among fellow EU foreign ministers.

According to Borrell, an EU plan to use profits from frozen Russian sovereign assets to buy weapons for Ukraine has also stalled due to resistance from Budapest.

Western nations have seized some $300-billion-worth of Russian assets, most of which are held in the EU. Brussels’ plan, which Borrell strongly supports, would provide some $3.25 billion (€3 billion) for Ukraine this year alone. Moscow has warned that it will retaliate, should its property be “stolen” by the US and its allies.

The EU and its member states have so far mobilized nearly $35 billion in military support for Ukraine, according to data published on the European Commission’s website. This includes over $6.5 billion under the European Peace Facility to support the delivery of military equipment.

In March 2024, the European Council established a dedicated Ukrainian Assistance Fund worth almost $5.5 billion.

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

Putin warns West about consequences of attacking Russia

RT | May 28, 2024

The West needs to understand that long-range strikes on Russian territory with their weapons would represent an escalation with “serious consequences,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

Speaking to reporters at the end of his two-day visit to Uzbekistan, Putin addressed the recent Ukrainian demands for NATO to permit the use of their weapons in attacks on Russia and the comments by the US-led bloc’s head, Jens Stoltenberg, appearing to endorse this.

“To be honest, I don’t know what the NATO secretary-general is saying,” Putin told reporters, adding that Stoltenberg “did not suffer from any dementia” when he worked constructively with Russia as the prime minister of Norway (2005-2013).

“This constant escalation can lead to serious consequences. If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the US behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons? Hard to say. Do they want global conflict?”

Putin explained that long-range precision strikes require space reconnaissance assets – which Ukraine does not have, but the US does – and that their targeting is already done by “highly qualified specialists” from the West, without Ukrainian participation.

“So, these representatives of NATO countries, especially in Europe, especially in small countries, must be aware of what they are playing with,” the Russian president said, noting that a lot of these countries have “a small territory and a very dense population.”

Putin reminded reporters that their colleagues in the West never reported on the Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and other Russian regions along the border, only about the Russian advance on Kharkov.

“What caused this? They did, with their own hands. Well, then, they will reap what they have sown. The same thing can happen if long-range precision weapons are used,” the Russian president added.

Asked if Russia was refusing to negotiate with Ukraine, Putin told reporters that such claims by the West were baffling.

“We don’t refuse!” he said. “I’ve said it a thousand times, it’s like they don’t have ears!”

The Ukrainian side initialed an agreement with Russia in March 2022, then publicly reneged and refused to negotiate any further, Putin explained. He described Kiev’s current “peace conference” effort in Switzerland as an attempt to get some kind of international buy-in for their entirely unrealistic “peace platform,” which isn’t working out.

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

Ukraine’s Use of Chemical Weapons Became Systematic With US’ Silent Consent – Russian MoD

Sputnik – 28.05.2024

The use of poisonous substances and chemical riot control agents by Ukrainian forces has become systematic with the tacit approval of Washington, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian Armed Forces’ radiation, chemical and biological defense troops, said on Tuesday.

“With Washington’s tacit approval, the use of poisonous substances and chemical riot control agents by Ukrainian militants during their special operations has become systematic,” Kirillov said at a briefing.

“Numerous cases of the Ukrainian side using the irritant substance chloropicrin, often mixed with chloroacetophenone, have been recorded in the Donetsk region, in the settlements of Bogdanovka, Gorlovka, Kremenovka, and Artyomovsk (Bakhmut),” he added.

Kirillov emphasized that while chloroacetophenone is classified as a chemical riot control agent, chloropicrin is listed in Schedule 3 of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Kirillov recalled that Ukrainian neo-Nazis first used the dangerous substance chloropicrin against Euromaidan opponents during the siege of the Trade Union House in Odessa on May 2, 2014.

“There are grounds to believe that the action carried out in Odessa was premeditated, meticulously planned to exploit the effects of the toxic substances used, aimed at inflicting maximum casualties,” Kirillov added.

He noted that Russian law enforcement agencies conducted an investigation that identified the perpetrators of the terrorist act.

According to Kirillov, the use of this toxic substance was indicated by the militants’ possession of pre-prepared filtering gas masks, the appearance of characteristic yellow-green smokefire broke out at the Trade Union House , and attempts to mask the use of toxic chemicals with the aftermath of the fire.

Recently, Kiev used gas grenades containing the irritant substance CS against Russian servicemen.

“The Russian side has recorded and confirmed cases of the Ukrainian Armed Forces using munitions not only loaded with chloropicrin but also with other chemical irritants. Gas grenades of American production containing the substance CS were employed against Russian servicemen in the Krasny Liman and Boguslav regions,” Kirillov said.

“Hand grenades with chemical irritants, labeled Teren-6, were dropped from Ukrainian UAVs onto positions of Russian troops, and a stash containing these munitions was discovered in the territory of Donetsk. According to testimony from Ukrainian prisoners of war, assault groups of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are equipped with such grenades,” the official added.

CS is an irritant chemical. It is a white, solid, slightly volatile crystalline substance with a pepper-like odor. It is sparingly soluble in water, moderately soluble in alcohol, and freely soluble in acetone and chloroform. Under combat conditions, it is dispersed as an aerosol. CS at low concentrations is irritating to the eyes and upper respiratory tract, while at high concentrations it causes burns to exposed skin areas and in some cases paralysis of the respiratory and circulatory systems leading to death.

The Ukrainian armed forces also used the chemical agent BZ against Russian servicemen.

“Ukrainian armed formations also use other listed chemicals. We refer to cases of use of the combat chemical agent BZ against Russian servicemen in August 2022 and silyl acid in February 2023,” he said at the briefing.”

Kirillov noted that Ukrainian Armed Forces also use other other listed chemicals.

“We are referring to instances of using the combat chemical agent BZ against Russian servicemen in August 2022 and silyl acid in February 2023,” he explained.

“The statements from Ukrainian military representatives about their possession of phosphorus organic compounds, including analogs of the combat chemical agent Tabun (GA), raise particular concern,” Kirillov added.

He added that Ukraine is requesting antidotes and gas masks in excessive quantities, indicating plans for the use of toxic substances.

“The requests from Ukraine for the supply of antidotes, gas masks, and other personal protective equipment in volumes that are clearly excessive testify to plans for large-scale use of toxic substances,” Kirillov said.

In addition, Ukrainian nationalists continue in their attempts to destroy chemically hazardous facilities in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

“The attempts by Ukrainian nationalists to destroy chemically hazardous facilities in the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics persist, thereby creating a threat of chemical contamination to the civilian population of the regions,” Kirillov said.

He recalled that industrial facilities such as Zarya in the city of Rubezhnoye, Azot in Severodonetsk, and the Koksokhim plant in Avdeyevka have repeatedly been subjected to massive rocket attacks.

US Continue to Develop New Chemical Weapons

The Pentagon continues to develop new and upgrade existing non-lethal chemical munitions and other chemical weapons delivery systems.

“According to available information, the Pentagon continues to develop new and upgrade existing non-lethal chemical munitions and other chemical weapons delivery systems, such as 120mm mortar rounds, 155mm artillery shells, and 120mm tank rounds,” Kirillov said at the briefing.

“No less than $10 million is allocated annually for their procurement for use in combat zones,” he added.

OPCW turns a blind eye to the fact that the US is still storing highly toxic reactive masses in chemical weapons destruction facilities. “I would like to draw your attention once again to the fact that according to the deadlines set by the OPCW, the United States should have completed the destruction of its declared chemical weapons stockpiles by 2007. However, despite the economic potential, they did not achieve this until 2023, twice postponing the deadline, citing financial, organizational, and technical difficulties. The United States still retains highly toxic reactive masses at chemical weapons destruction facilities. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons does not seem to notice this fact,” he said.

The US has also developed a legal framework that regulates a wide range of scenarios for the use of chemical agents by the US armed forces, Kirillov added.

“Washington has not only not renounced the use of chemical agents, but has also enshrined the possibility of their use at the legislative level. Thus, the United States has adopted a combined arms manual on the use of non-lethal weapons,” Kirillov told reporters, adding that it defines the procedure for the use of non-lethal chemical weapons by military units during special, humanitarian, anti-terrorist and peacekeeping operations.

If previously the US talked about using such weapons only in response to the enemy chemical aggression, an important aspect of the new rules is the ability to use toxic chemicals unilaterally,” the official said.

“Thus, the United States has created a legal framework that regulates a wide range of scenarios for the use of chemical weapons by the armed forces,” Kirillov said.

The United States allocates at least $10 million annually to purchase non-lethal chemical munitions for use in combat areas, the official said, adding that the Pentagon continues to develop new and modernize existing non-lethal chemical munitions.

May 28, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Arrest these insane NATO warmongers!

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 28, 2024

Incredibly, the world is being pushed to the abyss of nuclear war by nonentity Western numbskulls who are not even elected.

Jens Stoltenberg, the civilian head of the NATO military bloc, is the latest blockhead to advocate for the United States to permit the targeting of Russia with long-range weapons.

The Norwegian figurehead, we are led to believe, made the conceptual breakthrough (how much was he paid and by whom or what was the blackmail used?) by telling the Economist magazine that the Ukrainian regime should henceforth be officially allowed to use NATO missiles to hit Russia.

However, with the logical skills of a hacked-up chopping block, Stoltenberg claimed that such a move would not lead to an escalation in war between Russia and NATO because the weapons were not being fired from NATO countries.

So Stoltenberg thinks it’s somehow feasible to turn Ukraine into a silo for launching ballistic missiles at Moscow and yet for Russia not to perceive NATO nations as a legitimate target?

As if to further reassure, he added: “We don’t have any intention to send NATO ground troops into Ukraine because our purpose… has been two-fold, to support Ukraine as we do, but also to ensure that we don’t escalate this into a full-scale conflict.”

The barefaced cheek of Stoltenberg and other Western figures is that, in their arrogant mindsets, what’s going on is not escalation because they say it is not escalation. It’s like hitting someone with a punch in the face and then having the brass neck to tell the person you didn’t hit them because you said so.

The former Norwegian prime minister, who is soon to leave his NATO job to take up a plum post as a central banker, is the latest Western voice to up the ante in the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken – a wannabe rock guitarist who hasn’t a clue what he is singing about – has also joined the list of gung-ho politicians urging for Ukraine to be given a license to strike Russian territory with long-range NATO-supplied weapons.

Britain’s Foreign Minister Lord David Cameron, the Eton-educated dimwit, has decided that Ukraine has “every right” to use British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles to hit targets inside pre-war Russian borders.

Other political figures de facto egging on nuclear war are U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a religious fanatic who believes God is an anticommunist, as well as Victoria Nuland, the former American diplomat who midwifed the 2014 coup in Kiev that ushered in the current NeoNazi regime.

All of them are urging the Biden administration to abandon official restrictions on the Ukrainian proxy regime using Western missiles to hit Russia.

Ukraine’s puppet president Vladimir Zelensky, who cancelled elections but continues to hold office, has remonstrated with his Western handlers to be given a free hand to strike deep into Russia.

The distinction of “official permission” is a cynical sleight of hand. The Ukrainian side with NATO logistics and weapons has already been targeting inside Russia.

Oil infrastructure and military bases inside Russia’s pre-war borders have been frequently hit with missiles and drones. It is inconceivable that such targeting could be achieved without NATO’s involvement, including boots-on-the-ground advisors.

Nevertheless, the rhetorical difference is significant. For the Biden administration to officially give the green light for such attacks would mark a grave and explicit escalation – and one that Russia could not afford to ignore.

Russia has already warned that NATO weapons hitting its territory would result in retaliation beyond Ukraine. That could mean a Russian air strike on NATO members.

This week Moscow began exercises for deploying tactical nuclear weapons. Russia’s publicly avowed nuclear doctrine defines the permissibility of using such weapons with the criterion of the Russian nation facing a strategic threat, even if that threat is posed by enemies using conventional arms.

The West and its Ukrainian proxy are pushing at that catastrophic threshold. In the past week, one of Russia’s early warning ballistic radar systems in southwest Krasnodar region was reportedly hit by a drone attack. One purpose of the raid was to disable Russia’s ability to intercept the long-range ATACMS conventional warheads that the U.S. is ready to supply Ukraine. Another much more sinister interpretation is the West is probing the capability of Russia’s nuclear defenses.

When this proxy war erupted more than two years ago with Russia’s intervention in Ukraine after eight years of relentless NATO arming and provocation of the NeoNazi regime, there were anxious elite discussions among NATO members about whether to send “lethal weapons” and not just helmets, night-vision goggles, and radios.

Two years on, the NATO deliberation has shifted beyond sending tanks, F-16s fighter jets, and cruise missiles, and is now taking an official position endorsing the deep-striking of Russia with ballistic warheads.

Incredibly, the people continually pushing the envelope are a minuscule minority in Western societies who are not even elected – Stoltenberg, Blinken, Cameron, Nuland, among others. These ventriloquist dolls are doing the bidding of the masters of war, the military-industrial complex, and the banking elite.

The elite warmongers argue that Ukraine has its hands tied behind its back because it can’t bombard Russia at will. In reality, the country with its hands tied is Russia. It has to listen to the likes of Stoltenberg and his ilk advocating for strikes on Russia from NATO’s firing positions in Ukraine – and yet Russia is somehow supposedly not permitted to retaliate against NATO.

Surely, a fatal red line is imminent. Insanity rules among the Western elites as the world is pushed towards the abyss.

The world’s majority needs to issue arrest warrants for these privileged criminals… before it’s too late.

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

The US Is Playing A Dangerous Game Of Nuclear Chicken With Russia

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 26, 2024

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski revealed in his latest interview with The Guardian that “The Americans have told the Russians that if you explode a nuke, even if it doesn’t kill anybody, we will hit all your targets [positions] in Ukraine with conventional weapons, we’ll destroy all of them. I think that’s a credible threat.” If true, and there’s no reason to suspect that he simply made that up, then this amounts to the US playing a dangerous game of nuclear chicken with Russia.

As was explained in this analysis here about why Russia is presently undertaking tactical nuclear weapons exercises, it hopes to deter NATO from a conventional military intervention in Ukraine, barring which it wants to signal that it could resort to these arms if those forces cross the Dnieper. From Russia’s perspective, the reportedly 100,000-strong force that NATO is preparing to invade Ukraine if its “red lines” are crossed could pose a threat to its territorial integrity if they attack its newly unified regions.

So long as they stay on the western side of the Dnieper, then there’d be no reason for Russia to countenance using tactical nuclear weapons, but they could realistically be employed in the event that they cross the river and credibly appear to be approaching that country’s new borders. In that scenario, Russia would have reason to drop them on the invading forces as a last resort out of self-defense to preemptively neutralize this threat in accordance with its nuclear doctrine.

Having brought the reader up to speed about the context within which Sikorski shared the US’ planned response to Russia potentially exploding nukes in Ukraine, it should now be easier to understand why this amounts to a dangerous game of nuclear chicken. Essentially, the US wants Russia to stand down from its signaled intent of possibly using tactical nuclear weapons if NATO’s reportedly 100,000-strong invasion force crosses the Dnieper, which could occur if Russia achieves a military breakthrough.

If this sequence of events unfolds – the front lines collapse, NATO conventionally intervenes in Ukraine, its reportedly 100,000-strong invasion force crosses the Dnieper, Russia drops tactical nukes on them, and then the US hits all of its forces in the newly unified regions – then World War III would break out. There’s no way that Russia would sit back and let the US directly attack any target within its borders since it’ll either respond in a tit-for-tat fashion or jump to the chase by launching a nuclear first strike.

The only way to avoid this worst-case scenario is for NATO to eschew its invasion plans under any circumstances, including a potential Russian military breakthrough. If they still go through with them, however, then they should keep their forces on the western side of the Dnieper and ideally rely on a neutral mediator like India to convey to Russia that they don’t intend to cross even if they approach it. Anything less is a dangerous game of nuclear chicken that could literally provoke the apocalypse.

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

‘Certain friends and foes’ want Georgia to send troops to Ukraine – official

RT | May 27, 2024

Georgia has been repeatedly pushed into a conflict with Russia, with “certain friends and foes” urging Tbilisi to impose sanctions on the country and even to deploy troops to Ukraine, the President of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, has said.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, the house speaker said the country has been repeatedly bombarded with such demands, both in public and in private.

“Certain friends and foes have been pushing us into this, so that we would send fighters to Ukraine, which would have directly meant war with Russia,” he explained.

Top Ukrainian officials, including the former head of the National Security Council Alexey Danilov, have repeatedly urged Georgia to open a “second front” against Russia, with the calls consistently shot down by Tbilisi.

While Papuashvili did not mention any actors in particular, he implied that members of the US-led NATO bloc were among them. With “such actions” demanded for some unknown reason from Georgia, NATO states themselves were abstaining from sending in their own militaries, he said. Apart from demands to enter the conflict directly, Georgia has for long been facing pressure to join Western sanctions against Moscow, he also noted.

Non-state actors have been pushing Georgia into war with Russia as well, Papuashvili claimed, stating that “non-governmental organizations that held rallies in Tbilisi with similar calls have also demanded our troops be sent to Ukraine.”

The speaker’s jab at the NGOs comes as the country continues to experience domestic unrest and foreign pressure over its draft “foreign agents” legislation, requiring those organizations and individuals receiving over 20% of their funding from abroad to register and disclose their sources of income. The controversial bill ended up being shelved amid mass protests and foreign pressure last year, with the new attempt to pass its slightly modified version running into the same troubles. However, the Georgian government has stood its ground and vowed to adopt the bill no matter what.

While Tbilisi has maintained an explicitly neutral stance on the Ukrainian conflict, a sizeable number of mercenaries originating from the country have been fighting on Kiev’s behalf. According to the Russian military’s estimates, the country has provided some 1,042 mercenaries, with the figure beaten only by Kiev’s top backers, namely the US and Poland, with at least 1,113 and 2,960 fighters coming from those two countries, respectively. At least 561 Georgian nationals in the Ukrainian military’s ranks ended up killed during the hostilities, according to Moscow’s estimates.

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

As Ukrainian casualties soar, EU will move to conscript European youth to fight, warns Hungarian FM

Remix News | May 27, 2024

Ukraine’s high causality rates combined with its struggle to conscript its own population means the EU will increasingly move to conscript European youth, mostly in the geographical proximity of Ukraine, to fight against Russia, said Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó following a meeting with EU foreign ministers.

“Ukrainian casualties are becoming more and more unbearable, Ukrainian men are not being allowed out of Ukraine, and now they want to conscript European youth into the war. And obviously, as the escalation hits this neighborhood first, one can almost clearly hear the argument that the soldiers should be sent from the geographical proximity first. All this means that they want to send Central European youth, including Hungarian youth, to the war with mandatory European conscription,” said Szijjártó during an interview with Hungarian media.

The Hungarian foreign minister said he would be firmly opposed to any efforts to institute a European mandatory conscription effort, stating: “Hands off Central Europeans, hands off Hungarian youth, we will not allow Hungarian youth to be involved in the war, because this is not our war.”

Szijjártó did not disclose which foreign ministers or member states are exploring the possibility of a European conscription effort, but recently, several countries have said they would consider sending their own troops to Ukraine if Russia had a breakthrough on the Ukrainian front, including France and more recently, the Baltic states.

However, a long-term goal of the left-liberal establishment in Brussels is the creation of an EU military force, including removing the decision-making process about defense from member states and centralizing it in Brussels. Under such a proposal, a potential conscription effort could arise that applies to all EU member states.

Szijjártó described an extremely intense atmosphere at the Council of Foreign Ministers in Brussels before the European Parliament elections. He stated that the mood turned sour when those present began to talk about the release of €6.5 billion for Ukraine, which the Hungarian foreign minister rejected, saying it would only escalate the war. However, his position came under extreme pressure from a number of other countries.

“And there was a big mess here. The German, Lithuanian, Irish, Polish and other colleagues fell against me in this matter, but this could not shake our position, despite the shouting of Europe’s pro-war politicians,” he said.

“They think that if they shout from many directions, then I will say that it is good, it is fine. However, they should already know us well enough to know this won’t happen,” he added.

May 27, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

US-Ukraine Arms Scheme Could ‘Fail in All of Its Objectives’ – Ex-State Department Analyst

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 27.05.2024

No one will sign up to be part of a deal on Kiev-Washington arms co-production, given Russian precision strikes on Ukrainian military infrastructure amid its proxy war with NATO, former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett told Sputnik.

The US State Department recently announced a $2 billion package for Kiev aimed at creating the so-called Ukraine Defense Enterprise Program (UDEP) fund.

In particular, the fund could be used to “strategically weaken Russia by transitioning partners away from Russian systems and supporting [foreign military financing] loans to partners and allies,” an unnamed State Department official was cited by the Defense One news outlet as saying.

“Without any doubt, the US funding package for Ukraine – intended to be used to stimulate Europe’s arms industry, fund US-Ukraine arms co-production, and lure countries away from the Russian arms market – will fail in all of its objectives,” former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett said in an interview with Sputnik.

He explained that “the US-Ukrainian arms development scheme will ultimately fail because the entire nation of Ukraine is now devolving into a failed state.”

Another aspect pertains to the fact that Ukraine “has no personnel able to create weapons anymore, and no ability to establish such an enterprise on its soil, as Russia would immediately target and destroy any such facilities before they could produce or deploy any weapons to be used against Russian soldiers,” per Bennett.

“The Ukrainians know this, and therefore no one would ‘willingly’ sign up to be part of any facility in Ukraine that does such activities because it would just be a matter of time before the building disappeared in a mountain of rubble,” the ex-State Department analyst pointed out.

When asked what specific types of arms or ammunition the US could co-produce with Ukraine, Bennett said that “these type of guerilla terrorist weapons might include drones, sea, air, and land bombs.”

He didn’t rule out that investor nations involved in the UDEP project “would most likely be Britain, France, Germany, and the Baltic nations.”

Touching upon the issue of the weapons market, Bennett said the US “has been on a conveyor belt of producing weapons for the shallow purpose of enriching politicians and the military-industrial complex, and not for military efficiency purposes.” Per him, “This is a lethal flaw, and an impediment which the rest of the world sees and therefore consciously and unconsciously views US-NATO weapons on a lower level than the Russian weapons.”

Bennett referred to Russian weapons as something “designed to defeat the US-NATO Ukrainian military,” which he said is viewed as “the main destabilizer of the world.”

So, he went on to say, “It is logical to assume that Russian weapons will be valued and sought after as the natural antidote or best defense against future Western Empirical operations — which they openly boast is coming with fatalistic and narcissistic indifference.”

As such, the US-Ukrainian arms development scheme “will once again confirm to the American and European peoples — currently held hostage by their governments — that the real enemy of Western peoples are the tyrants in their own government who are using the war to bleed money from citizens and construct an endless excuse for absolute authoritarian political control using endless fear and ‘rumors of war’,” the ex-State Department analyst concluded.

May 27, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Orban Foresees Dire Consequences If EU Militarism Continues Unchecked

Sputnik – 26.05.2024

BUDAPEST – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Sunday that he had never seen greater irresponsibility than Europe getting involved in the conflict in Ukraine without calculating what it would cost.

“Europe is becoming so involved in the war that it does not even have an estimate of the scale of the costs and means necessary to achieve its military objective. I have never seen anything more irresponsible in my life,” Orban said in an interview with the Patriota YouTube channel.

He added that, in his opinion, NATO wanted to become a party to the conflict in Ukraine and “the chances that the alliance can be kept from doing so are limited.”
Budapest is against having decisions on the service of Hungarian citizens made “in Brussels or Germany,” Orban emphasized.

“We don’t want anyone else to be able to make decisions about conscription and sending our young men of draft age anywhere. We have to forget about a European army with compulsory conscription, this is a crazy idea,” the prime minister stressed.

Earlier in May, Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s Party, the largest one in the European Parliament, suggested reinstating compulsory military service across the entire European Union.

If Weber’s idea was implemented, “Hungarian families would be told from Brussels or Germany that their children would be compulsorily conscripted into the European army and told where they would go,” Orban added.

In the years to come, current events may be seen as a prelude to World War III or even its first episode if Brussels’ militarism is not countered, the Hungarian prime minister warned.

“Perhaps in 10 years the current processes will be called a prelude to World War III. It cannot be ruled out that if things go badly and we fail to control the military psychosis developed in Brussels, the history of these years will also be an episode of the first years of the big world war,” Orban said in an interview with the YouTube channel Patrióta.

Although European politicians see nuclear weapons as a deterrent, unforeseen worst-case scenarios could come to life, the Hungarian prime minister emphasized.

“In my opinion, European politicians think of the nuclear bomb as a tactical deterrence tool and not as something that should really be used, but what they don’t consider at the beginning of a war can still happen at the end, thus worst-case scenarios can come to life,” Orban explained.

Previously, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper that the United States threatened Moscow with the “destruction” of Russian forces in the special military operation zone if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitriy Medvedev said Poland should understand that an American strike on Russian troops would mean the beginning of a world war.

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

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