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Germany and Ukraine sign ‘long term’ security deal

RT | February 16, 2024

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky have signed a security pact under which Berlin will supply Kiev with military and economic aid for another ten years.

Inked on Friday, the 10-page agreement commits Germany to providing “unwavering support for Ukraine for as long as it takes in order to help Ukraine defend itself” and restore its 1991 borders. In addition to retaking the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, this feat would also involve the seizure of Crimea from Russia, which some American officials and Kiev’s former military chief view as next to impossible.

On top of military aid, the plan binds Germany to training Ukrainian police officers, transferring weapons manufacturing technology, paying for green energy projects, and a range of other efforts to help the Ukrainian government “continue providing services to its people”

Speaking at a ceremony in Berlin, Zelensky said that the details of the agreement “are very specific and involve long-term support,” and that the pact proves that one day “Ukraine will be in NATO.”

Germany is Ukraine’s second-largest Western backer, behind only the US. To date, Berlin has given Kiev €22 billion ($23.7 billion) in assistance, including €17.7 billion in military aid, according to figures compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. When aid transferred via the EU is included, Germany has handed over a total of €28 billion to Ukraine, Scholz said on Friday.

In addition to signing the decade-long pledge to Ukraine, Scholz announced a new package of military aid worth €1.1 billion. It will include 36 self-propelled howitzers, 120,000 artillery shells, and additional ammunition for Ukraine’s German-provided Iris-T air defense systems.

Germany’s outlay has hurt its own military readiness, with the New York Times reporting in November that training exercises are routinely canceled due to ammunition shortages, while German soldiers have yet to fire their latest howitzers, all of which have been sent to Ukraine.

Scholz’s decision to sanction Russian energy imports has also hammered the German economy, with industrial output falling by 2% last year, while the entire economy shrank by 0.3% in the same time period, according to the country’s Federal Statistical Office. One in three German manufacturers is currently considering moving abroad, Federation of German Industries (BDI) chief Siegfried Russwurm told Bild on Saturday, citing persistent inflation and high energy costs.

February 16, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Putin’s points in his interview with Carlson confirmed by Western scholars

By Uriel Araujo | February 16, 2024

Much has been said about “The Vladimir Putin Interview”, hosted by American political commentator Tucker Carlson, which premiered on February 8 (the full transcript can be read here). It was the first interview granted by the Russian president since he launched the ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. Most Western media reports have talked about it using words such as “propaganda” and “disinformation”. The Guardian’s piece described it as “Putin lecturing the conservative host on his distorted views of Russian and Ukrainian history.” In fact, whether one likes Putin or not and whether one agrees with his conclusions and decisions or not, most mainstream Western historians and experts would acknowledge at least the premises and historical facts mentioned by the Russian leader as accurate – rather than “distorted”.

Take Putin’s much criticized claim that Russians and Ukrainians even today are “one people”, for instance – a claim he had been making years before the said interview, often using the word “narod”, that is a “people” or a community with a shared history, not “natsiia” (nation).

When the Russian president started talking about his country’s special relationship with neighboring Ukraine, he talked about the beginning of the Russian state in 862, and Rurik, in a digression that lasted over twenty minutes and has been much mocked by Western commentators. His main point, though, not just during that part of the interview but throughout the whole conversation, was to highlight that the Russian-Ukrainian statehood ties go way back and also to stress the relative novelty of the independent Ukrainian state. Those are really basic points about Eastern Slavic history.

Consider this: in a survey taken six months before the war, over 40 percent of Ukrainians nationwide (“and nearly two-thirds in the east and south”), agreed with Putin that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”, according to Nicolai N. Petro, a professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island, writing for Foreign Policy – not Tucker Carlson, mind you, and certainly not a “Putin’s propagandist”. This is no “ancient History”, either.

Back to History, anyway, let us take, for instance, Chris Hann’s 2023 academic article called “On peoples, history, and sovereignty”. Mr. Hann is a Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, and an expert in Eastern and Central European peoples. In his aforementioned article, the ethnologist makes a distinction between “historical” and “non-historical” peoples, because, he writes, “it might reasonably be supposed that a people such as the Ukrainians, who have only been known as such since the nineteenth century, is more exposed to geopolitical vagaries than those with a longer continuous pedigree of statehood and Hochkultur.” The Hegelian (and Marxist) idea that some peoples “lack a history” (geschichtslos) does not imply, it should be stressed, any kind of “inferiority”. In those terms, “historical nations” are merely those that possess a long tradition of statehood and clearly defined national identity. For centuries, Ukrainian identity has been part of a larger Russian identity, and to this day, millions of Ukrainians think of the categories “Russian” and “Ukrainian” as being aligned and compatible – and not fully separated.

In the interview, Putin went so far as to rhetorically describe the ongoing conflict as having “an element of civil war” so as to emphasize his point about there being a deep historical connection – but Putin himself concedes that being supposedly part of the same “people”, does not necessarily entail being part of the same state: “I say that Ukrainians are part of the one Russian people. They say, ‘No, we are a separate people.’ Okay, fine. If they consider themselves a separate people, they have the right to do so, but not on the basis of Nazism, the Nazi ideology”. This brings us to another key point often made by Russian authorities – and scholars of all political persuasions, by the way.

One could say, in fact, that Putin was quite “timid” to talk about the topic in his exchanges with Carlson. He did not mention the infamous Azov regiment, for example, described by CNN, in 2022, as a “far-right battalion” with “a key role in Ukraine’s resistance”, which has “a neo-Nazi history.” This is not just a paramilitary militia turned into an official unit within the Ukrainian National Guard, but a larger social movement. Political scientists Ivan Gomza and Johann Zajaczkowski detail the far-right politics of the Azov movement in their chapter “Black Sun Rising: Political Opportunity Structure Perceptions and Institutionalization of the Azov Movement in Post-Euromaidan Ukraine”, published in 2019, by the Cambridge University Press.

Again, this is not “Russian propaganda”, but actual facts about the Ukrainian regime today. Ivan Katchanovski, in turn, who was a Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, wrote, in 2016, on how Fascist groups, albeit a minority of the Ukrainian voters, have had a key role in national politics: “The far right achieved significant but not dominant role in the Ukrainian politics during and since the ‘Euromaidan.’… Far right organizations and their armed units had a key role in major cases of political violence during and after the ‘Euromaidan,’ and they attained an ability to overthrow by force the government of one of the largest European countries”.

He adds that “as a result of the far right involvement in the violent overthrow of the Yanukovych government by means of the Maidan massacre the far right organizations achieved their strongest influence in Ukraine since its independence in 1991” and “because of their involvement in the government overthrow, the war in Donbas, integration in the government and the law enforcement, and ability to overthrow the government, the influence of the far right organizations in Ukraine became greater compared to other countries in Europe.”

Putin’s several mentions of Poland have also confused even educated people in the English-speaking world – but, as I wrote elsewhere, it is just impossible to talk about Ukrainian identity and nationalism without mentioning their complicated relations with the Poles since the 16th century. In addition, Ukraine today glorifies the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which, in collaboration with Nazi Germany, committed genocide against Poles, according to respected Western and Ukrainian historians such as Yaroslav Hrytsak, a fact that, predictably, is not well received in Poland.

Of course, any head of state giving an interview during a conflict will be also engaging in PR and it would be naive to think otherwise. With that in mind, it is still true that even after peace is achieved, as long as ethnic Russians and philo-Russians remain marginalized in Ukraine and as long as NATO enlargement goes on, there still will be room for tension and conflict – internally and internationally. It is about time to talk about those issues. Or one can just shrug them all off as merely “Russian propaganda.” The latter would be an ill-informed stance, though.

February 16, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

American Foreign Policy Seems to Have Nowhere to Go

Just like the caged-up Palestinians

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 15, 2024

Over the past four months I have carried out my daily morning scan of the major online news websites increasingly concerned over what I would be seeing given the mainstream media’s reluctance to report honestly and the persistent management by government propaganda mills of what is leaked to the journalists. News regarding what is taking place with Russia-Ukraine suffered initially as the war turned sharply in Moscow’s favor late last year, so much so that the likely outcome is only being challenged on neocon dominated sites like American Enterprise Institute, Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the National Review. President Joe Biden and team are now only struggling to raise $61 billion for Volodymyr Zelensky to prolong the conflict through the US election later this year so Biden can appear to be a strong “wartime” president fighting hard to defend the United States from the threatening Red Hordes. That the money will essentially drop down the hole of Ukrainian corruption seems to bother no one in the White House, but the game goes on with Biden saying “This bipartisan bill sends a clear message to Ukrainians and to our partners and to our allies around the world: America can be trusted, America can be relied upon, and America stands up for freedom. We stand strong for our allies. We never bow down to anyone, and certainly not to Vladimir Putin. So, let’s get on with this… Are [we] going to side with terror and tyranny? Are [we] going to stand with Ukraine, or are [we] going to stand with Putin? Will we stand with America or – or with Trump?” The president is also currently pumping the line that he is somehow saving or protecting “democracy.” The fact that Ukraine, banning political parties and even religious groups and the Russian language, is no democracy does not seem to impact on the narrative. And don’t forget how the Zelensky government recently murdered American journalist Gonzalo Lira for his exercising freedom of the press!

Biden argues that standing by America’s “allies,” even when they are not actual allies, is essential to maintain confidence in the United States and its leadership mission to create a “rules based international order” and thereby save the world. Beyond Ukraine, there is, of course, America’s “best friend” and “greatest ally” Israel which also is no democracy as Palestinian citizens have limited rights, with those living on the Israeli army occupied West Bank having effectively no protection from being arrested arbitrarily or even shot on sight by rampaging soldiers and settlers, who fear no consequences for killing and robbing Arabs because there are no consequences. The bombing of Gaza into the stone age continues with hardly any coverage in the mainstream media as if it is an atrocity that will disappear from the collective conscience if no one refers to it in spite of the rows of dead women and children. The US and European media meanwhile blithely report every new “Hamas atrocity” promoted by the habitually lying Israeli Army (IDF) as if it were the truth while Biden is pulling out the stops to provide the cash ($14 billion) and weapons to enable the IDF to kill more Palestinians while at the same time mock-mourning the slaughter of the innocents that is taking place. The ghastly death toll is a direct result of Joe’s lack of any action to force the Israelis to change course, which he has the leverage to do with a phone call to Benjamin Netanyahu threatening to cut off the cash, arms and political support. But the administration has made plain that it has no intention to do anything like that.

But even given all of that excitement last week there is one story that stands out, the video of former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo in Israel grinning and dancing with celebrating Israeli soldiers, who presumably have just returned from Gaza after having had the pleasure of blasting a few more score of civilians, including a large percentage of children. The Israeli Army’s latest stunt is to position snipers and tanks around the last functioning major medical facility in Rafah district in the south of Gaza, the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The Palestinians trying to survive in Gaza were previously ordered by Israel to go to Rafah where they would be “safe” but it was a self-serving lie and the military then proceeded to bomb and shoot civilians, even when they were trying to surrender, and also destroying infrastructure like hospitals and schools to make the area uninhabitable. The army snipers have now joined in the fun by shooting Gaza’s doctors and patients inside the building and on the grounds to force Nasser Hospital to evacuate and shut down. They followed up on the shooting gallery by storming the hospital, allegedly in search of “hostages.” It is all part of what is developing as Netanyahu has announced that the ground invasion of Rafah will soon begin even though the encaged Palestinians, who are already starving due to the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid, have nowhere to go and many more thousands will die one way or another.

As a taste of what is to come that is even more bizarre than what has already transpired, Israel’s “most moral army in the world” has now also gone into the entertainment business. It has begun to invite groups of Israeli civilians into detention centers and prisons that have been holding West Bank Palestinian prisoners as well as detainees from the Gaza Strip. The civilians are able to observe the detainees, stripped to their underwear, and laugh and jeer as the men are being beaten, humiliated and tortured, with many of the viewers also allowed to film what is happening on their own cell phones to share with their friends and families. Mike Pompeo, who is a Christian Zionist of dispensationalist persuasion, believes that the former Palestine belongs to the Israelis because it says so in the Bible, which he has carefully “studied.” He also, while Trump’s Secretary of State, declared that the US no longer regards the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank as “illegal” and he similarly approved of the Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights as perfectly acceptable under international law, which it is not. Wonder what Mike as a self-identified pious Christian thinks about all those dead and mutilated Palestinian babies if he ever chooses to think about it at all?

Also in the running for god-awful narrative of the week was a piece claiming that the successful first step by way of a majority vote in the House of Representatives to bring about the richly deserved impeachment of Department of Homeland Security’s ghastly Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday was the result of an “antisemitic conspiracy theory” because he is a “Sephardic Jew,” not due to his own incompetence which he has been demonstrating regularly for the past three years. The deep hole of depression that I crawled into as I watched the fat twerp Pompeo cavorting while the midget Mayorkas touted his Jewish credentials drove me to rethink the whole issue of US foreign and national security policy. I came to the conclusion that the players are caricatures and it should not be taken seriously and should instead be regarded as a comedy routine, something like Monty Python but terribly lethal and without the intelligence and wit of John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman.

To be sure the Biden administration can always be counted upon to produce a laugh, particularly when it brings on the clowns named Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, Karine Jean-Pierre and Jake Sullivan. There has been a lot of funny stuff lately, most particularly the chatter about a solution to the Palestinian genocide, even though Biden seems quite comfortable to let the Israelis finish their ethnic cleansing of Gaza before anyone looks for a place willing acquire two million more stateless and homeless Palestinians. Former presidential aspirant and totally owned Zionist stooge Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has already declared that no Palestinians should be allowed into the US as refugees as they are “antisemites.”

Nevertheless, Biden and Blinken’s State Department want to come up with some kind of formula, if only because the worldwide blowback due to the White House’s unflinching support for Israeli brutality has begun to have consequences as it constitutes complicity in crimes against humanity. Some kind of limited sovereignty, disarmed for sure, allowed to Palestine is envisioned but Netanyahu and his political allies, long opposed to a two-state solution, have recently repeatedly rejected proposals for any Palestinian sovereign entity. Israel is even now using its formidable lobby and international press/narrative control to work assiduously against any diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state by individual countries or as a full member at the UN. Not surprisingly, the greatest effort to keep things on track is being directed against voices raised in support of Palestine in the United States. Biden is listening to be sure and is having both Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan carefully coordinate every step the administration takes with the Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs and former ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer. Even though Israel and Netanyahu definitely hold the whip hand, the president is nevertheless inevitably looking over his shoulder and is fearful of alienation of voters with the national election coming up if the carnage in Gaza continues. Not for the first time the endless farce of US internal politics will likely at least somewhat influence what eventually takes place in countries six thousand miles away. And given Biden’s propensity to avoid doing the right thing, one can be pretty sure that the result won’t be pretty!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

February 15, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Vladimir Putin Interview – Part Two

Part Two — Is Russia Angling for an Exit?

By William Schryver – imetatronink – February 15, 2024

In the immediate aftermath of Tucker Carlson’s interview of Vladimir Putin, Carlson recorded at least two brief segments during which he gave his impressions of the experience. I was exceedingly surprised that one of his foremost “takeaways” from the interview was that Putin had expressed a desire to enter into negotiations to bring the hostilities in Ukraine to an end; that Putin was, as it were, “angling for an exit” from the war.

This is a gross misinterpretation and misrepresentation of what Putin actually said — and the fact is that Putin, on multiple occasions, reiterated his posture on the question.

Tucker Carlson: Will there be talks? And why haven’t there been talks about resolving the conflict in Ukraine? Peace talks.

Putin’s reply came without hesitation:

Vladimir Putin: There have been. They reached a very high stage of coordination of positions in a complex process, but still they were almost finalized. But after we withdrew our troops from Kiev, as I have already said, the other side (Ukraine) threw away all these agreements and obeyed the instructions of … European countries and the United States to fight Russia to the bitter end.

A brief discussion ensued wherein Carlson suggested that the negotiations must take place between Russia and the United States, rather than between Russia and Ukraine, and he (Carlson) lamented that Putin had not even spoken with US President Joe Biden since the war commenced.

Tucker Carlson: … why don’t you just call Biden and say “let’s work this out”?

Vladimir Putin: What’s there to work out? It’s very simple. I repeat, we have contacts through various agencies. I will tell you what we are saying on this matter and what we are conveying to the US leadership: “If you really want to stop fighting, you need to stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks. That’s it. And then we can agree on some terms …”

What’s easier? Why would I call him? What should I talk to him about? Or beg him for what? “You’re going to deliver such and such weapons to Ukraine. Oh, I’m afraid, I’m afraid, please don’t.” What is there to talk about?

I don’t know how Putin could have been more clear about the Russian posture at this stage of the war [paraphrasing]: “If the United States desires for the war to end, the solution is simple: STOP FIGHTING US!”

Earlier in the interview, Carlson had asked Putin if Russia had now achieved its aims in the war. Putin explicitly replied in the negative.

What are Russia’s aims in this war? Well, they were explicitly articulated in Putin’s two landmark speeches delivered in February 2022.

In his February 21, 2022 speech, Putin meticulously recounted the relevant history of the region dating back multiple centuries, and focused specifically on the events that followed in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In addition to Putin’s history lesson, he makes particular reference to a detailed proposal Russia delivered to the United States and its NATO allies in mid-December 2021 — a proposal that effectively amounted to a “final warning”; a last-ditch effort to avoid war in Ukraine.

Consider his words carefully, and particularly in light of how Russia has unswervingly adhered to the objectives Putin articulated in his February 24, 2022 speech.

Last December, we handed over to our Western partners a draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on security guarantees, as well as a draft agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and NATO member states.

The United States and NATO responded with general statements. There were kernels of rationality in them as well, but they concerned matters of secondary importance and it all looked like an attempt to drag the issue out and to lead the discussion astray.

We responded to this accordingly and pointed out that we were ready to follow the path of negotiations, provided, however, that all issues are considered as a package that includes Russia’s core proposals which contain three key points. First, to prevent further NATO expansion. Second, to have the Alliance refrain from deploying assault weapon systems on Russian borders. And finally, rolling back the bloc’s military capability and infrastructure in Europe to where they were in 1997, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.

Vladimir Putin, Address by the President of the Russian Federation, February 21, 2022

(emphasis added)

I submit we can confidently assume Putin was as deadly serious on February 21, 2022 as he was on February 24, 2022; that he was not bluffing; that he was resolved to “raise the stakes” commensurate to whatever was required to achieve the objectives he had so carefully articulated.

The Russian objectives, as delineated in February of 2022, were as follows:

  • To prevent further NATO expansion.
  • To compel the withdrawal of NATO military forces and infrastructure to their 1997 borders.
  • To demilitarize Ukraine.
  • To denazify Ukraine.
  • To restore to mother Russia the portions of the “Russian Nation” that had been previously severed from it as a result of the ill-considered decisions of Russian leadership over the course of the twentieth century.

As the war has continued, Russian territorial objectives have been further defined. In addition to the reassimilation of the Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions into Russia, it is now clear that the Russians are determined to reassimilate into the motherland the Kharkov region and all of the regions bordering the Black Sea coast, extending to the Danube River bordering Romania.

I was convinced as early as February 27, 2022 that it would become imperative for Russia to reassimilate at least the territory indicated on the map below:

Indeed, based on numerous repeated statements from various of the foremost Russian government leaders, including President Putin, it is increasingly evident that the imperatives of Russian “strategic depth” will not be satisfied short of reassimilating both the red and orange-shaded regions indicated on this map, and perhaps even the region shaded in yellow:

It is categorically false to believe Russia would be willing to “freeze” the conflict on the current line of contact, or even with the full annexation of the four regions that have already conducted referendums to rejoin Russia.

I submit that Vladimir Putin’s domestic popularity AND the support of his generals correlate closely to the perception that he will not waver from the objectives he set forth in the beginning. Indeed, it has only been the misplaced sense that he might stop short of achieving his stated objectives that has resulted in meaningful criticism arising from his domestic supporters — whether in government, the military, or the general public.

I further submit that it is precisely the burgeoning faith that Putin will resolutely pursue and achieve his stated objectives that has resulted in the unprecedented willingness of China, Iran, India, and other geostrategically important Eurasian and Global South nations to not only openly support Russia in this conflict, but to also, in many instances, openly defy imperial decrees forbidding military and commercial relations with Russia.

I am thoroughly convinced that a large proportion of the support Russia continues to command across the planet is directly correlated to a pervasive perception that the Russians “really meant it” when they solemnly, formally, and explicitly informed the United States and NATO that peace would henceforth be contingent on them “… rolling back the bloc’s military capability and infrastructure in Europe to where they were in 1997, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.”

Near the end of the interview, Carlson once again returned to the topic of negotiations to end the conflict:

Tucker Carlson: … are you worried that what’s happening in Ukraine could lead to something much larger and much more horrible and how motivated are you just to call the US government and say “let’s come to terms”?

Vladimir Putin: I already said that we did not refuse to talk. We are willing to negotiate. It is the Western side [not willing to negotiate], and Ukraine is obviously a satellite state of the U.S. It is evident. I do not want you to take it as if I am looking for a strong word or an insult, but we both understand what is happening.

Putin then briefly referred to the massive amounts of money and weaponry the NATO nations have pumped into Ukraine, and made the point again that, if there was a desire for the war to end, NATO support for Ukraine must end first.

Tucker Carlson: … that is why I asked about dealing directly with the Biden administration, which is making these decisions, not president Zelensky of Ukraine.

Putin then proceeds to explain to Carlson the situation in terms that ought to have defied any misunderstanding. Indeed, this is arguably the single most important part of the entire interview. Pay close attention to how Putin frames the issue:

Vladimir Putin: Well, if the Zelensky administration in Ukraine refused to negotiate, I assume that they did it under the instruction from Washington. If Washington believes it to be the wrong decision, let it abandon it, let it find a delicate excuse so that no one is insulted, let it come up with a way out. It was not us who made this decision, it was them, so let them go back on it. … They did it so let them correct it themselves. We support this.

And yet, amazingly, the ill-prepared and slow-to-comprehend Tucker Carlson still does not grasp Putin’s meaning:

Tucker Carlson: So, I just want to make sure I am not misunderstanding what you are saying — and I don’t think that I am — I think you are saying you want a negotiated settlement to what’s happening in Ukraine.

Putin visibly sighs at this retort, and patiently attempts again to make Carlson understand. He reminds Carlson of how a tentative peace settlement had been reached in early 2022, but was then torpedoed by the west, who instead persuaded Ukraine to fight on, with the reassurance that NATO would continue to support them “for as long it takes”.

Vladimir Putin: … we prepared a huge document in Istanbul that was initialed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation. He affixed his signature to some of the provisions … [later] he himself said: “We were ready to sign it and the war would have been over long ago, eighteen months ago. However, Prime Minister Johnson came, talked us out of it and we missed that chance.”

Well, you missed it, you made a mistake … Why do we have to bother ourselves and correct somebody else’s mistakes?

I know one can say it is our mistake, it was us who intensified the situation and decided to put an end to the war that started in 2014 in Donbass, as I have already said, by means of weapons. Let me get back further in history, I already told you this, we were just discussing it. Let us go back to 1991 when we were promised that NATO would not be expanded, to 2008 when the doors to NATO opened, to the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine declaring Ukraine a neutral state. Let us go back to the fact that NATO and US military bases started to appear on the territory of Ukraine creating threats for us. Let us go back to the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014. It is pointless though, isn’t it? We may go back and forth endlessly. But they stopped negotiations. Is it a mistake? Yes. Correct it. We are ready. What else is needed?

Tucker Carlson: Do you think it is too humiliating at this point for NATO to accept Russian control of what was two years ago Ukrainian territory?

Vladimir Putin: I said let them think how to do it with dignity. There are options if there is a will.

Up until now there has been the uproar and screaming about inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield. Now they are apparently coming to realize that it is difficult to achieve, if possible at all. In my opinion, it is impossible by definition. It is never going to happen. It seems to me that now those who are in power in the West have come to realize this as well. If so, if the realization has set in, they have to think what to do next. We are ready for this dialogue.

That both Tucker Carlson and others have failed to correctly interpret Putin’s words is incomprehensible to me. So permit me to paraphrase them in language that is perhaps more understandable to the dimwitted and disingenuous people in the west who continue to misrepresent them:

“We offered them an early out, and they rejected it in favor of an appeal to arms in order to inflict what they imagined would be a severe strategic defeat against Russia on the field of battle. But their reach greatly exceeded their grasp. They cannot defeat us. Now let them seek a delicate exit from the mess they’ve gotten themselves into — but we will achieve our objectives.”

February 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Brussels will not extend gas transit contract with Moscow – EU energy chief

RT | February 15, 2024

The EU has no intention of extending the gas transit contract with Russia via Ukraine when it expires at the end of this year, European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson told an EU Parliament committee meeting on Thursday.

This comes after Simson met with Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko on the sidelines of the annual International Energy Agency ministerial meeting in Paris on Wednesday. During the talks with her Ukrainian counterpart, she emphasized that EU member states are currently filling gas storage facilities and working on diversifying their energy supplies.

Galushchenko, meanwhile, said that Ukraine “will cope if the transit stops.” “We have been preparing for the expiration of this contract for two years now. Our focus is on diversifying supplies and integrating Ukraine’s energy markets into the EU.”

Despite multiple EU pledges to completely stop energy imports from Russia and numerous sanctions imposed on the country over the military conflict in Ukraine, Russian energy giant Gazprom has continued to send gas to the bloc under a five-year agreement reached in 2019.

The transit line through Ukraine and the European arm of TurkStream are the only two remaining conduits for piped Russian gas to reach Central and Western Europe. Ukrainian officials previously explained that the current transit arrangement was maintained due to the gas needs of the Czech Republic, Austria, and Slovakia.

However, a decision not to renew the current transit contract will further reduce the EU’s access to pipeline gas and could augur increased imports of liquefied natural gas – including from Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine is set to be deprived of billions of dollars in transit fees.

Bloomberg recently reported that the European Commission has conducted a preliminary analysis of potential scenarios resulting from an end to the transit deal, including modeling the capacities of other avenues, such as TurkStream, to help make up for any shortfall. The commission is expected to present its plan to energy ministers at a meeting in Brussels on March 4.

February 15, 2024 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Attacks Russia’s Belgorod With Vampire MLRS: Six Killed, 17 Wounded, Shopping Mall Damaged

Sputnik – 15.02.2024

At least six people were killed during a Ukrainian missile attack on the Russian city of Belgorod today.

Ukrainian forces carried out the attack using the Czech RM-70 Vampire multiple launch rocket systems, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement, adding that Russian air defense systems managed to intercept 14 rockets.

“On February 15, 2024, at around 12:30 [local time, 09:30 GMT], an attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack on targets on the territory of Russia using the RM-70 Vampire multiple launch rocket system was stopped. On-duty air defense systems destroyed 14 rockets over the territory of the Belgorod Region,” the ministry said in a statement.

A shopping mall in Belgorod ended up being damaged as a result of this attack.

The mall building, which housed a grocery store and a pharmacy, sustained serious damage, according to local media reports.

Accorting to preliminary reports cited by local authorities, at least six people (including one child) were killed during this attack, and 17 more (including four children) were injured.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who branded the attack as “another act of terrorism perpetrated by the Kiev regime,” has announced that Russia is going to have this matter reviewed by the appropriate international organizations, including the UN Security Council.

February 15, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

No chance of diplomatic solution to Ukraine conflict – FM Lavrov

RT | February 14, 2024

The West will not offer a realistic diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict because the US and its allies are still intent on inflicting a strategic defeat on Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Briefing Russian MPs on his ministry’s work and the current international situation, Lavrov stated that Moscow is “at the advance guard in the fight for a better future,” adding that the Western-dominated system is giving way to a multipolar world.

The US and its allies, however, remain committed to waging a hybrid war against anyone that prioritizes national interests, as evidenced by the continued Ukraine conflict, Lavrov claimed.

There has been a shift in Western rhetoric due to Moscow’s battlefield successes, according to the minister, with officials now focusing on preventing a Russian victory rather than ensuring its defeat. Nonetheless, their core policy of trying to damage Russia remains the same, Lavrov said, meaning the conflict is unlikely to be resolved diplomatically.

“Considering that those who declared a war on us offer no serious proposals and are unwilling to respect our interests and the reality on the ground, getting an agreement at the negotiating table will certainly be impossible. No such scenario is foreseen,” the diplomat stated.

Lavrov insisted that the West had initiated the conflict through its continued quest for “global domination and exceptionalism.” Russia, meanwhile, is working with its allies to dismantle the current system, which it perceives as colonialist in nature, he told the lawmakers.

US President Joe Biden reiterated his Ukraine policy on Tuesday, urging the House of Representatives to adopt a Senate-approved foreign aid package including roughly $60 billion for Kiev. The money will mostly fund arms production in the US and will help Ukraine oppose the “vicious onslaught” by Russia, Biden claimed.

“The United States pulled together a coalition of nearly 50 nations to support Ukraine. We unified NATO; we expanded it. We can’t walk away now,” the leader declared.

If approved, the bill would raise the amount of military assistance provided to Ukraine by the US since the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022 to some $170 billion.

February 14, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The Vladimir Putin Interview – Part One

Part One: The Genealogy of a Civilizational Power

By William Schryver | imetatronink | February 13, 2024

On February 6, 2024, Tucker Carlson, a popular American conservative journalist and polemicist, was granted an interview with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. The interview — a two-hour-long marathon by American sound-bite / talking-point standards – was broadcast two days later.

It was initially published on Carlson’s website, and was then posted to the X social media platform. The X post alone has tallied ~200 million views. We may confidently assume that the interview video on Carlson’s website has been viewed by several million more.

It is reasonable to conclude that this interview of Vladimir Putin has been seen by a larger global audience than has ever previously watched an interview of a major national leader.

The reactions of the viewing audience have varied greatly. Western media and political leaders have almost universally condemned the interview as nothing more than what they characterize as typical Russian propaganda and mendacity. These same people have excoriated Tucker Carlson as a “Putin puppet” and a “useful idiot” who never should have afforded Putin the opportunity to speak from such a bully pulpit.

Some western political leaders and commentators even proposed to deny Carlson reentry to the United States, to deprive him of the privilege of traveling in the European Union, to sanction him in punitive ways, and even to charge him with espionage and treason.

Others who watched part or all of the interview considered it boring and tendentious.

Yet others — and my sense is that this category comprises the majority — found the interview surprisingly enlightening and came away from it with a favorable impression of President Putin.

I have now watched the video of the interview twice in its entirety, and have carefully read the transcript twice in full, and some parts additional times.

I have also, over the past two decades, viewed and/or read literally hundreds of Putin speeches, interviews, press-conferences, etc.

In my carefully considered opinion — given its context in this period of unprecedented global tensions and what is indisputably a major proxy war being waged by the United States and its NATO allies against Russia — I regard the interview as arguably the single most important such event of the post-Cold War era.

I submit further that, in my estimation, Vladimir Putin is, by a substantial margin, the single most intellectually potent and personally charismatic world leader of the past century. His knowledge and understanding of history, international relations, macroeconomics, and his manifest talent as an extemporaneous speaker are utterly unparalleled among all the national leaders of whom I have been aware over the course of my lifetime.

The interview commenced, much to my surprise and chagrin, with a mendaciously framed and deliberately disingenuous query by Carlson:

Tucker Carlson: On February 24, 2022, you addressed your country in your nationwide address when the conflict in Ukraine started and you said that you were acting because you had come to the conclusion that the United States through NATO might initiate a quote, “surprise attack on our country”. And to American ears that sounds paranoid. Tell us why you believe the United States might strike Russia out of the blue. How did you conclude that?

The premise of this question is patently false. Putin’s speech of February 24, 2022 makes no mention whatsoever of the threat of a “surprise attack on our country” from the United States or its NATO allies. Carlson claimed it to be a direct quote. No such statement is present in the speech, nor anything like unto it.

At no point in the speech does President Putin attempt to justify the coming “Special Military Operation” on the threat of an imminent attack from the western powers.

Simply put, Carlson invented this quote ex nihilo, and apparently sought to bait Putin into a response which, presumably, Carlson then intended to take advantage of in some fashion.

I was frankly shocked that he had done this. I was immediately aware that the question was built upon a falsehood, for I am extremely familiar with both the major speeches Putin gave in the days preceding the launch of the Russian “Special Military Operation”.

Why did Tucker Carlson do this? Hard to say. But it evoked from Putin a brilliant reply which immediately turned the tables on whatever Carlson’s motivations were for posing a question built upon a lie.

Vladimir Putin: It’s not that the United States was going to launch a surprise strike on Russia. I didn’t say so.

Are we having a talk show or a serious conversation?

This pointed response disarmed Carlson’s ill-intentions for the time being, and knocked him back on his heels.

Putin then started a “serious conversation” on his terms, and according to his agenda. And what he did first — although it no doubt befuddled a large proportion of his audience — was not only an exhibition of erudition, but more importantly, it was a type of thing one simply does not see in our day and age, although in ancient times it would have been considered entirely normal, and even de rigueur for a great national leader to do precisely what Putin did: present, as it were, the Russian nation’s Letters Patent; its genealogy dating back over a thousand years; its historical bona fides.

Vladimir Putin is the current leader of a great “civilizational power” — a nation whose history stretches back over a millennium, and whose voluminous archives document that history. And, given the fundamental importance of that fact in the context of what is in many respects a civil war taking place in Ukraine, it was imperative that certain elements of evidence be presented as a preface to the eventual discussion of the illegitimacy and demonstrable falsehoods of Ukraine’s presumptuous claims upon portions of the longstanding “Russian nation”.

“Ukraine” is a sovereign polity created in 1991. Its geographic footprint is an artificial construction effected by exogenous powers over the course of the twentieth century. Its origins are a relatively limited and historically ill-defined cultural area previously known as “The Ukraine” — a region “on the outskirts” of its mother nation: Russia.

One needn’t search hard to discover that nineteenth century maps and encyclopedias are perfectly consonant with this reality. In the Chambers Encyclopedia my great-grandfather purchased in 1888, the following map of European Russia appears:

A smaller crop of that map which includes the area crafted into “Ukraine” in 1991 appears below:

And the encyclopedia entry for “Ukraine” reads as follows:

UKRAINE (Slavic, a frontier country or March), the name given in Poland first to the frontiers towards the Tatars and other nomads, and then to the fertile regions lying on both sides of the middle Dnieper, without any very definite limits. The Ukraine was long a bone of contention between Poland and Russia. About 1686 the part on the east side of Dnieper was ceded to Russia (Russian Ukraine); and at the second partition of Poland, the western portion (Polish Ukraine) also fell to Russia, and is mostly comprised of the government of Kiev. The historic Ukraine forms the greater part of what is called Little Russia (a name which first appears about 1654), which is made up of the governments of Kiev, Tchernigov, Poltava, and Kharkov.

– Chambers Encyclopedia, Volume VII, 1888 (abbreviations expanded)

But, as it has done in many other regions of the world, the Anglo-American empire, beginning as early as the immediate post-WW2 period, and accelerating in the post-Cold War period, sought to methodically cultivate violent national aspirations among portions of the populace of this region in order to effect a stratagem to weaken its long-time nemesis in Russia.

The western powers focused their nefarious project upon those portions of Ukraine wherein resided the heirs to the German-collaborating Ukrainian nationalists who, in direct affiliation with the Nazi SS formations, had proven to be reliable and particularly ruthless executioners of Jews, Poles, and Russians during the Second World War.

These historical facts are beyond dispute — at least in the realms of the informed. But the highly propagandized people of the so-called “western democracies” are not well-informed, and it is precisely for this reason that Vladimir Putin no doubt felt compelled to expound upon these questions in his lengthy but essential opening remarks in the interview with Tucker Carlson.

Carlson attempted multiple times to interrupt and redirect Putin’s train of thought, but to no avail. He even had the temerity to once again make reference to his initial deceptively constructed question:

Tucker Carlson: … many nations feel frustrated by their re-drawn borders after the wars of the 20th century, and wars going back a thousand years, the ones that you mention, but the fact is that you didn’t make this case in public until two years ago in February, and in the case that you made, which I read today, you explain at great length that you thought [there was] a physical threat from the West and NATO, including potentially a nuclear threat, and that’s what got you to move. Is that a fair characterization of what you said?

It is NOT a “fair characterization” of what Putin said. In fact, it is emphatically a FALSE characterization of what he said.

And yet Carlson was determined to extract an answer to this tortured misrepresentation of Putin’s own words.

Nevertheless, Putin refused to take the bait, and once again parried Carlson’s disingenuous query:

Vladimir Putin: I understand that my long speeches probably fall outside of the genre of an interview. That is why I asked you at the beginning: “Are we going to have a serious talk or a show?” You said — a serious talk. So bear with me please.

And then he proceeded to conclude his exposition of the essential historical facts.

I will, in subsequent installments of my commentary on this important interview, highlight multiple additional instances of Tucker Carlson posing ill-formed and disingenuous questions to President Putin, and then examine how Putin skillfully countered these curious attempts to “put words in his mouth”.

Coming up in Part 2: Tucker Carlson himself, along with many other western commentators and state-controlled propaganda organizations (such as Reuters, as seen above), have attempted in the aftermath of the interview to advance the demonstrably false narrative that Putin expressed a desire to negotiate a ceasefire and a mutually acceptable end to the ongoing war. Of course, that is a highly deceptive misinterpretation and misrepresentation of what really happened.

February 14, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Blood on BoJo’s Hands

Putin’s claim that Boris Johnson scuttled peace deal confirmed by witnesses

BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and the mainstream media are hotly denying Vladimir Putin’s claim (in his recent Tucker Carlson interview) that Johnson derailed a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine just a couple of months after the war commenced.

And yet, Putin was merely confirming the statement of David Arahamiya, leader of Ukraine’s ruling party, that was reported in Newsweek on November 27, 2023: Russia Offered to End War if Ukraine Dropped NATO Bid: Kyiv Official.

The German analyst and Former United Nations Assistant Secretary General, Michael von der Schulenberg, also published a reconstruction of these events on November 14, 2023, titled How The Chance Was Lost For A Peace Settlement Of The Ukraine War.

The totality of circumstances and the statements of Arahamiya and von der Schulenberg indicate that an Austrian-style neutrality deal could have prevented this war to begin with, and then—had it been embraced by the the USA and Britain—ended it just two months later.

Since Churchill delivered his June 4, 1940, “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, many postwar heads of state have apparently fantasized that their opponents on the international stage are “just like Hitler” and that there can be no negotiated settlement with them.

In BoJo’s case, this shallow, sophomoric notion has apparently resulted in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian and Russian soldiers.

February 14, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Magical Thinking

By Karen Kwiatkowski | LewRockwell | February 13, 2024

In 2005, Joan Didion published “The Year of Magical Thinking” that about grieving the loss of her husband, the unavoidable instant reduction of a rich marriage to aimless solitude.

Beyond the obvious arena of modern imperial foreign policy, magical thinking is a well-known psychological concept. It is “the belief that wishes can impose their own order on the material world.” It is driven by human goals of fulfillment “without consideration of the constraints of the external world.”

We’ve been reminded of this concept in many different ways over the past few weeks. The befuddled fumbling old man in the White House insulting reporters who ask him about his memory lapses, then demonstrating his disability several times later in the press conference.

He wishes to remain President, yet he is incapable of being President. He wants that particular fulfillment regardless of its fundamental impossibility.

We see the same in many modern political leaders, no doubt Canada’s Trudeau, who was upset that Putin, in a wide ranging interview last week, mentioned the Canadian Parliament’s celebration of World War II Ukrainian Nazi Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old surviving member of the Waffen SS Galicia Division. Zelensky had just spoken, and all present sincerely wished that killing Russians was great Western tradition, habitual and just. Instead we saw the impossibility of wishes making their own reality, their own order; the impossibility of changing fact to fantasy, and fantasy to fact.

Access to the most casual and shallow history of World War II should have revealed to any one of the hundreds of educated and cosmopolitan MPs, and the media covering the event, that those killing Russians in WWII were either part of Nazi Germany, or allied with Nazi Germany. It is modern Russian intolerance for Nazis that we find to be traditional, habitual and just. The propagandized West seeks a better world through magical thinking, not through the embrace of reality.

We see magical thinking in Kiev, but somehow I suspect Ukrainians have a far better understanding of reality than do Zelensky’s American and British advisors – who seem permanently afflicted with lies becoming truth if only we all wished for it hard enough. The best example of this is our puppet in Kiev who insists on no negotiations with Russia until the popular and extremely rational “history buff” President Putin, steps down to face the Ukrainian music for his war crimes.

Yet when Tucker Carlson asked Putin what it was all about – we found simply that the protection of Russia and Russian people are a cause for which Putin is willing to fight. It is a concept that shocks the Western empire circa 2024.

We also learned that years of western actions, like withdrawing from nuclear treaties and pursuing first strike capabilities, drove Russian development of hypersonic missiles and a whole range of capabilities to survive and defeat such extreme threats coming from an increasingly unpredictable West. Meanwhile, US and NATO naval capability is underwhelming, recruitment abysmal, technology plateaued and inappropriate for offense or defense, and funds are dwindling.

We learned that while politicians and academics continue to push for ever more massive sanctions against Russia – new markets materialized and Russia’s economy adapted and thrived, as the economy of the western allies shrank and struggled.

We learned that western cultural fetishes of magic energy replacing hydrocarbons, 72 genders, modern monetary theory and unlimited immigration without cultural integration have all been rejected – rationally and straightforwardly – by Russia. The former Communist empire has become a sanctuary for Orthodox Christianity, while the West bans and abandons Christian churches and principles in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Europe and in America. It sounds unbelievable, unpredictable, a rabbit from a hat and a lady cut in half all in one show  – but it’s true.

A key advisor to Zelensky on US-UK-EU proxy war, and former UK PM Boris Johnson is an exemplar of magical thinking. He was outraged that Putin explained with evidence how the last 18 months of war in Ukraine could have been prevented, and ended peacefully, as peace talks in Turkey produced a draft treaty acceptable to both Ukrainian and Russian teams. This was abruptly canned after Boris rushed to Kiev, where he demanded the Ukrainians reject the nascent agreement. Boris, bobbing in the flotsam of magical thinking, is a liar, and yet, one marvels at the power of believing that your desires and wishes can create a new world order.

We see this in the US, in both its obsession with Julian Assange despite the utter irrationality of its pursuit of a man who exposed US lawbreaking and evil – something top politicians in the US should always be eager to correct in the name of American heroism and honor.

We see this in the continued fantasy of electoral honesty in the US, in the imperial two-tiered system of law, in the incomprehensible funding and moral support provided to Israel as it directly and systematically exterminates 2 million people, destroys their homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses, and takes their land. We see it in Israel, as it imagines what it is doing will save rather than destroy her. Magical thinking.

Joan Didion popularized the term, documenting her grief at the sudden end of a life, marriage, meaning, and purpose. Magical thinking may be part of a process by which people and institutions cope with the innate realization of irretrievable loss.

The US government, and its very federalism, is undergoing an imperial metamorphosis from rapacious caterpillar, to life in a rapidly decaying cocoon, to something entirely different and unrecognizable – life in the air, with little baggage, free, vulnerable and alive. It will own nothing and be happy. Dissolution and death of empire is a story told many times, a pattern of nature, and it cannot be stopped. Magical thinking is simultaneously necessary and futile, and Washington and many of the European capitols are deeply engaged in this phase. They are ending, ungracefully, ungratefully, undeniably.

But for the people, who live with feet on the ground, and eyes wide open, who bear the costs of the magical thinking of their governments, and the lies of their propagandists, and the waste of their wars, and the contamination of everything that was good – for us the only value is seeing the reality of things. Recognizing reality, acting upon it, rejecting even the most subtle suggestions of magical thinking and fantasy and imaginations of world orders – in this way imperial error can be stopped, and reversed.

Peace, transparency, prosperity, exchanges of goods, ideas, and many charming conversations with partners and friends around the planet – none of this is fantasy, and it doesn’t require magic. Let’s get on with it.

Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in Virginia’s 6th district in 2012, is a Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, and an Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute.

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February 13, 2024 Posted by | Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

Does anybody still believe in Ukrainian victory?

By Uriel Araujo | February 12, 2024

While Moscow is making major investments in defense, Ukraine has stalled (in the battlefield) and so is the American aid package, writes Foreign Policy reporter Amy Mackinnon. “Ukraine will lose – on our present trajectory”, says Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow of the Centre for European Studies, Harvard, interviewed by John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.

According to Ferguson, thus far the US-led West has given Kyiv enough weapons “not to lose, but not enough to win”. In addition, the United States’ “interest” is “clearly waning, particularly “among Republican voters and Republican politicians”, to the point that American aid to the Eastern European country “could be cut off if Donald Trump is reelected president in November 2024”. In this scenario, he says, it is hard to see how Ukraine could possibly win. Furthermore, he claims, the Ukrainians themselves admit that they have achieved a “stalemate” now, and in terms of resources it is “David versus Goliath,” with the latter being, more and more, “the likely favorite.” If Russia is, “to put it very, very modestly”, able to “retain control” of those parts of Ukraine it already does, that will be “the first big defeat of Cold War II, for the West.” Considering all the Western pro-Zelensky propaganda, all the “speeches”, “support” and “pledges” made, if Ukraine “loses”, the West’s credibility will be greatly undermined, Fergunson convincingly reasons.

Meanwhile, should an “all-out multifront assault on Israel” arise, in the Middle East, and the US fails to take meaningful action, then the expert argues, somewhat less convincingly, it would be “surprising” if Xi Jinping “didn’t take the opportunity to add Taiwan to the strategic mix” – and, in the scenario of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan, it would be “rather difficult to send another major naval expedition across the Pacific” because of the risk of US-China “hostilities” in this case, which then would mean a “much larger war than anything we’ve seen so far.” What Ferguson fails to acknowledge is that tensions with Taiwan arose after a series of American provocations, and that the current crisis in the Levant and the Red Sea is largely the result of the Western resolve to keep aiding and funding its Israeli ally even in face of the latter’s disastrous and globally condemned ethnic cleansing campaign in Palestine.

Back to the Ukrainian conflict’s prospects, Mark Episkopos, Eurasia Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, writes that, at this point, there is “no magic weapon left”, and that Kyiv’s “backers” (on “both sides of the Atlantic”) have “no realistic theory of victory” accounting for “the dire conditions” faced by Ukraine and thus fail to offer “a sustainable framework for war termination on the best possible terms for Kyiv and the West.” In the same spirit, James Stavridis, former  NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe sees no future for Ukraine other than a land-for-peace deal.

Back to the aforementioned Ferguson’s interview, the Scottish–American historian concludes, from an Anglo-Western perspective, that “this is a very dangerous moment in world history”, and “we’ve stumbled into it, partly by forgetting the lessons of Cold War I”, namely that one must have “credible deterrence.” Such deterrence, he laments, has been lost. As I’ve written, the West has no such deterrence against Iran in the Middle East either.

As is often the case, notwithstanding any criticism one may have of the Russian president and of his choices pertaining to Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine, there is something missing in the conversation about the crisis, namely any mention of the Western role in at least partly bringing it about by NATO expansion or, for that matter, any mention of the Western white-washing and support for far-right paramilitary nationalism in Ukraine – which is often neo-Fascist – since the Maidan Revolution, and the role this factor played in the Donbass war (going on since 2014); not to mention the issue of the civil rights of ethnic Russians, Russian-speaking and pro-Russian people in Ukraine since the aforementioned Maidan.

In any case, it is not just into Eastern Europe that Washington has “stumbled”. It is also “stuck”, as I wrote, in the Middle East, where it acts as an undecided declining superpower, “torn”, as it is, according to a recent The Economist piece, “between leaving and staying and cannot decide what to do with the forces it still has in the region.”

In September last year, Former US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates described his country as a “divided” and “dysfunctional superpower”, unable to deter both China and Russia. “Torn”, “stuck”, “divided” – undecidedness could really be a key word with regards to the existential crisis haunting American exceptionalism: Washington seems unable to decide, for example, as Jerry Hendrix (formerly an adviser to Pentagon senior officials) puts it, whether it wishes to maintain its declining naval hegemony, as a sea power, in Mackinder’s terms, or to keep engaging in land wars in Eurasia in its struggle for the “Heartland”. It cannot decide whether to pivot away from the Middle East towards the Indo-Pacific Region (IPR) or to “stay” in the Middle East region. It seems to want it both ways always, as materialized in the different versions of the “dual containment” formula – now applied to both Beijing and Moscow simultaneously.

Thus, going beyond the issue of Ukraine, it is about time to acknowledge that the declining American superpower is currently overburdened and overstretched, in Stephen Wertheim’s words; that its policy of “dual containment” makes the world a far less stable place; and that Washington therefore must exercise restraint.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

February 12, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Kremlin comments on Starlink claims

RT | February 12, 2024

The Russian military never officially ordered SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet terminals and they are not certified for use in Russia, the Kremlin has said. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov made the comment shortly after Ukrainian intelligence claimed that Russian forces were using the technology amid the ongoing armed conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk donated some 20,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine shortly after Russia launched its offensive against the country in February 2022. Ukrainian troops are using them to operate drones along the front line. However, the billionaire said last year that he had refused Ukraine’s request to activate the Starlink service in Crimea.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Peskov noted that Starlink had never been certified in Russia, meaning that it “cannot be and is not being delivered here officially.” He added that, for this reason, the technology cannot be used in any official capacity in Russia.

The Kremlin’s representative concluded by saying that there was no point in Moscow getting involved in a “discussion between the Kiev regime and entrepreneur Musk.”

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Musk lamented that “a number of false news reports claim that SpaceX is selling Starlink terminals to Russia.”

“To the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia,” the SpaceX CEO added.

In a separate statement on Thursday, SpaceX insisted that it “does not do business of any kind with the Russian government or its military,” and has “never sold or marketed Starlink in Russia, nor has it shipped equipment to locations in Russia.”

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) claimed to have intercepted a conversation between Russian military personnel, where one service member could be heard saying in Russian “Starlink is working, we have internet [access].”

GUR spokesman Andrey Yusov alleged that Russian troops are “systematically” using Starlink terminals.

In September, Musk said his company had refused to enable Starlink coverage over Crimea. “Now, the reason it was turned off was actually because… the United States has sanctions against Russia… and that includes Crimea,” he explained at the time. In the absence of any direct orders from the US leadership, SpaceX opted not to run afoul of the regulations despite Kiev’s request to do so, the entrepreneur noted.

Earlier, CNN reported that Musk’s decision had thwarted a Ukrainian drone attack against the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

February 12, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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