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Don’t Forget WaPo’s Report From December About Kiev’s Plans To Blow Up The Kakhovka Dam

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 6, 2023

The partial destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on early Tuesday morning saw Kiev and Moscow exchange accusations about who’s to blame, but a report from the Washington Post (WaPo) in late December extends credence to the Kremlin’s version of events. Titled “Inside the Ukrainian counteroffensive that shocked Putin and reshaped the war”, its journalists quoted former commander of November’s Kherson Counteroffensive Major General Andrey Kovalchuk who shockingly admitted to planning this war crime:

“Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages. The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.”

His remark about how “the step remained a last resort” is pertinent to recall at present considering that the first phase of Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive completely failed on Monday according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Just like Ukraine launched its proxy invasion of Russia in late May to distract from its loss in the Battle of Artyomovsk, so too it seems it might have gone through with Kovalchuk’s planned war crime to distract from this most recent embarrassment as well.

The above-mentioned explanation isn’t as far-fetched as some might initially think either. After all, one of complexity theory’s precepts is that initial conditions at the onset of non-linear processes can disproportionately shape the outcome. In this context, the first failed phase of Kiev’s counteroffensive risked ruining the entire campaign, which could have prompted its planners to employ Kovalchuk’s “last resort” in order to introduce an unexpected variable into the equation that might improve their odds.

Russia had over 15 months to entrench itself in Ukraine’s former eastern and southern regions that Kiev still claims as its own through the construction of various defensive structures and associated contingency planning so as to maintain its control over those territories. It therefore follows that even the most properly supplied and thought-out counteroffensive wasn’t going to be a walk in the park contrary to the Western public’s expectations, thus explaining why the first phase just failed.

This reality check shattered whatever wishful thinking expectations Kiev might have had since it showed that the original plan of swarming the Line of Contact (LOC) entails considerable costs that reduce the chances of it succeeding unless something serious happens behind the front lines to distract the Russian defenders. Therein lies the strategic reason behind partially destroying the Kakhovka Dam on Tuesday morning exactly as Kovalchuk proved late last year is possible to pull off per his own admission to WaPo.

The first of Kiev’s goals that this terrorist attack served was to prompt global concern about the safety of the Russian-controlled Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which relies on water from the now-rapidly-depleting Kakhovka Reservoir for cooling. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that there’s “no immediate nuclear safety risk”, but a latent one can’t be ruled out. Should a crisis transpire, then it could throw Russia’s defenses in northern Zaporozhye Region into chaos.

The second goal is that the downstream areas of Kherson Region, which are divided between Kiev and Moscow, have now been flooded. Although the water might eventually recede after some time, this could complicate Russia’s defensive plans along the left bank of the Dnieper River. Taken together with the consequences connected to the first scenario, this means that a significant part of the riparian front behind the LOC could soon soften up to facilitate the next phase of Kiev’s counteroffensive.

In fact, the geographic scope of Kiev’s “unconventional softening operation” might even expand to Crimea due to the threat that Tuesday morning’s terrorist attack could pose to the peninsula’s water supply via its eponymous canal. The regional governor said that sufficient supplies remain for now but that the coming days will reveal the level of risk. While Crimea still managed to survive Kiev’s blockade of the canal for eight years, there’s no doubt that this development is disadvantageous for Russia.

The fourth strategic goal builds upon the three that were already discussed and concerns the psychological warfare component of this attack. On the foreign front, Kiev’s gaslighting that Moscow is guilty of “ecocide” was amplified by the Mainstream Media in spite of Kovalchuk’s damning admission to WaPo last December in order to maximize global pressure on Russia, while the domestic front is aimed at sowing panic in Ukraine’s former regions with the intent of further softening Russia’s defenses there.

And finally, the last strategic goal that was served by partially destroying the Kakhovka Dam is that Russia might soon be thrown into a dilemma. Kiev’s “unconventional softening operation” along the Kherson-Zaporozhye LOC could divide the Kremlin’s focus from the Belgorod-Kharkov and Donbass fronts, which could weaken one of those three and thus risk a breakthrough. The defensive situation could become even more difficult for Russia if Kiev expands the conflict by attacking Belarus and/or Moldova too.

To be absolutely clear, the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine still favor Russia for the time being, though that’s precisely why Kiev carried out Tuesday morning’s terrorist attack in a desperate attempt to reshape them in its favor. This assessment is based on the observation that Russia’s victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk shows that it’s able to hold its own against NATO in the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that the bloc’s chief declared in mid-February.

Furthermore, even the New York Times admitted that the West’s sanctions failed to collapse Russia’s economy and isolate it, while some of its top influencers also admitted that it’s impossible to deny the proliferation of multipolar processes in the 15 months since the special operation began. These include German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former US National Security Council member Fiona Hill, and Goldman Sachs’ President of Global Affairs Jared Cohen.

The military-strategic dynamics described in the preceding two paragraphs will inevitably doom the West to defeat in the New Cold War’s largest proxy conflict thus far unless something major unexpectedly happens to change them, which is exactly what Kiev was trying to achieve via its latest terrorist attack. The reason why few foresaw this is because Kovalchuk admitted to WaPo last December that his side had previously planned to blow up part of the Kakhovka Dam as part of its Kherson Counteroffensive.

It therefore seemed unthinkable that Kiev would ultimately do just that over half a year later and then gaslight that Moscow was to blame when the Mainstream Media itself earlier reported the existence of Ukraine’s terrorist plans after quoting the same Major General who bragged about them at the time. Awareness of this fact doesn’t change what happened, but it can have a powerful impact on the Western public’s perceptions of this conflict, which is why WaPo’s report should be brought to their attention.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | | Leave a comment

‘Give War a Chance’ – A ‘War That Even Pacifists Can Get Behind’

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 5, 2023

More than a year into Russia’s Special Operation, the initial burst of European excitement at western push-back on Russia has dissipated. The mood instead has turned to “existential dread, a nagging suspicion that [western] civilisation may destroy itself”, Professor Helen Thompson writes.

For an instant, a euphoria had coalesced around the putative projection of the EU as a world power; as a key actor, about to compete on a world scale. Initially, events seemed to play to Europe’s conviction of its market powers: Europe was going to bring down a major power – Russia – by financial coup d’état alone. The EU felt ‘six feet tall’.

It seemed at the time a galvanising moment: “The war re-forged a long-dormant Manichaean framing of existential conflict between Russia and the West, assuming ontological, apocalyptic dimensions. In the spiritual fires of the war, the myth of the ‘West’ was rebaptised”, Arta Moeini suggests.

After the initial disappointment at the lack of a ‘quick kill’, the hope persisted – that if only the sanctions were given more time, and made more all-embracing, then Russia surely would ultimately collapse. That hope has turned to dust. And the reality of what Europe has done to itself has begun to dawn – hence Professor Thomson’s dire warning:

“Those who assume that the political world can be reconstructed by the efforts of human Will, have never before had to bet so heavily on technology over [fossil] energy – as the driver of our material advancement”.

For the Euro-Atlanticists however, what Ukraine seemed to offer – finally – was validation for their yearning to centralise power in the EU, sufficiently, to merit a place at the ‘top table’ with the U.S., as partners in playing the Great Game.

Ukraine, for better or worse, underlined Europe’s profound military dependence on Washington – and on NATO.

More particularly, the Ukraine conflict seemed to open the prospect for consolidating the strange metamorphosis of NATO from military alliance to an enlightened, Progressive, peace alliance! As Timothy Garton Ash effused in the Guardian in 2002, “NATO has become a European peace movement” where one could watch “John Lennon meet George Bush”.

The Ukraine war is portrayed, in this vein, as the “war­ that even former pacifists can get behind. All its proponents seemed to be singing is “Give War a Chance””.

Lily Lynch, a Belgrade-based writer, argues that,

“… especially in the past 12 months, telegenic female leaders such as the Finnish Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, have increasingly served as the spokespersons of enlightened militarism in Europe … ”

“No political party in Europe better exemplifies the shift from militant pacifism to ardent pro-war Atlanticism than the German Greens. Most of the original Greens had been radicals during the student protests of 1968 … But as the founding members entered middle age, fissures began to appear in the party – that would one day tear it apart”.

“Kosovo then changed everything: The 78-day NATO bombing of what remained of Yugoslavia in 1999, ostensibly to halt war crimes committed by Serbian security forces in Kosovo, would forever transform the German Greens. NATO for the Greens became an active military compact concerned with spreading and defending values such as human rights, democracy, peace, and freedom – well beyond the borders of its member states”.

A few years later, in 2002, an EU functionary (Robert Cooper) could envisage Europe as a new ‘liberal imperialism’. The ‘new’ was that Europe eschewed hard military power, in favour of weaponising both a controlled ‘narrative’ and controlled participation in its market. He advocated for ‘a new age of empire’, in which Western powers no longer would have to follow international law in their dealings with ‘old fashioned’ states; they could use military force independently of the United Nations; and could impose protectorates to replace regimes which ‘misgovern’.

The German Greens’ Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, has continued with this metamorphosis, scolding countries with traditions of military neutrality, and imploring them to join NATO. She has invoked Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s line: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”. And the European Left has been utterly captivated. Major parties have abandoned military neutrality and opposition to war – and now champion NATO. It is a stunning reversal.

All this may have been music to the ears of the Euro-élites anxious for the EU to rise to Great Power status, but this soft-power European Leviathan was wholly underpinned by the unstated (but essential) assumption that NATO ‘had Europe’s back’. This naturally implied that the EU had to tie itself ever closer to NATO – and therefore to the U.S. which controls NATO.

But the flip-side to this Atlanticist aspiration – as President Emmanuel Macron noted – is its inexorable logic that Europeans simply end by becoming American vassals. Macron was trying rather, to rally Europe towards the coming ‘age of empires’, hoping to position Europe as a ‘third pole’ in a concert of empires.

The Atlanticists were duly enraged by Macron’s remarks (which nonetheless drew support of other EU states). It could even seem (to furious Atlanticists) that Macron actually was channelling General de Gaulle who had called NATO a “false pretence” designed to “disguise America’s chokehold over Europe”.

There are however, two related schisms that flowed out from this ‘re-imagined’ NATO: Firstly, it exposed the reality of internal European rivalries and divergent interests, precisely because the NATO lead in the Ukraine conflict sets the interests of the Central East European hawks wanting ‘more America, and more war on Russia’ up and against that of the original EU western axis which wants wanting strategic autonomy (i.e. less ‘America’, and a quick end to the conflict).

Secondly, it would be predominantly the western economies that would have to bankroll the costs and divert their manufacturing capacity towards military logistic chains. The economic price, non-military de-industrialisation and high inflation, potentially, could be enough to break Europe – economically.

The prospect of a pan-European cohesive identity might be both ontologically appealing – and be seen to be an ‘appropriate accessory’ to an aspiring ‘world actor’ – yet such identity becomes caricature when mosaic Europe is transformed into an abstract de-territorialised identity that reduces people to their most abstract.

Paradoxically, the Ukraine war – far from consolidating the EU ‘identity’, as first imagined – has fractured it under the stresses of the concerted effort to weaken and collapse Russia.

Secondly, as Arta Moeini, the director of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, has observed:

“The American push for NATO expansion since 1991 has enlarged the alliance by adding a host of faultline states from Central and Eastern Europe. The strategy, which began with the Clinton administration but was fully championed by the George W. Bush administration, was to create a decidedly pro-American pillar on the continent, centred on Warsaw – which would force an eastward shift in the alliance’s centre of gravity away from the traditional Franco-German axis”.

“By using NATO enlargement to weaken the old power centres in Europe that might have occasionally stood up to [Washington] such as in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Washington ensured a more compliant Europe in the short-term. The upshot, however, was the formation of a 31-member behemoth with deep asymmetries of power and low compatibility of interests” – that is much weaker and more vulnerable – than it believes itself to be”.

Here is the key: “the EU is much weaker than it believes itself to be”. The outset of the conflict was defined by a cast of mind entranced by the notion of Europe as a ‘mover and shaker’ in world affairs, and mesmerised by Europe’s post-war prosperity.

EU leaders convinced themselves that this prosperity had bequeathed it the clout and the economic depth to contemplate war – and to weather its reversals – with panglossian sanguinity. It has produced rather, the converse: It has put its project in jeopardy.

In John Raply and Peter Heather’s The Imperial Life Cycle, the authors explain the cycle:

“Empires grow rich and powerful and attain supremacy through the economic exploitation of their colonial periphery. But in the process, they inadvertently spur the economic development of that same periphery, until it can roll back and ultimately displace its overlord”.

Europe’s prosperity in this post-war era, thus was not so much one of its own making, but drew benefit from the tail-end of accumulations hewn from an earlier cycle – now reversed.

“The fastest-growing economies in the world are now all in the old periphery; the worst-performing economies are disproportionately in the West. These are the economic trends that have created our present landscape of superpower conflict — most saliently between America and China”.

America may think of itself as exempt from the European colonial mould, yet fundamentally, its model is

“an updated cultural-political glue that we might call “neoliberalism, NATO and denim”, which follows in the timeless imperial mould: The great wave of decolonisation that followed WW2 was meant to end that. But the Bretton Woods system, which created a trading regime that favoured industrial over primary producers and enshrined the dollar as the global reserve currency – ensured that the net flow of financial resources continued to move from developing countries to developed ones. Even when the economies of the newly-independent states grew, those of the G7 economies and their partners grew more”.

A once-mighty empire is now challenged and feels embattled. Taken aback by the refusal of so many developing countries to join with isolating Russia, the West is now waking up to the reality of the emerging, polycentric and fluid global order. These trends are set to continue. The danger is that economically weakened and in crisis, western countries attempt to re-appropriate western triumphalism, yet lack the economic strength and depth, so to do:

“In the Roman Empire, peripheral states developed the political and military capacity to end Roman domination by force… The Roman Empire might have survived – had it not weakened itself with wars of choice – on its ascendant Persian rival”.

The final ‘transgressive’ thought goes to Tom Luongo: “Allowing the West to keep thinking they can win – is the ultimate form of grinding out a superior opponent”.

June 5, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Western weapons used in Ukrainian raid inside Russia – WaPo

Moscow earlier published photos of destroyed Western hardware on Russia’s territory as Washington struggled to explain them

RT | June 3, 2023

Military equipment and small arms provided by several NATO nations, including the US, ended up in the hands of militants who launched a cross-border raid into Russia’s Belgorod region in May, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing sources linked to US intelligence.

At least four tactical vehicles initially supplied to the Ukrainian military by the US and Poland were employed in the May raid, raising concerns about Kiev’s commitment to fulfilling the demands of its Western supporters, the sources told WaPo.

The US and its Western allies have consistently expressed opposition to the use of Western arms by Ukraine in attacks on Russian territory. They also urged Kiev to “carefully track the billions of dollars’ worth of weapons that have flowed into the country,” WaPo reported.

The attack in question occurred in late May, and in response, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that “over 70 Ukrainian terrorists, four armored combat vehicles, and five pickup trucks” had been destroyed in the clash in Belgorod. The remaining militants were subsequently forced back into Ukraine and targeted by Russian artillery. The incursion resulted in one civilian death and 12 injuries, according to Russian authorities.

The Russian military shared a series of photographs showing what appeared to be destroyed Western equipment abandoned by the militants. Some of the images depicted two M1151A1 Humvee armored cars stuck in bomb craters, while others displayed two M1224 MaxxPro armored vehicles. An AMZ Dzik-2 armored car, manufactured in Poland, was also visible in the images.

Kiev attempted to distance itself from the raid by claiming it was carried out by the “Freedom of Russia Legion” and the “Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK),” the neo-Nazi units responsible for a similar attack in the Bryansk Region in March. The Pentagon and the US State Department expressed doubts regarding the authenticity of the images.

The State Department also said that the US “does not encourage or enable attacks inside of Russia.” Washington also does not “support the use of US-made equipment … for attacks inside of Russia,” it added.

According to the Washington Post, videos published by the “Freedom of Russia Legion” and the RDK militants themselves showed fighters using the Czech-made CZ Bren and Belgium’s FN SCAR assault rifles. Both types of weapons were provided to Ukraine by the respective nations, the paper said, adding that “Bren and SCAR rifles are commonly distributed to Ukraine’s soldiers” and foreign fighters who travel to Ukraine to combat Russian forces.

A spokesperson from the Belgian Defense Ministry informed the Washington Post that they only provided weapons to “official authorities and the regular army” in Ukraine, placing responsibility on Kiev for their usage. Poland and the Czech Republic declined to comment on the findings presented by the Washington Post.

The use of Western military supplies in an attack on Russian territory raises the issue of Kiev’s accountability, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think-tank, told WaPo. The Ukrainians “are clearly complicit here,” Cancian, a retired US Marine Corps officer, added.

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky will not attend the NATO summit unless his ultimatum is met – FT

By Ahmed Adel | June 2, 2023

The Financial Times reported that Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky has made it clear to NATO leaders that he will not attend the July summit in Lithuania unless a roadmap is proposed for Kiev’s entry into the alliance. According to FT, in addition to the plan for joining the alliance, Zelensky also wants alliance-specific guarantees.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba stated that Ukraine would not be satisfied with any other decision of the July summit other than the invitation to join NATO. Previously, the Ukrainian president stated that the country would not join the alliance until the end of the conflict but would like the support of partners and a membership invitation. In September 2022, Zelensky announced Ukraine’s candidacy to join NATO on an expedited basis.

The secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, acknowledged the bloc’s position on the right of each country to determine its path and stressed that the “open door” policy remains, emphasising that the alliance would spare no effort in helping Kiev to defend itself.

“Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO. And over time, our support will help you make it possible,” Stoltenberg declared during his visit to Kiev in April 2023.

If NATO were to grant Ukraine membership, it would automatically drag the entire alliance into a direct war with Russia ­— a nuclear power that has regularly warned it would use its nuclear weapons if it were under existential threat. For this reason, NATO leaders have clarified that Ukraine’s membership prospects are untenable if the war continues; thus, Zelensky’s ultimatum demonstrates his entitled attitude even more.

Sources told DW that NATO countries have been unable to find a consensus on what this means for Ukraine’s membership prospects in the short- to medium-term. Several former Soviet bloc NATO members are seeking formal commitments to Ukraine — pledges such as a pathway or a timetable that could be given to Kiev at a summit of NATO leaders in July in Vilnius.

Zelensky, despite his ultimatum, is still expected to attend the meeting and make the plea for Ukraine’s need for a concrete roadmap to becoming a NATO member and for more weapons. However, even Washington, a huge backer of the Ukrainian military, does not seem inclined to make formal accession promises to Kiev, even if the administration of US President Joe Biden says it remains steadfast in its commitment to NATO’s “open door” policy.

“We will look for ways to support Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations,” Dereck Hogan, the top US diplomat for European and Eurasian Affairs, told reporters in Washington. “But right now, the immediate needs in Ukraine are practical, and so we should be focused on building Ukraine’s defence and deterrence capabilities.”

NATO’s major members now no longer openly map a roadmap for Ukraine’s membership, as they once did. The US and France are restraining support for Ukraine due to upcoming elections, and Germany has repeatedly said it wants to prevent a total isolation of Russia in the post-war European security architecture.

It is recalled that those member states adopted a completely different language at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 when they agreed that Ukraine and Georgia are prospective members of the alliance but stopped short of extending a formal invitation. However, given the success of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War and the current demilitarisation operation in Ukraine in blocking Tbilisi’s and Kiev’s NATO accession, alliance members are fully aware that Russia will take devastating action if they directly intervene.

Although it is impossible for Ukraine to become a NATO member at this current junction, NATO leaders seek to send a positive signal to Kiev without making substantial decisions on the principles or the timing of possible membership. One such proposal is to upgrade Ukraine’s political relationship with NATO, but this is mostly bureaucratic. There is, of course, the potential for increased and deeper joint military exercises, but again, this is very far from what Ukraine wants, the highly-coveted collective defence pact – Article 5, which states that an armed attack against one member of the alliance is an attack on all members.

At the same time, Western countries are putting increasing pressure on Turkey to admit Sweden to NATO, with the country’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, writing in the Financial Times that a new anti-terror law which entered into force on June 1 delivered “on the last part” of an agreement to secure Ankara’s support for entry into the military alliance.

A senior Swedish official said: “This terror law is our big hope for unlocking the situation. Then it’s up to Turkey to decide.”

However, this should not give encouragement to Ukraine because Turkey’s impasse with Sweden is over the Scandinavian country’s hosting of Kurdish and political dissidents. Stockholm can overcome this relatively minor issue if it submits to Ankara’s demands. Going to war with Russia for the sake of a new member like Ukraine is an entirely different prospect, in any case. No number of ultimatums and entitled behaviour by Zelensky will change the position of NATO member states.

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

June 2, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Kiev Faces Seven Key Challenges Ahead Of Its Counteroffensive

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 1, 2023

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed that Kiev’s upcoming NATO-backed counteroffensive will commence sometime this summer, which makes it timely to discuss the key challenges that it’ll face. First and foremost among these is the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared in mid-February. Considering that Kiev is entirely dependent on foreign support, the state of those two’s competition is the most crucial variable.

The second one is connected with the preceding one and concerns the fact that Kiev’s NATO-trained forces haven’t yet been tested in battle. For all the hype about the upcoming counteroffensive, it remains to be seen whether they’ll perform as expected since they lack the experience carrying out large-scale operations. Russia learned from its shortcomings that were responsible for Ukraine’s reconquest of Kharkhov and half of Kherson Region, thus reducing the chances of this happening again.

On that topic, the third key challenge facing the counteroffensive is that Russia has fortified its defenses along the Line of Contact (LOC). Kiev will therefore struggle to achieve a breakthrough absent some black swan event, which of course can’t be ruled out but nevertheless appears unlikely. Moreover, the Battle of Artyomovsk imbued Russian forces with invaluable urban warfare experience that they can put to use defending major cities under their control, which could create more meat grinders for Kiev.

This leads into the fourth point, which is that Ukraine has already exhausted a large amount of its equipment and personnel over the past 15 months. The Washington Post drew attention to this in their detailed report in mid-March, which the Polish Chief of Army Staff extended credence to in his similar assessment that he shared in late April. These objective observations from pro-Kiev sources cast serious doubt on the success of the upcoming counteroffensive.

It’s precisely because of these worries that Ukraine is pinning its hopes on so-called “wunderwaffen” like the F-16s, but even US Air Force chief Frank Kendell said in late May that such systems aren’t going to be a “dramatic game-changer…for their total military capabilities.” Furthermore, Russia has already proven that it’s able to adapt to Kiev’s fielding of prior such “wunderwaffen” like Turkiye’s Bayraktar drones, which government-funded US and UK experts recently admitted that Moscow successfully neutralized.

Building upon the abovementioned fifth key challenge, the sixth one involves the West’s growing fatigue with indefinitely funding the NATO-Russian proxy war, which has already cost their taxpayers over $160 billion. Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul cautioned in early May that the counteroffensive’s potential failure to meet the public’s expectations could lead to a reduction in future support, which exposes other Western officials’ pledges of unconditional support as lies.

And finally, the last factor working against Kiev’s favor ahead of its counteroffensive is to meet the Western public’s unrealistically high expectations that McCaul spoke about despite the tremendous odds. Unnamed Biden Administration officials told Politico in late April that they’re very worried that this won’t happen, which places Ukraine’s spree of terrorist attacks since then into their appropriate context by revealing them to be nothing but infowar copium to satiate the bloodthirsty Western masses.

These seven key challenges will be very difficult for Kiev to overcome, thus making it likely that the outcome of its much-hyped counteroffensive will simply be some limited changes along the LOC. Seeing as how that would almost certainly provoke deep disappointment among the Western public, it could very well be that this predictably lackluster result directly leads to the resumption of peace talks by year’s end, which might freeze the conflict with a ceasefire if not end it outright with some sort of compromise.

June 1, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

The Union State Expects That The NATO-Russian Proxy War Will Expand

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 1, 2023

The 52nd session of the CIS Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services took place in Minsk on Thursday, during which time representatives from the Union State expressed concern that the NATO-Russian proxy war will expand. FSB chief Bortnikov from the Russian side shared his assessment that this bloc is responsible for sabotage in their two countries. He also warned that “The West actively encourages Moldova to get involved in the Ukrainian conflict by cleansing Transdniestria and Gagauzia.”

As for the Belarusian side of the Union State, it was most importantly represented by President Lukashenko, who raised awareness of the West’s impending coup plot against him. According to him, “this is no longer 2020, when girls went to rallies wearing short white skirts and holding flowers. People are ready to come here with weapons.” He said that this is because the West now demands that those “opposition” figures who they’re hosting commit terrorist attacks in order to continue receiving funding.

Bortnikov and Lukashenko shared their views on the same day as the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had beaten back Ukrainian terrorists earlier that morning who tried infiltrating Belgorod Region in a repeat of last week’s incident. These three developments suggest that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will possibly attempt to expand the geographic scope of this proxy war to include Belarus, Moldova, and/or Russia’s pre-2014 territory, perhaps even all at once.

The strategic reason for going all out like that would be to compensate for the seven key challenges that place Ukraine in a position of weakness vis-à-vis Russia even in spite of the over $165 billion in aid that it’s received from NATO since the start of the special operation. Aware that the counteroffensive will likely fail to meet the Western public’s expectations exactly as unnamed US officials told Politico in late April, Kiev seems to be preparing a set of spectacular provocations to spin as a success instead.

The potential plan appears to be for Kiev to lash out in those three directions in the hope of achieving a breakthrough across at least one of those fronts, not to mention the Line of Contact (LOC) between its forces and Russia’s in the territory that Ukraine claims as its own. The West wanted Georgia to play a role in this scheme too in order to maximally divide Moscow’s attention, but its Color Revolution agents couldn’t get Tbilisi to go along with this despite trying their best to pressure it to do so in March.

In the event that Kiev gains and holds ground in Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and/or Ukraine’s former regions, none of which can be taken for granted of course, then the West can claim that the counteroffensive was worth it. NATO doesn’t think that the last-mentioned front along the LOC will see much progress, if any at all, which is why it appears to be preparing Kiev for a multifront attack that stands a better chance of meeting the public’s expectations of success.

The scenario of a direct NATO military intervention in Moldova and/or up to the LOC also can’t be ruled out either. The second one would of course spike the risks of nuclear brinksmanship, but since “Biden’s Re-Election Hinges On The Success Of Kiev’s Counteroffensive”, the US’ ruling liberal–globalist elite might gamble with the apocalypse out of desperation if Kiev fails to achieve any success at all. The possibility of Russia reversing the dynamics to achieve its own breakthrough could also prompt that dark scenario too.

The West is in a dilemma since NATO’s “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia that Secretary-General Stoltenberg declared in mid-February is gradually trending in Moscow’s favor as proven by its victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk. Such an astronomical sum has already been invested in this counteroffensive, which has also been hyped up to an absurd level, that it has to go forward no matter what despite the Washington Post warning in mid-March about how poorly Kiev’s forces are really faring.

It’s therefore politically impossible to do the pragmatic thing by agreeing to a ceasefire that freezes the LOC before Kiev loses even more territory, hence why the West seems to be seriously contemplating the previously unthinkable scenario of escalating along four separate fronts at once. This is being done from a position of weakness out of desperation for something tangible to be achieved that can then be spun as a success in order to partially meet the Western public’s expectations.

The counteroffensive’s full failure would reflect terribly on the ruling Western elite and possibly pose a major electoral challenge to their figureheads the next time that voters go to the polls, which is why they’re ready to do whatever is required to prevent that perception among their people. There’s of course the slim chance that cooler heads will prevail, but the latest developments suggest that Kiev is being pressured by NATO to go all out, which could lead to the proxy war expanding in four directions at once.

June 1, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Insisting on “demilitarized zone” in Russia, Kiev shows no interest in diplomatic solutions

By Lucas Leiroz | June 1, 2023

The Kiev regime shows that it is really not willing to negotiate and achieve peace diplomatically. In a recent publication on social media, Mikhail Podoliak, the main adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, stated that it would be necessary to create a “demilitarized zone” inside Russian territory. The measure sounds absolutely absurd and does not correspond to the terms of peace demanded by the Russians, making it impossible for there to be talks seeking mutual interests.

Podoliak published his plan in his Twitter account on May 29. The adviser stated that the creation of a demilitarized zone of 100-120 km (62-76 miles) deep into Russian territory bordering Ukraine would “prevent a recurrence of aggression in the future”, and “ensure real security” for Ukrainian citizens in Kharkov, Chernigov, and Sumy regions. According to him, Zaporozhye, Lugansk and Donetsk regions (which Kiev considers its own, but which were already reintegrated into Russia last year) would also benefit from the absence of Russian troops in the area.

In the scheme exposed by him, there should be no units of the Russian armed forces in the cities of Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk and Rostov. Curiously, Podoliak referred to these Russian oblasts as “republics”, quietly suggesting that they should become more autonomous regions or independent states. With this, Podoliak also makes it clear that he echoes the already known intentions of the Ukrainian and Western authorities to divide the Russian Federation in order to neutralize it through the loss of territorial control.

The adviser believes that the plan to create the demilitarized zone should be implemented in stages, with the possibility of initially allocating an international security contingent in the region to gain territorial control and guarantee the absence of Russian forces. Then, the area could finally be completely demilitarized, making the peace project successful.

The official even classified these measures as a “key issue” to discuss the possibility of lasting peace between the two countries. For him, “if [the Russians] are not going to attack and don’t decide they want revenge in a couple of years, this shouldn’t be an issue”. Obviously, the aide ignores all the problems involved in this dispute, such as the self-determination of ethnic Russians who want to join the Federation and Russia’s need for solid security guarantees.

In fact, the Ukrainian attitude of ignoring Russian demands for peace is already well known, being the main reason why all attempts at talks so far have failed. However, there is something significantly more serious about the current case, as Kiev openly plans to violate Russia’s undisputed territory under the excuse of “avoiding aggression”. In practice, Ukraine makes it clear that its condition for peace is not only to take back the territories it considers its own (the newly integrated oblasts and Crimea), but also to fragment the Federation and prevent Moscow from exercising its sovereignty even in areas not claimed by Kiev.

In other words, Podoliak makes it clear that the neo-Nazi regime has no other intention in this conflict than to attack Russia and violate its sovereign space. Although the western narrative describes Russia as an “invader” and an “aggressor”, the real situation is the exact opposite, with Kiev and NATO being the threatening sides, who openly want to harm Russia and its people. Moscow’s military actions since the beginning of the special operation have been only a reaction to the imminent risk posed by the (Western-sponsored) Ukrainian side.

In practice, this definitely annuls the chances of peace through diplomacy. Moscow will obviously not accept restrictions on the use of its military force in its own territory. And Kiev will certainly continue to refuse to accept Russian terms, which would oblige the Ukrainian government to recognize territorial losses and commit to not joining NATO. Faced with this impasse, the only solution left is to continue fighting on the battlefield until the winning side unilaterally imposes its conditions after neutralizing the enemy.

For Ukraine, this is the worst scenario, since, according to many experts, the country is simply not able to reverse the unfavorable military scenario. Russian victory seems to be just a matter of time, as Moscow troops continue to gain territory even with a low percentage of mobilization, while Ukraine is losing more and more ground even though it is using everything it has – no longer being able to count on reserves for the future. Obviously, in the face of imminent defeat, it is best to resort to negotiations, but Kiev does not have the sovereignty to decide something in this sense, only obeying Western orders to continue a proxy war that is impossible to win.

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

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

June 1, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky “turned the country into a new Afghanistan” – former Ukrainian PM

By Ahmed Adel | June 1, 2023

The legacy of Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky will be turning Ukraine into “a new Afghanistan,” according to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. Azarov was head of government three times and presided over Ukraine’s largest economic growth in its post-Soviet history, thus making his opinion about Zelensky’s legacy, especially scathing.

“Over the years, presidents of Ukraine made promises to turn the country into either a new France or a new Switzerland. However, Zelensky went further than anyone and turned the country into a new Afghanistan, to the delight of the Anglo-Saxons and defence companies,” Azarov wrote in a social media post.

“What do you think? Is there a chance that Washington will get tired of its ‘toy’ in the foreseeable future? Or is the pleasure of playing dirty tricks on Russia more important than the lives of the hostages of the Kiev regime?” the politician asked on Facebook.

It is recalled that Azarov explained in an interview in early May the role played by the US and the UK in transforming Ukraine into a failed state, outlining how since the Euromaidan coup in 2014, the country’s population halved. He also characterised the current Ukrainian president as “an empty vessel” who cares more about profits and popularity abroad than the Ukrainian people, which makes him a tool of Western powers and oligarchic interests.

Azarov is certainly not the first to compare the war in Ukraine to that of the 20-year US war in Afghanistan, with experts believing that both conflicts were prospects for the US military-industrial complex to profit from massive new defence contracts. However, experts also warn that Ukraine could become Washington’s next Afghanistan-style forever war.

It is recalled that analyst Scott Ritter, a former United Nations inspector and US Marine in Iraq, said that President Joe Biden should tell his Ukrainian counterpart that his country realistically has no chance of emerging victorious from its confrontation with Russia and that the US runs from fights as it does not have to deal with the terrible consequences of leaving, just like in Afghanistan and Vietnam.

In this same light, The American Conservative published in August 2022 that “defense contractors shed a tear when America’s war in Afghanistan came to a close […] But just after one protracted conflict came to a close, another came to the complex’s rescue. Though there is little national interest for the U.S. in Ukraine, and everything to lose given Russia is a nuclear-armed power, Biden has vowed that the U.S. will be alongside Ukraine for the long haul.”

It is suggested that the US continues its useless but destructive wars, such as in Vietnam, Afghanistan and now Ukraine, to prop up the American military-industrial complex. The same publication, but in a later article, highlighted that the war in Ukraine was a “new 1980s-style Afghanistan, with the U.S. playing both the American and the Soviet roles at times,” adding that “while NATO countries and others sent small numbers of troops and material to Afghanistan, the U.S. has gone out of its way to make Ukraine look like a NATO show when it is not.”

The comments by Azarov came days before Zelensky said that the start time for the activation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had been approved. According to Zelensky, at the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief meeting, there was also a discussion on the issue of supplying ammunition to soldiers.

However, Zelensky is merely speaking for the sake of speaking when we consider that we are in the last day of spring and the first days of summer, and the long-awaited offensive never began, which is especially humiliating considering the boastful claims made of soon capturing Crimea and Mariupol from Russia.

It is likely that, just like in the Afghanistan case, military offensive methods will not be used by Ukraine but rather terrorist methods instead, such as reconnaissance, drone weapons, airspace intrusion, and infrastructure destruction. As The Telegraph concedes, Ukrainian troops are exhausted, and Kiev is in a “desperate push to replenish its battle-stricken military ahead of a looming counter-offensive.”

Even though Ukraine has received a lot of NATO equipment and weapons, there is nonetheless a shortage of troops that officials consider key players in the counter-offensive. Recruiters are facing a huge challenge trying to attract the right number of men into the army, and now they are adopting harsher recruitment tactics to find people for the Army. All this points to a similar scenario experienced in Afghanistan, something Zelensky has made Ukraine akin to.

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

June 1, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Weapon US gave Ukraine spotted in cartel hands – Mexican media

A member of the Cartel Del Golfo (CDG) in Tamaulipas, Mexico carrying a US-made anti-tank weapon, May 30, 2023 © screenshot/Milenio TV
RT | May 31, 2023

A militant wearing the insignia of Mexico’s notorious Gulf Cartel (Cartel Del Golfo, CDG) was filmed in the state of Tamaulipas carrying a US-made anti-tank missile launcher. Milenio TV identified the weapon as a Javelin, thousands of which were sent to Ukraine by the Pentagon.

Footage filmed in Matamoros on Monday and aired on Tuesday evening by the news channel Milenio TV showed a man with CDG patches armed with a Kalashnikov rifle and a missile they said was the Raytheon-made FGM-148.

Over 10,000 Javelins from Pentagon stockpiles have been sent to Ukraine since last February, to the point where the US military has begun to run out of the missiles itself.

Milenio presenter Azucena Uresti noted on Twitter that the estimated value of a Javelin launcher on the black market was anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000, while the average cost of a missile was about $30,000.

Keen-eyed military experts believe the weapon in the Milenio footage may actually be the AT-4, a Swedish-made disposable anti-tank launcher, which is also in use by the US military and likewise supplied to Ukraine by the thousands.

Russia has repeatedly warned the US and its allies not to “stuff” Ukraine with weapons and ammunition, both because this risked a direct confrontation and since nonexistent controls would result in the weapons ending up in the criminal underworld.

A RT investigation in July 2022 found a variety of Western-supplied weapons, including anti-tank rockets, for sale on the “dark web.” Several months later, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that $1 billion a month worth of Western weapons was ending up in the hands of “terrorists, extremists and criminal groups in the Middle East, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia.”

Kiev has denounced this as “propaganda” and insisted all were accounted for.

The US outlet CBS censored their documentary on weapons supplies to Ukraine after the government in Kiev objected. Last month, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said the West was aware its weapons were ending up on the black market, but that most governments did not care because arming Ukraine mattered more to them.

The Gulf Cartel is based in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, specifically in the border city of Matamoros, just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. It dates back to the 1930s, but gained in notoriety in the late 1990s, when it spun off a notorious militia called Los Zetas. The group has since broken off on its own. Though primarily known as a drug smuggling cartel, CDG has also been accused of racketeering, abductions, money laundering, and trafficking of people, sex slaves and weapons.

In March, the cartel apologized for one of its factions kidnapping four Americans and killing two of them, in what they said was a case of mistaken identity. Five members of that faction were handed over to the Mexican police.

May 31, 2023 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

What are ATACMS Missiles and Why is US Threatening to Give Them to Kiev?

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 30.05.2023

President Joe Biden has confirmed the US is still mulling over whether to send MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles to Ukraine. What are these weapons? What are their characteristics? And why has Russia warned that their delivery to Kiev might drag Washington into a direct confrontation with Moscow? Sputnik explains.

“That’s still in play” was Joe Biden’s four-word answer to a reporter outside the White House on Monday after being asked whether the US plans to deliver ATACMS to Ukraine. He did not elaborate.

Made to be used by the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System road-mobile multiple rocket launchers which the US began to send to Ukraine last summer, and older M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (M270s) sent by Germany, Italy, Norway, and the UK, ATACMS have been touted by US media and politicians as one of the most fearsome conventional weapons in America’s arsenal.

What are ATACMS Used For, What is Their Range, How Fast Can They Fly, and How Accurate are They?

Created in the mid-1980s at the twilight of the Cold War and entering into service with the US Army in early 1991, just in time for a US-led war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, ATACMS are a solid-fuel, surface-to-surface ballistic missile with an effective firing range of up to 300 km, and a maximum velocity during boost phase of up to Mach 3, or 1 km/second, making them difficult to intercept using older air defense systems.

ATACMS’ characteristics vary wildly depending on model, block number, and configuration. For example, while they can be armed with 500 pound (230 kg) penetrating high explosive blast fragmentation warheads, they can also be fitted with other explosives weighing anywhere from 160 and 560 kg, including anti-personnel and material cluster “bomblets.”

There are also notable differences in the weapons’ guidance systems, with older variants relying on inertial guidance, while newer missiles include built-in GPS.

Where Have ATACMS Been Used Before and What Countries Have Them?

Along with the 1991 Gulf War, ATACMS were used extensively during the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s.

Besides the US military, the missiles are operated by just a handful of US partners and clients, including NATO allies Greece, Turkiye, Poland, and Romania, as well as South Korea, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Australia, Taiwan, Lithuania, Estonia, and Morocco have either signed contracts on the purchase of the weapons, or submitted formal requests to do so.

How Much Do ATACMS Cost?

ATACMS are pricey. So pricey that the Netherlands decided to shop around for and find an alternative earlier this year. Finland made a similar move in 2014. The US Army – the ATACMS’ main user, decided to wind the program down in 2007, citing high costs, and penning a life extension contract with Lockheed Martin to upgrade the remaining stock of missiles. A specialized “cross-domain” ATACMS proposed in 2016 was also killed off in the fiscal 2021 defense spending bill, due to unspecified “technical problems.”

ATACMS have an estimated cost of over one million dollars (the Pentagon provided an $820,000 per missile price tag in the late 1990s – which would be equivalent to over $1.5 million today, with no newer valuations made available since).

Over 3,700 ATACMS of various modifications were produced between the late 1980s and 2007, with about 600 expended by Washington in its wars over the past 30 years.

What is the Russian Equivalent of the ATACMS?

About half-a-dozen non-US missile systems have been compared to the ATACMS, including the OTR-21 Tochka, a Soviet-made tactical ballistic missile, the 9K720 Iskander, a Russian-made missile, the Fateh-313 – an Iranian-made tactical missile design, and the P-12 variant of China’s B-611 missile. North Korea, India, Israel, and Ukraine have also tinkered with comparable systems, with varying degrees of success.

Iskanders boast superior range and payload characteristics to the ATACMS, but their launchers are only capable of firing their specially designed missiles, whereas ATACMS can be fired from HIMARS and MLRS launchers.

What System is Expected to Replace the ATACMS?

Lockheed Martin’s Precision Strike Missile is expected to succeed the ATACMS. In development since 2016, the missile is expected to have a longer maximum range (500 km or more), and be slim-lined to allow for two to be fitted per carrier.

Why Would ATACMS Deployment in Ukraine Be a Major Escalation?

In light of Kiev’s propensity to use its Western-provided weapons to attack targets inside Russia – including civilian infrastructure in Donbass, Moscow has warned repeatedly that sending ATACMS to Ukraine would dramatically increase the danger of an escalation, and possibly even lead to direct military clashes between Russia and the US.

Earlier this year, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov blasted lawmakers in Washington over their calls to ship ATACMS missiles to Ukraine for strikes against Crimea, calling such proposals “an element of psychological warfare,” and warning that the West’s escalation of the proxy war could have unpredictable consequences.

In late 2022, US media reported that Pentagon officials had urged the White House not to send ATACMS to Ukraine, similarly citing their potential use “against targets inside Russian territory,” and the danger that they could “potentially set off a wider war with Russia.”

May 31, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Uranium weapons being employed in Ukraine have significantly increased Uranium levels in the air in the UK

Chris Busby | April 5, 2023

Freedom of Information request by Dr Busby to Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston UK showed increased level of Uranium in all the environmental measurement filters. He discusses the health implications of this for Europe in an interview, where he outlines what his research found in Iraq, increases in cancer and congenital birth defects in Fallujah. His paper on the Ukraine Uranium in UK is at: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat…

The findings in Iraq were recently discussed in a Guardian article at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/data…

May 31, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Moscow might cut all ties with London over UK’s rabid Russophobic hostility

By Drago Bosnic | May 30, 2023

There’s hardly a shortage of Russophobia in the political West, whether it’s the previously latent one or the much more blatant hatred unashamedly demonstrated in recent times. In most countries dominated by the United States this has become the “new normal” since February 24, 2022. However, of all Washington DC’s allies and satellite states/vassals, there’s one that makes even such endemically Russophobic countries like Poland or the Baltic states seem “moderate” – the United Kingdom.

In recent announcements, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said that it could completely cut diplomatic ties with the UK over its extremely escalatory actions such as the delivery of ever more advanced and longer-range weapons to the Kiev regime. In a statement for Russia’s RT, published on Friday, the Russian MFA cited London’s significant and ever-growing meddling in Ukraine, as well as other actions aimed against Russia, particularly when it comes to arming and directly assisting the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Although the MFA stated that cutting ties with the UK might be an “extreme measure”, it was left without virtually any other option, so this move is being considered very seriously.

“The severing of diplomatic ties with the UK would be an ‘extreme measure’, but [Russia] could end up taking the step considering London’s significant involvement in the Ukraine conflict,” the Russian MFA warned on Friday.

On May 18, The Wall Street Journal published a report claiming that “UK special forces from the British Army’s SAS [Special Air Service] and SRR [Special Reconnaissance Regiment] regiments and the Navy’s SBS [Special Boat Service] units are operating very close to the front lines in Ukraine”. The WSJ presented the report in a way that indicates these actions constitute a supposed “split” in policy with the US, as Washington DC has allegedly “held back sending special forces to directly assist the Ukrainians on the front lines of fighting”. However, such claims are rather laughable, especially when considering numerous reports about American special forces and intelligence assets operating in Ukraine.

Worse yet, intelligence sources are adamant that special services operators sent by the US are directly supporting the Kiev regime forces, including by directing their attacks on not just the Russian military, but also targets deep within Russia. The WSJ report implies that the only supposed difference between the US and UK special forces and intelligence assets is that those sent by London directly take part in hostilities on the frontlines while their American counterparts “only provide advisory services”. What’s more, the aforementioned UK special forces are believed to be directly involved in planning and assisting cross-border sabotage operations and terrorist attacks, including the latest one against civilians in the Belgorod oblast (region).

When asked by RT about these controversial (to say the least) reports, the Russian MFA stated: “[Moscow] is well aware of consistent efforts by London aimed at providing military assistance to the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.”

“The UK’s support includes the supply of domestically produced and foreign military hardware to Ukraine, the training of Ukrainian troops in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, intelligence sharing, consulting support and likely participation in the operational-tactical planning by the [Ukrainian] military, including sabotage, other operations, direct provision of cyber-security, [and] deployment of mercenaries,” the Russian MFA said in an official statement, further adding: “We can’t rule out that the British participated in the planning, organization and support of terrorist attacks carried out by the Kiev regime on the territory of Russia, including through the provision of intelligence information.”

Deborah Bronnert, the UK ambassador to Russia, has been summoned several times by the Russian government which demanded explanations of London’s unadulterated enmity. However, the policy of escalating confrontation with Moscow, started under former prime minister Boris Johnson, seems to be going on unabated. According to various sources, during the first several months of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe Johnson even actively worked to prevent peace talk initiatives between Russia and the Kiev regime, some of which could have stopped the conflict from escalating and causing further bloodshed. Worse yet, the former UK PM also personally and repeatedly urged the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky “not to give an inch of compromise with the Russians”.

Since then, regardless of who was at its helm, the UK has only escalated its already extensive military support for the Kiev regime. Apart from training the junta’s forces, London was also the first to pledge the deliveries of heavy armor and various missile systems, such as the “Brimstone” (against ground targets) and “Starstreak” MANPADS (man-portable air defense system).

More alarmingly, the UK also delivered depleted uranium munitions, as well as the stealthy “Storm Shadow” (also known as SCALP-EG in French service) air-launched cruise missiles. Reports indicate that the Russian military destroyed the depleted uranium munitions in a recent strike, while the transonic “Storm Shadow” missiles have been used in combat, but proven largely ineffective against Russia’s second-to-none air defense.

However, there’s no indication London will stop escalating, as it’s now at the forefront of the initiative to deliver F-16 fighter jets to the Neo-Nazi junta. Moscow is well aware of this and has made efforts to communicate with the UK, but to no avail. London’s rabid Russophobia seems to be clouding its judgment, leaving Russia with no other option but to just cut contact, which would be yet another step closer to a world-ending thermonuclear conflict between Moscow and the political West.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

May 30, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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