By Drago Bosnic | June 26, 2023
Amid numerous disturbing reports about possible false flag operations involving nuclear devices and weapons, the Kiev regime seems to be escalating its actions in this regard. According to various local sources, the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), located in the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk in the Nikolayev region (oblast), has been effectively taken over by the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Although troops have been stationed in and around the NPP since the start of the special military operation (SMO), in recent weeks this has escalated. Apparently, mysterious “guards” have appeared at the NPP and have even restricted access to the reactor facilities, including to the staff responsible for the critically important maintenance of the reactor and the NPP’s key systems and subsystems.
Worse yet, the “guards” are offering no explanation for their behavior, nor does anyone else, be it the military or civilian authorities. In essence, nobody really knows for sure, but many people are skeptical (to say the least). The “guards” have even placed what can only be described as ammunition crates inside the NPP. And it doesn’t seem to be small arms ammunition, but something much bigger, such as shells or even rockets, all of which have foreign markings. For over a year, there have been numerous reports about the Kiev regime hiding NATO-sourced weapons there, obviously in an attempt to prevent their destruction. Needless to say, having any sort of weapons at a nuclear facility of any kind is suicidal in and of itself, but having shells and rockets stored there is simply criminal.
This is particularly dangerous as the political West and the Neo-Nazi junta have been insisting that Russia is supposedly planning to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, supposedly due to mythical “battlefield losses”. On the other hand, Moscow has repeatedly issued warnings about the Kiev regime’s plans to build a so-called “dirty bomb”, for which it has more than enough enriched uranium stored in several Soviet-era NPPs across Ukraine. The previous scenario is extremely unlikely, as it’s not in Russia’s interest to use nuclear weapons. However, Moscow’s “dirty bomb” warnings are certainly not to be dismissed, as the Neo-Nazi junta has been threatening to acquire nuclear weapons for years. This includes threats by the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky himself.
Latest intelligence data suggests that the South Ukraine NPP is also being used as an ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) command and control center for most NATO forces covertly stationed in Ukraine. This is hardly unexpected and is in line with the previous message Russia sent to the belligerent alliance after it hit an underground bunker where hundreds of NATO officers were deployed to command and coordinate their favorite puppet regime’s troops. According to varying estimates, up to 400 officers and other staff were neutralized in a hypersonic missile strike (presumably involving a single 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal”). Obviously, in order to ensure such high casualties among high-value assets are avoided, NATO most likely decided to deploy its higher-ranking personnel in NPPs, knowing that Russia will not target those.
This could also explain why the United States and NATO are suddenly parroting about invoking Article 5 in case of a supposed Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons or if an attack on an NPP causes radiation spikes. Both scenarios clearly imply that a false flag is in the works, as this is precisely how the political West operates during its countless aggressions against the world. The belligerent power pole first threatens to attack in case the side they are targeting does something, and then, all of a sudden, the targeted country supposedly does “exactly that”, even though it’s clearly not in its interest. Obviously, such a scenario is virtually impossible to implement against a country like Russia without leading to a world-ending thermonuclear confrontation.
It has now become clear that the political West is aware of just how much of a failure the Neo-Nazi junta’s much-touted counteroffensive has been, leading to attempts to thwart any possible Russian counterattack that might have devastating consequences for the Kiev regime. This might be attempted through direct intervention by NATO, as the political West probably believes that such escalation could be controlled. And a possible false flag operation simulating a Russian attack on the South Ukraine NPP (or even the Zaporozhye NPP) might be used as an excuse for that. Still, considering how risky such a scenario is, the belligerent power pole might even contemplate the delivery of nuclear weapons to the Neo-Nazi junta in an attempt to cause a localized nuclear confrontation with Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already hinted at this possibility, warning that the delivery of nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets might be the way for the political West to achieve such a scenario. However, for its part, Moscow has warned that this would certainly not be a localized confrontation, as the Kiev regime’s puppet masters would also suffer the consequences of their rabidly Russophobic actions in Ukraine. The already thin line between global peace and thermonuclear annihilation is getting thinner by the day due to the US-led belligerent power pole’s unrelenting aggression against Russia. The political West has a clear choice of considering an off-ramp solution that might avert a catastrophe of global proportions. Still, it’s pushing for further escalation.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | June 25, 2023
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill last week banning the import of books produced in Russia or printed in the Russian language. The new law is Kiev’s latest escalation in its extensive effort to eliminate Russian culture in Ukraine.
Since taking office, Zelensky has led a campaign of “derussification” within Ukraine. Last year, Kiev’s legislature passed a bill that will heavily restrict books manufactured in Russia or printed in the Russian language. Zelensky announced he signed the bill on Thursday, saying, “I believe the law is right.”
Kiev’s Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko praised Zelensky for approving the ban. “The adoption of this draft law will protect the Ukrainian book publishing and distribution sector from the destructive influence of the ‘Russian world,’” he said.
The bill signed into law last week will ban all imports of books from Russia and Belarus. Additionally, the state will require a permit to import a Russian book from any third country. Zelenskiy’s office said the law would “strengthen the protection of the Ukrainian cultural and information space from anti-Ukrainian Russian propaganda.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Zelensky enacted a series of escalating steps with the goal of erasing, from Ukraine, any and all Russian culture. Kiev has worked to destroy all Russian monuments, rename public spaces that are in the Russian language, erase Russian historical figures, and target a branch of the Christian Orthodox church Kiev believes is too closely tied with Moscow.
Tkachenko has long been an advocate of the culture war in Ukraine. In a 2015 interview, he supported a ban on TV series and movies that are produced in Russia or glorify Russian people. One of Tkachenko’s goals at the time was to replace Russian content on Ukrainian televisions with Western programming.
While Kiev presents Moscow as the target of the culture war, the substantial minority of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers living in Ukraine are subjected to the laws. Zelensky has used the pretext of “derussification” process to consolidate control over Ukraine’s politics and media.
Sputnik – 22.06.2023
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday the European Union have transferred to Ukraine another 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in financial assistance to support its infrastructure.
“Today we disburse another €1.5 bn for Ukraine in macro-financial assistance. We help keep Ukraine’s services and infrastructure afloat in its brave fight for freedom,” von der Leyen tweeted.
She also promised to give Kiev more money, recalling the recently announced 50 billion euros of four-year financial reserves for Ukraine.
The head of the commission reiterated the EU was willing to provide Kiev with “long haul” support.
Earlier, the European Commission has reviewed the draft EU budget for the 2024-2027 period and asked member states to increase it by 66 billion euros ($72 billion), mostly to fund assistance for Ukraine.
Western countries have supplied Ukraine with military aid since the start of hostilities in February 2022. The support evolved from lighter artillery munitions and training in 2022 to heavier weapons, including tanks, later that year and in 2023.
By Gilbert Doctorow | June 22, 2023
This morning’s edition of the news and discussion program Sixty Minutes on Russian state television opened with the now traditional montage of excerpts from U.S. television reporting on transgender issues. Today this was the latest court decisions on state legislation banning sex change operations in children. That sort of material is now the daily filler on Russian news, providing a nice distraction from the misery of war and a clear demonstration of what degenerates the Americans have become.
However, this distraction was cut short and ten minutes into the program we were shown live images of the ongoing meeting of the RF Security Council chaired by Vladimir Putin. The meeting was virtual not in-person. The President was seated at his desk in his Kremlin office with the other participants shown on television monitors. We caught the moment when Defense Minister Shoigu was reporting to Putin on the summary results of the fighting since the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive at the start of the month: 246 Ukrainian tanks, including13 German Leopards, have been destroyed and a bit more than 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. Yes, killed. In addition there must be the injured.
This, of course, was the part of the session fit for public dissemination. What really brought the Council together today was something else: to consider Russia’s response to latest developments in the war zone, namely the Ukrainians’ destruction yesterday of several bridges connecting the Kherson oblast under Russian control to the Crimea. It has already been determined that the attackers used the British supplied cruise missiles Storm Shadow. This looks very much like the tripwire that Shoigu had in mind a couple of days ago when he said that Russia will bomb the decision making center in Kiev if its territory is attacked. So we may well expect something to happen now.
Then there was surely another issue on the table arising from developments described in a 5-minute report by a journalist with the German Bild magazine which the Russians put up on the screen. His televised report was devoted to the consequences of the explosion at the Kakhovka dam and the emptying of the vast reservoir behind it, which, per the journalist was, as measured in square kilometers, larger than the Berlin metropolitan area.
After opening his remarks with the Hail Mary assertion that the Russians were responsible for this disaster, he went on to describe very persuasively why the emptying of the reservoir now serves Ukrainian military interests perfectly. Most of the land which had been under water is now dry and can very likely support tanks. In the new conditions, the distance separating Ukrainian and Russian forces in the Kakhovka area has been reduced to zero from what had been a body of water varying from 5 to 31 kilometers in width. Moreover, the length of this new stretch of the front is up to 200 km. And in this new front line, the Russians have no defensive mine fields, tank traps, hidden artillery or well engineered trenches that have been so murderous to the attacking Ukrainian army in the Southern Donetsk and Zaporozhie fronts.
This has to be one of the main “surprises” that the Ukrainian command had in mind as it looks for new ways to achieve a breakthrough. But, this potentially dramatic change is not necessarily what it seems: this is not some German move around the Maginot line that left the French with no response. Russia has the means to respond, but that takes us back to point one: to finish off the regime in Kiev now and not wait further.
Finally, within the broadcast of Sixty Minutes, the leader of a Chechen unit active in the Donbas who appears rather frequently on the program gave his assessment of the personnel and equipment losses on Ukrainian fighting potential. As he noted, the loss of tanks and artillery pieces means that the best trained Ukrainian fighters are now dead. To put an infantry soldier on the front lines, you hand him a Kalashnikov and push him out on the field. But the tank commanders and artillery men are the top soldiers who have undergone long training and war experience. Their loss is irreplaceable and explains the heavy infantry losses comprising most of the 13,000 dead, new recruits who were sent to their deaths as cannon fodder.
The two o’clock feature news program on Channel One provided additional video excerpts from the morning’s RF Security Council meeting, in particular the report to Putin by Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of the Council. His discussion of Ukrainian equipment destroyed was far more detailed, listing the numbers of armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces and rapid fire rocket launchers, helicopters, drones and much more. The conclusion was that most of the equipment that has been supplied to Ukraine over the past months is now destroyed. That takes in both US and European manufactured equipment as well as Soviet equipment donated by former Warsaw Pact countries. Ukraine is now living hand to mouth on fighting material coming in from the West.
The two o’clock news also devoted special attention to the commemorative events going on today in Moscow and in cities and towns across Russia to mark the 82nd anniversary of the German invasion that brought the USSR into WWII. We were shown video recordings of candle lightings where tens of thousands of lights were laid out to form powerful images of remembrance. All of this comes in the midst of what is seen as a new struggle to crush Nazism in Europe as did their parents and grandparents in the Great Patriotic War.
RT | June 22, 2023
The Ukraine conflict was instigated by the US and other Western countries, and as such it is up to Washington to pay for the reconstruction of the ravaged nation, Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, claimed on Wednesday.
Antonov was asked to comment on a statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who, while speaking at a Ukraine reconstruction conference in London, claimed that “Russia will eventually bear the cost” of restoring the country.
The Russian diplomat pushed back against Blinken’s remarks, saying the conflict between Moscow and Kiev was “the result of years of deliberate efforts by the United States to create a hotbed of tensions at our borders, to turn Ukraine into ‘anti-Russia,’” which involved a Western-backed coup in the Ukrainian capital in 2014.
Antonov claimed that the US was actively fanning hostilities by pumping Kiev with weapons, while nipping any peace initiatives in the bud. “This means that the administration is fully responsible for what is happening in Ukraine. That’s why it is up to the United States to rebuild the country,” he stated.
He went on to state that while it is possible to restore houses destroyed by American weapons, it will be much more difficult to erase the humanitarian consequences of the conflict.
“How will… Washington evaluate the lives of innocent people? How is the United States going to settle accounts with the Ukrainians, whom they are driving into reckless frontal assaults in today’s so-called counter-offensive?” the envoy asked.
While Western countries have pledged billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance to Ukraine, some of Kiev backers have also called for the seizure of Russian assets that were frozen after the start of the Ukraine conflict, to be used for reconstruction. While legal hurdles have so far prevented this from happening, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has described the initiative as “pure banditry.”
The Cradle | June 21, 2023
Egyptian researcher and political analyst Ahmad Sultan was quoted as saying on 21 June that many of the extremist militants who left Syria for the Ukrainian battlefield last year have realized that the fight against Russia is futile.
“The jihadists have realized that the situation in Ukraine is difficult for them, and that the arena there is not suitable for them, and that their fight against Russia is a lost battle,” Sultan said.
“Among the jihadists who returned [to Syria] recently is the leader Abdel Hakim al-Shishani … he is one of the most prominent leaders who left with their fighters from Idlib to Ukraine,” he added.
“Dozens of foreign jihadists, especially Chechens, led by Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, the leader of the Soldiers of the Caucasus group, left Idlib in northern Syria and relocated to the fronts against Russian forces in Ukraine,” Sultan went on to explain, adding that Shishani made his way back to Syria “recently.”
Shishani is a Chechen militant leader who was in charge of the Idlib-based group of foreign fighters, Soldiers of the Caucasus.
At the start of the year, Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported that after several months of disappearance, the well-known Chechen extremist appeared in Ukraine as part of Kiev’s ‘international legion.’ The Chechen commander appeared in a video posted by the official Twitter account of Ukraine’s defense intelligence.
According to Sultan, Shishani and his Soldiers of the Caucasus were stationed on the fronts near Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city which just last month fell to Russian forces.
“The available data confirms that there are countries that facilitated the process of these fighters’ exit from Syria to Ukraine and that the process of transferring foreign fighters was planned by intelligence services affiliated with countries involved in the conflict inside Ukraine,” the Egyptian researcher continued.
According to Al-Akhbar’s January report, Turkish intelligence played a leading role in facilitating the transfer of militants from Syria to Ukraine.
Sultan adds that these cross-country transfers of militants were ignored by the US coalition operating in Syria, which he said “raises questions.”
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, hundreds of Syria-based militants belonging to ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and other groups, have made their way to the eastern European country.
“The transfer of foreign fighters suggests that there is an attempt to recreate the scenario of the Afghan-Soviet war in Ukraine. There are fundamental differences between the two cases, but this did not prevent some countries from using the same tactics,” he concluded.
During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, foreign militants joined the Afghan side under heavy backing from the US and Saudi Arabia.
US-backing for the ‘Mujahideen’ in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s resulted in the formation of what is today known as Al-Qaeda. This was admitted by Hilary Clinton in 2009.
By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 20.06.2023
While the long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive has been going on for more than two weeks already, one thing has become increasingly apparent: Kiev’s troops’ have stalled while they continue to suffer heavy casualties, a security analyst told Sputnik.
Ukraine essentially continues to be sending all its troops at the Russian defenses, sacrificing hundreds, if not thousands, of Ukrainian soldiers and still failing to produce any result that Zelensky and his NATO sponsors could sell as at least a tactical victory.
Speaking to Sputnik, international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda noted that “there has been essentially no progress by the Kiev regime’s offensive.”
“It is effectively stalled and they continue to take heavy casualties, heavy attrition,” Sleboda said, adding that, in most cases, Ukrainian troops bleed and die “still ten, fifteen kilometers” away from “Russia’s first defensive line.”
According to Sleboda, all this fighting is taking place in what he described as the “throwaway zone”: an area before the actual Russian defensive lines, which the Russian troops deemed unsuitable for “static, heavy defenses, defensive lines with trenches and fortifications.”
Noting how Institute for the Study of War said in a statement that Ukrainian forces may be temporarily pausing counter offensive operations to reevaluate tactics, the analyst suggested it essentially means that the architects of the counteroffensive realized that their approach is not working.
While he did admit that this statement could be a deception, Sleboda argued that it “largely reflects what we’re seeing,” with Ukrainian forces managing to seize into a “string of farm hamlets” at a cost of “so much blood and steel,” only to find themselves the lowlands, with Russian forces raining rockets and shells upon them from fortified positions located on the high ground.
He also stressed that, while resorting to “human wave attacks” allowed Ukrainian forces to drive back some of the Russian screening squads deployed ahead of the actual Russian defensive lines, most of the Kiev regime’s troops who perished in this counteroffensive “died without ever really seeing the enemy,” not to mention that they lost a lot more men than the Russian defenders.
On Tuesday, June 20, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Kiev regime forces lost over 400 militants dead during the past 24 hours alone while unsuccessfully attempting to simultaneously advance on several fronts.
RT | June 20, 2023
The European Commission wants member states to cough up €50 billion ($55 billion) to bankroll the Ukrainian government, so it can pay wages and pensions, and commence reconstruction projects, sources cited by Bloomberg have said.
The terms of the proposed bailout are subject to change pending an official announcement on Tuesday, the outlet reported on Tuesday. The package will be financed by direct contributions from member states, as opposed to borrowing from the market.
The aid will be provided in the form of grants, concessional loans and guarantees rather than some “burdensome reconstruction instrument,” the outlet said, adding that the money would be provided between 2024 and 2027.
The Ukrainian budget has been receiving cash injections from Western sponsors to keep it running. Washington and its allies have pledged to help Kiev “for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia, including through the provision of non-military support.
The US alone provided $26.4 billion in budgetary aid between January 2022 and February 2023, according to the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. The aid package announced by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on February 24 was worth $9.9 billion.
Critics of the policy have claimed Ukraine has a lengthy record of grafting and argued that the money could have been spent by Western nations at home to solve their own immediate problems. Bloomberg sources suggested that the EU funding would be made conditional on Kiev delivering reforms “to improve the rule of law and address corruption.”
According to Reuters, the European Commission is set to publish a report this week about Kiev’s effort, which will state that it has met two of the seven conditions to start membership negotiations. The milestones reportedly relate to judicial reform and media regulation.
Sputnik – 20.06.2023
The trend of non-return to Kiev of representatives of the Ukrainian interior, foreign and defense ministries and special services, who are completing long-term business trips abroad, is gaining momentum, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said on Tuesday.
“Along with the mass exodus of the working age population from Ukraine, the trend towards non-return to Kiev of representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, special services and the Ministry of Internal Affairs is gaining momentum,” the SVR said in a statement.
“This is what many employees of Ukrainian diplomatic institutions accredited in the EU countries do. After completing a long-term business trip, they remain in the host countries, changing their diplomatic status to refugee status,” the SVR said, adding that employees of foreign missions of Ukraine in the countries of the Asia-Pacific region do the same.
Additionally, the SVR said that “mop-ups” are underway in the foreign institutions of Ukraine as Kiev seeks to identify disloyal employees and ensure their early return to their homeland.
By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 19.06.2023
The long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, touted both by the regime in Kiev and its Western backers for months, finally began this month, although it seems that it has so far failed to produce the results its masterminds desired.
While Ukrainian forces demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for losing manpower and military hardware by charging across minefields into fortified positions held by Russian forces, they haven’t managed to get close to, let alone breach, the first line of Russian defense.
Retired USAF Lt.Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik that Western media “has reported very little concrete information about the counteroffensive,” with much of the information on the subject coming straight from Ukrainian media and thus being “difficult to verify.”
According to Kwiatkowski, Kiev was “politically pushed” into launching this counteroffensive by “its NATO sponsors,” despite the fact that, as it turned out, Ukrainian forces simply weren’t prepared for it.
“The results are an increasingly desperate battlefield for Ukraine, and increasingly desperate measures being taken by Ukraine and its political leadership,” she said. “When I say desperate, I’m suggesting that the Ukrainian leadership has decided to write off regaining the eastern lands including Crimea and now are ready to do what they can to simply increase costs for Russia in the future – by destroying civilian and energy infrastructure, and the ability of that part of Ukraine to become productive as easily as they might.”
Rather than an actual counteroffensive meant to allow Kiev to seize control over Donbass and Crimea, Kwiatkowski argued, we are witnessing what she described as “dog in the manger” military scenario.
It also remains unclear whether NATO leaders and the Kiev regime are even in agreement about what the “end goal” of this “strangely-designed counteroffensive” actually is, the ex-DoD analyst mused.
“When US policymakers are asked about this ‘goal’ they say simply, ‘no peace, no freeze, keep fighting until the last Ukrainian,'” she added.
As Kwiatkowski explained, the Kiev regime and its NATO backers are unlikely to achieve any “serious progress” if they “continue solely with what they have been doing.”
Theoretically, Ukrainian forces might achieve success if their “ground and limited sea capability” could be “refreshed, well-led, focused on a specific mission, AND a specific counter-offensive coordinated with a temporary destruction of air command and control, or a major destruction of Russian airfields or aircraft,” she said.
However, “the very imaginative consideration of how many ducks would need to be in a row for this to succeed is mind-blowing, and certainly unsustainable by current Ukrainian capabilities,” Kwiatkowski remarked.
“In a sense, this has been the story of the Ukraine war — and fantasies that have fed Ukrainian political strategy since 2014. These fantasies are based in trust in American politicians and diplomats – who know very little about actual war-fighting, actual democracy, and economy,” she continued. “The same people who promised cakewalks and flowers in Iraq and new energy pipelines across Afghanistan, also promised Zelensky things that cannot be delivered.”
Kwiatkowski did warn, however, that this does not mean that the “neocons in the West, who have insisted upon this war, are not dangerous to Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the planet.”
By Drago Bosnic | June 19, 2023
Respecting deals between countries or governments goes back millennia and includes civilizations such as Sumerians and Ancient Egyptians. This was always considered a sort of litmus test of a certain country’s or ruler’s reputation and it stuck for a very long time. In essence, this practice predates the very concept of international law and is in many ways its direct predecessor. However, it would seem certain countries haven’t really got the memo about how important respecting treaties is and what disastrous consequences may follow if one doesn’t.
On June 17, during a meeting with a number of African leaders and delegates who came to Moscow to offer a solution that would end the Ukrainian conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a shocking revelation and even gave details of a March 2022 peace deal with the Kiev regime. The agreement, titled the “Treaty on the Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine” (negotiated with the mediation of the Turkish government), was actually signed by the Kiev regime. However, the Neo-Nazi junta decided to discontinue its compliance with the treaty as soon as Russia kept its own initial end of the bargain.
Apart from other, more technical details, the deal included a clause that was supposed to be one of the key points of the Ukrainian Constitution and that would guarantee the country’s permanent neutrality. The very fact that Russia was insisting on this makes the claims that Moscow allegedly wanted to “conquer Ukraine” a moot point. In return for neutrality, the Russian military was to pull out and effectively end the special military operation (SMO). To back up his claims, President Putin also presented the relevant documentation of the abortive peace deal to the African delegates.
“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that, with President Erdogan’s assistance, as you know, a string of talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in Turkey so as to work out both the confidence-building measures you mentioned, and to draw up the text of the agreement. We did not discuss with the Ukrainian side that this treaty would be classified, but we have never presented it, nor commented on it. This draft agreement was initiated by the head of the Kiev negotiation team. He put his signature there. Here it is,” Putin stated and then presented the documents.
The documents also revealed that apart from Russia, other guarantors of the agreement were the United States, the United Kingdom and France. The only non-Western guarantor was China. The deal also specified the future size of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), as well as what types of weapons and equipment it would be allowed to field. Expectedly, numbers proposed by the two sides were vastly different, as Moscow suggested the AFU shouldn’t have more than 85,000 soldiers, while the National Guard should be limited to 15,000. On the other hand, the Kiev regime insisted that the number should be 250,000.
In terms of weapons and equipment, Russia proposed that the AFU should be capped at 342 MBTs (main battle tanks), 1029 armored vehicles, 96 MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems), 50 combat and 52 support aircraft. However, for its part, the Neo-Nazi junta insisted on having 800 MBTs, 2400 armored vehicles, 600 MLRS, 74 combat and 86 support aircraft. The agreement was also supposed to include limitations on the number of ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles), MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems), mid to long-range SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems and several other types of weapons and military equipment.
To show that its goal was never to “conquer Ukraine”, as well as to demonstrate its readiness to honor the peace treaty, Moscow even pulled out its troops from northern Ukraine, including from the outskirts of Kiev it reached in mere days. Obviously, the actual aim of the SMO was to conduct an operation similar to that in Georgia in 2008, when Tbilisi was forced to sign a peace deal after it foolishly attacked Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. However, the Kiev regime withdrew from the talks immediately after the Russian military left northern Ukraine, clearly indicating that the Neo-Nazi junta never intended to honor the agreement.
“After we pulled our troops away from Kiev – as we had promised to do – the Kiev authorities … tossed [their commitments] into the dustbin of history. They abandoned everything,” Putin stated, adding: “Where are the guarantees that they will not walk away from agreements in the future? … However, even under such circumstances, we have never refused to conduct negotiations.”
Indeed, how is Russia to ever trust any official agreement signed by the Kiev regime when the latter repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to break any and every deal so far? Worse yet, the so-called “guarantors” from the political West have shown that they’re equally untrustworthy, as their (current and former) leaders have not only admitted, but are even openly boasting about “giving Ukraine time” by signing deals that they knew would be broken. This only reinforces the notion former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev (rightfully) insists on – negotiating deals with the political West and its vassals and satellite states only demonstrates weakness.
It should also be noted that thanks to this treachery, approximately 200,000 forcibly conscripted Ukrainians were sent to certain death, while at least twice as many have suffered permanent, life-altering injuries. Worse yet, these are not conclusive numbers, as there’s no indication that hostilities will end any time soon. Moscow clearly demonstrated that it didn’t want this, but it also showed what its armed forces are capable of. Either way, the political West awakened a sleeping giant that is extremely unlikely to go back to hibernation now that its opponents have shown their true colors.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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