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German Long-Range Taurus Missiles Won’t Be Wunderwaffe Ukraine Is Looking For

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 19.08.2023

Berlin has joined Washington in climbing up the escalation ladder in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, sending more military aid to Kiev than any other country besides the US. Germany has also borne the brunt of the West’s economic war against Moscow, with its economy sinking into a recession and facing the threat of deindustrialization.

A majority of Germans are opposed to sending Taurus KEPD 350 air-launched long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, with a fresh poll finding while 36 percent are in favor of their delivery, 52 percent are opposed, with support falling to just 21 percent among residents of eastern Germany.

Despite opposition, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner and other members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government have expressed support for delivering the missiles this week, with Lindner saying a decision on the matter would be reached “faster and at shorter notice” than in the past.

German media first reported on talks to send Taurus missiles to Kiev last week, saying the chancellor’s office was hoping to make changes to the missiles’ programming to prevent Ukraine from using them to attempt strikes deep into Russian territory.

Previous assurances in this vein by the US and other NATO powers have turned out to be empty promises, with Ukraine’s military eagerly using its Western-provided military hardware including artillery, missiles and drones to strike Russia, and to indiscriminately fire on cities and settlements in the Donbass.

“As in the past, we will always check every single decision very carefully,” Scholz told reporters last week when asked about the Taurus missiles’ delivery.

These “very careful” checks have already seen Germany send some €7.5 billion ($8.15 billion) in weapons to Ukraine over the past year-and-a-half, the second-largest amount only behind the United States. Berlin has already approved sending over 260 Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks, including from its own armories and those of other European NATO allies, plus Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, MARS rocket artillery systems, Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled howitzers, Marder infantry fighting vehicles, Bergepanzer armored recovery vehicles, Panzerfaust RPGs and billions more in other weapons, support equipment, ammunition and supplies.

What distinguishes the Taurus cruise missile is its range and firepower. The €950,000-a-piece bunker buster munition has a 481 kg warhead, and an operational range of over 500 km, making it a standoff weapon which, in the wrong hands, could turn into a tool for terror bombings.

No Wonder Weapon

“The long-range Taurus cruise missiles are an advanced high-precision unmanned weapon system, but they are not a wonder weapon,” AfD European Parliament MEP Gunnar Beck told Sputnik.

“They will add to Ukraine’s military capability, but not decisively,” the lawmaker, who serves as vice president of the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy fraction, said.

Instead, “the delivery of these missiles is significant in that it marks a further escalation of the conflict, leading perhaps to the delivery of other weapons with greater and more decisive offensive capability. That, to me, is the danger here,” Beck stressed.

The lawmaker noted that the danger of Ukraine using Taurus missiles against Russian territory is “the main point of controversy,” with government assurances that this won’t take place of little comfort to ordinary Germans.

“The German government says it would like to prevent Ukraine from using the missiles against Russian territory. However, this is just fanciful talk. In practice, Germany cannot do anything to prevent Ukraine from using the missiles as they like,” Beck said.

“Most Germans do not wish to be drawn into a major international conflict with Russia,” the AfD lawmaker emphasized. “This is particularly true of East Germans who still appreciate that without Russian blessing reunification could not have been achieved 33 years ago.” Most Germans “simply do not believe that Russia and President Putin are a real threat to Germany today. That is my own personal view too. Ordinary Germans have less to fear of Russia today than it has from the EU, their own government and any of the major political parties within Germany itself.”

Amid the Ukrainian crisis and economic downturn, Beck’s party has seen a major surge in support, with recent polling indicating it would win up to 18 percent of the vote if elections were held today – on par with Chancellor Scholz’ Social Democrats. The growing prominence of the upstart opposition party and its social conservative, Eurosceptic brand of populism has led to debate inside the German political establishment on whether it should be banned as an “extremist” organization.

Beck emphasized that notwithstanding the “relentless” “anti-Russian propaganda” in German media, many Germans, especially in the east of the country, “have lost faith” in Scholz’s coalition, and “cannot remember when their government last did something for them.” Instead, half of Germans “now regard their political elite as just the executor of the aims and objectives of large multinationals and foreign powers – very well-paid executors at that,” the lawmaker summed up.

Germans Don’t Want Nuclear War With Russia

Dan Kovalik, a US-based human rights and labor rights lawyer and peace activist, echoed Beck’s sentiments on the implications and dangers of the Taurus missiles’ potential delivery to Kiev.

“I think Russia is about to destroy the Ukrainian military and probably the Ukrainian state as it exists, and that’s just a fact. I don’t think the missiles will change that. Of course, what they could do is allow Ukraine to fire more into Russian territory in a more destructive way than they are now with drones, which of course presents a great danger of escalating this conflict into a major world war, possibly even into a nuclear conflict. That’s why I think the German people are against this,” Kovalik stressed.

“Of course, Germany and Russia have been through two world wars against each other, and I don’t think either wants to repeat that,” the observer added.

August 20, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Western calls for Ukraine peace talks a ‘tactical ploy’ – Moscow

RT | August 19, 2023

The US and its allies do not want the Ukraine conflict to end and their purported peace initiatives are merely attempts to buy Kiev time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview published on Saturday.

Geopolitical issues need to be discussed “not with [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters,” Lavrov said earlier this year. Negotiating directly with the Americans would make sense, he told the magazine International Affairs when asked about the idea.

“The problem, however, is that the United States has no intention of ending the conflict,” Lavrov explained, noting that “their officially declared objective is to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia.”

Prospects for negotiations between Russia and the West “are non-existent at this stage,” Lavrov said, while Kiev “Western sponsors are constantly pushing them to up the ante.”

Insisting on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s so-called ‘peace formula’ at meetings in Copenhagen and Jeddah – to which Russia was not invited – “hardly demonstrates an intention by the West to negotiate with Russia,” Lavrov said. Moscow has dismissed Zelensky’s ten-point list of demands as an unacceptable ultimatum unrelated to reality.

Russia has repeatedly tried to negotiate, from the 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements to the “drastic attempt to convey our concerns to Western capitals” in December 2021, Lavrov noted. The West “arrogantly rejected” Moscow’s initiative and ramped up deliveries of weapons and ammunition to Kiev instead.

“We regard the Westerners’ hypocritical calls for talks as a tactical ploy to buy time once again giving the exhausted Ukrainian troops a respite and the opportunity to regroup, and to send in more weapons and ammunition,” Lavrov said, adding that “this is the path of war, not a peaceful settlement process.”

Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of Germany, admitted last December that the 2015 Franco-German proposal in Minsk was “an attempt to give Ukraine time” to build up its military. This was then confirmed by former French President Francois Hollande.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Lost Cause Is in the Air

By William Schryver – imetatronink – August 18, 2023

Back in February, I wrote what was and will likely remain the longest blog post I have authored. (I solemnly promise not to do such a thing again.)

Among other things, I observed:

“… the milieu of the past several weeks, during which time we have observed a pronounced rhetorical revolution in the popular western narratives regarding the NATO/Russia war in Ukraine.

“Lost cause is in the air. Many who have privately known this to be the case for some time have finally been sufficiently emboldened to publicly embrace the obvious — albeit reluctantly, and often with a good measure of rationalization and lingering misinformation in tow.”

Of course, at that point in time, the pivotal Battle of Bakhmut had not reached its inevitable conclusion, and the dream of a decisively triumphant Ukrainian march to Crimea was still cherished fondly by those partial to that cause.

As per usual, my sense of the trajectory of events anticipated something that would still take some time to be realized in full.

In any case, lost cause is now acrid in the late summer air of August 2023 — cordite, sulphur, and putrefied flesh.

Chagrined accounts of Ukrainian slaughter and woe are now rippling through the mainstream western media, and spilling off the lips of the “credentialed commentariat”.

It has become the pitiless massacre many of us predicted all those months ago.

And, of course, it never had a chance to be anything else.

What were they thinking?!

How did the Imperial Masters of War ever persuade themselves that their money, weapons, several thousand mercenaries, and a large fraction of the male population of Ukraine could defeat Russia in a high-intensity industrial land war on its borders?!

Did they really believe NATO armaments, training, intelligence, surveillance, planning, command, and impotent economic sanctions would be sufficient to defeat a resurgent Russia in 2022 and beyond?

I think they almost certainly did. Hubris and its attendant delusions are staples of end-of-empire epochs.

Of course, they’re going to try to spin this major geostrategic defeat such that its true realities, causes, and consequences are obscured. Already they’ve been working overtime to subtly dismiss the obvious conclusion that Russia is simply too strong and capable to defeat militarily.

I’ve noted the recurring talking point that the repulse of Ukraine’s offensive is being attributed to Russia’s supposedly archaic employment of “minefields and trenches” in a complex array of static defense lines.

Somehow they neglect to mention the overwhelming dominance of Russian artillery, its dizzying array of battlefield attack drones, its air superiority, its first-rate motorized infantry maneuver, and its relentless long-range precision missile strikes on rear-area logistical targets.

The simple fact of the matter is that, not only was defeating Russia beyond the capacity of the Mother of All Proxy Armies NATO built in Ukraine, it would likewise defy the never-yet-demonstrated and effectively fictitious American “mastery” of what the Pentagon has fancifully termed “combined-arms operations”.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the damn fools aren’t still stupid enough to try.

Either way, as I wrote in my previous post:

Matters have reached the point where the imperial masters will be forced to choose between a humiliating disengagement and abandonment of Ukraine to its fate — or otherwise blunder into a calamitous direct military intervention.

I continue to be convinced they won’t go there. And for the sake of the bereaved mothers, widowed wives, and fatherless children of the young American men who would be compelled to act out the catastrophe, I sure hope I’m right.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

West has shown its ‘true Russophobic face’ – Lavrov

RT | August 18, 2023

Washington and Brussels have openly unleashed a hybrid war against everything Russian, dropping their masks after decades of pretending to be civilized and adequate international partners, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with International Affairs, published on Saturday.

“Many of our former partners have been concealing their Russophobic nature under the veil of hypocrisy, but have now shown their true face in all its glory,” he said. “However, there is also the flip side of the coin here, since the Global Majority saw the true face of those who went as far as [to] aspire to a monopoly in defining the so-called universal values.”

“Today’s West is steered by people like Josep Borrell who divide the world into a blooming ‘garden’ and ‘the jungle,’ where the latter clearly applies to most of humanity,” Lavrov added.

The West has spent decades cynically transforming neighboring Ukraine into a “hostile military bulwark against Russia by nurturing an entire generation of politicians ready to declare war on our shared past, culture and everything Russian,” according to Lavrov.

Western capitals even openly admitted that reaching a peaceful settlement in Ukraine was never part of their plan, and that the Minsk agreements were originally designed to “buy some time to prepare a military scenario and deliver weapons to Kiev.”

“I think that the essential thing we must understand in this regard is that the West wants to do away with our country as a serious geopolitical rival,” the top Russian diplomat said “They have not hesitated to use subversive methods and perform acts of sabotage, as was the case with the explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea.”

Lavrov also accused Washington and its allies of using all possible coercive means to prevent Russia’s partners from engaging in economic and other kinds of cooperation, while also “making outrageous efforts to disconnect Russia from international cooperation mechanisms in culture, education, research, and sports.”

One thing that the West fails to understand, according to Lavrov, is that “Russia will use all means to defend its people and its vital interests,” and thus would be better for the opponents to realize that “confrontation with Russia is futile and switch to more civilized” means for achieving a balance of interests.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Unexploded device detonates in Donetsk killing three

RT | August 18, 2023

Three utility workers were killed in the Russian city of Donetsk on Friday when a faulty Ukrainian cluster shell exploded, according to local officials. Another worker was injured in the blast.

The workers, who had been repairing water pipes in central Donetsk, were caught in the blast during their lunch break. They were killed on the spot in a “detonation of an explosive device,” Donetsk Mayor Aleksey Kulemzin said. Two others were hospitalized following the blast.

According to media reports and local officials, the explosion was caused by a Ukrainian cluster artillery shell. The unexploded device may have been hanging from a tree or in a trash can, local residents told the media. The shell suddenly detonated and released its sub munitions, which exploded, hitting the civilians.

In recent weeks, the Ukrainian military has ramped up its use of cluster munitions, repeatedly firing them at Donetsk and other locations near the front line. The shells have already caused multiple deaths and injuries among civilians.

The uptick in the use of cluster munitions comes after last month the US sent so-called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) for NATO-caliber 155mm howitzers. The controversial delivery, which was criticized even by some of the US’ closest allies, came as a stop-gap measure to compensate for a shortage of conventional artillery shells, as admitted by President Joe Biden.

Over the course of the ongoing conflict, Russia has accused the Ukrainian military of repeatedly using cluster munitions from its domestic stockpiles to target civilian areas. In particular, Kiev’s forces have on many occasions shelled Donetsk and its surroundings with unguided multiple rocket artillery projectiles containing the controversial anti-personnel PFM-1 petal mines.

August 18, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Diplomacy with Russia necessary for Europe – former French President

By Lucas Leiroz | August 18, 2023

Showing realism and willingness for dialogue, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy strongly criticized the West’s stance on the Ukrainian crisis and demanded more diplomatic efforts. For the former politician, it is necessary for Europeans to live peacefully with Russia, as it is not possible to continue a policy of confrontation and aggression in the long term.

Sarkozy’s criticisms were made during an interview with the French newspaper “Le Figaro”. He spoke with journalists about possible solutions to the current conflict in Ukraine and endorsed the need to pursue peace through diplomacy. Sarkozy condemned the policy of prolonging the war through unlimited military assistance to Kiev, which has been one of the main points of Emmanuel Macron’s foreign policy.

For Sarkozy, Macron failed to continue to deal with the reality of the conflict mainly “due to pressure from [some] eastern Europeans”. Last year, Macron was severely slammed by Polish leader Mateusz Morawiecki because he was trying to negotiate with Moscow in the early weeks of the special military operation. In May 2022, Morawiecki compared Macron’s stance to an “attempt to negotiate with Hitler”. Sarkozy sees this event as an important point of international pressure, boosting Macron’s decision to adhere to the policy of unlimited support to Kiev.

The former president also negatively assessed the project of Ukrainian membership in the European Union. For him, these plans are merely “fallacious promises that will not be held”. Sarkozy compared the Ukrainian access to the Turkish one, making it clear that in both cases the projects are unlikely to succeed.

Also, Sarkozy emphasized the importance of maintaining good relations with Russia due to the geographical factor. Considering the proximity between the EU and Russia, it is necessary that both sides are diplomatically close, without friction and conflicts. Sarkozy admits that the confrontation with Russia is only of American interest, not European, and therefore there must be a reformulation of Europe’s Ukraine policy.

“Russia is a neighbor of Europe and will remain so (…) In this regard, European interests are not aligned with American interests. We cannot stick to the strange idea of ​’fighting a war without fighting”, he said.

Another subject commented by Sarkozy was the territorial issue. For him, peace negotiations will have to deal rationally with the possibility of recognizing Crimea and Russian historic territories. Sarkozy states that with Ukraine’s impossibility to win the war, there are only two alternatives: freeze the conflict or recognize the territorial loss. The first option seems inadequate because a new war situation would arise in the future, while on the other hand the recognition of territories can be legitimate, if done by referendum with international observers.

“When it comes to this territory (Crimea), which was Russian until 1954 and where a majority of the population has always felt Russian, I think any step back is illusory (…) If the Ukrainians do not completely manage to win them back, then the choice will be between a frozen conflict – which we know will inevitably lead tomorrow to a new hot conflict – or we can come out on top by resorting, again, to referendums strictly supervised by the international community to settle these territorial questions in a definitive way”, he added.

It is necessary to note that Sarkozy does not adopt a “pro-Russian” opinion. He echoes the Western “consensus” of criticizing Russia’s decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine, even referring to the special military operation by the biased word “invasion”. The very proposal to redo the referendums in Crimea and other regions shows Sarkozy’s distrust of Russia, since Moscow has already held referendums that have been widely verified by invited international observers, having no need to redo them. So, the former president’s opinion is undoubtedly aligned only with European interests, with no pro-Russian bias.

The problem is that Europe is now conditioned to believe that American interests are its own. And this is precisely what Sarkozy is criticizing. He reminds how geography is a basic principle of international politics. Neighboring regions must strive to maintain friendship and respect so that there are no conflicts, as they will always be close and have to deal with each other, rationally overcoming disagreements. And this is what Sarkozy advocates for EU-Ukraine-Russia relations – that, despite disagreements, a peaceful [and realistic] solution is found as soon as possible.

Obviously, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime rejected Sarkozy’s proposal. Zelensky’s aide Mikhail Podoliak accused the former French leader of “deliberately participating” in “genocide and war” by simply advocating diplomacy. For the Ukrainian official, Sarkozy’s ideas are “fantastic” and “criminal”, as Crimea and Donbass are supposedly “unconditional territories of Ukraine”. In fact, this type of position on the part of Kiev is not surprising, since in addition to being one of the sides directly involved in the conflict, the regime works as a proxy for Washington, completely adhering to American anti-Russian narratives.

What really matters is whether French and European politicians will be attentive to Sarkozy. The former president is denouncing an obvious reality: to satisfy American interests, Europe is destroying itself and harming its relations with a neighboring power. Current politicians need to be aware of this scenario and reverse it. However, unfortunately, it seems the current generation of heads of state does not have the same strategic understanding as Sarkozy.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

August 18, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

A Vicious Blame Game Is Breaking Out After The Counteroffensive Predictably Failed

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 17, 2023

Two back-to-back pieces published by Newsweek and Politico confirm that a vicious blame is breaking out after the counteroffensive predictably failed. The first was released on Wednesday and reported how “Zelensky’s Pivotal Counteroffensive Call Threatens to Divide Leadership” between the presidential administration that wants to prepare for a potential Russian offensive and the armed forces that want to continue pushing ahead. An unnamed source also alleged that politicians felt misled by the military.

As for the second, which came out the day later on Thursday, its author observed that “As Ukraine counteroffensive gets bogged down, it’s back to the drawing board”. The problem is that nobody knows what to do next, however, since they can’t agree on what went wrong to begin with. According to their report, everyone is pointing fingers at who’s to blame for getting hopes unrealistically high about this failed campaign.

Here are some analyses of the relevant events leading up to this vicious blame game:

* 24 January: “Deciphering Ukraine’s Destabilizing ‘Deep State’ Dynamics”

* 14 February: “NATO’s Self-Declared ‘Race Of Logistics’ Confirms The Bloc’s Military-Industrial Crisis”

* 14 March: “The Washington Post Finally Told The Full Truth About How Poorly Kiev’s Forces Are Faring”

* 24 April: “US Propaganda Is Responsible For Unrealistically High Hopes About Kiev’s Counteroffensive”

* 29 April: “Poland’s Top Military Official Shared Some Unpopular Truths About The NATO-Russian Proxy War”

* 3 May: “Garry Kasparov’s Cognitive Dissonance Is Typical Of Kiev’s Average Supporters Right Now”

* 13 May: “Ten Critical Observations At The Onset Of Kiev’s NATO-Backed Counteroffensive”

* 21 May: “What Comes Next After Russia’s Victory In The Battle Of Artyomovsk?”

* 1 June: “Kiev Faces Seven Key Challenges Ahead Of Its Counteroffensive”

* 2 June: “Viktor Orban Is Right: The Counteroffensive Will Be A Bloodbath For Ukraine”

* 11 June: “Kiev’s NATO-Backed Counteroffensive Is The West’s Most Important Military Campaign Since WWII”

* 12 June: “CNN Admitted That Kiev Lost Around 15% Of Its Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles In A Week”

* 14 June: “How Will The US Respond After The Failure Of Kiev’s NATO-Backed Counteroffensive?”

* 20 June: “Putin Strongly Suggested That A Political Solution To The Proxy War Is Still Possible”

* 21 June: “Lavrov Sent The Clearest Signal Yet That Russia Is Interested In Freezing The Proxy War”

* 5 July: “Will Zelensky Become The New Saakashvili?”

* 7 July: “Pay Attention To What NATO Chief Stoltenberg Conspicuously Omitted From His Latest Speech”

* 8 July: “Cluster Munitions Are The Latest Wunderwaffe That’s Doomed To Disappoint The West”

* 10 July: “Removing Ukraine’s MAP Requirement For Joining NATO Isn’t As Important As It Seems”

* 17 July: “Kiev’s Latest Attack Against The Crimean Bridge Was A Desperate Distraction”

* 24 July: “The New York Times Finally Told The Truth About The Failure Of Kiev’s Counteroffensive”

* 6 August: “The Jeddah Talks Backfired On Zelensky”

* 11 August: “The Polish President Said Kiev Isn’t Doing The West Any Favors & Its Counteroffensive Failed”

* 16 August: “Bolton’s Criticism Of Biden’s Ukraine Policy Doesn’t Stand Up To Scrutiny”

Simply skimming the headlines reveals that the counteroffensive’s failure was predictable due to Russia’s growing edge in the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition”, yet it still went ahead anyhow for ulterior military and political reasons. Regarding the first, these concerned the West’s interest in obtaining invaluable battlefield data for its weapons, while the second involved Kiev’s inability to walk back its maximalist demands for ending the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine.

This disaster was therefore entirely avoidable, which the Western public is quickly realizing as it begins to dawn on them that their over $165 billion in taxpayer-provided aid to Kiev failed to break the stalemate that set in last winter. The wisest among them might soon start wondering why a ceasefire wasn’t agreed to back then in order to focus on war-torn Ukraine’s reconstruction, which is why their leaders are now desperately trying to shift the blame to redirect rising public anger away from themselves.

Tens of thousands of Kiev’s troops have been killed since January and tens of billions of dollars spent just for the sake of gaining less than 100 square miles, which wasn’t worth it from the perspective of average Ukrainians or Westerners. The only party that profited was the military-industrial complex that obtained invaluable battlefield data for its weapons, though this was at the expense of further depleting the West’s stockpiles, which makes it more difficult for this New Cold War bloc to respond to sudden crises.

On the Ukrainian front, military-political divisions are reportedly widening per Newsweek’s report, which also claims that Russia is gearing up for its own offensive that’s slated to begin sometime this fall before scaling into a full-fledge one by next spring. Meanwhile, the Western front is less dramatic per Politico’s report as officials mostly try to pin the blame on the expert and media communities, though opposition parties like the Republicans are also of course trying to capitalize on this ahead of coming elections.

These latest observations about how counterproductive the counteroffensive has been for Ukrainian-Western unity, solidarity within their respective ranks, and Ukraine’s human and military resources mean that Russia’s prior interest in a ceasefire can no longer be taken for granted. Russia arguably has more to gain by continuing to fight than freezing the conflict since its enemies’ recent weaknesses raise the chances that all the entirety of those former Ukrainian territories that it claims can finally be liberated.

That’s not to say that there’s no possibility of Russia agreeing to a ceasefire in the unlikely event that the US complies with President Putin’s demand from late June to cut off arms shipments to Ukraine as the prerequisite for resuming related talks, but just that it would be his most surprising “goodwill gesture” yet.

August 18, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Deploying elite brigade will not revitalise Kiev’s failed counteroffensive

By Ahmed Adel | August 18, 2023

The Ukrainian 82nd Air Assault Brigade, one of the last reserves of the Ukrainian Army but described as its “most powerful unit,” has entered the battlefield and is combating Russian forces. However, their entry will not revitalise an already failed and exhausted counteroffensive.

The Russian Army confirmed on August 15 that it repelled three attacks from this elite Ukrainian unit near Robotyne, Zaporozhye. In the battle, 200 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, and five tanks, eight armoured and infantry fighting vehicles and two Msta-B howitzers were destroyed.

Forbes reported that the brigade — which had spent most of the last two and a half months in reserve as the Ukrainian army tried to mount its counteroffensive — had finally been deployed, calling it “good and bad news” for Kiev.

Equipped with Challenger 2 tanks armed with depleted uranium shells, the Ukrainian 82nd Air Assault Brigade is also armed with Marder and Stryker armoured vehicles, among the most modern NATO equipment delivered to Kiev.

The 82nd Brigade is said to be among “the last major units” at the disposal of the Ukrainian command. Their deployment “could significantly boost” the firepower of the Ukrainian forces in the near term. Still, when the 82nd and its sister, the 46th Air Assault Brigade, withdraw, “there might not be any equally powerful fresh brigades to fill in for them,” meaning “the counteroffensive could lose momentum,” Forbes warned.

“If the Russians in Robotyne can hold their ground, and endure what is likely to be a major but temporary surge in Ukrainian combat power, they might eventually find themselves in a position to strike back at the Ukrainians—once the surge brigades rotate off the front line without replacement,” the article concluded.

Nonetheless, the author exaggerates the capabilities of the 82nd Air Assault Brigade, which is not even a division. To date, Ukrainian troops have been unable to break through the first line of Russian defences. Therefore, throwing an elite reserve into battle already demonstrates Ukraine’s desperate situation of being unable to break the meat grinder.

The fact that the 82nd Air Assault Brigade is armed with British tanks and modern Western combat vehicles does not mean it can change the situation. This is because Ukrainian forces cannot overcome minefields and break through the opposition posed by Russian reconnaissance and strike forces operating along the entire line of contact.

Deploying the 82nd Air Assault Brigade also points to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu correctly assessing that Ukraine’s military resources are almost exhausted.

“The preliminary results of the fighting show that Ukraine’s military potential is practically exhausted,” Shoigu said when speaking at the 11th International Security Conference in Moscow on August 15.

While the counteroffensive has failed, Kiev and Western leaders have started pointing the finger. Ukrainian officials blame Western governments and media for the overoptimism surrounding the counteroffensive. However, this is gaslighting by the Kiev regime as they were the source of much hype and propaganda surrounding the offensive, which Western governments and media were more than happy to disseminate.

It is recalled that in the preparation stages of the counteroffensive in 2022, Chief of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov predicted that the capture of Crimea would happen “not in summer [of 2023], but by the end of spring – perhaps, even a little earlier.”

Budanov said he was not afraid of making such predictions because “it’s not even the beginning of the end [of the war]; it’s a process, and it’s in the making.” He even refused to backtrack from his audacious predictions when given an opportunity in April, saying he had “no reason” to reassess his prediction.

As it turned out, the much-lauded offensive did not even begin in the spring, but in the first week of summer, humiliating Budanov’s predictions that led to NAFO ridiculously planning parties and events in Crimea in the expectation the peninsula would be captured by Ukrainian forces.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to control expectations while also building Western confidence to maintain the flow of equipment, weapons, and, of course, money. Zelensky only attempted to temper expectations when it was evident that the highly promoted spring offensive would become a summer one.

It can be said that deploying the elite 82nd Air Assault Brigade into the Russian meat grinder is the last throw of the dice for Ukraine with only weeks of summer left, which marks a symbolic and literal reminder of how the “spring” offensive was an utter failure. Ukraine has reportedly committed over 90% of its troops in recent days, and in the likelihood that they fail in their objectives, the country will be left with no serious fighting forces, leaving it at the mercy of the Russian military.

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

August 18, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Western press fetishizes Ukrainian amputees as limb loss epidemic grows

BY KIT KLARENBERG · THE GRAYZONE · AUGUST 15, 2023

With Ukrainian forces reportedly suffering a level of amputations reminiscent of WWI, a New York Times proxy war propagandist is spinning amputees as sex symbols and painting their gruesome injuries as “magical.”

After 18 months of devastating proxy warfare, the scale of the depletion of the Ukrainian military is so extensive that even mainstream sources have been forced to concede the cruel reality. On August 1, The Wall Street Journal reported that “between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians” have “lost one or more limbs since the start of the war.” What’s more, the outlet notes, “the actual figure could be higher” because “it takes time to register patients after they undergo the procedure.”

By comparison, around 67,000 Germans and 41,000 Britons underwent amputations during the entire four-year span of the First World War. The publication quotes the head of a group of former military surgeons who train Ukrainian military medics who maintained that “Western military surgeons haven’t seen injuries on this scale since World War II.”

While the implications of the Journal’s report have largely been studiously ignored by Western media, at least one mainstream journalist has displayed a keen interest in Kiev’s amputees. The New York Times’ columnist and ardent liberal interventionist Nicholas Kristof practically fetishized the mass disfigurement of Ukrainian combat veterans in the name of Washington’s war du jour.

In a July 8 op-ed titled “They’re Ready to Fight Again, on Artificial Legs,” Kristof insisted that rather than resenting being used as cannon fodder, Ukraine’s newly-disabled veterans “carry their stumps with pride.”

Citing one soldier who expressed hopes of returning to the frontline despite missing three limbs, Kristof framed such “grit and resilience” as a sure sign Kiev is winning the proxy conflict, and will inevitably emerge victorious over Russia.

The gut-wrenching homage to crippled and mangled Ukrainian soldiers even spun amputation as a means of getting laid, quoting the wife of one amputee as saying, “he’s very sexy without a leg.”

Another amputee cited in the op-ed claimed he had never dared ask his hometown crush out on a date before being hospitalized for “mortar injuries that took his leg and mangled his arms.” But after suffering irreparable and life-altering injuries, he and his sweetheart have been together ever since, the disabled soldier claimed.

Kristof quoted the soldier as follows: “It’s magical. Someone can have all his arms and legs and still not be successful in love, but an amputee can win a heart.”

Hyping Russian losses, covering up Ukraine’s

Throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western officials and journalists have taken a decidedly asymmetrical approach to reporting combat losses. Since the conflict’s first days, legacy media has dutifully repeated the vast, unverifiable figures that NATO-affiliated analysts insist Moscow suffered on the battlefield. In April 2022, the BBC even went as far as to publish the names and photos of Russian soldiers allegedly killed during the war.

But when reporting on Ukrainian casualties, major news outlets typically refer to the figure as a “closely guarded state secret.” The same senior US intelligence and defense officials who are heavily involved in assisting Kiev on military planning and strategy appear to be genuinely in the dark. On the rare occasion that these sources comment publicly on Kiev’s losses, they invariably caution that they’re merely offering an “estimate.”

From the perspective of Kiev and its foreign backers, the proxy war’s informational component is among its most impactful, and the propaganda utility of concealing losses is clear. Shielding Western audiences from the devastating human cost of the conflict makes the ever-fanciful prospect of Ukrainian victory seem more attainable, and keeps public support for the fight high, arms shipments flowing, and the profits of major weapons manufacturers soaring.

A Ukrainian veteran receiving care at the US-based Medical Center and Orthotics & Prosthetics

Ukrainian amputee centers “must be common as dentists”

As the Wall Street Journal explained in early August, Ukraine’s healthcare system “is now overwhelmed… with many patients waiting more than a year for a new limb.” In Zaporizhzhia alone, 40 to 80 wounded veterans reportedly arrive at hospitals with battlefield traumas each day, including amputees from the frontline 25 miles away.

The outlet quoted a Ukrainian medical director who insisted that facilities dedicated to treating and rehabilitating amputees are now needed “in every town across Ukraine,” and, ideally, “must be as common as dentists.”

Unlike recent US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the ongoing proxy conflict in Ukraine is a high-intensity battle of attrition between two near-peers. Under such circumstances, the primary sources of amputation injuries are essentially the same as they were during the grinding trench battles of World War One — artillery, missiles, and mines.

According to a 2014 policy brief published by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, “the typical ratio of those wounded to those killed in conflict has historically hovered around the 3:1 mark,” though “with recent medical advances, however, the U.S. wounded-to-killed ratio today ranges anywhere from 10:1 to 17:1.”

But as the proxy war’s most vocal defenders are quick to point out, Ukrainian soldiers do not have access to the same medical technology as Americans.

Beyond the year-long wait for new limbs, a severe shortage of doctors and technicians to tend to amputees has been reported as well. And despite receiving well over $100 billion in aid from Western nations, Kiev still clearly lacks the technology, infrastructure and expert staff required to match Washington’s contemporary casualty record.

Over the course of two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, around 1,650 US veterans underwent amputation, according to the most recent figures available. And though that relatively small number has often been attributed to improvements in medical technology, American troops were also fighting lopsided skirmishes against poorly equipped adversaries operating without the benefit of air cover.

A January 2008 analysis of data published by the US Army Institute of Surgical Research’s Joint Theater Trauma Registry found that as of June 2006, 423 US soldiers who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan suffered one or more “major limb amputations,” a rate of 5.2% among serious injuries overall.

Eerily, the researchers responsible for the study noted that the percentage of amputees among the Vietnam War’s roughly 96,000 seriously injured casualties was also 5.2% —  the same ratio recorded in Afghanistan and Iraq decades later. The paper’s conclusions were stark:

“Amputation rates [in war] have remained at roughly 7% to 8% of major-extremity injuries for the past 50 years. This is despite increasingly rapid evacuation of casualties, dramatic improvements in surgical technique, and far forward deployment of specialist care. However, over the same period, the degree of primary tissue destruction associated with modern weaponry has also increased dramatically. Unfortunately… we believe the rate of amputation following major limb injury is likely to remain unchanged in the current combat environment.”

However, The Wall Street Journal acknowledged that deaths on the Ukrainian side dwarf those suffered by the US military in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere during recent conflicts:

“Out of 100 soldiers wounded within about three miles of the front line, 36% suffered very severe injuries, while between 5% and 10% of all deployed troops were killed, according to Ukrainian military estimates shared with a group of US military surgeons. In comparison, only 1.3% to 2% of U.S. troops deployed in recent conflicts died in action.”

A study this June by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology which found that 78 percent of Ukrainians have had close relatives or friends injured or killed as a result of the conflict suggests the casualty figures are orders of magnitude greater than those publicly admitted by the Ukrainian military.

Mass death in “an investment trap”

Despite the best offers of liberal interventionists like the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, who attempted to reframe war amputees as an indicator of Ukrainian fearlessness, rather than unambiguously grim symbols of an utterly catastrophic situation, Western citizens are increasingly repelled by the deluge of pro-war propaganda.

On August 4, a CNN poll found that a majority of Americans opposed Congress authorizing more funding for Ukraine, with 51% of respondents saying Washington had “already done enough.” Markedly, there was “slim backing for US military forces to participate in combat operations” – just 17%.

With US elections rapidly approaching, and Biden administration officials openly worrying their Ukraine policy will be a decisive issue on polling day, the conflict’s conclusion could be near. Even Democratic Party loyalists like Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment (a think tank formerly directed by now-CIA director William Burns) are lamenting that the Ukraine proxy war has become a quagmire.

“It’s sad,” Miller wrote. “But [the] US is in an investment trap in Ukraine with no clear way out. Chances of a military breakthrough or a diplomatic solution are slim to none; and slim may have already left town. We’re in deep and lack the ability to do much more than react to events.”

Since publishing its grim survey of Ukraine’s amputation epidemic, The Wall Street Journal has churned out another depressing read for proxy war boosters. On August 13, the WSJ reported that Kiev’s failure to make headway in its vaunted counteroffensive has forced military planners to look ahead to Spring 2024 for another opportunity that “might” tip the balance.

August 17, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Bill Kristol leads charge to make Republicans think ‘right’ on Ukraine

His $2 million campaign wants to ensure that there is only one way to support the people there — and it’s not focusing on diplomacy.

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | Responsible Statecraft | August 17, 2023

Notorious neoconservative Bill Kristol has just launched a $2 million campaign to prevent more Republicans from jumping off the forever war train and to remind them that true Republicans support Ukrainians by backing unfettered aid and weapons for the conflict.

That is the clarion call promoted in this Washington Post story announcing “Republicans for Ukraine,” which is designed to provide “counter-programming” to the “populist” strain that has captured the base, particularly on foreign policy. It is the latest advocacy effort by Kristol’s group, Defending Democracy Together, which has been trying desperately to maintain the hawks’ grip on the GOP since Donald Trump began questioning it during his 2016 presidential campaign.

“Supporting Ukraine is in the best interests of the United States and the best traditions of the Republican Party. Now is no time to give up the fight,” declares the Republicans for Ukraine website.

In previous years (and before the Ukraine war) DDT also pushed campaigns like “Republicans Against Putin” and “Standing with Allies” (which advocated maintaining a U.S. presence in Syria and Iraq). It has leaned in hard on the Never Trump camp, particularly with the super PAC “Republican Voters Against Trump,” which raised over $10 million in the 2020 election cycle, spending $5.6 million in support of Democrat Joe Biden, and $3.3 million against Trump, according to Open Secrets.

Critics say it has been a long time since Kristol was considered a part of the Republican or conservative movement. Aside from his opposition to Trump, it’s obvious that the populist shift in the base against the Washington war policies of the last 20 years has also driven his estrangement.

Conservatives were quick to point out on Tuesday that Kristol doesn’t speak for them or for voters who have soured on the Washington’s foreign policy playbook, particularly on Ukraine. That Kristol’s campaign, through its cultivated Republican testimonials, is unabashedly deploying the Manichean language not only of the Cold War and the Global War on Terror, but also the Domino Theory and the Messianic talk he and his friends favored in 2002, makes the gambit even more out of touch.

“Since when is it ‘conservative’ to spend the taxpayers’ money with no accountability, no strategy, no timeline, and no end game? This ad buy is a waste of money, because conservative voters know the truth: we’ve spent too much money on Ukraine at a time when we can ill afford it. But I’m also not surprised… considering how well-financed the neocon war machine in D.C. has been,” blasted Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, in a comment to RS.

“Conservatives have moved on from such internationalist nonsense, as evident from the combined total tally of the top three primary frontrunners,” argued Sumantra Maitra, a senior editor at the American Conservative, pointing to comments urging restraint on Ukraine by Trump (who is 40 points ahead, on average, of his GOP rivals, despite his legal troubles), Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy. All three, particularly Trump and Ramaswamy, have called for negotiations and a swift end to the war in Ukraine.

“This (Republicans for Ukraine) initiative ignores the vital need to pair American military support with American diplomacy,” says George Beebe, QI’s Director of Grand Strategy. “Aid without diplomacy is simply a formula for yet another forever war — or worse, an escalation into direct war with Russia.”

But to Republicans for Ukraine, that is not the American, or even moral way of talking about the war.

“We’d like to put pressure on Republicans to do the right thing on Ukraine,” said Sara Longwell, executive director of DDT.

That may be a tough slog. Recent polling shows that a strong majority of Republicans are unhappy with Biden’s Ukraine policy and wary of sending more aid to Ukraine. This has driven down overall support for the war, at least in various surveys. Sure, this doesn’t jibe with traditional party positions on Capitol Hill and among the GOP elite in Washington, which continue to see Russia as an existential threat to U.S. interests, and a military buildup of NATO and Ukraine as the best way to challenge it. This is obviously manifested in calls for bigger Pentagon budgets and even advocating for Ukraine membership in NATO.

But the party cracks may be more evident as Biden and congressional leaders attempt to push billions in more aid through a general emergency spending bill this fall.

Here’s where Kristol’s patented “you’re either with us or against us,” “for aid, or against aid,” “democracy vs. autocracy” dichotomies start to fall apart. While some members are calling for a total cut-off, others just want to see future assistance tied to a clear strategy and/or tougher oversight measures.

“When you see Marco Rubio asking why Florida disaster relief must be paired with (Ukraine aid), you know it’s not 2012 anymore,” said Jim Antle, politics editor at the Washington Examiner, pointing to recent comments by the Florida senator, usually one of the biggest foreign policy hawks on the Hill. Rubio said that Biden “owes the American people” a real Ukraine strategy, “something he’s refused to do since Putin invaded Ukraine.”

“We’ve seen incredible bravery by the Ukrainians over the last 18 months,” Rubio continued, “but we’ve also seen U.S. stockpiles dwindle, European countries slow walk critical supplies, and China grow more aggressive towards the U.S. and our national interests. We cannot give a blank check to continue the status quo.”

Conservatives Reid Smith (Stand Together) and Tyler Koteskey (Concerned Veterans of America) published this comprehensive “Blueprint for Rigorous Oversight of Ukraine aid,” in War on the Rocks this week. They acknowledged that there will likely be future aid, but “Congress should pursue a series of measures to ensure better Ukraine aid oversight and a more robust strategic dialogue about how U.S. involvement in the war impacts American interests.”

The new “Republicans for Ukraine” appear to see things through a more black-and-white prism: the only “right” way to support Ukraine is by doing “whatever it takes” unconditionally. Whoever thinks differently is wrong — they may not even be a real conservative or a patriotic American. (A similar frame and the pressures to conform to it also exist among Democrats on the left). These are the same tactics deployed by Kristol’s cadre to chill debate during the two decades of failed U.S. policies in Afghanistan and the Middle East. It is not clear they will work again.

Will Ruger, president of the American Institute for Economic Research and Trump’s nominee for Ambassador to Afghanistan, said DDT’s consternation with the direction of the Republican base on Ukraine “is actually another great sign that those of us who have been fighting neoconservatism for decades are having an impact.” But the fact that the group can easily marshal $2 million in an effort to stop it means this brand of political activism still wields influence.

“(It) shows that people who want to turn American foreign policy back to the dark days of the Bush administration have a lot of resources to try to sway Republicans,” Ruger tells RS.

“The question, though, is whether the Republican base will listen given their increased skepticism towards an idealistic approach to the world that doesn’t seem to put our national interests first.”

August 17, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

CIA Warned Blinken Ukraine ‘Counteroffensive’ Bound to Fail: Seymour Hersh

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 17.08.2023

The veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, who broke the story earlier this year on Washington’s role in last September’s terror attacks against the Nord Stream gas pipeline network, has now pointed to evidence of disillusionment within the Biden administration as the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine grinds to a halt.

The CIA notified US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the Ukraine counteroffensive would be unlikely to inflict a defeat on Moscow, US veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Thursday, citing a US intelligence official.

“The word was getting to him [Blinken] through the Agency [CIA] that the Ukrainian offens[ive] was not going to work. It was a show by Zelensky and there were some in the administration who believed his bull****,” the anonymous official was quoted as saying.

Blinken, the official claimed, has come to the realization that Washington and its Ukrainian proxies “will not win the war” against Russia, but did not “want to go down as the court jester” of the administration in relation to the Ukraine crisis.

“Blinken wanted to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine as [former Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger did in Paris to end the Vietnam War,” according to the official. Instead, the secretary realized that “it was going to be a big lose,” and “found himself way over the skis.”

Ukraine launched a major counteroffensive in early June against heavily entrenched Russian positions in Donbass, Kherson, and Zaporozhye. The counteroffensive failed to make any substantive gains, and cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives, and hundreds of NATO-provided armored vehicles, with Ukraine’s forces unable to reach even the first major Russian defensive lines in two-and-a-half months’ time.

‘Jake Sullivan’s Baby’

The intelligence official cited by Hersh also offered new details on the Biden administration’s motivations for holding the Jeddah Peace Summit earlier this month – with the gathering flopping after Russia was curiously left off the list of invitees, but apparently planned well in advance as a victory summit.

“Jeddah was [Biden National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan’s baby,” the official said, with Sullivan planning it to be “Biden’s equivalent” of Woodrow Wilson’s Versailles Treaty moment at the end of World War I.

“The grand alliance of the free world meeting in a victory celebration after the humiliating defeat of the hated foe to determine the shape of nations for the next generation. Fame and Glory. Promotion and re-election. The jewel in the crown was to be Zelensky’s achievement of Putin’s unconditional surrender after the lightning spring offensive. They were even planning a Nuremberg-type trial at the world court, with Jake as our representative. Just one more f***-up, but who is counting? Forty nations showed up, all but six looking for free food after the Odessa shutdown,” the official said.

Jockeying for Position

Hersh’s source also indicated that CIA Director William Burns had apparently recently “made his move to join the sinking ship” of stoking the crisis in relations with Moscow over Ukraine after signing on to the administration’s position on continued NATO expansion – which along with Kiev’s eight-year-long war against Donbass was one of the causes of the present conflict.

“Burns does not lack self-confidence and ambition,” the anonymous intelligence official said, indicating that running the CIA under Biden has effectively been a demotion compared to his previous job as deputy secretary of state under Barack Obama.

Notwithstanding growing internal concerns about the continued viability of the proxy war in Ukraine, Hersh believes that the administration will continue to promote a wishful thinking approach to the crisis to the American people, even as “the end” nears and “the assessments supplied by Biden to the public are out of a comic strip.”

August 17, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s asymmetric response

Russia’s asymmetric response to latest announced plans of U.S. and NATO for sending more devastating military hardware to Ukraine

By Gilbert Doctorow | August 15, 2023

Each time over the past 18 months that it appeared the Ukraine war was approaching a finale amounting to Kiev’s defeat and capitulation we have been surprised by yet another U.S. initiated escalation that changes the nature of the conflict and promises a new and drawn-out stage of fighting.

Did the Ukrainian counter-offensive which began on 4 June fail?  An increasing number of Western mainstream media including CNN have published reports acknowledging it is a failure. In Washington, the finger pointing game over who ‘lost Ukraine’ has begun among the country’s most determined backers.

Europe is a backwater in more than one dimension. Not everyone here has gotten the word about Ukraine’s losses in two months of desperate attacks on Russian defensive positions across the entire 1,000 km front. Last night I watched a round-table discussion of the war on French television in which not a single panelist had been told that the game is up in Ukraine. These smirky amateurs, mostly garden variety journalists, were discussing the fighting around one or another Ukrainian town on the front line whose name they could barely pronounce, all convinced that the Ukrainian forces had the upper hand and were on their way to breaching the Russian defenses, about to reach the less awesome second line of defense, and were surely to make it through to the Sea of Azov, thereby achieving the basic objective of the entire operation – cutting the Russian supply lines and breaking the back of Russian resistance. The whole time these commentators smiled broadly as if the war were just a video game.

But to hell with the French propagandists. In the German media, mainstream journalists have been seeding the discussion of the war with news about Ukraine’s setbacks and the improbability of their accomplishing anything other than self-destruction as the fighting continues. Simultaneously with the announcement that Germany is about to supply long range reconnaissance drones to Kiev, Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for “continuation” of peace negotiations. It is curious that no one told him there are no peace negotiations going on today. But the main point is that victory on the battlefield seems to have vanished from the Berlin discourse.

Nonetheless, the United States and Britain announce day after day new appropriations for delivery of military hardware of the most devastating sort to Ukraine. Abrams tanks are on the way. Longer range strike missiles with a range up to 500 km may soon be shipped. Biden in the past week inserted authorization for another 14 billion dollars in military supplies into a bill for provision of aid to victims of natural disasters, meaning the present disaster in Hawaii and elsewhere in the States. The tactic was meant to overcome rising Republican opposition to giving Ukraine one more cent of aid should the aid have been in a separate bill dedicated to the war effort. The drumbeats for provision of F16s to Ukraine continue and there is talk of preparing new Ukrainian troops for a renewed counter-offensive in 2024.

So what are the Russians doing about the new arms on the way to Ukraine?

An article posted in Russian social media and carried by the number one news portal, Dzen, formerly a subsidiary of Yandex, gives us a good insight into Russian countermeasures that otherwise are buried in general daily Western reporting on the war. We hear about air raid alerts across Ukraine which took place a day ago but there is no explanation. We hear about a Russian missile strike that killed a young Ukrainian family but are told it is just part of the Russian attacks on civilians.

The article posted on “Интересная жизнь с Vera Star” makes sense of it all.

First, those air raid sirens across the whole of Ukraine were related to the systematic Russian bombardment of all still functional Ukrainian airports from which their air force’s SU-24 and SU-27 can operate. These are the aircraft that are capable of carrying and firing the Storm Shadow and other long range missiles that have been supplied by Britain and France, and which may carry German missiles, if Berlin decides to proceed with its previous offer of such materiel.

Second, we are told that the Russians have just used Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to destroy the railway tunnels passing under the Carpathians which have been the main supply route of Western military hardware arriving from Poland and Romania. For a long time, there was discussion in the Russian senior military command over whether it was permissible to attack this ostensibly civilian infrastructure. However, the decision was taken to do so in light of the latest U.S. and NATO plans to raise the bar in what attack equipment they are providing to Ukraine. As the Russians argue, civilian infrastructure that is being used to serve military objectives automatically becomes a legal target for them.

By Russian calculations, they have now nullified the latest Western plans to prolong the war.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

August 15, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

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