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Fake News Alert: It’s Extremely Unlikely That Kiev Shot Down A Hypersonic Missile

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 6, 2023

The Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force claimed on Saturday that his forces shot down a hypersonic missile with the help of the US’ Patriots, which Mainstream Media outlets like CNN took at face value to question Russia’s related capabilities. It’s extremely unlikely that this happened, though, since no air defense system anywhere in the world at this time is able to intercept any such projectile traveling at ten times the speed of sound. At most, there might have been an accidental hit or a technical malfunction.

Either of those scenarios would represent statistical anomalies, especially the first one, which means that it’s almost certainly the case that Kiev is just lying through its teeth yet again. It makes sense why it would do so at this particular time since its perception managers hope to dent Russians’ pride ahead of Victory Day, sow the seeds of doubt about its hypersonic capabilities with the intent of deterring purchases whenever they’re eventually put to the market, and exaggerate the Patriots’ effectiveness.

Furthermore, Kiev was likely tipped off about CNN’s investigation into Russia’s electronic jamming of their much-hyped HIMARS missile systems by some of those same Pentagon officials that the outlet cited in their report, which was also released on Saturday. In response, they could have then prepared this latest fake news provocation with the expectation of carrying it out on the same day that CNN’s report was published, thus distracting the public from this unsavory story.

Even so, as was noted in the introduction, CNN had no problem taking their side’s claim at face value and subsequently spinning it for maximum anti-Russian soft power effect. It obviously has the experts on hand who, if they were honest, would have informed them that the Patriots are incapable of shooting down hypersonic missiles. By not relying on those professionals’ insight prior to publishing their report and inserting their opinion into it, CNN once again exposed its anti-Russian bias.

The same observation can be said about all those other Mainstream Media outlets that reported on this fake news story without including any reference to the Patriots’ lack of requisite capabilities for achieving this literally unprecedented military feat. They uncritically repeat Kiev’s most ridiculous claims about the NATO-Russian proxy war despite knowing better like in this instance, which proves that they don’t conduct genuine journalism anymore and only parrot a foreign country’s propaganda nowadays.

May 6, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Over 126,000 Donbass Residents Recognized as Victims Since 2014 – Investigative Committee

Sputnik – 06.05.2023

Russian investigators have established that over 126,000 residents of the Donbass region became victims of the crimes committed by Kiev since 2014, with the damage to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics surpassing 228 billion rubles ($2.9 billion), the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, said.

“More than 9,500 civilians were injured in the armed conflict, and over 5,000 civilians were killed. Over the entire period of the investigation in this criminal case, more than 259,000 people were interrogated, and over 126,000 people were recognized as victims, including about 24,000 minors,” Bastrykin said.

Bastrykin also said that the investigation analyzed the destruction in the cities of Mariupol, Rubezhnoe, Schastie, Krasnyi Luch, Stakhanov, Kirovsk, Alchevsk, Lisichansk and others, adding that the damage assessment in other cities was underway.

Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, after the DPR and LPR appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian provocations. In response to Russia’s operation, Western countries have rolled out a comprehensive sanctions campaign against Moscow and have been supplying weapons to Ukraine.

On September 30, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the DPR and LPR, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, signed agreements on the accession of these territories to Russia, following referendums that showed that an overwhelming majority of the local population supported becoming part of Russia.

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

Odessa Massacre 9 Years On… West’s Shameful Silence

Strategic Culture Foundation | May 5, 2023

This week saw the ninth anniversary of a shocking massacre of 42 civilians in Odessa by Ukrainian fascists. Only weeks prior to that, the fascists’ political leaders had carried out a violent coup in Kiev.

The barbarity of the Odessa atrocity was unspeakable but emblematic of the NATO-backed fascist regime that seized power illegally in February 2014.

Significantly, and shamefully, the Western media and governments hardly mention that horror, or if they do, they tend to distort the incident and typically, yet baselessly, accuse Russia of disinformation.

On May 2, 2014, hundreds of protesters in Odessa against the fascist Kiev regime became embroiled in violent clashes with supporters of the regime. Thousands of far-right paramilitaries belonging to the NeoNazi Right Sector had been transported from the north to the southern port city of Odessa on the Black Sea under the guise of attending a football match.

Street battles ensued all day with cobblestones, Molotov cocktails and gunfire exchanged by both factions. By evening, the more numerous pro-regime crowds turned their focus on a tent encampment of anti-regime protesters near the Soviet-era Trade Unions building in the center of Odessa. The encampment was a peaceful gathering which included women and children. It had been set up for several weeks to demonstrate opposition to the Maidan events in Kiev.

The anti-regime protesters were opposed to the coup that had taken place in Kiev weeks earlier by the so-called EuroMaidan movement. On February 20, a gruesome sniper massacre in Kiev (later found to have been carried out by CIA-backed fascists) led to the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych. The latter had maintained friendly relations with Russia which far-right Ukrainian factions abhorred. Yanukovych’s government was strongly supported by Ukrainians of ethnic Russian heritage mainly in the south and eastern parts of the country.

The fascist regime that came to power in Kiev in February 2014 and which prevails till this day – albeit with a president, Vladimir Zelensky, who is nominally of Jewish ancestry – was opposed from the outset by many Ukrainians. They viewed the new rulers as unelected and illegitimate. They were also fearful of the NeoNazi factions that openly glorified Ukrainian figures like Stepan Bandera who had collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War in the mass murder of their own compatriots.

That is why the people of the Crimea peninsula voted in a referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. In other parts of Ukraine, the southeast Donbass region also repudiated the Kiev regime and its “anti-Russian” hostility. In May, 2014, the Kiev regime proceeded to launch its so-called Anti-Terror Operation on the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk with the backing of then CIA chief John Brennan on a visit to the country. The U.S. vice president at the time was Joe Biden who served as Washington’s point man for the new regime. That aggression marked the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine which culminated in the present conflict with Russia, and the joining last year of the Donbass and neighboring regions with the Russian Federation.

This was the context in Ukraine in May, 2014. The country was in turmoil and splitting into ethnic and political divides. Cities like Odessa had strong historical and cultural connections with Russia. The city known as the Pearl on the Black Sea owing to its storied trading economy was founded in 1795 by Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia.

When the NATO-backed putschists seized power in Kiev in a bloody coup and began organizing Nazi-style torchlit processions, many ethnic Russian people in Ukraine and others were horrified. Odessa was one such city with a large Russian population. The city had suffered mass killings by Nazi Einsatzgruppen SS death squads and their local henchmen.

When the Kiev regime fascists targeted the protest camp in Odessa on the evening of May 2, some 300 of the protesters took refuge inside the Trade Unions building. The mob outside bombarded the historic building with incendiary devices setting it ablaze. The deliberate intention was to incinerate all those inside. The hatred shown by the Right Sector attackers towards the trapped victims was appalling. Several of the people in the building tried to escape the flames by jumping out of high-rise windows. As their bodies smashed the ground below, frenzied crowds clubbed them to death.

In all, 42 people were murdered in the Trade Unions building massacre. Not one attacker was ever prosecuted. The Kiev regime refused to carry out any adequate investigation.

However, the horror of that day was a turning point for many Ukrainians and Russians. It revealed the hideous nature of the regime that had seized power over the country and its vile fascist hostility toward Russia.

This is the regime that was brought to power by Washington and its NATO partners. Since 2014, it has been armed and built up to be a war machine to aggress Russia and obliterate all cultural connections with Russia.

The massacre in Odessa should be remembered for the sake of the victims that day. But also remembered because it helps explain the background of how the present U.S.-led NATO proxy conflict in Ukraine with Russia has come about.

For that reason, Western news media and their governments chose to studiously ignore the Odessa massacre. Their shameful silence is necessary in order to conceal the criminal complicity of the West in Ukraine’s deadly turmoil.

May 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The American Government Arguably Played A Role In Kiev’s Arrest Of US Journalist Gonzalo Lira

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 6, 2023

Dual American-Chilean national Gonzalo Lira was recently arrested by Ukraine’s secret police on charges pertaining to “wartime propaganda”, for which he faces the possibility of 5-8 years in jail. The US Government’s (USG) silence on this incident completely contrasts with its hysteria over Wall Street Journal (WSJ) employee Evan Gershkovich’s arrest in Russia last month on charges of espionage after he was caught red-handed soliciting classified military-industrial information from a regional lawmaker.

This is a betrayal of American principles since the freedom of speech is regarded as a sacred right of all its citizens no matter where they might be at any given time. Regardless of whatever one might think about Lira’s views and the particular piece of Ukrainian legislation that was cited as the basis for arresting him, the USG is supposed to support the rights of its nationals abroad. This is especially so whenever they’re arrested for expressing an opinion and/or practicing journalism like he was.

Its silence in the face of this scandalous incident suggests a degree of complicity in, or at the very least tacit approval of, Lira’s arrest since nothing else cogently explains the conspicuous lack of any response. These suspicions are further reinforced by the fact that one of the USG’s leading information warfare assets in Ukraine, transgender mercenary Michael John Cirillo, admitted to the Daily Beast that he colluded with the SBU on its case against Lira and even plans to testify against him.

In his exact words, “I’ve already given my sworn statement to SBU about Gonzalo Lira several months ago and expect to be called as a witness in his prosecution.” Cirillo also added on Twitter that “When I’m on Capitol Hill in 10 days, no doubt the arrest of Gonzalo Lira will be a prime topic of conversation.” Instead of seeking his release, the USG is relying on one of its top propagandists in that country to pursue Lira’s conviction, prior to which their proxy brazenly plans to boast about this to Congress.

It should also be noted that Cirillo told this to Julia Davis, who’s banned by Russia on the basis of having worked against its national interests at the behest of hostile powers, which obviously refers to the USG in this context. Her article also mentions that she obtained exclusive footage of Lira’s arrest, which could only have been obtained by the SBU, whose employees shared it with her precisely because they know that she’s one of their patron’s most reliable agents and would thus use it to humiliate Lira in her piece.

These facts lead to the conclusion that the USG is indeed complicit in Ukraine’s arrest of this dual American national. It’s not even hiding its complicity in Lira’s persecution either after one of its leading information warfare assets in that country admitted to colluding with the secret police on this case, told the media that he plans to testify against him, and even plans to brag about this to Congress. The USG is perversely proud of this since it hopes to pressure critics of its proxy war into self-censoring.

This objective also clearly includes its own citizens like Lira, who the USG hates with a passion since his brave reporting from Kharkov discredited many of their claims about this conflict. It could have simply requested that Kiev deport him in order to lessen the damage that he’s inflicted on their information warfare operations, but it preferred to make an example out of him by pursuing his prosecution. Cirillo’s role in this incident and his plans to brag about it to Congress leave no doubt about the USG’ complicity.

May 6, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

The Galician genocide: How Russian identity was wiped out in what is now Western Ukraine

By Dmitry Plotnikov | RT | March 15, 2023

Galicia, a historical region in the West of Ukraine, is currently the center of the country’s nationalist movement. However, things were once very different. A little over a hundred years ago, representatives of opposing Russophile and pro-Ukrainian political movements competed for the loyalty of the local Ruthenian population, also known as Rusyns. Galicia’s Russophiles welcomed the beginning of the First World War as a step toward an anticipated reunion with Russia. However the Ukrainian movement remained loyal to Austria-Hungary. With the help of the latter, Vienna killed off the Rusyn intelligentsia, which it considered a “fifth column”. To accomplish this, the Hapsburgs set up concentration camps.

What happened next amounted to a genocide.

Ukraine’s most nationalist region was once a hotbed of pro-Russian sentiment – how and why did it change?

The beginning of the tragedy  

By the start of the First World War, the Russophile movement in Galicia was experiencing tough times. As a result of the “divide and rule” policy implemented by the Austrians, the movement suffered a split. The oldest and most respected organizations ended up in the hands of pro-Austrian leaders who advocated Ukrainian, not Rusyn, identity.

After the army of the Russian Empire crossed the border on August 18, 1914, and launched an offensive in Galicia, mass repressions swept through the region. People fell victim to the rage of the Austrian authorities over trifling matters – like possessing Russian literature, being a member of a Russian society, having a Russian education, or just sympathizing with Saint Petersburg. In some cases, people were arrested just for calling themselves Russians. Prisons were full of “enemies of the state” and “dangerous Moscow agents”, and the streets were lined with gallows.

“Those suspected of ‘Russophilia’ were hung on these trees in front of the windows. People were hung right on the trees. They would hang there for a day, then would be taken off and others would take their place… ” recounted one of the peasants in the Gorodetsky district. The repressions primarily affected the intelligentsia and Orthodox priests, most of whom completed spiritual studies in the Russian Empire.

RT

Austro-Hungarian servicemen pose against the background of three hanged men executed on August 30, 1914 in Mukachevo. ©  Wikipedia

Repressions against the intelligentsia were followed by those against the general public. Anyone who was thought to sympathize with Russia or Russian culture became a suspect. This included people who had once visited Russia, read Russian newspapers, or were just known as “Russophiles.” Military courts worked around the clock and a simplified procedure of legal proceedings was introduced for cases of suspected treason.

Members of Galicia’s Rusyn movement who chose the “Ukrainian way” actively participated in the repressions. Pro-Austrian politicians prepared lists of “unreliable” suspects and based on mere accusations, and arrested anyone who sympathized with Russia. As Russophile public figure Ilya Terekh described, “At the beginning of the war, the Austrian authorities arrested almost the entire Russian intelligentsia of Galicia and thousands of peasants, based on the lists handed over to the administrative and military authorities by the Ukrainophiles.”

“People who recognized themselves as Russian or simply had a Russian name were seized indiscriminately.

Anyone who possessed a Russian newspaper, book, sacred image, or even a postcard from Russia was grabbed, abused, and taken away. And then, there were gallows and executions without end – thousands of innocent victims, seas of martyr blood and orphan tears,” said another Russophile, Julian Yavorsky.

RT

Talerhof in 1917, the place where the camp executions were carried out. ©  Wikipedia

In October 1914, the Russian writer Mikhail Prishvin, who served as a medical assistant at the front, wrote in his diary: “When I got to Galicia … I felt and saw the living images of the times of the Inquisition.” Prishvin described the feelings of the Galician Rusyns toward Russia as follows: “Galicians dream of a great, pure, and beautiful Russia. A seventeen-year-old schoolboy walked with me around Lvov [now Lviv, then Lemberg] and spoke Russian without an accent. He told me about the persecution of the Russian language. Students were not even allowed to have a map of Russia, and before the war he was forced to burn books by Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky.”

As casualties mount, why there’s a growing backlash against the methods used to conscript Ukrainian men for war

Hell on earth

The prisons of Galicia were not big enough to accommodate all the repressed.  On August 28, 1914, there were two thousand prisoners in Lviv alone. It was then that the Austrian authorities decided to establish concentration camps. In September 1914, the huge Thalerhof place of incarceration was set up in Styria. The first prisoners were delivered on September 4. According to the testimony of one of the survivors, priest Theodor Merena, prisoners were “people of different class and age”. They included clergy, lawyers, doctors, teachers, officials, peasants, writers, and students. The age of the prisoners ranged from infants to 100-year-olds.

Occasionally, Ukrainian activists who were loyal to the Austrian regime were accidentally placed into Thalerhof. Most of them were removed quickly. One later recalled that all prisoners had a chance to escape by giving up their Russian name and registering as “Ukrainians” in the “Ukrainian list.” 

Up to the winter of 1915, there were no barracks in Thalerhof. People slept on the ground in the open air despite the rain and frost. The camp’s sanitary conditions were awful. The latrines were uncovered and used by twenty people at a time. When the barracks were built, they were overcrowded, housing 500 people instead of the intended 200. The prisoners slept on straw beds which were rarely replaced. Naturally, epidemics were widespread. In just two months following November 1914, over three thousand prisoners died of typhus.

“In Thalerhof, death rarely came naturally – it was injected through the poison of infectious diseases. Violent death was commonplace in Thalerhof.

There was no question of any treatment of the sick. Even doctors were hostile toward the prisoners,” wrote imprisoned Rusyn writer Vasily Vavrik.

The prisoners weren’t provided with any adequate medical care. In the beginning, Thalerhof didn’t even have a hospital. People died on the damp ground. However, when the hospital barracks were finally built, the doctors gave almost no medicine to the patients.

RT

Talerhof. Cemetery “under the pines” in 1917. ©  Wikipedia

To instill fear, prison authorities constructed poles throughout the camp and regularly hung “violators” on these poles. The violation could be a mere trifle, like catching someone smoking in the barrack at night. Iron shackles were also used as punishment, even on women. Moreover, the camp was supplied with barbed wire, observation towers with sentries, barking dogs, posters with slogans, propaganda, torture facilities, a moat for executions, gallows, and a cemetery.

70 years after Stalin’s death: How Western propaganda has rebranded the Soviet dictator from villain to hero, and back again

The camp operated for nearly three years and was closed down in May 1917 on the order of Charles I of Austria. The barracks stood on the site until 1936, when they were finally demolished. 1,767 corpses were then exhumed and reburied in a common grave in the nearby village of Feldkirchen.

The exact number of victims in Thalerhof is still disputed. The official report by Field Marshal Schleer dated November 9, 1914, stated that 5,700 Russophiles were imprisoned there at the time. According to one of the survivors, in the autumn of the same year there were about 8,000 prisoners. Twenty to thirty thousand Russian Galicians and Bukovinians passed through Thalerhof in total. In the first year and a half alone, about 3,000 prisoners died. According to other sources, 3,800 people were executed in the first half of 1915. Overall, in the course of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian authorities killed at least 60,000 Rusyns.

Remembering the forgotten

In the period between the two world wars, the former prisoners strived to preserve the memory of the tragedy that affected Galicia’s Ruthenians and to perpetuate the memory of the victims of Thalerhof. The first monument was erected in 1934, and soon similar memorials appeared in other parts of the region. In the years 1924-1932, the Thalerhof Almanac was published.  It provided documentary evidence and eyewitness accounts of the genocide. In 1928 and 1934, Thalerhof congresses, which gathered over 15 thousand participants, were held in Lviv.

RT

The procession of the participants of the Talerhof Congress on the occasion of the opening of the monument to the victims of Talerhof, 1934. ©  Wikipedia

Galicia became part of the USSR in 1939. Even before Soviet times, there was an unspoken ban on the topic Thalerhof, because the very fact of Russian existence in Galicia was seen as an impediment to Ukrainization, which was actively cultivated in Western Ukraine following World War Two. After Galicia and Volhynia became part of the USSR, most Russophile organizations in Lviv were closed. However, memorial services by the monuments continued. As the eyewitnesses and contemporaries of the events grew older and died, a new generation of Galicians was brought up in the spirit of atheism and took on a Ukrainian national identity. As a result, fewer and fewer people came to the memorials.

In modern Ukraine, the Rusyn genocide isn’t publicly discussed. Thalerhof is not mentioned in any school textbooks on the history of the country. The idea that Russians once lived in Galicia – the proud center of “Ukrainian culture” – does not fit the nationalistic ideology of contemporary Ukraine. Most young people have never even heard of Thalerhof.

The tragedy marked the end of the Russophile movement in Galicia. All those who did not submit and did not take on a Ukrainian identity were physically annihilated. Just a few years after the tragic events, public views changed. The region came under the influence of other movements and politicians. When Austria-Hungary fell apart after the First World War, Galicia turned into a powerful center of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.

RT

Bird’s-eye view of the Talerhof concentration camp. ©  Wikipedia

Dmitry Plotnikov is a political journalist exploring the history and current events of ex-Soviet states.

May 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Chilean journalist arrested in Ukraine

RT | May 5, 2023

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on Friday confirmed the arrest of Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean national living in Kharkov, suspecting him of pro-Russian sympathies. Lira was detained in April 2022, but released after a week and ordered not to leave the city.

According to a SBU statement quoted by Ukrainian media, Lira “publicly justified the armed aggression” of Russia, denied or glorified alleged Russian war crimes, and “engaged in discrediting the top military and political leadership and the Defense Forces of our state.”

The SBU filmed Lira’s second arrest by heavily armed agents, blurring out the faces of everyone involved.

He is suspected of “producing and distributing materials justifying the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, committed repeatedly.” A court ordered him jailed pending the outcome of the investigation.

The SBU has reportedly seized Lira’s computer and multiple cell phones as evidence.

Lira, 55, is a writer and filmmaker who used to work in the US. Several years ago, he moved to Kharkov, where he got married and began blogging as ‘Coach Red Pill’.

This is the second time he has been detained by the SBU. He was first arrested in April 2022, but was released after a week. No charges were pressed at the time, and Lira would not discuss the details of what happened, saying only that he was not allowed to leave Kharkov.

He blamed the US outlet Daily Beast for directing Kiev’s attention to his work, accusing the outlet of trying to get him killed. The tabloid had reported on Lira’s activities in March 2022, calling him “sleazy” and a “pro-Putin shill,” and noting its reporters had reached out to Ukrainian authorities.

While Lira kept a low profile for several weeks after his release, he eventually returned to social media and continued voicing criticism of Kiev’s policies. Since then, Ukraine has enacted laws criminalizing dissent and allowing President Vladimir Zelensky to ban opposition political parties, nationalize the media and even persecute the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for being in canonical communion with Moscow.

May 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Zelensky must choose between talks or losing more territory – former US Army chief

By Ahmed Adel | May 5, 2023

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will have to choose between peace talks with Moscow or the continuation of the conflict and the loss of more territory, former US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis wrote in an article.

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is loath to agree to any deal that leaves Ukrainian territory in Russian hands. The reality, however, is that he does not have what it takes to fully force Moscow off his territory. The most realistic choice he faces is between negotiating an end to the fighting that allows Ukraine to hold what it has, or to continue fighting and lose even more ground. That decision is Zelensky’s alone to make, but America also has agency and must look out for its own interests,” Davis wrote in 19FortyFive.

According to him, the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is unlikely to be successful since they do not have enough troops to cope with the Russian military given the superiority in the number of soldiers, weapons, and equipment.

The former lieutenant colonel also reflected on his own country’s policy regarding the armed conflict, lambasting the promise to continue giving Ukraine what it needs “for as long as it takes” because it is not a sustainable strategy and will almost certainly not produce a beneficial result for either the US or Ukraine. “A course correction is therefore required,” he stressed.

Davis added that many in Europe already recognise that Ukraine cannot win in a practical time frame at a reasonable cost.

In the end, the author states that, “as horrible as it would be for us to accept ending the war on undesirable terms, it would be even worse to ignore reality and continue pursuing an unattainable military objective. The cost for the former is unpleasant. The cost to the latter could be infinitely worse.”

In early April, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces might carry out an offensive in the coming weeks. For his part, the Ukrainian Defence Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, appealed to wait until the end of the mud season, known as Rasputitsa, so that the roads are useable.

Spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitry Peskov, noted that any statements about the planned offensive by the Ukrainian military are being carefully monitored and considered in their own planning of the special military operation. In this way, Russia has had ample time to prepare for this Ukrainian offensive, and although gains might initially be made, it is expected that it will fizzle out and be followed by a major Russian counterattack.

The New York Times noted that if the Ukrainian military are not successful in pushing back Russian forces, Western support for Ukraine might weaken. This is especially the case since war weariness and economic crises are gripping the EU and USA.

None-the-less, the European Commission adopted on May 3 the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) “to urgently deliver ammunition and missiles to Ukraine and to help Member States refill their stocks.”

“By introducing targeted measures including financing, the Act aims at ramping up the EU’s production capacity and addressing the current shortage of ammunition and missiles as well as their components. It will support the destocking from Member States and the joint procurement for ammunition,” the announcement added.

For her part, President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “We stand by our promise to support Ukraine and its people, for as long as it takes. But Ukraine’s brave soldiers need sufficient military equipment to defend their country.”

However, for all the talk of supporting Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” it is doubtful that EU member states will continue draining their economies and resources in the long-term because Kiev refuses to negotiate. This will become especially apparent as elections begin creeping up in member states and people’s fury about the dire economic situation are expressed.

In the same light as Ursula von der Leyen, White House spokesman John Kirby revealed on May 3 that the US has already handed over almost 100% of the military aid that Kiev requested for its offensive but this will not prevent them from making further deliveries.

There is evidently a clear divide between Western rulers and experts, especially when recalling that former US Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis is far from the only expert urging for negotiations since Ukraine does not have a chance of winning the war despite all the brave talk and propaganda.

Pumping resources to the Ukrainian military stems from the fact that if Kiev’s offensive is unsuccessful the West would have failed in its task to preserve Ukraine’s pre-war borders and halt Russia’s advances, in addition to wasting billions upon billions of dollars to their own immense detriment. But as said, for now, it is only Western experts, and not the rulers, who are willing to face this reality.

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

May 5, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s coming revenge attack on Ukraine for the attempted assassination of Putin

By Gilbert Doctorow | May 4, 2023

Yesterday The New York Times only published a tiny article on the Kremlin’s assertion that Ukraine had targeted Putin in a drone attack on the Kremlin. On the contrary, The Financial Times considered the issue to be of prime importance and gave it lead position in their online edition. And what about the Russians, how did they deal with this?

The hourly news programs were very restrained, giving the story top place but only a minute or two of attention. However, the talk shows gave it extensive attention. Sixty Minutes focused on the U.S. official reaction to the Kremlin charges, with an excerpt from the interview that Antony Blinken gave. In his remarks, Blinken first put in question the whole incident, saying dismissively that you cannot believe anything the Kremlin says. Then he went on to say that Kiev can do anything it deems necessary to repel the aggressor and recover its sovereign territory, for which it has American support. The hosts left it to the audience to interpret Blinken’s words, though none but blithering idiots would fail to understand from Blinken that the USA was in cahoots with Kiev on such an attack. Those who are politically informed about Washington would understand that Blinken is now wholly controlled by his nominal subordinate, Victoria Nuland, since what he said was  exactly what she would say, meaning hawkish, anti-Russian in the extreme.

Beyond that, Sixty Minutes directed attention to Zelensky’s convenient departure for Finland shortly after the attack on the Kremlin. They also noted that his stay in Finland has been extended by a day, that he is now headed for Germany, where there was no expectation of his visit, and that he is being transported by a U.S. military plane. Here again, without saying it, the program hosts allow the audience to reach the logical conclusion that Zelensky was directly involved in the plot to assassinate Putin and that the United States was at his side all the way.

The talk show Evening with Vladimir Solovyov was less subtle. The host opened by reminding his audience of what Dmitry Medvedev, former President and head of the Russian Security Council said earlier in the day: that Ukraine is now a terrorist state, that there is no longer any justification for negotiating with Zelensky and that the Kiev regime must be destroyed.

For those who think that Solovyov and Medvedev were just sounding off and have no credibility, I point out that the Volodin, Speaker of the State Duma, yesterday also called for the destruction of the decision-making bodies in Ukraine, which means, of course, the presidential administration first of all.

While American and European newscasters opine over whether all this spells an escalation of the war, I will say with almost certainty that it does. It is hard to imagine that Vladimir Putin will be able or will even want to remain calm and restrained in the face of the latest U.S.-Kiev provocations. If his position is at risk in this war, it is from Russia’s super patriots.

The Russians have the ability to strike anywhere in Ukraine and to destroy any safe-places of the Kiev leadership including the deepest of bunkers. The question now is will they do so before Zelensky returns home, if he ever does? Will they do so during or immediately after the 9 May military parade in Moscow?

We are once again at a turning point in this war which has been provoked by Washington acting through the puppet regime in Kiev.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

May 4, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

RFK Jr: Zelensky Could Have Avoided Conflict With Russia by Saying ‘No’ to NATO

Sputnik – 03.05.2023

WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had a chance to avoid the conflict with Russia by simply refusing to join NATO.

“In 2019 actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky ran as the peace candidate winning the Ukrainian presidency with 70% of the vote. As Benjamin Abelow observes in his brilliant book, ‘How the West Brought War to Ukraine,’ Zelenskyy almost certainly could have avoided the 2022 war with Russia simply by uttering five words – ‘I will not join NATO,'” Kennedy said in a tweet.

According to Kennedy, Zelensky was forced to continue the dangerous path to NATO by neoconservatives in the Biden administration and by violent fascist elements within the Ukrainian government.

Moreover, Zelensky even allowed the United States to place its nuclear-capable Aegis missile launchers along Ukraine’s 1,200-mile border with Russia and thereby provoked Russia, the presidential candidate added.

Moscow launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. Russian and Ukrainian delegations have engaged in several rounds of peace talks since then, but the negotiations ultimately reached an impasse. Russia has insisted that it is open for talks with Kiev, even after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree prohibiting negotiations with Moscow in October 2022.

May 3, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Kiev regime’s meddling destroys last vestiges of press freedom in US

By Drago Bosnic | May 3, 2023

It’s hardly breaking news that the United States is meddling in the affairs of virtually every country on the planet. The simple fact that Washington DC is the only geopolitical player that operates under the doctrine of so-called “full spectrum dominance” is a testament to that. Perhaps the most obvious example of that is former Ukraine, a country that has been hijacked by a US-backed Neo-Nazi junta in 2014. However, it would seem the meddling isn’t always one-sided, at least according to the latest reports regarding the background of Tucker Carlson’s firing from the Fox News Channel (FNC).

All things considered, Carlson is the most popular news anchor in American history. His rational, highly informed, witty and mostly unbiased (with the notable exception being his views on China) analyses are extremely popular, both in the US and worldwide. However, as such, they are also an insurmountable obstacle for the warmongering propaganda machine. Years before the start of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe, Carlson had been warning against antagonizing Moscow. For this, the rabid Russophobes keep accusing him of supposed “pro-Russian bias”.

These attacks on Tucker Carlson and his family went on for years, but escalated dramatically after the start of the SMO (special military operation). Any attempt to actually analyze this new stage of the US-induced Ukrainian conflict is effectively considered “heresy”. Carlson dismissed this, convinced that his country is still a “bastion of freedom”. However, although the attacks from the establishment became more direct, he refused to back down and continued his reporting, at that point the only one in an American mass media outlet not going 100% with the official narrative.

According to Semafor, Fox Corporation Chair Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan spoke on the phone with the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky before Carlson was ousted on April 24. The report claims that “the elder Murdoch held a call with the Ukrainian leader in March where the two discussed the war in the Eastern European country as well as the anniversary of the deaths of two Fox News journalists outside of Kyiv in March 2022”, further adding that “a similar conversation took place between Zelensky and the younger Murdoch, Fox Corporation Executive Chairman, on March 15, which was noted in a national broadcast last month”.

If the reports are accurate, this would mean the phone calls took place just weeks before Carlson’s contract was officially terminated. Citing “a person familiar with the calls”, Semafor reports that “senior Ukrainian officials had raised their objections to Carlson’s coverage of the war to Fox Executives, but Zelensky did not address these objections [directly] during the calls”. While Zelensky may have skipped direct appeals to have Carlson fired, he certainly must have “strongly implied” that this would be “good for freedom and democracy” in the US and worldwide.

“Clearly, he spooked a lot of members into not being fully supportive of Ukraine,” an unnamed senior GOP congressional aide told Semafor, adding: “Carlson’s ouster probably reduces the loudest voice out there against US support.”

Fox Corporation is yet to reveal which of the numerous reports on the Ukrainian conflict, including exposing the lies about Russia’s long-debunked “battlefield failures” and the staggering level of corruption associated with the Kiev regime, got Carlson fired. However, whichever it was, his ouster is certainly in the interest of Zelensky, whom Carlson even called a “dictator” on several occasions (although a “puppet” would be more suitable). It is also in the interest of numerous high-ranking US officials, particularly since Carlson’s investigative approach that revealed just how corrupt the Kiev regime frontman is could easily incriminate them as well.

This notion is further reinforced by the reactions of top-ranking officials like the Republican congressman from Texas, the infamous warmonger Michael McCaul, one of the most prominent GOP warhawks and an outspoken supporter of US meddling in Ukraine and Taiwan, who described Carlson’s reporting as “Russian disinformation”. Needless to say, without providing any evidence for such bold claims. Carlson (rightfully) slammed the attack as slander. Although some of his fellow journalists supported Carlson, the vast majority, particularly those working for the mainstream propaganda machine, almost uniformly applauded his ouster from the FNC.

One of the founders of The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, is among the former, as he criticized Carlson’s removal and the open suppression of his stances against the proxy war in Ukraine and the rapidly escalating confrontation with Russia. Greenwald also commented on the revelations about Zelensky’s involvement.

“This article strongly suggests that the Murdochs talked to Zelensky, and Tucker’s opposition to the US proxy war in Ukraine was a major factor in his firing. I’ll await confirmation, but one thing is for sure: his removal eliminated the most influential anti-war voice from TV,” Greenwald posted on Twitter.

“From the start of Biden’s war policy in Ukraine, the establishment wings of both parties were – as usual – in lockstep. Schumer and AOC have the same views as McConnell and Lindsey Graham,” Greenwald noted, adding: “The only DC opposition came from the populist right, and Tucker was its key media voice.”

Considering the fact that Zelensky officially leads an unashamedly Neo-Nazi regime that openly persecutes Ukrainian Orthodox Christians, essentially kidnaps regular Ukrainians and sends them to die as cannon fodder for a “NATO mission”, the American people should be terrified of the prospect that the same person is regulating what they can (or cannot) watch on TV.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

May 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s Military Performance Doesn’t Match the Propaganda

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | May 3, 2023

American government and media statements have led the public to believe that the Russian military has been shockingly ineffective and there should be confident optimism for a Ukrainian victory. Ukrainians have indeed fought courageously and performed above expectation. But there has been a vast gulf between private and public assessments. Recent leaks have confirmed what has long been suggested: there is a need to re-evaluate the performance of the Russian army and to recalibrate the optimistic expectations.

The ridiculing and mocking of the Russian military has been possible only because of a deliberate self-delusion that demanded turning away from two important admissions.

First, in the three quarters of a century since the United States became the world’s dominant power, it has seldom decisively won a war or fully achieved its explicit policy goal for going to war. Honestly evaluating Russia’s military performance requires comparing it to the exemplar of recent American wars. The United States has consistently failed to defeat armies far more ragtag than the modern Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Since Vietnam, the United States has failed to achieve its military and political goals in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya. After twenty years of fighting in Afghanistan, the U.S. was forced to withdraw. They were in disarray; the Taliban is back in power. The United States has twice withdrawn from Iraq because their government refused to capitulate to Status of Forces Agreements. The first withdrawal left Saddam Hussein in power; the second removed him and left Iran (not the U.S.) strengthened in Iraq. The war in Libya left a failed state to bleed weapons into extremist movements throughout North Africa. In none of these wars did the United States leave victorious nor with their foreign policy objectives achieved. Each of them left a government in power that was not pro-American. The war in Syria has also left Bashar al-Assad in power.

If the Russian military has fared badly against the modern Ukrainian army, it has fared no worse than the United States has against much less modern adversaries.

The second point is the reason why Russia is fighting such a modern Ukrainian army. Ukraine has become a de facto member of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies are providing everything but the bodies in the war against Russia. Moscow is not pulling off this level of performance against Kiev: it is pulling off this level of performance against the combined resources of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies have provided and maintained the weapons, trained the Ukrainian soldiers to use them, and provided the intelligence on where to target them. The U.S. is providing “stepped up feeds of intelligence about the position of Russian forces, highlighting weaknesses in the Russian lines.” The U.S. has essentially assumed planning, conducting war-games, and “suggesting” which “avenues… were likely to be more successful.” In March, the U.S. hosted members of the Ukrainian military at an American military base in Germany for war games to strategize for the next phase of the war. In April, they “held tabletop exercises with Ukrainian military leaders to demonstrate how different offensive scenarios could play out” in the expected counter offensive, for which the U.S. has “worked” with Ukraine “in terms of their surprise,” according to General Christopher Cavoli.

But even though Russia is facing an enhanced Ukrainian military, recent leaks confirm what private assessments have long suggested: Ukraine’s losses have been understated while its prospects have been overstated, and Russia’s losses have been overstated while its achievements have been understated.

Long before the recent leaks revealed that many more Ukrainian soldiers than Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded on the battlefield, that Ukraine will be out of antiaircraft missiles by early May, that they are short of troops and ammunition and their counteroffensive will fall “well short” of its goals, attaining, at best, only “modest territorial gains,” U.S. generals and government officials had been quietly admitting as much.

In February, The Washington Post reported that privately the U.S. intelligence’s “sobering assessment” that retaking Crimea “is beyond the capability of Ukraine’s army” has been “reiterated to multiple committees on Capitol Hill over the last several weeks.” As early as November, 2022, U.S. officials shared that assessment with Ukraine, suggesting they “start thinking about [their] realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea.” That same month, western military analysts began to warn of an “inflection point” at which Ukraine’s battlefield gains were at an apex. And on January 21, 2023, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said publicly that Ukraine would not be able to retake all of its territory.

But it was not only that Ukraine’s ambitions had been inflated and their prospects overstated. Their losses had also been understated. Despite public claims of parity in losses or worse for Russia, the leaked reports of a much higher ratio of Ukrainian deaths and casualties to Russian deaths and casualties had been forecasted by military analysts who frequently put the ratio of soldiers killed at closer to 7:1 or 10:1 Ukrainian versus Russian losses. Der Spiegel has reported that German intelligence is “alarmed” by the “high losses suffered by the Ukrainian army” in the battle for Bakhmut. They told German politicians in a secret meeting that the loss of life for Ukrainian soldiers is in “three-digit number[s]” every day on that battleground alone. The Washington Post has reported that the most highly trained and experienced Ukrainian soldiers are “all dead or wounded.”

And it is not only Ukrainian losses that may have been understated. Russian losses, ineptitude, and material setbacks may have been just as overstated. After suffering high casualties at the beginning of the war, Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary, says Russia began to pursue a more methodical battlefield strategy and lowered their losses.

On April 26, General Cavoli, the commander of United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, gave a congressional audience of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee a report that is very different from what they’d been told just a month earlier. The public is constantly told that Putin is throwing his soldiers into a meatgrinder. General Mark Milley recently reported that Russian troops are “getting slaughtered.” He told the House Armed Services Committee in late March, “It’s a slaughter-fest for the Russians. They’re getting hammered in the vicinity of Bahkmut.”

But in April, General Cavoli told that same body, “The Russian ground force has been degenerated somewhat by this conflict; although it is bigger today than it was at the beginning of the conflict.” And it is not only the ground force. Cavoli went on to report, “The air force has lost very little: they’ve lost eighty planes. They have another one thousand fighters and fighter bombers. The navy has lost one ship.”

And as for the larger Russian military, Cavoli said, “Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict… despite all of the efforts they’ve undertaken inside Ukraine.”

Historian Geoffrey Roberts, an authority on Soviet military history, told me:

“Russia’s Armed Forces have made many mistakes and suffered severe setbacks during the course of its war with Ukraine and NATO, but overall it has performed very well. Like the Red Army during the Second World War, the Russian military has shown itself to be a resilient, adaptable, creative, and highly effective learning organization—a modern war-making machine whose lessons and experience—positive and negative—will be studied by General Staffs and military academies for generations to come.”

After initial territorial setbacks, the Ukrainian military countered with two shocking victories in Kharkiv and Kherson provinces. But in each of those cases, Russia seems to have either decided to leave or redeployed, offering little defense. Military analyst and ret. Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis has pointed out that in each situation where the Russian military “chose to stand and fight, Ukraine has not defeated them.” Russia has not lost a battle it has chosen to fight.

Since then, the Russian military has settled itself in Bakhmut where, like death’s maw, it has devoured everyone Kiev has sent in to displace it. A Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut has said that “the exchange rate of trading our lives for theirs favors the Russians. If this goes on like this, we could run out.” Daniel Davis has pointed out that, even if Ukraine were to launch and win a counteroffensive, the rate of casualties and deaths would be so high, they would “have spent [their] last remaining force with which to conduct offensives” or future operations. Military historian Geoffrey Roberts recently told an interviewer, “if the war continues for much longer, I am worried that Ukraine will collapse as a state.”

Professor Hill argued in November 2022 that “had Zelensky’s Ukrainian government been willing to negotiate back in April [2022] then the eventual outcome on the ground would probably have ended up being better for Ukraine than is likely to be the case today or in the future.” It’s a prognosis, he told me, that still stands.

The Ukrainian military may have performed above expectation, and the Russian military may have performed below expectation. But recent statements, both leaked and on the record, suggest the need for an updated, more sincere evaluation. Russia is not struggling only against the Ukrainian Armed Forces: they are struggling against a military seriously swollen by NATO resources, training, and planning. And even still, they are faring no worse than the U.S. military has fared against much less equipped, trained, and prepared forces over the past several decades. The dismissive mocking of the Russian military has been helped by underestimating Ukrainian losses, overestimating Ukrainian capabilities, and by overestimating Russian losses and degeneration and underestimating Russian capabilities and achievements.

Both senior U.S. military leadership and major western media must begin reassessing the Russian military and its capabilities for what they are, instead of how narratives wish them to be.

May 3, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Kiev’s counterattack unlikely to succeed due to excessive casualties

By Lucas Leiroz | May 3, 2023

Ukrainian plans to launch a counteroffensive look rather difficult to implement. At a meeting of Russian top military officials held on May 2nd, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu reported the official assessments on Ukrainian casualties during the last month. The government estimates that more than 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded in April. According to Shoigu, Kiev is unable to prevent its troops from suffering serious damage on the frontlines, “despite unprecedented military assistance by Western powers”.

The Russian data comes amid a scenario of collective skepticism about the possibility of Kiev reversing the military scenario of the conflict. More and more Western public opinion seems skeptical about a Ukrainian victory, considering that the territorial losses of Kiev’s troops are notorious and that the Russians are increasingly advancing towards the complete liberation of the territories reintegrated to the Federation. Now, with the release of this data about the number of casualties, the tendency is for this skepticism to increase, which complicates the Western war plans.

The big Western media outlets have been reacting to this situation through a kind of damage control – partially admitting that things are not going well in Ukraine, but suggesting that if more weapons are sent, the scenario could change. Some journalists use the rhetoric that there is a supposed counteroffensive plan to be implemented sometime this season, which would allegedly allow Ukrainian troops to achieve a major territorial advance, expelling the Russians even from peaceful territories such as Crimea. But the existence of data like this one revealed by the Russian Ministry makes it difficult to believe in the possibility of such a move.

Although the mainstream media tends to prevent the spread of information about Ukrainian problems, it will be difficult to stop the collective skepticism, as this is not the first time that numbers informing about the catastrophic situation of the Ukrainian forces have been revealed. On several occasions in recent months, reports on this subject have appeared. Included in the recent wave of leaked documents was a Pentagon assessment that between 124,000 and 131,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed by Russian forces. In estimates made by other intelligence agencies, there are even higher figures, with some reports giving statistics as high as 200,000 to 300,000 Ukrainian casualties. These reports circulate freely on the internet, so, as much as there are attempts by mainstream media to censor the data, the multiplicity of sources makes this work really difficult.

As expected, the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev continues to deny all these reports and claim its ability to carry on the fight. In February, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov stated that the number of deaths among the regime’s troops was lower than the number of deaths in the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria. According to official sources, the catastrophe in these two countries led to the death of 55,000 people, which shows how Reznikov is evidently lying, since even among the most openly pro-Ukrainian sources there is no belief in such a low number of casualties.

Similar declarations are also expected for the near future, especially responding to Shoigu’s statements. Kiev’s officials will try in every way to show that they have control over the situation of their troops and that their soldiers are in sufficient numbers for a counteroffensive – depending only on more Western weapons, thus justifying the “beggar” behavior for which Zelensky has already become known. At the same time, in Western countries governments will somehow have to convince their citizens that it is indeed prudent and necessary to continue sending arms to Kiev.

The wisest thing to do would be to admit the alarming numbers of Ukrainian casualties and stop the war machine behind the regime. Considering that it is an unwinnable conflict, negotiating peace is the best alternative for all sides. But neither Ukraine has the sovereignty to make such a decision, nor NATO has an interest in any possibility of peace. So, most likely, Ukrainian citizens will continue to die on the frontlines’ “meatgrinder”.

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

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

May 3, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

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