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How Britain Sabotaged Ukraine Peace

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2024

On April 16th, Foreign Affairs published an investigation, documenting in forensic detail how in May 2022 Kiev was a signature away from a peace deal with Russia “that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees,” which was scuppered by Western powers. The outlet attributes the failure of negotiations to “a number of reasons” – although it’s unambiguously clear the biggest was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson offering President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the blankest of blank cheques to keep fighting.

For two years, claims and counterclaims have abounded about these peace talks, initiated almost immediately after the conflict began, and why they collapsed. Independent journalists and researchers, the Kremlin, and some foreign officials involved, assert that a favorable settlement was within reach, only to be scuttled at the 11th hour by Western actors. By contrast, Kiev, its supporters, and proxy sponsors have strenuously denied that negotiations were ever taken seriously by either party, while claiming Moscow’s terms were completely unacceptable.

Foreign Affairs has now validated what anti-imperialists have consistently contended. Amicable peace could’ve been achieved in Ukraine at the earliest stages of the proxy conflict, on terms favourable to both parties. Western powers responsible for sabotaging negotiations in service of weakening Russia knew that all along. Yet, they kept this inconvenient reality consciously concealed until now, when the war is unambiguously an unwinnable lost cause for all concerned, bar Moscow.

Still, to have the truth confirmed by Foreign Affairs – an elite US journal published by the notorious, highly influential Council on Foreign Relations – is hugely significant, and the narrative threat posed is evident. Within hours of release, Polish think tank operative Daniel Szeligowski took to X to rubbish the investigation at length, reinforcing the established Western fable that negotiations could never have succeeded, due to Kremlin intransigence, and Ukrainian resolve, in the face of industrial scale Russian war crimes.

Such pushback is only to be expected. After all, Foreign Affairs has raised a number of troublesome questions about the proxy war. In particular, why it continues to grind on today at unsustainable human and financial cost for Kiev and its foreign sponsors. The investigation also confirms Western governments that pushed Ukraine into conflict with its neighbor and historic ally were completely unwilling to come to the country’s rescue, in the event Russia responded to their provocations.

Talks begin, major concessions offered

Foreign Affairs bases its investigation on multiple “draft agreements exchanged between the two sides, some details of which have not been reported previously,” and interviews “with several participants in the talks as well as with officials serving at the time in key Western governments.” It offers a granular timeline of events, “from the start of the invasion through the end of May, when talks broke down.”

Before then, Vladimir Putin and Zelensky reportedly “surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war.” This included peacefully resolving “their dispute over Crimea during the next 10 to 15 years.” Talks began four days after the invasion in Belarus, with President Aleksandr Lukashenko playing mediator.

Putin appointed a negotiating team led by Vladimir Medinsky, a senior adviser to the Russian president who previously served as culture minister. By his side were deputy ministers of defense and foreign affairs, among others. Kiev dispatched Davyd Arakhamia, parliamentary leader of Zelensky’s political party, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, and other senior officials. The individuals involved amply underlines how seriously negotiations were taken by both sides.

By the third round of talks, drafts of a peace treaty began to circulate. Many more materialized over subsequent weeks, as the two sides sought to overcome “substantial disagreements”, refining details face-to-face in a variety of international venues, and via Zoom. In brief, Kiev would accept various limits on the size of its Armed Forces, striking range of any missiles sited on its territory, and number of tanks and armored vehicles it could maintain.

Most crucially, Ukraine would implement the Minsk Accords, “renounce its NATO aspirations and never host NATO forces on its territory,” accepting permanent neutrality. In return for ensuring Russia’s “most basic security interests”, Kiev was free to pursue EU membership, and “security guarantees that would oblige other states to come to Ukraine’s defense if Russia attacked again in the future.”

Those guarantees could extend to “imposing a no-fly zone, supplying weapons, or directly intervening with the guarantor state’s own military force” – “obligations…spelled out with much greater precision than NATO’s Article 5,” Foreign Affairs observes. The outlet suggests this component was the undoing of negotiations, due to Kiev’s “risk-averse Western colleagues”:

“Kyiv’s Western partners were reluctant to be drawn into a negotiation with Russia, particularly one that would have created new commitments for them to ensure Ukraine’s security.”

Whitewashing Johnson’s Kiev visit

Foreign Affairs notes that Naftali Bennett, Israeli premier while the talks were ongoing, who was “mediating between the two sides”, has said that he “attempted to dissuade Zelensky from getting stuck on the question of security guarantees.’ He explained, “There is this joke about a guy trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a passerby. I said, ‘America will give you guarantees? It will commit that in several years if Russia violates something, it will send soldiers? After leaving Afghanistan and all that?’ Volodymyr, it won’t happen.’”

Of course, several of Ukraine’s “Western patrons” have sent soldiers to assist in the proxy conflict – most prominently Britain, which in January signed a wide-ranging “security cooperation agreement” with Kiev. Foreign Affairs references Boris Johnson’s visit to the country in April 2022, and how Davyd Arakhamia has claimed the then-Prime Minister “said we won’t sign anything at all… let’s just keep fighting.”

The outlet adds that “already on March 30, Johnson seemed disinclined toward diplomacy, stating that instead ‘we should continue to intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of [Putin’s] troops is out of Ukraine.’” So it was that he arrived in Kiev on April 9, “the first foreign leader to visit after the Russian withdrawal from the capital.” Johnson reportedly told Zelensky:

“Any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid… some victory for him. If you give him anything, he’ll just keep it, bank it, and then prepare for his next assault.”

Yet, Foreign Affairs downplays Johnson’s intervention, claiming allegations the British premier sabotaged negotiations are “Putin’s manipulative spin.” In support, the outlet notes how despite Moscow’s withdrawal from the northern front resulting in “the gruesome discovery of atrocities that Russian forces had committed in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin,” talks continued thereafter. The two sides worked “around the clock on a treaty that Putin and Zelensky were supposed to sign during a summit to be held in the not-too-distant future”:

“The sides were actively exchanging drafts [and] beginning to share them with other parties… the April 15 draft suggests that the treaty would be signed within two weeks. Granted, that date might have shifted, but it shows that the two teams planned to move fast… work on the draft treaty continued and even intensified in the days and weeks after the discovery of Russia’s war crimes, suggesting that the atrocities at Bucha and Irpin were a secondary factor in Kyiv’s decision-making.”

‘Bucha Effect’ leads to ‘frozen negotiations’

Bucha may have been a “secondary factor” in Ukrainian decision-making, but it wasn’t from the British government’s perspective. Unmentioned by Foreign Affairs, days before Johnson landed in Kiev, he boldly declared the alleged massacre of civilians in the town by Russian forces didn’t “look far short of genocide,” and “the international community – Britain very much in the front rank – will be moving again in lockstep to impose more sanctions and more penalties on Vladimir Putin’s regime.”

While a subsequent UN investigation failed to validate charges of genocide by Russia in Ukraine, once Johnson deployed the term, many Western officials followed suit. As a result, widespread public and state consent for keeping the proxy war going was very effectively manufactured across Europe and North America. To even speak of a negotiated settlement publicly became beyond the pale. Meanwhile, Britain’s shadowy, spook-infested Counter Disinformation Unit, which censors social media, began policing content related to Bucha online.

What happened in Bucha remains extremely murky. At the time, an anonymous US Defense Intelligence Agency official told Newsweek that civilian deaths could have resulted from “intense” ground combat over control of the town: “We forget two peer competitors fought over Bucha for 36 days, the town was occupied, Russian convoys and positions inside the town were attacked by the Ukrainians and vice versa.” They further warned the “Bucha Effect” had “led to frozen negotiations and a skewed view of the war”:

“I am not for a second excusing Russia’s war crimes nor forgetting that Russia invaded the country. But the number of actual deaths is hardly genocide. If Russia had that objective or was intentionally killing civilians, we’d see a lot more than less than .01 percent in places like Bucha.”

Such anxieties fell on deaf ears, although they reflect a broader resistance to escalating the proxy war on Washington’s part. In December 2022, the BBC reported that British officials were intensely worried about the “innate caution” of US President Joe Biden, “who is… concerned about provoking a wider global conflict.” A nameless state apparatchik revealed that London had “stiffened the US resolve at all levels”, via “pressure.”

Leaked material shows senior British military and intelligence officials leading London’s contribution to the proxy war are committed to challenging the “US position… firmly and at once.” One can only speculate whether incidents such as the Kerch Bridge bombing, which these officials secretly planned and helped Kiev execute – despite reported US opposition – were intended to escalate the conflict further, and keep Washington embroiled in the quagmire.

We are also left to ponder whether those officials played any role in the massacre of civilians in Bucha, whose names Ukraine refuses to release despite formal Russian requests. Kremlin apparatchiks, and Aleksandr Lukashenko, have claimed to possess evidence British special forces were responsible for the killings. None has emerged since, although why Britain prevented an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Bucha requested by Russia in April 2022 going ahead remains an open question.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t confuse them with facts

By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 11, 2024

Extraordinary events are taking place in the streets of Tbilisi. Normally, agitated crowds should be demanding increased transparency in public affairs and access to all the facts they need to efficaciously exercise their civic duties. In Georgia, they want the opposite. The agitated crowd’s vociferous demand is for the facts to be withheld from them.

They are vigorously opposed to Parliament’s intention to enact a legal mechanism that would provide for the registration of foreign agents operating within the country. The legislation now before the Georgian Parliament, which a comfortable majority of the deputies support, would make available to the demonstrators and to all citizens of Georgia information about foreign financing sources of the “non-governmental organisations” that proliferate in Georgia. In that small country targeted for regime change by the collective West there are currently about 20,000 “NGOs,” a remarkable statistic by any measure. The demonstrators however adamantly refuse to know and they oppose that their fellow citizens should be allowed to find out what entities from abroad supply money and logistical assistance to those “NGOs.” Consequently, what they are actually opposing is public disclosure of the agenda those organisations promote and serve.

In simple terms, the demonstrators are saying, “Do not turn on the lights. We prefer to wander in the darkness and as in the current geopolitical confrontation our country is being strong-armed to take a stance disadvantageous to it we prefer that the Georgian government and the public should also roam in complete darkness.”

Briefly, the law that the protesters are objecting to, and which is on the verge of being passed by the Georgian Parliament, provides that if more than twenty percent of operating funds originate from foreign sources, Georgian “NGOs” must publicly disclose such a fact and identify the sources of their funding. This law has been mendaciously misrepresented by Georgia’s NGO sector and the collective West media and political institutions as the “Russian law.” But it is, of course, nothing of the sort. It does exhibit some commonalities with legislation passed by the Russian Duma several years ago that requires foreign agents in Russia to be registered, but the Russian law itself is but a translated copy/paste version of the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) that the US Congress had passed in 1938. The enactment of FARA is explained by reference to perfectly reasonable national security and democratic transparency concerns:

“The Foreign Agents Registration Act provides the public with an opportunity to be informed of the identity of persons engaging in political activities on behalf of foreign governments, foreign political parties and other foreign principals, so that their activities can be evaluated in light of their associations.”

To say that from the standpoint of democratic practice the Georgian demonstrators’ demands are merely counter-intuitive would be putting it quite mildly. Being mostly young, with access to the internet and presumably computer-savvy, these opponents of the Georgian transparency law can easily research the facts. Invincible ignorance is therefore a plea that these alert young intellectuals are precluded from invoking.

The interesting question is what could possibly motivate a large crowd of mostly young Georgians to assemble day after day in the streets of their capital and to even try to storm their Parliament in a show of revulsion toward perfectly acceptable legislation which, moreover, happens to be invested with the imprimatur of the world’s leading democracy?

In light of what we have already witnessed of the successful application of cognitive reformatting techniques not merely in Ukraine but over the years in Georgia as well, and in Armenia more recently, the answer is readily suggested. In the Ukraine, after years of persistent and amply funded perception-altering indoctrination (to the tune of five billion dollars, according to Victoria Newland) the Maidan putsch of 2014 became possible. Even if they were not the majority, a politically significant portion of the Ukrainian public were persuaded to open the gates to their country’s adversaries. They were successfully zombified to choose fairy tale promises made by the West over the tangible benefits that would have accrued from the proposed alliance with Russia and associated countries. The tragic outcome of the wrong choice that a politically illiterate nation made then is today plain for all to see.

A symmetrical process has been taking place in Georgia. Since the partially successful “Rose revolution” of 2003, Western special services and their ancillary agencies have had twenty years to fine tune their color revolution scenario and adapt it to Georgia’s unique conditions. To that end, thousands of “NGOs” were set up, abundantly funded, and turned loose to reformat the thinking of the traditionalist Orthodox society in Georgia.

The creation of an insular core of programmed local activists to promote collective West’s agenda whilst deceitfully cultivating the illusion that the work being done was entirely by domestic forces not beholden to foreign sponsors is a fundamental part of the game. Transparency with regard to the logistics and command and control of local activists would demolish that illusion. The local public would grasp that it is being misled and manipulated, and by whom. That is impermissible. Hence the frantic effort and the mobilisation of all available local assets against the registration law, to impede the Georgian authorities from efficiently addressing this paramount national security issue. The monetary investment and decades-long cultivation of pliant cadres must not be allowed to go to naught.

An excellent theoretical explanation of the subversive technology on full display in the streets of Tbilisi is the concept of the “Lesser nation” developed by Academician Igor Shafarevich in his insightful essay “Russophobia.” The “Lesser nation” is an elitist subculture ensconced within its larger host. It is specifically programmed to be alienated from the larger nation that surrounds it and to continuously vex it from within. Just as importantly, in response to the remote control signals emitted by its animators, it is configured to be aggressive, loud, and obnoxious. The Lesser nation’s self-awareness is shaped to counter-pose it to the larger community in which it operates, whose interests, values, and traditions it dismisses with disdain. But at the same time, in sovereign fashion it claims the right to rearrange that community’s affairs, treating it as mere human fodder for the achievement of the Lesser nation’s ideological aspirations.

Shafarevich makes observations whose pertinence will readily be recognised by all who have studied the technology of “color revolutions” and creation of local battering rams that are meticulously prepared in advance to ensure their success.

He points out that local operatives are inculcated with the “belief that the people’s future, like a mechanism, can be freely designed and restructured; in this connection [they are imbued with] a contemptuous attitude toward the history of the ‘Greater People,’ up to and including the assertion that it has not existed at all; the demand that the basic forms of life be borrowed in the future from outside and that we [must] break with our own historical tradition [in this case it is the demonstrators’ demand that Georgia sacrifice transparency to chimerical EU membership, thus affirming its commitment to “European values”];  the division of the people into an ‘elite’ and an ‘inert mass,’ and the firm belief in the right to use the latter as material for historical creativity; and finally, outright revulsion toward representatives of the ‘Greater People’ and their psychological makeup” [P.17].

Shafarevich diagnoses this phenomenon as “hostile alienation from the spiritual foundations of the surrounding world” [P. 37].

With regard to the gullibility of the preponderantly youthful recruits, Shafarevich points out that “in the face of this refined technique of brainwashing that has been tested in practice and improved through long experience, confused young people find themselves absolutely defenceless. For, after all, no one who might be an authority for them will warn them that what they are dealing with is simply a new version of propaganda, albeit a very toxic one, that is based on an extremely fragile factual basis” [P. 28].

“Thus,” he concludes, “logic, facts and ideas alone are powerless in such a situation … ” [P. 25].

In other words, they will not be confused with facts.

Time will tell what measures the Georgian authorities will employ to ensure the integrity of their country. Scott Ritter harbours no doubts that Georgia is targeted for “regime change” but he believes also that the current Georgian government are well aware of the fate their Western “partners” have envisioned for them and will react accordingly. Let us hope that in Georgia on both the governmental and popular levels sound judgment shall prevail, as in neighbouring Armenia it evidently has not.

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ukraine War

By William Schryver | imetatronink | May 11, 2024

The essay below was originally published in early July 2022. Version 1.0 of #TheMotherOfAllProxyArmies in Ukraine had been severely attrited, and Version 2.0 would not appear until later in the summer.

Nevertheless, it had already become very apparent that the Russian strategy and doctrine for this war was not at all what the vast majority of western military “experts” expected it to be. And consequently they lacked the capacity to understand what was happening.

For the most part, they still don’t get it.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million Ukrainians (and a few thousand NATO-affiliated “volunteers”) have been sacrificed on the altar of western hubris and military ineptitude. Vast quantities of western equipment and ammunition has been expended — to the point of near-exhaustion in European NATO countries, and acute depletion of American stockpiles.

And yet the doctrine and tactics described in this mid-2022 article have changed only in the sense that the Russians have consistently refined and improved them along the way, even as the US/NATO have effectively learned nothing.

I’ve watched a LOT of drone footage from this war. I’ve seen, from a bird’s eye view, as it were, the design of the field fortifications Ukraine constructed, with NATO guidance, over the course of eight years.

The logic of these miles and miles of fortifications harkens back to the 1864-65 Battle of Petersburg (US Civil War), with a few World War I innovations thrown in for good measure.

It is a logic where victory largely depends on you not running out of men, heavy weaponry, and ammunition — and the enemy being comparatively stupid.

In many ways, the revealed logic of Ukraine’s long-prepared strategy for this war is a reflection of American military delusions and vanities, which multiplied and solidified over the course of the brief and fleeting “unipolar moment”.

Despite not having won a war since 1945, the US military is consumed with the vanity that it has always dominated opposing forces in every conflict.

There is a measure of truth in this perspective. But it is irrelevant. Because, since no later than the Korean War, the US has not faced a peer or near-peer adversary in a high-intensity conflict. The US military has not been, for almost three-quarters of a century, truly tested “under-fire”.

The US has measured its battlefield mettle, for decades, against brave sandal-shod men with AK-47s, RPGs, and a certain savoir faire for constructing IEDs.

But they have never faced anything like Russian artillery or missiles – not even in Hollywood movies or video games.

Consequently, the Pentagon’s self-perception of unquestioned supremacy has served to disinform and corrupt its doctrinal and procurement decisions for multiple generations of its officer corps. For most US generals and admirals, all potential opponents are underestimated.

That said, I believe a great many have now been awakened from their intellectual slumber by the manner in which the Russian armed forces quickly assessed the Ukrainian order of battle, and then professionally adapted their strengths and tactics to decisively defeat it.

The Battle of the Donbass

Here is a brief summation of the Russian tactical approach to the Battle of the Donbass:

Step #1: Advance reconnaissance units (often in force, with dozens or hundreds of drones overhead) to assess the situation; draw fire; relay to commanders raw video and geo-coordinates.

Step #2: With target-correcting drone swarms overhead, relaying real-time strike video, proceed to savage the fortifications with towed and mobile artillery, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (in gradations of strength and precision), and even horrific thermobaric munitions for particularly suitable targets.

Let smoke clear.

Repeat Step #1.

Still something moving there?

Repeat Step #2.

Repeat Step #1.

Dead bodies everywhere?

Step #3: Send in tanks and infantry to mop up.

Move to next series of fortifications.

And so on and so forth …

This is why Ukraine now suffers hundreds of battle deaths every single day. And why, for months, the Russians have suffered very few casualties — likely as low as a 1:8 ratio, and quite possibly even lower.

Artillery, airstrikes, and precision guided munitions are doing almost all the fighting.

The Fatal Hubris of NATO War Strategy in Ukraine

But back to Ukraine’s apparent strategy for this war, and the apparent US influence on that strategy.

I will preface my commentary on this issue by stating that Ukraine’s fatal blunder was buying into NATO’s over-confident delusion that they (the Armed Forces of Ukraine) actually had a reasonable opportunity to defeat the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in a high-intensity conflict.

I initially believed NATO military leaders must have had a sober view, far in advance, that their half-million-strong, well-armed, trained-to-NATO-standards Ukrainian proxy army had almost no chance of prevailing on the field of battle against Russia.

But watching drone video of Ukrainian fortifications has convinced me the US military brain trust, in the course of their eight-year-long preparation of the eastern Ukrainian battlefield, effectively disdained the Russian military and its commanders.

Their vanity persuaded them the Russians would mindlessly smash themselves to pieces against an entrenched well-armed force.

Indeed, they were so confident of the genius of their plan that they persuasively encouraged many hundreds of now-killed or captured NATO veterans to “share in the glory” of humiliating the Russians and bringing down the Putin regime once and for all.

They deluded themselves into believing the Russians lacked strategic and logistical acumen, a sufficiently well-trained force, and – arguably the biggest miscalculation of all – sufficient stockpiles of ammo to conduct a protracted high-intensity conflict.

In short, I have come to believe US/NATO commanders actually persuaded themselves that this “Mother of All Proxy Armies” had an excellent chance to soundly whip the Russians in a battle situated in their own back yard.

In other words, they disregarded centuries of European history that they somehow convinced themselves had no relevance to their 21st century aspirations to defeat Russia militarily and take a great spoil of its resources.

But, as is now readily apparent to all objective, knowledgeable military analysts around the globe, the Ukrainian proxy army has been pulverized by a patient, methodical, and significantly outnumbered Russian force, using long-established Russian doctrines and tactics.

Even more revealing is that once-vaunted and universally feared US/UK weaponry – almost all of it actually rather antiquated – has proven to be far less “game-changing” than the pea-brained strategists in Washington and Whitehall mistakenly believed.

Javelins, NLAWs, and Stingers have been exposed as mostly ineffective against their intended targets (tanks, helicopters, and low-flying jets). M-777 howitzers break down after just a few fires. GPS-guided “precision” munitions are routinely jammed by Russian electronic warfare counter-measures.

Worse yet, the inculcation of NATO field doctrines in the minds of the Ukrainian officer cadre has resulted in pervasively inflexible responses to battlefield events that develop contrary to expectations. Consequently, discipline has disintegrated, and improvisation has been paralyzed.

To be sure, if one were to go by the laughable assessments of western think-tank propagandists and their dutiful lackeys in the media, “Ukraine is winning” and “the inept Russian military has been humiliated”.

But more discerning observers around the world know better.

Sober military men in potential adversary countries across the globe see with clarity that Russia has, with one hand tied behind its back, eviscerated the massive, relatively well-armed and well-trained Ukrainian military.

The US/NATO intimidation factor has been forever compromised.

More geopolitically significant, at least in the near future, is that European NATO members can also read the scorecard of this war: they now understand as they never could previously that standing on the NATO side of the field is hardly a guarantee of security.

I am convinced NATO will not survive the results of this war in Ukraine. Sure, they’ll “keep up appearances” for the time being, but there can be no doubt most now understand that siding with a rapidly declining empire is fraught with great risk and minimal gain.

More concerningly, the Chinese have been watching all of these developments with great interest. They are almost certain to be emboldened to act decisively to secure their sphere of influence in the emerging multipolar world.

Great dangers now await in east Asia …

May 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

MTG Says ‘Uniparty’ Win Saving Johnson’s Speakership Will Mean More Money for Foreign Wars

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, speaks to reporters before a meeting with US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, about a possible Motion to Vacate filing to remove him from the speakership, at the US Capitol on May 7, 2024, in Washington, DC.
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 09.05.2024

House Democrats and Republicans joined forces on Wednesday to shoot down the congresswoman’s motion to oust the speaker over his efforts to secure tens of billions of dollars for wars abroad while overlooking the crisis at the US southern border, and to reauthorize measures allowing for warrantless surveillance of US citizens by the state.

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took to X on Thursday to issue a scathing attack targeting her fellow Republicans who joined with Democrats to block her push to vacate the House and prompt the selection of a new Speaker to replace Mike Johnson.

“All the scary bad things they all told you would happen if I called the motion to vacate didn’t happen. They said ‘Democrats would take control of the House and [Minority Leader Hakeem] Jeffries would become speaker because Republicans only have the majority with one seat’. Didn’t happen. Instead, Democrats voted to save Johnson because they knew it was impossible to take control of the House and they want to keep Johnson because he’s given them everything they want,” Greene wrote.

“They said ‘we should be focused on more serious issues! None of this does anything for the American people!’ Doing things for the American people and focusing on serious issues didn’t happen because the Uniparty reared its ugly head and voted to protect their Uniparty leader and to keep the status quo which has done nothing for the American people or solved problems on serious issues,” the lawmaker added.

“And you know what else didn’t happen? Congress, which is paid by the American people and sent to represent them, didn’t stop the border crisis, didn’t stop funding foreign wars, didn’t protect America’s energy industry, didn’t cut spending to reduce inflation, didn’t defund the weaponized government. Instead Congress protected itself and kept the Uniparty control over the People’s House,” Greene wrote.

Greene, 49, is one of a handful a new breed of Republicans calling for a radical review of the America’s domestic and foreign priorities, calling for a halt to US support for foreign wars, measures to clamp down on illegal immigration, and efforts to deal with America’s gargantuan $34+ trillion federal debt.

43 House lawmakers voted against tabling Greene’s motion to vacate the House on Wednesday, among them ten Republicans, including Paul Gosar, Thomas Massie, Andy Biggs and Chip Roy. Nearly three dozen Democrats also voted against killing the motion, which would have opened the door to Johnson’s removal, among them several members of the so-called Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Jamaal Bowman, Pramila Jayapal, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Democratic support saved Johnson’s speakership, but potentially puts the politician in an electoral tight spot among conservatives as a speaker propped up by the opposition.
However, former president and presumptive GOP nominee for president Donald Trump – whose 2016 election gave rise to the anti-neocon Republican movement, and ultimately Greene’s election in 2020, rushed to Johnson’s defense in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.

“I absolutely love Marjorie Taylor Greene. She’s got Spirit, she’s got Fight, and I believe she’ll be around, and on our side, for a long time to come,” Trump wrote. “However, right now, Republicans have to be fighting the Radical Left Democrats, and all the Damage they have done to our Country. With a Majority of One, shortly growing to three or four, we’re not in a position of voting on a Motion to Vacate. At some point, we may very well be, but this is not the time.”

Emphasizing in all caps that a motion to vacate would show “DISUNITY” and “be portrayed as “CHAOS,” Trump said that Johnson was “good man who is trying very hard,” and that while he wished “certain things were done over the last period of two months… we will get them done, together.”

Trump, whose backdoor negotiations with House Republicans reportedly included the idea of turning new Ukraine aid into a ‘loan’ to earn GOP support last month, did not elaborate on what these “certain things” were.

Greene, Gosar, Massie, Biggs, Roy, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Andrew Clyde, Eli Crane, Bob Good, Troy Nehls, Ralph Norman and Matt Rosendale, all Republicans, were the only House lawmakers to vote against all the legislation put before the floor on April 20, including aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, a TikTok ban and new sanctions against Iran after its retaliatory April 14 attack on Israel.

Johnson is the second Republican House speaker to have been targeted by an effort to oust him from his conservative flank, with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy ousted in October 2023 over what Rep. Gaetz alleged was a “secret side deal on Ukraine” to provide Kiev with more funding. McCarthy’s ouster was made possible after conservative Republicans secured the support of Democrats to force him out, with the move resulting in the blockage of nearly $100 billion in US military and economic support for foreign wars for more than six months.

May 9, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

The Great Ukraine Robbery is Not Over Yet

By Ron Paul | May 6, 2024

The ink was barely dry on President Biden’s signature transferring another $61 billion to the black hole called Ukraine, when the mainstream media broke the news that this was not the parting shot in a failed US policy. The elites have no intention of shutting down this gravy train, which transports wealth from the middle and working class to the wealthy and connected class.

Reuters wrote right after the aid bill was passed that, “Ukraine’s $61 billion lifeline is not enough.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on the Sunday shows after the bill was passed to say that $61 billion is “not a whole lot of money for us…” Well, that’s easy for him to say – after all it’s always easier to spend someone else’s money!

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was far from grateful for the $170 billion we have shipped thus far to his country. In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine as the aid package was passed, Kuleba had the nerve to criticize the US for not producing weapons fast enough. “If you cannot produce enough interceptors to help Ukraine win the war against the country that wants to destroy the world order, then how are you going to win in the war against perhaps an enemy who is stronger than Russia?”

How’s that for a “thank you”?

It may be understandable why the Ukrainians are frustrated. Most of this money is not going to help them fight Russia. US military aid to Ukraine has left our own stockpiles of weapons depleted, so the money is going to create new production lines to replace weapons already sent to Ukraine. It’s all about the US weapons industry. President Biden admitted as much when he said, “we are helping Ukraine while at the same time investing in our own industrial base.”

This is why Washington Is desperate to make sure that if Donald Trump returns to the White House, the “Ukraine” gravy train cannot be shut down by his – or future – administrations. Last week news broke that the Ukrainian government was in negotiations with the Biden Administration to sign a ten-year security agreement that would lock in US funding for Ukraine for the next two and a half US Administrations. That would unconstitutionally tie future presidents’ hands when it comes to foreign policy and would leave Americans on the hook for untold billions more dollars taken from them and sent to the weapons industry and to a corrupt foreign government.

The US weapons industry and its cheerleaders in Washington DC are determined to keep Ukraine money flowing… until they can figure out a way to gin up a war with China after losing the current war with Russia. That, of course, depends on whether there is anything left of us when the smoke clears.

When President Biden signed the $95 billion bill to keep wars going in Ukraine and Gaza and to provoke a future war with China, he called it “a good day for world peace.” Yes, and “War is peace.” Debt is good. Freedom is slavery. We are living in a post-truth society where billions spent on pointless wars are “not a whole lot of money.” But the piper will be paid and the debt will be cleared.

May 7, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Russia issues military ultimatum to UK

UK Ambassador to Russia Nigel Casey leaves the Russian Foreign Ministry, in Moscow, Russia. © Sputnik / Ilya Pitalev
RT | May 6, 2024

Moscow will retaliate against British targets in Ukraine or elsewhere if Kiev uses UK-provided missiles to strike Russian territory, the Foreign Ministry told London’s ambassador on Monday.

Ambassador Nigel Casey was summoned to the ministry following an interview by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron with Reuters last week, in which he said Ukraine has the right to use long-range missiles sent by the UK to strike deep inside Russia.

”Casey was warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory could be any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the meeting.

The US and its allies had previously qualified their deliveries of long-range weapons to Kiev by saying they could only be used on territories that Ukraine claims as its own – Crimea, the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Cameron’s statements to the contrary “de facto recognized his country as a party to the conflict.”

Russia understands Cameron’s comments as “evidence of a serious escalation and confirmation of London’s increasing involvement in military operations on the side of Kiev,” the ministry added.

Casey was urged to “think about the inevitable catastrophic consequences of such hostile steps from London and to immediately refute in the most decisive and unequivocal manner the bellicose provocative statements of the head of the Foreign Office.”

Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry announced an exercise to test the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. President Vladimir Putin ordered the drills after “provocative statements and threats” by Western officials, the military said.

French Ambassador Pierre Levy was also summoned to the Foreign Ministry. Moscow has not yet disclosed the details of the meeting.

May 6, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Macron deployed French Foreign Legion to Ukraine, claims former US official

By Ahmed Adel | May 6, 2024

Contrary to previous claims that NATO has no operational plans for Ukraine, former US Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Stephen Bryen claims that France already has boots on the ground in Ukraine. His revelation comes as NATO has hypocritically outlined two red lines that would justify intervention in the Ukraine War even though France has already committed troops and has thus escalated the conflict without provocation.

“France has sent its first troops officially to Ukraine,” said former US Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Stephen Bryen in an article published by Asia Times.

Bryen further wrote that forces were mobilised “in support of the Ukrainian 54th Independent Mechanized Brigade in Slavyansk.”

The soldiers would have come from the 3rd Infantry Regiment, one of the main components of the French Foreign Legion. French authorities have not yet commented on the matter.

“These troops are being posted directly in a hot combat area and are intended to help the Ukrainians resist Russian advances in Donbas. The first 100 are artillery and surveillance specialists,” Bryen argued.

According to him, around 1,500 soldiers from the French Foreign Legion are expected to arrive in Ukraine in the near future.

The former US Deputy Under Secretary of Defense wondered about the “Russian red line on NATO involvement in Ukraine” or if “the Russians see this as initiating a wider war beyond Ukraine’s borders?”

At the same time, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported on May 5 that NATO — “in a very confidential way and without an official statement — established at least two red lines, beyond which there could be direct intervention by the alliance in the conflict in Ukraine.” The newspaper also stressed that NATO does not plan to send its military contingent to Ukraine immediately.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently clarified that he did not rule out the possibility of NATO sending troops from Europe to Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced Macron’s statement as “very dangerous,” which was also criticised by French opposition parties and by several NATO members, including Italy, Hungary, and Slovakia.

According to La Repubblica, the first “red line” revolves around the possibility of Russia penetrating Kiev’s defence line and refers to the “direct or indirect involvement of third parties” in the conflict. This would happen when Ukrainian forces “can no longer fully control” the border, which would create conditions for the Russian military to penetrate the corridor between Ukraine and Belarus.

As the newspaper suggests, “then Minsk will be directly involved in a military dispute,” and “its troops and arsenal will be of decisive importance for Moscow.”

The second “red line,” according to the outlet, “implies a military provocation against the Baltic States or Poland or a targeted attack on Moldova.”

In addition, Western authorities were deeply concerned about the situation at the front and the “unfavourable conditions” for Kiev.

Russia has repeatedly stated that NATO is directly involved in the conflict, supplying weapons and training Ukrainian forces. According to Moscow, NATO, whose activities near Russia’s borders have intensified to unprecedented levels, are aimed at confrontation. The Kremlin has continuously clarified that Russia is not threatening anyone and would not attack anyone but would not ignore actions potentially dangerous to its interests.

Macron is evidently testing Moscow’s resolve and limits by deploying the Foreign Legion, foreigners in the French military who will be entitled to French citizenship after three years of service. This is, according to Bryen, for two reasons: So Macron can “act like a tough guy without encountering much home opposition” and as a petty revenge for “French troops, almost all from the Legion, getting kicked out of Sahelian Africa and replaced by Russians” which has resulted in France losing “influence” and harmed “overseas mining and business interests.”

Most importantly, though, especially in light of the two red lines that were imposed, how will NATO react to Macron’s deployment of the French Legion since the decision was made without NATO backing? Bryen suggests that “the French cannot claim support from NATO under its famous Article 5, the collective security component of the NATO Treaty” and that “Should the Russians attack French troops outside of Ukraine it would be justified because France has decided to be a combatant, and forcing an Article 5 vote would seem to be difficult if not impossible.”

The two red flags outlined by NATO do not include if French-flagged troops are killed by Russian forces, meaning if Macron’s hope is to drag the entire alliance into conflict with Russia, it will not succeed, demonstrating once again his desperation to keep France relevant in the international scenario after Russia humiliated the French president’s neo-colonial agenda in Africa.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

May 6, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Could Ukraine resort to terrorism against Russian and pro-Russian targets around the world?

By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 5, 2024

On April 26th, it was reported that the Russian embassy in Brazil had received a phone call informing of a bomb presence on the premises. The Military Police of the Federal District was activated and headed to the location to conduct searches.

After several hours of searching, no explosive device was found within or around the embassy. Nevertheless, even if the “alert” was false, the case warrants a deeper investigation, along with reflections on the risks surrounding Russians and “friends of Russia” abroad, given the current geopolitical climate.

In this specific case, despite no explosive device being found, it falls under Brazilian legislation on terrorism, as our laws also encompass the threat of an attack (and mere insinuation constitutes a threat). Hence, “terrorism” is established, regardless of the presence of an actual device at the embassy.

However, it would be imprudent to consider the matter “closed” for several reasons.

Firstly, attention is drawn to the degeneration of the Ukrainian state into a terrorist institutional apparatus, with its security services having been involved in numerous terrorist attacks inside and outside Ukraine.

Ukraine’s degeneration into normalizing terrorism as a state practice accompanies its inability to confront Russia through regular warfare methods. It is predicted that the degradation of the Ukrainian armed forces will be accompanied by a proportional increase in terrorism usage by its security apparatus. Everyone remembers the terrorist attacks that killed Daria Dugina, Vladlen Tatarsky, and the Crocus City Hall attack. Threats to various Russian public figures are constant.

But it is necessary to question whether Ukrainian terrorism (but not only Ukrainian) could extend beyond the Russian-Ukrainian borders and overflow into other nations. Consider, for example, the waves of Russophobia immediately stirred up after the start of the Russian special military operation.

This wave of Russophobia saw not only the cancellation of artistic and academic presentations linked to the Russian World but also physical attacks on some individuals in various countries. Needless to enumerate cases, it suffices to point out that even in Brazil, there were acts of vandalism against Russian Orthodox churches.

To this adds the presence of dozens of Brazilian mercenaries in Ukraine, fighting for Atlanticism. Some of these mercenaries are neo-Nazis, others are neoconservatives, many others are merely useful idiots deceived by unscrupulous influencers on social media. Recently, one of these mercenaries already returned to Brazil, named João Bercle (who, however, according to field information, was never on the front line), stated that Ukraine would “go after” Russians and “defenders of Russia” worldwide, insinuating the possibility of violence fomented, financed, and/or orchestrated from Kiev.

Furthermore, journalist Lucas Leiroz demonstrated in a thread on X that Brazilian President Lula was listed as a “target” on the infamous Myrotvorets website, an authentic “death list” indicating supposed “enemies of Ukraine” to be targeted through terrorist attacks or kidnappings. Many other foreign citizens have also been included on this list.

Well, personalizing the reflection, the author writing this article has indeed received death threats through anonymous accounts on the internet, including threats containing personal information and photos of family members.

Returning, therefore, to the bomb threat at the Russian embassy in Brazil, it is crucial to seriously consider the possibilities, paying attention to future risks.

In any case of such a threat, one must always consider the possibility of it being a troll or a madman or, in general, a person with no specific ideological or collective connections. But the fact that we are in such a geopolitically turbulent period forces us to also insist on other possibilities.

If the origin of the threat is not a troll, then the first suspicion could only fall on Ukrainian security services, such as the SBU and the SZRU, whose involvement in the aforementioned terrorist attacks is at least suspected.

It is notorious that the SBU operates in Brazil, infiltrating the Ukrainian-Brazilian community, which is relatively large, albeit discreet. Years ago, this author learned from a primary source that relatives of Brazilians who fought for the Donbass in Ukraine between 2014-2016 received death threats, with the primary suspicion at the time falling on the SBU.

In this sense, it is evident that the SBU would be the main suspect. And that directly or indirectly.

Indirectly, it is necessary to consider, first of all, Brazilian neo-Nazi groups, most of which have links with analogous organizations in Ukraine and even with the security sectors of that country, such as members of the Misanthropic Division Brazil, especially since some of these Brazilian neo-Nazis fought for the Ukrainian side in the past or went there for training, as reported by the Brazilian mainstream media several times.

The instrumentalization of members of these groups for terrorist attacks against Russian or pro-Russian targets in Brazil would not be particularly difficult. They would require little persuasion and encouragement.

Naturally, if we are still thinking about native Brazilians who could be instrumentalized for this type of terrorism, it would be necessary to observe those who have indeed been engaged in spreading widespread Russophobia and who see Russia as the embodiment of evil.

In this regard, the ferment of neoconservatism and ultraliberalism, proliferated over the last few years in Brazil, with its tendencies toward conspiracy theories, coupled with various behavioral disorders and the possibility of conscious or unconscious cooptation by some intelligence service, opens up the possibility of something in this direction.

Of course, in many of the suspected Ukrainian terrorist actions, some degree of contribution from Western intelligence agencies is suspected.

In this sense, and even considering threats to the President of Brazil, it would be essential to strengthen the counterintelligence work of Brazilian security agencies, as well as to monitor possible connections between neo-Nazi groups or extremist factions of neoconservatism with Ukraine or other intelligence services of NATO countries.

May 5, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s creditors want their money back – WSJ

RT | May 5, 2024

A group of foreign bondholders have taken steps to force Ukraine to begin repaying its debts as soon as next year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. If they succeed, Kiev could hemorrhage $500 million every year on interest payments alone.

The group, which includes investment giants Blackrock and Pimco, granted Kiev a two-year debt holiday in 2022, gambling that the conflict with Russia would have concluded by now.

With no end to the fighting in sight, the lenders have now hired lawyers at Weil Gotshal & Manges and bankers from PJT Partners to meet with Ukrainian officials and strike a deal whereby Ukraine would resume making interest payments next year in exchange for having a significant chunk of its debt written off, anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal.

The group holds around a fifth of Ukraine’s $20 billion in outstanding Eurobonds, the newspaper reported. While this figure represents a fraction of Ukraine’s total external debt of $161.5 billion, servicing the interest on these bonds would cost the country $500 million annually, the bondholders said.

Should the bondholders fail to strike a deal with Kiev by August, Ukraine could default. This would damage the country’s credit rating and restrict its ability to borrow even more money in the future.

According to the newspaper, Ukrainian officials are hoping that the US and other Western governments will take its side during talks with the bondholders. However, a group of these countries have already offered Ukraine a debt holiday on around $4 billion worth of loans until 2027, and are reportedly concerned that any deal with the bondholders would see private lenders being repaid before them.

Ukraine already relies on foreign aid to keep government departments open and state employees paid. The country’s military is almost entirely dependent on foreign funding; officials in Kiev and the West were predicting imminent defeat until the US Congress approved a foreign aid bill last month which included $61 billion for Ukraine and US government agencies involved in the conflict.

The bill provides almost $14 billion to Ukraine for the purchase of weapons, and includes $9 billion in new “forgivable loans.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, some bondholders have suggested that the US and EU could use frozen Russian assets to pay off Ukraine’s debts. While around $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank have been frozen in American and European banks since 2022, the US only passed legislation allowing for their seizure last month, and no similar legal mechanism exists in Europe, where the vast majority of these assets are held.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) have both urged governments not to steal this money, with ECB chief Christine Lagarde warning last month that doing so would risk “breaking the international order that you want to protect.”

May 5, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Odessa massacre 10 years on… Western media silence covers up NATO incrimination

Strategic Culture Foundation | May 3, 2024

Ten years ago this week, a shocking and brutal massacre was perpetrated by supporters of the NATO-backed Kiev regime in Odessa.

At least 42 men and women were murdered on May 2, 2014, when the Trade Unions House in the historic port city was set ablaze by a fascist mob.

Last year to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the atrocity, our weekly editorial provided a rationale for Western silence. We commented:

“In all, 42 people were murdered in the Trade Unions building massacre. Not one attacker was ever prosecuted. The Kiev regime refused to carry out any adequate investigation.

However, the horror of that day was a turning point for many Ukrainians and Russians. It revealed the hideous nature of the regime that had seized power over the country and its vile fascist hostility toward Russia.

This is the regime that was brought to power by Washington and its NATO partners. Since 2014, it has been armed and built up to be a war machine to aggress Russia and obliterate all cultural connections with Russia.

The massacre in Odessa should be remembered for the sake of the victims that day. But also remembered because it helps explain the background of how the present U.S.-led NATO proxy conflict in Ukraine with Russia has come about.

For that reason, Western news media and their governments chose to studiously ignore the Odessa massacre. Their shameful silence is necessary in order to conceal the criminal complicity of the West in Ukraine’s deadly turmoil.”

Now 10 years on, the Western media do not even make any mention of the atrocity. In earlier years, the Western media sought to distort the incident by claiming that it was a confused melee and the tragic result of a clash between unknown rival factions. There were even deplorable attempts by Western media to make out that claims of an atrocity were “Russian disinformation”.

The cover-up has given way to total silence as if the horrific event was consigned to an Orwellian “memory hole”.

Russia continues to call for an international independent investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Kiev regime persists in rebuffing any serious investigation for the simple reason that a thorough probe would probably show that the atrocity was carried out by the leadership of the Kiev regime in collusion with Western intelligence agencies.

What happened in Odessa on May 2, 2014, was not some random event of chaotic violence that got out of control. This is what the Western media initially reported.

No, it seems quite clear now that the massacre was a well-planned, deliberate act of mass murder to terrorize the Ukrainian opposition into complying with the NATO regime. It was an act of state terrorism.

The victims were all from Odessa who had been participating in a peaceful protest outside the landmark building in the city center. The building was closed due to the May Day holiday. As in several other southern and eastern regions of Ukraine at the time, there were many protests against the NATO-sponsored coup in Kiev that had taken place only weeks earlier in February of that year.

Many Ukrainians were not happy – indeed were appalled – that the so-called EuroMaidan coup in Kiev had brought to power ultranationalists and fascists who glorified NeoNazi figures and paramilitaries. Cities like Odessa suffered terribly under Nazi occupation during the Great Patriotic War (WWII). Now they were seeing a regime exulting in those Nazi memories and wanting to banish all Russian cultural connections.

In those pivotal months of 2014, the CIA’s plan to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russian bulwark was not a foregone conclusion due to the formidable opposition to the new regime in cities like Odessa, Kherson and Kharkov  – as well as of course the Crimea Peninsula and the Donbass.

Former Odessa lawmaker Vasily Polishchuk who witnessed the violence that day testifies that senior figures in the Kiev regime were present in Odessa in the days before May 2. One of those was Andriy Parubiy who had been appointed head of national security. Parubiy is also implicated in the sniper shootings in Kiev on February 20 – a false flag provocation killing dozens of protesters and police officers – that precipitated the coup against the elected pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.

Two weeks before the Odessa massacre, the then CIA director John Brennan was in Kiev on an unannounced visit. Even some U.S. lawmakers complained at the time that it was not a good look for the United States to be seen collaborating with the Kiev regime. Brennan was not only giving the green light to the “anti-terror operation” (civil war) that the Kiev regime was about to launch against the Donbass. It seems plausible that the United States was also helping to formulate a scorched-earth policy of terror to quell any dissent across Ukraine.

The mass killings in Odessa on May 2 were the selected terror demonstration.

Eyewitnesses tell of how thousands of Kiev regime paramilitaries who had been instrumental in the coup in the capital weeks earlier were bussed into Odessa and put up in camps. Andriy Parubiy was seen inspecting their ranks and overseeing the supply of body armor.

When the anti-Maidan protesters were attacked on May 2, they were herded by baseball-bat-wielding thugs into the Trade Union House. The building was then assailed with incendiary devices.

People who jumped from the blazing building were bludgeoned to death by NeoNazi gangs shouting “Death to all Russians”.

The dereliction of duty by the police that day to protect the peaceful protesters and the subsequent quashing of any crime investigation is proof that the security forces were complicit. That could only have been enabled by senior orders most likely issued by those in Kiev.

This is essential background to understand the current conflict in Ukraine and why Russia decided to intervene on February 24, 2022. Moscow maintains that Ukraine is a proxy war orchestrated by the United States and its NATO allies as a geo-strategic confrontation to subjugate Russia. Western regimes and their propaganda media make out that Ukraine is a democracy under aggression from Russia.

Understanding how the Kiev regime was installed with CIA and NATO engineering and how it rapidly used its fascist violence to turn Ukraine into a terror state corroborates the analysis of the current conflict being a Western imperialist proxy war.

The Western-lionized “democracy” has repressed all opposition parties and media.

The United States and its NATO accomplices do not want the Western public to understand the truth about their criminal machinations in Ukraine. These powers want the bloodshed to continue to the last Ukrainian because the war racket is so damn lucrative.

Thus the Western powers must shove episodes like the Odessa massacre down the memory hole and keep a lid on it. It is imperative to keep the fiction going of a democracy under attack otherwise the West’s collusion with a NeoNazi regime would reveal the Western powers’ inherent fascism.

Several events and developments around the world – brutal police repression of peaceful protests in the U.S. and Europe, the enabling of genocide by a fascist Israeli regime, the unprovoked aggression toward China, and the nefarious involvement in Ukraine – all point to Western states degenerating into full-fledged fascism.

May 4, 2024 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Russia shoots down four US-made long-range missiles – MOD

RT | May 4, 2024

Russian air defenses have shot down four US-manufactured long-range missiles over Crimea, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow.

On Saturday night, Kiev’s forces attempted “to carry out a terrorist attack” against the Russian peninsula using surface-to-surface Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) supplied by Washington, the ministry said in a post on Telegram. The strike was intercepted, it added.

On Tuesday, the Defense Ministry claimed that six ATACMS projectiles had been downed in a single day, without specifying the location of the strikes. In total, 15 such missiles have been intercepted in the past seven days, Moscow reported on Saturday.

In late April, US officials confirmed earlier media reports that the Pentagon had secretly shipped an unspecified number of long-range missiles to Ukraine as part of an arms package announced by President Joe Biden in mid-March.

The “goal” of supplying Kiev with ATACMS was to put more pressure on Crimea and allow Ukrainian forces to target the peninsula “more effectively,” the New York Times reported at a time, citing an unnamed Pentagon official.

Moscow said the provision of long-range missiles would only spell “more problems” for Kiev. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted that the use of ATACMS would not impact the outcome of the conflict, or prevent Russia from achieving its security goals.

On Friday, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that any Western-backed Ukrainian attack against the Russian peninsula, or the Crimean Bridge which connects it to the Krasnodar Region, would spark a forceful response.

“I would like to again warn Washington, London, Brussels, that any aggressive actions against Crimea are not only doomed to failure, but will also be met with a retaliatory blow,” she said during a media briefing.

May 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Drone hits passenger bus in Russian border region – governor

RT | May 3, 2024

A drone struck a passenger bus on Friday morning in one of the villages in Russia’s Belgorod Region, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has said. He later reported that another UAV hit a car in the same settlement.

The attacks happened in the village of Voznesenka, located not far from the border with Ukraine, Gladkov wrote on Telegram.

According to the governor, an FPV drone had targeted a passenger bus which was being used to transport the employees of one of the local firms.

A driver and two passengers were inside the vehicle at the moment of the attack, he said.

“As a result of the explosion, one person was injured. The man suffered a barotrauma and a bruise to his right arm,” Gladkov said.

A few hours later, the governor reported another UAV attack in Voznesenka, saying that a kamikaze drone had struck a parked car in the village.

“There is one victim. A man with shrapnel wounds to his back and upper and lower extremities was rushed by ambulance to the regional clinical hospital,” he said.

The targeted car suffered “serious damage,” while three more vehicles were hit with shrapnel. Windows were also blown out in a nearby building, the governor said.

In the town of Shebekino in Belgorod Region, a kamikaze drone also struck a gas station; the explosion set one of the gas storage tanks on fire, Gladkov said.

No one was injured in the incident, the governor stressed, adding that the emergencies services have arrived on site.

Also on Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that five Ukrainian drones had been destroyed by air defenses above Belgorod Region and one more above Crimea overnight.

The Russian regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk, all of which border Ukraine, have been the targets of numerous Ukrainian missile, mortar and drone attacks since the outbreak of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. The strikes have targeted energy infrastructure and residential areas, resulting in civilian deaths and injuries, as well as the destruction of property.

May 3, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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