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Zelensky’s Global Begging Tour Is an Obscene Fiasco

Strategic Culture Foundation | December 15, 2023

The United States’ proxy war in Ukraine against Russia has cost the lives of up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers. In the last six months alone, it is estimated that over 120,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in a failed counteroffensive.

Even Western media are coyly admitting the grim reality of failure after much-vaunted predictions last year of imminent victory against Russia.

Yet nearly two years after the conflict erupted, the leader of the puppet regime in Kiev persists in begging for billions more in funds from his Western sponsors to continue the bloodbath – the biggest armed confrontation in Europe since the Second World War.

The hostilities can be traced back to the 2014 coup in Kiev orchestrated by the CIA and precipitated by the European Union and Washington trying to cleave traditional Ukrainian relations with Russia. Those hostilities culminated in February 2022 in what can be seen as a U.S.-led proxy war against Russia. A war that has failed for the Western powers and needs to be peacefully negotiated to spare further death and destruction.

This week, however, saw Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky going to Washington to plead for $60 billion in additional funds. His begging mission failed. The U.S. Congress refused to pass the supplemental bill requested on his behalf by President Joe Biden for Ukraine.

After that humiliation, Zelensky then turned his solicitation to the European Union. The EU, by turn, failed to agree on a requested fund for $54 billion for Ukraine.

As a sort of consolation prize, the EU leaders at their two-day summit in Brussels declared that Ukraine could start negotiations for eventually gaining access to the 27-member bloc. That decision was bombastically hailed as “historic” but it seemed more theatre than substance given that the negotiations will take several years to conduct and there is no guarantee at the end of the tedious process that Ukraine will actually gain EU membership. Will Ukraine even exist as a state in a few years, as our columnist Stephen Karganovic ponders in an article this week?

The EU membership talks were granted no doubt as a way to distract from the fact that the EU funds were not forthcoming and especially following the miserable response from U.S. lawmakers.

The whole sorry saga indicates that the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine has become a deplorable black hole for Western public money. Given the military debacle and the futile bloodshed, it is becoming politically untenable for Washington and Brussels to keep shovelling billions of taxpayer money into this abyss.

Up for the asking this week was a total of nearly $100 billion between the U.S. and Europe for Ukraine. How many badly needed public services in Western states could do with – and are denied – that kind of financial sustenance?

The spectacle of Zelensky touring the world scrounging for more money is as shameful as it is sordid.

Official figures show that the Western governments have already donated a combined total of $200 billion to Ukraine since the conflict escalated in February 2022.

To put that largesse into perspective, it is estimated that the U.S. Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of the whole of Europe following World War Two was equivalent to $173 billion in today’s money.

Think about that. The Western funding to Ukraine already exceeds this historic salvage package by some $30 billion. And yet Western governments are trying to muster another $100 billion on top of that.

There are several conclusions to be made. First of all, the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia is indisputably a calamitous failure. Despite the unprecedented financing of weapons and other support to the Kiev regime, the war is a dead-end for the Western powers. The 30-member NATO military alliance is staring at a defeat unparalleled in its 75-year history.

Secondly, it is patent that the Kiev regime is only being propped up by the transfer of colossal flows of aid from the West. Without those transfusions of weapons and capital, the regime is finished. It has already lost grievous numbers of troops on the battlefield. Conscription drives are scraping the barrel. Without the lifeline of aid, the regime is finished. The Kiel Institute for World Economy reported last week that Western capital pledges to the Kiev regime have fallen off a cliff since the summer.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week in his annual marathon televised Q&A with the public and journalists that Russia will push on with its objectives of eradicating the NATO-backed Nazi forces in Ukraine. There seems little doubt that the objective will be achieved given the parlous state of the Kiev regime.

Another conclusion to draw is the scale of corruption that Ukraine is mired in. For all the funds pumped into this regime so much of it has been siphoned off from the stated purposes.

The obscenity of this war racket is the inordinate corruption, deaths and destruction of economies across Europe while Western weapons corporations have raked in mega-profits.

Zelensky’s global begging tour is a desperate attempt to keep the war racket going for a while longer. He and his wife Olena have enriched themselves with overseas properties and shopping trips to Paris and New York. Zelensky and his cronies have been paid off with blood money for their role in peddling the biggest war scam in modern history. A scam that is funded by hard-pressed and hoodwinked Western taxpayers who have been gaslighted by their politicians and media about “defending democracy and freedom”.

To keep this grotesque charade going, Western politicians in the pay of arms companies and NATO think tanks are resorting to desperate scaremongering and blackmail.

President Biden has repeatedly warned that if extra funds were not released to Ukraine to “defend against Russian aggression” the rest of Europe will be overrun by Moscow.

In Washington this week, U.S. lawmakers who refused to pass the supplemental funding bill for Ukraine were, in effect, accused of being traitors by helping Russia.

Zelensky appealed to European leaders by saying that Putin would exploit any negativity towards Ukraine, and he pleaded with the EU to not “betray” Ukrainians.

On the eve of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, the European Commission declared that it was finally releasing €10 billion in withheld funds to Hungary. That was a bribe to Hungarian premier Viktor Orban to concede to the proposed €50 billion in extra aid for the Kiev regime. In the end, Orban did not concede to the multi-billion-euro handout, however, he gave way to his objection to talks for Ukraine’s membership of the EU. Such is the shoddy business of propping up the Kiev regime that arm-twisting and bribery are the order of business in Brussels.

The horrendous waste of lives and financial resources in Ukraine by the Western elite – instead of pursuing diplomacy and peace – is the hallmark that these regimes are terminally corrupt and doomed to failure.

The conflict in Ukraine has recklessly stoked tensions between nuclear powers and has condemned generations of Americans and Europeans to debt. The war in Ukraine is a historic dead-end for the U.S. and its European vassals. Zelensky’s begging bowl is a death rattle.

December 16, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

US has to ‘understand responsibility’ for Ukraine conflict – Kremlin

RT | December 15, 2023

The US has to review its current position on both the Ukraine conflict and relations with Russia if it wants to restore dialogue with Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told NBC in an interview published on Friday. Russia is ready to work with any American administration but would very much prefer a “more constructive” approach from Washington, he added.

The interview was published just a day after President Vladimir Putin accused the US and its allies of orchestrating the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev and essentially disrupting Russia’s years-long efforts to build normal relations with Ukraine. He also questioned the prospect of restoring relations between Russia and the West, saying that between NATO’s encroachment towards Russia’s borders and the role the US and its allies are playing in the standoff between the two neighbors, Moscow can hardly trust the Western nations.

Putin would be ready to work with “anyone who will understand that from now on you have to be more careful with Russia and you have to take into account its concerns,” Peskov told NBC’s Keir Simmons in Moscow, adding that the Russian leader would like to see a US president who is “more constructive” toward Russia and values dialogue more.

The Kremlin spokesman also criticized America’s current role in the Ukraine conflict by saying that Washington only throws taxpayer money “into the wind” and is unnecessarily prolonging the hostilities by sending conflicting signals to Kiev, which end up just leading to more Ukrainian deaths.

A much-touted Ukrainian counteroffensive has largely failed to bring about any notable changes to the front lines over some six months of the operation. According to Russian Defense Ministry estimates, Ukraine has lost over 125,000 troops and 16,000 pieces of heavy equipment in failed attempts to advance over the past half year.

“You have to understand your responsibility for this,” Peskov said. “You are telling them [Ukrainians] — go and die,” he continued, adding that “you know pretty well that they cannot win” but still offer Kiev more money and armaments.

Russia has repeatedly stated it was ready for peace talks with Kiev as long as “the reality on the ground” is taken into account. In the autumn of 2022, four former Ukrainian territories, including the two Donbass republics, joined Russia following a series of referendums.

Kiev declared the referendums “sham” and has been pushing for its own “peace formula” under which Russia would withdraw its troops not only from the four regions but from Crimea as well before any talks could even commence. Moscow dismissed Ukraine’s demands as being detached from reality.

“America is strongly involved in this conflict,” the Kremlin spokesman told NBC, adding that the standoff between the two neighbors is in fact a “hybrid war” against Russia launched by Washington. Such confrontational tactics have been detrimental to global security, Peskov warned, adding that the world is “less safe than it used to be’’ before dialogue between Moscow and Washington was “shut down.”

Contacts between the two nations were reduced to minimum after Russia launched its military operation in February 2022. The US and its allies openly supported Kiev in the conflict and slapped Moscow with an unprecedented number of sanctions. Western nations then also started supplying arms to Ukrainian forces.

The ties have not been severed entirely, though. On Thursday, Putin revealed that dialogue between the two nations continues, particularly about the Americans accused of espionage in Russia. When asked during his marathon press conference about US nationals Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, the president said that Russia was willing to exchange them but wanted to reach a deal with Washington that would be “mutually acceptable.”

December 15, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Russian Airborne Forces Ex-Commander: NATO Counteroffensive Plan Bad, New Ukraine Strategy Worse

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 14.12.2023

The Russian Armed Forces have shifted to the offensive in the special military operation zone and are making progress along the entire contact line, President Vladimir Putin said during his annual press conference.

Russia’s 617,000-strong military contingent is presently improving its positions along the almost 2,000 kilometer-long contact line, President Putin told attendees at his annual press conference. What’s behind the development?

The failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive has exposed the ineffectiveness of NATO’s strategic planning and outdated doctrines, says retired Colonel General Georgy Shpak, ex-commander of the Russian Airborne Forces.

“[NATO] placed its bet on Ukraine making it carry out a counteroffensive,” Shpak told Sputnik. “They organized and planned it. But the counteroffensive failed, because the [Russian military] foresaw [their steps], built good defenses worthy of the Russian army and withstood numerous attacks.”

“Now we have moved on to the second stage of this operation: to disable as much [Ukrainian] equipment and personnel as possible. This second stage is essentially coming to an end, because the Ukrainian army is exhausted, they lack manpower, their reserves are depleted, their money has run out, almost all of their equipment has been knocked out. This is the result of the work of American and British [military] advisers,” the retired colonel general continued.

NATO war planners failed to calculate the effects of many key factors, according to the military expert.

“They did not take into account current modern conditions, the huge number of [Russian] aerial vehicles that are designed for reconnaissance, observation, adjustment, and strikes. They didn’t take this into account. They hoped that if they struck in several directions, our defenses would crack, but we held the line.”

Shpak was also highly sceptical of NATO’s 2024 strategy for Ukraine, which envisages digging in and building up forces for a possible new offensive.

“I would say that it is even worse than their counter-offensive,” the general said. “Not a single defensive structure can withstand strikes of modern powerful weapons. Furthermore, it’s impossible to build reinforced concrete fortifications which are over 1,000 kilometers long and 20-30 meters deep, with enormous coverage. This is all nonsense. It’s impossible to build something like that. There will still be gaps here and there, failures here and there.”

“This is all theory. For me, as a military man, it’s just like a children’s fairy tale, not a thought-out plan. They have abruptly shifted from a counteroffensive to an all-out defense. I believe this will lead to their defeat,” Shpak added.

December 14, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s Botched Counteroffensive Ignites New ‘Mantras’ in US – Lavrov

Sputnik – 13.12.2023

With Ukraine’s counteroffensive obviously failing, the United States has taken up a new rallying cry, which is to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from winning in Ukraine so that “NATO is not conquered,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

“After the collapse of the so-called counteroffensive, [people] in Washington stopped talking about Russia’s strategic defeat on the battlefield and, during Zelensky’s latest visit, activated a new mantra: ‘don’t let Putin win in Ukraine’, otherwise all of NATO will be conquered and then America won’t sit through it,” Lavrov said during the “government hour” in the Federation Council, upper house of the Russian parliament.

“We are ready for such a challenge and will continue to firmly defend our truth,” Lavrov emphasized.

The top Russian diplomat also noted that “it is not easy for our ill-wishers to come to grips with the fact that the bet on the sanctions blitzkrieg against the Russian economy has completely failed.”

“Therefore, those who launched the hybrid war against us won’t admit their mistakes, they are trying to use more and more illegitimate tools to wear down Russia, as they say, relishing the dream of eliminating our country as an independent geopolitical value,” the Russian diplomacy chief explained.

December 13, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Mainstream propaganda machine doubles down on ‘Russia losing’ fantasies

By Drago Bosnic | December 13, 2023

Even before the start of the special military operation (SMO), the mainstream media had been running several propaganda narratives, almost simultaneously. Shortly before the SMO and in the first few days, there was the claim that Russia would take Kiev in three days and most of Ukraine in a week. However, as this didn’t happen (nor was it ever planned to unfold this way in the Kremlin), the mainstream propaganda machine went full afterburner in the opposite direction. Now, Moscow was suddenly losing, the Kiev regime forces are unbeatable, the Russians are suffering from extremely low morale due to massive losses, they’re running out of missiles, shells, fuel and so on, and so forth.

These ludicrous myths never stopped and continued until the failure of the much-touted counteroffensive. That was when many in the political West adopted a somewhat less propagandistic tone and tried mixing in some “realism”. However, this didn’t have the desired effect on the populace in Western Europe and North America. Thus, there’s a slow return to the most ridiculous propaganda one could possibly imagine. For instance, the Wall Street Journal claims that the Neo-Nazi junta will be “able to seize the initiative on the battlefield in 2025 if it can hold out against Russia until the end of next year”. This narrative is being pushed despite the fact that the United States, its primary backer, is about to stop the money flow.

The report initially doesn’t come off as propagandistic as one would expect, but towards the end, the authors still tried pushing debunked propaganda narratives. There are several instances of somewhat unexpected admissions, such as the obvious failure of the Kiev regime’s counteroffensive, as well as the dwindling financial support from the political West. The report also touched upon the growing divisions within the Neo-Nazi junta and the fact that its battered military will need time to recover. However, in a response to the WSJ, its Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba challenged this with a claim that “any pause in the fighting now would allow Russia to regroup and prepare for large-scale offensive operations”.

Kuleba even stated that the Kiev regime forces are preparing fresh brigades for “new counteroffensive and defensive operations”. The WSJ supported the idea and even went as far as to claim that “2024 will be the year of the recovery [for the Neo-Nazi junta troops]”. However, the authors admit that this comes with an important caveat, as the Kiev regime and its NATO overlords will need to “work through their current adversities and continue delivering supplies to troops, an emerging best-case scenario among Western strategists is that next year becomes a year of rebuilding for Kiev’s military“, adding that “the hope would be that a limited number of Ukrainian soldiers can hold Russian forces at bay”.

This would supposedly “allow NATO countries time to train fresh Ukrainian troops, expand armament production and restock Ukraine’s arsenals”. As indicated during a recent NATO meeting, the political West hopes that Russia’s incremental offensive operations will fail, “resulting in a depletion of its manpower and munitions, potentially offering Ukraine better prospects to retake the battlefield initiative in the spring of 2025, if it gets through next year”. However, the WSJ concluded the report with a not-so-optimistic remark of a Ukrainian infantry sergeant who said that when he talks to people at home he tells them that “everything is going well” and doesn’t describe what he sees or feels, which isn’t so upbeat.

“What is the point?”, the WSJ quoted the Ukrainian sergeant.

While the WSJ certainly is part of the mainstream, it’s still a bit more reputable than many other outlets of America’s massive propaganda machine. For instance, the infamous CNN is beating its own records in laughable claims by publishing that “Russia has lost a staggering 87% of the total number of active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine and two-thirds of its pre-invasion tanks”. Of course, this information came from “a source familiar with a declassified US intelligence assessment provided to Congress”. The assessment was sent on December 11, as the Republican-dominated Congress was in the middle of effectively canceling the “Ukraine aid”.

The “intelligence” assessment supposedly found that “the war has sharply set back 15 years of Russian effort to modernize its ground force”. Then came the numbers game, where CNN claims that “of the 360,000 troops that entered Ukraine, including contract and conscript personnel, Russia has lost 315,000 on the battlefield, 2,200 of 3,500 tanks and 4,400 of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers have also been destroyed, a 32% loss rate”. CNN says it reached out to the Russian Embassy for comment, which is yet to respond. The most likely scenario is that His Excellency Ambassador Anatoly Antonov is still laughing uncontrollably after reading all this. And he certainly isn’t the only one.

“The idea that Ukraine was going to throw Russia back to the 1991 borders was preposterous,” Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, said on CNN’s State of the Union on December 10, adding: “So what we’re saying to the president and really to the entire world is, you need to articulate what the ambition is. What is $61 billion going to accomplish that $100 billion hasn’t?”

Even CNN had to admit that “Ukraine remains deeply vulnerable”, as its “highly anticipated counteroffensive stagnated through the fall”, and that “US officials believe that Kiev is unlikely to make any major gains over the coming months”. As for the alleged “staggering losses” of the Russian military, the truth is that Moscow hasn’t been this strong militarily since at least the 1980s. In addition, the Kremlin is effectively returning to a Soviet superpower level with its latest military strategy shift. The very idea that Russia lost well over 300,000 soldiers is beyond ludicrous, as the country would be littered with new military cemeteries in virtually every major settlement. On the contrary, it’s precisely Ukraine that looks like that thanks to the NATO-backed Neo-Nazi junta.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

December 13, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Announces He’s Signed ‘Another $200 Million Drawdown’ From Pentagon for Ukraine

By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 12.12.2023

US President Joe Biden announced during a Tuesday joint meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he has “just signed another $200 million drawdown” from the Pentagon for Ukraine.

Biden used the “drawdown” provision in the Foreign Assistance Act that allows him to provide Defense Department stockpiles to countries without congressional approval. The $200 million package is the 53rd such drawdown package provided to Ukraine since March 2022, in addition to billions of dollars in aid authorized by Congress.

The announcement comes as Congress remains deadlocked on authorizing more aid to Ukraine. Biden has asked Congress to provide $60 billion in aid to Ukraine in a funding package that also includes aid for Israel and money to secure the southern US border.

However, some Republicans have asked for more concessions on the border, including changes to the asylum system, a non-starter for many Democrats, in exchange for increased funding in Ukraine. The House of Representatives also passed a standalone aid bill for Israel, which the Senate has refused to consider.

Zelensky visited Washington in what has been described by US media as a “last-ditch effort” to convince Congress to authorize more aid to his country. Part of that visit included separate meetings with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Both Johnson and Schumer said their meetings with Zelensky went well but had different opinions on the details of their meetings.

Johnson criticized the Biden administration for not articulating how Ukraine can win against Russia. “The Biden administration appears to be asking for billions of dollars without specifics, without a clear strategy for winning, and without the answers I think the American people deserve,” he said at a news conference following his meeting with Zelensky.

Meanwhile, Schumer, who has been extremely hawkish on Ukraine since the start of the special military operation, claimed that Zelensky explained Ukraine’s path to victory to him.

“He [Zelensky] described in detail what kind of help was needed and how it would help win. Even many of our Republican politicians were saying that we were winning this war,” Schumer claimed.

Schumer said he called Johnson and asked him to keep the House open after this week so the $61 billion aid package can be approved.

“Last night, I spoke with Speaker Johnson and urged him to keep the House in session a little longer to give the supplemental a chance to come together,” Schumer said at a briefing.

The much smaller aid package announced by Biden on Tuesday uses an authorization provided in the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) which allows the president to provide foreign aid using stocks the Defense Department has on hand without congressional approval.

This latest drawdown is at least the 53rd drawdown ordered by the Biden administration since the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.

The last drawdown, costing $175 million, was ordered by the Biden White House last week.

According to US media, the latest package includes High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), anti-armor systems, artillery rounds, demolition munitions, small arms ammunition, high-speed anti-radiation missiles, generators and spare parts, among other equipment.

US media also reported the Defense Department has about $4.4 billion in weapons remaining that it can use through drawdown authorizations.

According to a 2004 Department of Defense Security Cooperation handbook on the drawdown procedure, all equipment sent using drawdown authorization must be replaced with operations and maintenance funds already part of the Defense Department budget.

During the meeting with Biden, Zelensky told reporters that he wants to use the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets to fight the conflict if Congress will not provide more aid. When asked if his country could win against Russia without aid from Congress, Zelensky reportedly did not answer verbally, shrugging his shoulders instead.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli regime turning to Western mercenary groups to back its war on Gaza

By Reza Javadi | Press TV | December 12, 2023

Apart from the lavish military aid offered by the United States and Europe, the Israeli military is turning to Western mercenary groups in its genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.

In a recent interview with Spanish newspaper El Mundo, Pedro Diaz Flores, a notorious Spanish mercenary, revealed that the Israeli regime is recruiting Private Military Companies (PMCs) to achieve its interests in the besieged territory.

He revealed that “many” mercenary groups have joined Israel’s army, which pays them “very well.”

“So I came for the economy, for money. They pay very well, they offer good equipment and the work is calm. It is 3,900 euros [$4,187] per week, complementary missions aside,” Flores said.

Flores, who fought alongside neo-Nazis in Ukraine, spoke of his group’s assistance to Israeli forces.

“We only provide security support to arms convoys or the troops of the Israeli armed forces that are in the Gaza Strip,” Flores said, confirming the presence of PMCs in Gaza.

“We are in charge of the security of the checkpoints and access control on the borders of Gaza and Jordan. There are many PMCs here and they share the work. Traditionally they have guarded border terminals between Eliat and Aqaba.”

According to the images posted by a leading American PMC, Forward Observations Group (FOG), the American PMCs seem to be active in the occupied Palestinian territories aiding the Israeli regime.

On their social media accounts, FOG posted numerous images and stories showing its recruits in Palestine, surrounded by a large cache of weapons and sporting combat gear.

Wearing the American flag on their uniforms, the mercenaries’ social media accounts show that they are stationed alongside the Gaza border in the occupied territories.

In a YouTube video posted back in January, the group revealed its presence on the frontlines of the Ukraine war, assisting the Ukrainian forces in their war against Russian forces.

On its social media channels and website, FOG has advertised its gear through its training videos.

The founder of FOG is US mercenary and ex-US paratrooper, Derrick Bales, who has taken heat for his association with Vadim Lapaev, a member of the far-right Azov Battalion in Ukraine.

Bales, the former US infantry soldier who also served in Afghanistan, apologized but downplayed the radical aspects of those Ukrainian fighters.

Lapaev was quoted as saying by Vice News that he regretted his past association with neo-Nazis.

Apart from unconventional forces, the US has deployed more than 15,000 military troops to the occupied territories since the regime launched its fresh aggression against Palestinians on October 7.

Deployments disclosed by the Pentagon back in October also include two US aircraft carriers and their associated escort ships, in addition to the repositioning of an amphibious task force made up of about 4,000 US Marines and sailors.

The task force of sailors and Marines embarked aboard the USS Bataan and two other warships, includes an infantry battalion of about 900 combat personnel, F-35B fighter jets, armored vehicles and other weapons.

Apart from billions of dollars of military aid to the Israeli regime, the US military still continues to ship weapons and has pledged to provide more missile interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome military system, small-diameter bombs and other GPS-guided weapons, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman confirmed recently.

In this regard, the US is covertly providing 2,000-pound “bunker-busting” bombs to Israel’s air force to be used against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

According to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), some 100 of the BLU-109 bombs – designed to penetrate hardened surfaces to reach underground targets such as military bunkers – have been sent to Tel Aviv.

The bombs, which carry a warhead weighing more than 900 kilograms, are capable of penetrating hardened structures such as concrete before exploding, causing heavy casualties.

The covert arms transfers are being reported when the US claims that it is urging Israel to limit civilian casualties in its military campaign in Gaza. However, the US-provided weapons have been the main cause of high civilian casualties across Gaza.

According to US officials, an airstrike that hit the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza in the initial days of the war that killed over 100 people was conducted using US-provided bombs.

According to another latest report, phosphorus shells used by Israeli forces in an October attack on a Lebanese village were also provided by the US.

The revelation came after US officials expressed “concern” over the regime’s use of white phosphorous, which human rights campaigners say should be investigated as a war crime.

Meanwhile, some Russian news agencies and several experts have reported about mercenaries leaving Ukrainian soil and heading to the occupied territories to aid the regime forces against the Palestinian resistance movement.

“Assistance and attention to Kiev are noticeably decreasing due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which cannot but worry the Ukrainian authorities,” a Russian news agency posted on Telegram.

“The transfer of Foreign Legion fighters to participate in the war on the side of the Israel Defense Forces can greatly affect the morale of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” wrote another X account.

“Is the West ready to close the Ukraine project and devote all its attention to a new conflict in the Middle East?”

In this regard, the deployment of mercenaries in Gaza raises questions about accountability and the role of the international community, as it exacerbates the suffering of Palestinians.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian trial demonstrates 2014 Maidan massacre was false flag

By Kit Klarenberg | The Grayzone | December 11, 2023

A massacre of protesters during the 2014 Maidan coup set the stage for the ouster of Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. Now, an explosive trial in Kiev has produced evidence the killings were a false flag designed to trigger regime change.

Two police officers charged with the mass shooting of opposition protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014 have been released after a Ukrainian court determined the fatal shots in the infamous massacre were fired from an opposition-controlled building.

On October 18 2023, Ukraine’s Sviatoshyn District Court determined that of the five officers on trial, one would be acquitted outright, while another was sentenced to time served for alleged “abuse of power.”

The remaining three, who no longer live in Ukraine, were convicted in absentia on 31 counts of murder and 44 counts of attempted murder. This, under a Supreme Court opinion stipulating suspects can be held collectively responsible for the actions of a group deemed criminal.

The verdict means no one will face jail time, or be in any way punished for their alleged role in the infamous Maidan massacre, which saw over 100 protesters killed, triggered an avalanche of international condemnation and led directly to the downfall of President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country mere days later.

The trial began in Kiev in 2016, but the case languished for years. Matters were further complicated in 2019, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traded all five of the accused for prisoners held by Donbas separatists. Two subsequently returned on a voluntary basis to have their day in court.

Unsurprisingly, the verdict has triggered outrage among victims’ families, and prosecution lawyers say they plan to appeal. By contrast, the mainstream media has so far remained eerily indifferent. In an apparent attempt to distort the trial’s outcome, several outlets — including Reuters — simply referred to the court “sentencing” the officers in their headlines. The Kyiv Post went as far as falsely claiming all five had been found “guilty” of “Maidan crimes.”

But there is more to the story than these outlets have let on. As even the Western-funded Kyiv Independent acknowledged, “a former top investigator” previously tasked with probing the massacre said the verdict followed years of deliberate sabotage by Ukrainian authorities, who “have done their best to make sure there are no real results.”

The question of why officials in Kiev would seek to sabotage the probe has been largely ignored by legacy media outlets. But the verdict offers some highly revealing clues.

‘Unknown persons’ behind killing

Littered throughout the 1,000,000 word document are passages demonstrating conclusively that the sniper fire emanated from buildings controlled by the opposition to Yanukovych. Collectively, these excerpts strongly suggest the Maidan massacre was a false flag carried out by nationalist elements who aimed to ensure the president’s ouster.

The evidence “was quite sufficient to conclude categorically that on the morning of February 20, 2014, persons with weapons, from which the shots were fired, were in the premises of the Hotel Ukraina,” the court found.

Another section reveals “Hotel Ukraina” was “territory… not controlled by law enforcement agencies at that time.” Numerous video recordings show that before, during, and after the massacre, the building was overrun by the far-right opposition party Svoboda, whose leaders used the premises to coordinate their anti-Yanukovych activities on the streets below.

In at least 28 of the 128 shootings considered during the trial, the court ruled that whether “due to the lack of information, the incompleteness or contradictory nature of the submitted data,” the “involvement of law enforcement officers has not been proven,” and that “other unknown persons cannot be ruled out.”

Furthermore, the verdict effectively ruled out any involvement of Russian security and intelligence services in the massacre, a conspiracy theory promoted heavily by pro-Maidan elements.

“The ‘Russian trace’ was not confirmed after examining the relevant documents,” the court found. It concluded that those individuals who were suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence, and were being “constantly monitored,” did not have “any participation in the events on the street.”

For Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, a University of Ottawa political science professor who has spent years documenting overwhelming evidence of opposition responsibility for the massacre, such findings are a long-overdue vindication of his research. In comments to The Grayzone, he explained that the conviction of three police officers in absentia for the murder of 28 Maidan protesters and attempted murder of 36 was “based on a single fabricated forensic ballistic examination.”

The flawed “forensic examination of bullets reversed [the] results of 40 other ballistic examinations” taken previously — every one of which, Katchanovski notes, “showed bullets of Berkut police Kalashnikovs did not match those retrieved from bodies of killed Maidan protesters.”

In the end, “the trial produced an extraordinary volume of evidence proving protesters were shot at from various buildings controlled by pro-Maidan elements,” he says, pointing to the “over 100 witnesses, including 51 anti-government activists injured during the shooting, [who] testified to having been shot from these areas, or seeing snipers located there.”

Elsewhere, the verdict rejected a 3D-model reconstruction of the shooting of three Maidan activists, produced by a New York City-based “unconventional architecture practice” named SITU. This bogus analysis, which was financed to the tune of $100,000 by the Kiev branch of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, was heavily promoted by The New York Times and other Western media outlets and held up as definitive proof that Ukrainian security forces were responsible for the deaths. But the SITU model changed the location of victim’s wounds — from the side or back of their body to the front — and altered the angles of the bullets’ trajectory to fraudulently convict police for their murders.

As Katchanovski explains, “This is deliberate fraud and disinformation.”

“SITU’s bogus modeling allowed The New York Times and many others to deny the existence of Maidan snipers, and brand as ‘conspiracy theory’ any suggestion the massacre was a ‘false flag,’” he says.

But if the Berkhut officers were not responsible for the dozens of deaths that day, the question remains: who was?

Maidan killers move to Odessa

In August 2023, the New York Times revealed that the Ukrainian gunrunner Serhiy Pashinksy, once openly condemned by Zelensky himself as a “criminal,” had become the top private supplier of arms to Ukraine. Pashinsky sourced grenades, artillery shells and rockets “through a trans-European network of middlemen,” then sold, bought and resold the arms “until the final buyer, Ukraine’s military, pays the most.” The hustle has enriched him to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pashinsky, a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, was a central figure in the Maidan coup. As The Grayzone subsequently revealed, he has been accused by three Georgian mercenaries of personally orchestrating the February 2014 massacre, supplying the weapons used and personally picking targets to be shot. When Israeli journalists confronted Pashinsky about these allegations, he threatened to have his associates track them down at home and “tear them apart.”

During the Maidan trial, defense lawyers made prominent mention of those same Georgian mercenary snipers. Along with Maidan leaders, and Western-backed fascist paramilitary Right Sector, the snipers were also implicated in the May 2014 Odessa massacre, a gruesome incident in which scores of Russian-speaking anti-Maidan protesters were forcibly herded into the city’s Trade Unions House, which was then set alight. In all, 46 died due to burn injuries, carbon monoxide poisoning, and attempts to escape the horrors by jumping out of windows. Non-fatal casualties reportedly totaled around 200.

Katchanovski says that as with Maidan, evidence points to the role of an extremely well-organized plot to carry out the Odessa killings:

“A Georgian sniper who confessed their Maidan massacre role in an Israeli documentary also revealed one of the massacre’s organizers dispatched them to Odessa right before the attack on separatists there.”

Post-coup, coverup after coverup

From the beginning of the Maidan trial, witnesses and prosecutors were subjected by far-right Ukrainian figures to a campaign of intimidation. During proceedings, Neo-Nazi C14 and Azov activists stormed the courtroom, attacked defendants, and placed tires outside the court in an apparent threat to burn the building down. The presiding judge was even beaten by a Maidan activist.

“Covert pressure from Zelensky’s administration and the far-right is likely much greater than what we have seen publicly,” Katchanovski commented to The Grayzone. “Ukraine’s judiciary isn’t independent. Zelensky’s administration routinely and openly interferes in proceedings, and even dismissed the entire Constitutional Court. It’s a very difficult situation for the judges and jury. There were direct threats from the far-right to convict the accused.”

Accordingly, some wounded protesters who initially testified to the presence of snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings later revoked their accounts. They subsequently admitted the prosecution met with them privately, to discuss what they’d said on the witness stand. For Katchanovski, “this is proof the coverup goes to the top of the Ukrainian government.”

Many Ukrainians, especially in the East, have held this same suspicion since Ukraine’s post-Maidan nationalist coup government adopted a wide-ranging amnesty law in 2014. That legislation granted Maidan protesters blanket immunity from prosecution for every serious crime imaginable, including murder, terrorism, and seizure of power. The law also prohibited official investigation of any anti-government agitator for these crimes, and ordered the destruction of all relevant evidence that had previously been collected.

A high-ranking official within Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Office has since admitted that prosecutors handling the Maidan massacre investigation and trial were covertly selected and appointed by none other than Pashinsky. Efforts to conduct a parliamentary commission to probe the killings were blocked by Petro Poroshenko, the rabidly anti-Russian President of Ukraine who succeeded the ousted Yanukovych in 2014.

The official tampering was understandable, Katchanovski argues, given how fundamental Kiev’s narrative of the Maidan massacre is to the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government. The false flag mass murder led directly to Yanukovych, justifying the withdrawal of government forces from downtown Kiev, the seizure of government buildings by Maidan activists, and the president’s unconstitutional removal by the Ukrainian legislature.

All these developments paved a path to the eight-year-long civil war in Donbas, which claimed the lives of over 14,000 and precipitated Russia’s invasion in February 2022. For Katchanovski, the link between the false flag massacre and ongoing war in Ukraine is obvious. The verdict, he says, makes that even more clear.

As retaliation for his groundbreaking investigations into the Maidan massacre, Katchanovski’s home and property were illegally seized by local courts in 2014 “with the involvement of senior officials.” Yet the professor remains more determined than ever to get to the bottom of the story.

“One day, the truth of what happened will be officially acknowledged — the only question is when,” he vowed. “Delayed acknowledgment and lack of justice in this case has already cost Ukraine very dearly. There are many conflicts, including the ongoing war, which spiraled from the Maidan massacre. Countless people have suffered needlessly as a result. The time for truth and reconciliation is well overdue.”

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

FOI Request Reveals Bellingcat Collusion With Western Intelligence

By Kit Klarenberg | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 12, 2023

An email sent on November 12 2020 by an officer within Amsterdam’s National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) shows a Bellingcat investigation was intentionally shared with the agency prior to publication, so as to assist the Dutch spooks in shaping media strategies and messaging following its release. The revealing communication is irrefutable proof of the cozy relationship the self-styled “independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists” enjoys with Western intelligence services.

In the message, marked “high importance,” the undisclosed author explained that Bellingcat would soon publish research amounting to a deeply libelous attack on independent journalists and researchers, who challenged the mainstream narrative surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. As such, the Dutch intelligence officer wrote, “it is probably smart to put together interdepartmental wording for this already”:

“Because the article highlights several sides (MH17 but also COVID19) it is probably wise to wait a while and see if; a. the mainstream media pick it up; b. from which angle the media pick up and highlight it (MH17 or COVID); c. from this angle to determine the wording and therefore which department is in the lead; d. coordinate the language as much as possible interdepartmentally.”

A ‘bonanza’ of Western intel propaganda

The article in question, entitled “The GRU’s MH17 Disinformation Operations Part 1: The Bonanza Media Project,” was framed as an investigation into a now-defunct independent media venture named Bonanza Media which was established by Russian journalist Yana Yerlashova with the help of freelance Dutch researcher Max Van der Werff.

Much of Bonanza’s work challenged Western assertions that separatist fighters in Donbass shot down MH17 with a Buk surface-to-air missile system provided to them by the Russian military. Ukrainian officials began pushing that narrative, citing audio recordings they claimed to have intercepted alongside material purportedly found on social media implicating the separatists, even before Malaysia Airlines publicly announced it had lost contact with the plane.

Bellingcat, which serendipitously launched just days before the downing of MH17, came to prominence by immediately seizing on this deluge of carefully-curated and potentially falsified information. With amazing speed, the organization claimed to have precisely mapped out what happened that fateful day, and exactly how it occurred. Despite its relative inexperience and opaque organizational structure, its findings were accepted without a shred of scrutiny by Western journalists, lawmakers, pundits, and the official Dutch MH17 tribunal, which concluded in November 2022.

Bonanza Media’s film, “MH17 – Call for Justice”, features interviews with witnesses on-the-ground that day and Malaysian government officials who did not accept the official story, but doesn’t rule out the possibility of Russian culpability altogether. However, the documentary presented a substantial challenge to Bellingcat’s version of events – which also happened to align neatly with the official narrative. In 2020, Bonanza also published leaked documents confidentially submitted to the tribunal. This included Dutch intelligence files recording that while many Ukrainian Buk systems had been spotted in eastern Ukraine, Russian equivalents were nowhere to be seen.

Evidently, Bellingcat and its founder, Eliot Higgins, were displeased with their results. As Dutch freelance journalist Eric van de Beek wrote in 2020, “because it was impossible for Bellingcat to discredit Van der Werff on the basis of the well-researched content featured on his blog and in his recent documentary, Eliot Higgins opted to wage a campaign of misinformation.”

Bellingcat’s 2020 investigation into the group strongly insinuated Bonanza was being run by Russia’s GRU, heavily implied their investigations were edited by the agency’s operatives before publication, and suggested its contributors were on the Kremlin’s payroll. The group claimed their conclusions were “based on emails from the mailboxes of two senior GRU officers obtained by a Russian hacktivist group and independently authenticated by us.”

Strict British libel laws may have prevented the group from making direct allegations to this effect, but the Dutch media had no such qualms, and the investigation triggered a wave of smears in major local publications. One daily newspaper headlined as fact: “Dutch MH17-blogger directed by Russian secret service.” Another, which directly asserted that “Van der Werff worked on the orders of the Russian military intelligence service GRU,” is currently being sued by the researcher regarding the unproven claim.

Strikingly, throughout this period not a single mainstream journalist questioned how Bellingcat acquired the highly sensitive trove of documents upon which its investigation depended. On top of confidential GRU emails, Bellingcat somehow apparently acquired phone data showing calls between purported Russian intelligence officials and cell tower data tracking their movements, which it claimed pinpointed their locations to GRU headquarters in Moscow. None of this information is remotely “open source,” and since it wasn’t shared publicly, it can’t be independently verified.

Oddly, in one passage, Bellingcat stated “it is not clear who requested or suggested” changes to a Bonanza article it alleged were made after the piece was submitted to the GRU, before publication. One might think ascertaining this would be simple, given the vast amount of highly incriminating evidence to which Bellingcat had exclusive access. Perhaps British libel laws were a deterrent to accusing the GRU — but why would this be the case if the material was authentic, and defending it in court was no issue?

MH17 verdict undermines Bellingcat

The newly-released NCTV email strongly suggests Bellingcat’s investigation into Bonanza was the product of a Western intelligence information operation, intended to steer the MH17 tribunal in a very specific direction — namely, towards the defendants’ guilt. Sure enough, Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Donbas separatist Leonid Kharchenko, were convicted in absentia for the murder of MH17’s 283 passengers and 15 crew members, the court ruling they arranged the transfer of the Buk surface-to-air missile system that reportedly struck the plane.

Meanwhile, the only defendant to seek legal representation and give testimony during the trial, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted on all charges. The court found there was “no indication” he was involved in obtaining the missile system, that he could have prevented its use, or that he was involved in transporting it to another location after the incident. Prosecutors announced they will not appeal the verdict.

The response by the normally brash Higgins to the Dutch court’s judgment was uncharacteristically muted. In an otherwise self-congratulatory Twitter thread, he merely noted that “Pulatov is acquitted, the rest are found guilty.” There was no explanation for why the defendant was found innocent, nor any analysis of the ruling’s potential implications for Bellingcat’s MH17 investigations.

Higgins and his crack squad of laptop jockeys were understandably embarrassed on these counts. Not least because the Bellingcat chief repeatedly mocked Pulatov and his lawyers during the tribunal, suggesting his conviction was a fait accompli, and sneering when the defendant testified accusations of responsibility for MH17 resulted in adverse personal consequences for him. A June 2020 Bellingcat investigation lambasted Pulatov’s testimony, suggesting his defense strategy was “unlikely to win Mr. Pulatov the court’s sympathies.”

A sordid history of smears

Bellingcat’s confirmed collusion with NCTV raises obvious questions about whether the organization’s relentless attacks on journalists and researchers who do not toe the official national security line are also directly coordinated with, and on behalf of, Western intelligence agencies. In many cases, Bellingcat’s attacks have had real-world consequences for its targets.

For example, Bellingcat has over many years attempted to destroy the career of MIT emeritus professor Theodore Postol, who questioned official investigations into alleged chemical strikes in Syria. In 2019, Bellingcat pressured a science journal to prevent Postol from publishing an academic paper challenging the results of a UN probe into the alleged 2017 Khan Sheikhoun sarin attack which blamed the Syrian government on the basis of supposed “computational forensic analysis.”

Throughout the Syrian conflict, Bellingcat published investigations blaming government forces for chemical weapons attacks, typically within hours of them allegedly happening. These findings were invariably based in part on material provided to the organization by British intelligence constructs on-the-ground, such as the bogus humanitarian group known as the White Helmets. In the immediate aftermath of the notorious April 2018 Douma incident, which OPCW whistleblowers suggest was staged, Higgins tweeted an exclusive photo of one of the cylinders purportedly used in the strike.

The post was abruptly deleted though, perhaps because the White Helmets subsequently shared a photo of the same site in which the same cylinder was in a different position. Proof positive the scene had been manipulated by those staging it. Dissident British academics who have helped expose Douma and other chemical weapons strikes in Syria as opposition-executed false flags – in which British intelligence was frequently complicit – have likewise been relentlessly targeted by Bellingcat.

Elsewhere, Bellingcat fabricated and misrepresented evidence to smear independent Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva as a potential GRU asset. Meanwhile, the organization has played a lead role in disseminating and “verifying” dubious, if not outright fraudulent, material and claims related to the Ukraine conflict throughout its duration. Investigations by The Grayzone strongly suggest Bellingcat operatives were directly implicated in a Ukrainian intelligence operation gone wrong, which got Kiev’s forces killed.

CIA veterans have openly praised Bellingcat for stating publicly what spy agencies cannot. In a December 2020 Foreign Policy article entitled, “Bellingcat Can Say What U.S. Intelligence Can’t,” the CIA’s former deputy chief of operations for Europe and Eurasia was quoted as saying:

“I don’t want to be too dramatic, but we love this. Whenever we had to talk to our liaison partners… instead of trying to have things cleared or worry about classification issues, you could just reference their work.”

Accordingly, leaked files exposing the internal workings of Integrity Initiative, a British intelligence black propaganda operation tasked with ginning up conflict with Russia to pad the UK’s defense budget, were rife with references to Bellingcat. As an internal document which describes one of the group’s goals as “increasing the impact of effective organisations currently analysing Russian activities” notes, “we already do this [emphasis added] with… Bellingcat.”

As a result of such excerpts, this journalist repeatedly asked Higgins about the nature of his and his organization’s relationship with the Integrity Initiative. Though initially evasive, in March 2020 Higgins finally denied any association in an email that concluded with an ominous threat:

“The funny thing is your shitty reporting on the matter had [sic] proven quite useful to us, looking forward to you finding out how, try not to feel too bad.”

Almost four years later, this journalist is still waiting to learn what Higgins and his collaborators in Western spy agencies have cooked up to make me “feel bad.” Given the confirmed interest of British intelligence in sabotaging this outlet, and the crazed allegations put to me by the counter-terror police who detained me in London this May, he may have already made good on his threat.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Hungary PM Orbán vindicated, poll finds 71% of Europeans want ‘immediate end’ to Ukraine war and peace talks

Viktor Orbán claimed the recent polling showed that Brussels is not on the side of the European people

BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | December 12, 2023

Bureaucrats in Brussels do not represent the European people, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has claimed after a recent study revealed that an overwhelming majority of Europeans want peace talks between Ukraine and Russia and an immediate end to the ongoing conflict.

The poll, conducted by Hungary’s Századvég Foundation, found that 71 percent of EU and U.K. citizens believe the war should “end immediately and the parties should be brought to the negotiating table,” while just 20 percent support its continuation until such a time that “Ukraine defeats Vladimir Putin”.

Similarly, 67 percent of respondents were against the deployment of their own countrymen to Ukraine, compared with 25 percent in favor of such a move.

Another question showed that respondents in every EU member state believed that the economic sanctions imposed by Brussels against Russia had been detrimental to the European Union, and saw the United States and China as the biggest winners of the policy.

Only non-EU Norway believed the sanctions had benefited their own country while just five European nations — Norway, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia, and Denmark — believed the move had been beneficial for Ukraine in its ongoing fight with Moscow.

A clear geographical divide between the northern and southern European nations was seen when asked about Europe’s foreign policy concerning China. A majority from every mainland European nation with the exception of Poland and the Baltic states called for more “peaceful economic cooperation” to be sought with the superpower, insisting a “tougher approach is not needed”.

However, Poland, the Baltics, the U.K. and Ireland, and Scandinavian nations believed a tougher approach is necessary “because of its relation to Russia”.

Europeans were also split on Brussels’ policy of sending military aid to Ukraine. Eastern European nations, with the exception of Poland and the Baltics, had a majority of respondents against the provision of weapons to Kyiv, while Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, France, and Italy were also against the move.

A majority in favor of military aid, however, was found in Scandinavian nations, the Baltics, the U.K., Spain, and Portugal

Commenting on the Századvég Foundation’s findings, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the numbers were “clear” that the European Union was out of touch with European citizens and its policy to continue funding Ukraine in its conflict with Russia contravene public opinion across the continent.

Hungary has long been an advocate for peace talks, much to the dismay of the European liberal elite which has chastised Orbán’s administration for refusing to toe the line of Brussels.

Hungary has also remained vehemently opposed to the European Commission’s plans to advance EU membership talks with Kyiv despite the ongoing conflict, with Hungarian officials warning Brussels it risks bringing “war to Europe”.

Another study by the Századvég Foundation published on Monday found that 72 percent of Hungarians supported their government’s stance against EU membership for Ukraine, a monthly mood-checker that has seen opposition against the move increase each month since September.

The conservative think-tank warned that if Ukraine joined, “almost all Member States would become net contributors or current agricultural subsidies would have to be reduced by an average of 20 percent” in order to accommodate “Ukrainian farmers working on the richest farmland in Europe”.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

EU states consider ‘Plan B’ for Ukraine aid – FT

RT | December 12, 2023

Kiev’s main backers in the EU may overcome Hungarian opposition to the proposed allocation of $54 billion in long-term aid for Ukraine by providing funds outside of the bloc’s joint budget, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

The European Commission is seeking to provide the funding over the next four years through the so-called Ukraine Facility. The money is intended to help Kiev with its conflict with Russia, as well as for its reconstruction efforts.

Hungary, which has been highly critical of Brussels’ approach to the Ukraine crisis, has indicated that it would veto the decision during a summit of leaders on Thursday.

The Ukrainian government is counting on the money for its 2024 budget and has warned of “devastating consequences” if the EU comes up short, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told journalists on Monday ahead of a meeting with his European counterparts in Brussels.

Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishina said a failure to allocate the money would be “a failure of the entire European Union” that would impact Kiev’s chances of getting more aid from the US as well.

According to the FT, Kiev’s supporters in Brussels want to sweeten the deal for Budapest by releasing EU budget funds that were frozen due to Hungary’s perceived lapses in the rule of law and corruption.

The alternative is to have the other 26 members pool resources, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the talks on what one of the sources called a “plan B.” Diplomats are privately discussing “the feasibility and technical details” of such a move.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell urged national leaders to “stubbornly support” Ukraine for the sake of bloc unity after the ministerial meeting.

Hungarian Minister for EU Affairs Janos Boka told the FT that his government was not likely to change its position. He claimed that the reported consent-for-frozen-funds deal would amount to “political blackmail not from Hungary, but against Hungary” by Brussels.

However, he added that it was feasible for assistance outside of the EU budget to be provided. This would involve “member state contributions, mutual member state guarantees, a much shorter planning period of one year instead of four years,” and would be “under the clear political leadership of the member states.”

Budapest has argued that the tens of billions of dollars and euros poured into Ukraine by Western donors have failed to end the bloodshed. Nations should instead pressure Kiev and Moscow into peace talks, the Hungarian government believes.

Russia says Ukraine’s uncompromising position and refusal to accept the reality on the ground is standing in the way of resolving the crisis. Moscow wants its neighbor to be “neutral, non-aligned and nuclear-free” as well as respectful of the rights of its ethnic Russian minority, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s goal “conquering Ukraine”, say Western media. Not so, say experts

By Uriel Araujo | December 12, 2023

The Ukrainian former defense minister Oleksii Reznikov recently stated that the Kremlin’s goal is to “destroy” Ukraine completely, “assimilating” its citizens into the Russian Federation. Such wild claims have not been much challenged by journalists and opinion-makers in the West. After all, according to Western media Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “plan” is and has always been “to conquer” Ukraine all along. This pervasive Western narrative, also pushed by Kyiv, far from being a kind of self-evident truth, is challenged by voices within the US Establishment such as Jeffrey Sachs and by many respected scholars in the West, including some who are very critical of Moscow. Such a one-sized narrative in fact removes any context regarding the current crisis and completely ignores Russian perspective, goals, and security concerns.

Although a harsh critic of Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine, Wolfgang Richter (a Senior Associate in the International Security Division at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik – SWP) acknowledged, for example, in a 2022 article that in December 2021, Moscow had “made clear in two draft treaties” what it was after: “preventing a further expansion of NATO to the east and obtaining binding assurances to this end.” The Alliance and Washington, however, according to Richter, “were not prepared to revise the principles of the European security order” and thus Moscow obviously “did not accept this and resorted to the use of force.”

According to this expert, although the US is “far from the theater of conflict in Europe”, French and British nuclear weapons and “the deployment of US sub-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe and NATO’s conventional forces on Russia’s borders” are indeed a security risk in the European continent from Moscow’s perspective. This is so, he argues, quite convincingly, because Russia understands that a future threat could arise from the new American intermediate-range weapons in the continent, which could even reach Russian strategic targets (in the European part of the country) “should Washington and NATO partners decide to deploy them.” Moreover, NATO’s enlargement “has created more potential deployment areas in Central and Eastern Europe.” The Kremlin sees the Atlantic Alliance today, after all, as merely an American tool to advance its geopolitical interests (to the detriment of Russian security).

Sometimes, critics claim that the fact that Moscow cooperated in varying degrees with NATO from the nineties to around 2010 “proves” that Russian claims about NATO’s enlargement should not be taken seriously. This fact, if anything, corroborates Moscow’s arguments.

In his 2018 associated professorship habilitation thesis, Sao Paulo University History Professor Angelo de Oliveira Segrillo describes Putin as a moderate (albeit ambiguously) “Westernist”, rather than an Eurasianist, citing as evidence for it the Russian President’s well know admiration for Peter the Great. Segrillo argues that Putin was never a radical Westernist such as Boris Yeltsin, but rather a pragmatic and moderate one, while also being a gosudarstvennik, that is, someone who advocates for a strong State, in line with Russia’s political tradition. The Brazilian professor thus compares Putin to the French leader Charles de Gaulle, who often opposed Washington and NATO not simply out of an “anti-Western stance” but as someone who is in a position of defending the national interests of one’s own country.

Alas, whether the aforementioned thesis is fully accurate or not, that being something which interests mostly historians and biographers anyway, one can in any case argue that far from being staunchly “anti-Western” due to the supposed personal inclinations of the President (as Western propaganda would have it), the Kremlin in fact has had to take a defensive and counter-offensive approach towards the US-led West over the latter’s many provocations and developments which, from a Russian perspective, constituted crossing red lines.

In the NATO-Russia Founding Act of May 1997, NATO in fact pledged to limit the number of stationed troops, promising not to bring about any “additional permanent stationing of sub­stantial combat forces”, while  claiming it had no plan to deploy nuclear weapons in the accession countries. Such agreements eroded over several episodes, as Richter demonstrates. Countries that did not belong to the CFE started joining the Alliance in 2004 and, to make matters worse, Washington in 2007 established a permanent military presence on the Black Sea. The US had withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 which for the Kremlin was a threat to strategic stability, a perception enhanced by Washington’s 2007 bilateral agreements with the Czech and Poland to deploy missile defense systems in these countries (allegedly to counter an Iranian “threat”).

NATO’s war against Serbia in 1999 (denounced by Russia) had of course already violated the ban on the use of force, and the 1997 and 1999 agreements. Moreover, the brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 demonstrated America’s capacity and willingness to break international law, by relying on a “coalition of the willing” of new Eastern European partners and allies (even without NATO consensus). One could also cite Western recognition of Kosovo’s (unilateral) declaration of independence and the 2008 offer of the prospect of joining NATO to Ukraine and Georgia which, according to Richter, was “the breaking point in NATO’s relations with Russia.”

The 2014 Crimea referendum and the Donbass War might have been the culmination of the erosion of an already declining European security order, argues Richter but such erosion “had already begun in 2002 with the growing potential for conflict between Washington and Moscow”, George W. Bush having played an important role in this.

Which brings us to the current situation. For American political scientist John Mearsheimer, if Kyiv and Moscow had reached a deal, which could have happened if it were not for Western interference, Ukraine today would control a greater share of territory. As he writes, “Russia and Ukraine were involved in serious negotiations to end the war in Ukraine right after it started on 24 February 2022”. Regarding that, he adds: “everyone involved in the negotiations understood that Ukraine’s relationship with NATO was Russia’s core concern… if Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would not have agreed to these talks.” The main issue was NATO.

To sum it up, although at times Russia considered the possibility of engaging in further dialogue and cooperation with NATO, there have always  been tensions about the Atlantic Alliance’s expansion, and Moscow security concerns pertaining to it, far from being a mere excuse, are in fact well-founded.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

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