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US has “profound concerns” over success of Ukraine’s offensive, says document leak

By Ahmed Adel | April 12, 2023

The Ukrainian military is planning a new spring offensive, which will reportedly begin between Orthodox Easter on April 16 and Labour Day on May 9. This expected offensive has received much international media attention, particularly because of the bold and bombastic claims made by Ukrainian officials, such as the fallacy that Ukrainian troops will reach Crimea within seven months. However, a leaked US intelligence document found that a shortage of troops, ammunition and equipment could cause the Ukrainian military to fall “well short” of their goals.

It is recalled that Ukraine unveiled on April 2 a 12-point plan on how to integrate Crimea into the country after conquering the peninsula from Russia. However, Washington is sceptical that it can be achieved, meaning that this planned offensive is just a method to secure more weapons, funding and interest from the West.

The leaked document, labelled “top secret,” gave a bleak assessment from early February and warned of significant “force generation and sustainment shortfalls.” More alarmingly for Kiev is that such an offensive will result in only “modest territorial gains.” This leak obviously provides a more realistic assessment of the war in Ukraine, which is why Washington is scrambling and threatening journalists to not publish the contents of the leaks as it obviously contradicts previous claims made by the State Department and their controlled media apparatus.

Most importantly perhaps is that many of the documents are dated to February and March, meaning most of the information is current and relates to the awaited Ukrainian spring offensive.

According to the Washington Post, the leaked document predicts that the Ukrainian military will only achieve “modest success” despite Kiev’s strategy revolving around capturing areas already liberated by Russia in Donbass, while at the same time pushing south to cut the land bridge between Russia proper and Crimea.

The near impossibility of the offensive, according to the document, is because of the potency of entrenched Russian defences, as well as “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies” which will probably “strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive.”

The Washington Post said that the leaks “reveal profound concerns about Ukraine’s readiness to withstand a Russian offensive” while “beyond the leaked document, US officials said the prospects for a modest outcome in the spring offensive also were reinforced in a classified assessment by the National Intelligence Council” which “found that Ukraine was unlikely to recapture as much territory as Kyiv did last fall.”

Although a senior Ukrainian official did not dispute the contents of the leak, another senior official said the revelations were unlikely to compromise the planned spring offensive, saying: “It’s been obvious to everyone since November that the next counteroffensive will be focused on the south, first Melitopol and then Berdyansk. But the exact place — we can change that the week before.”

Perhaps the most interesting changes since the leaks were published is a begrudging acknowledgement in Western mainstream media that the situation is not desperate for Russia, as people have been led to believe since the conflict began, and rather it is the Ukrainian military suffering from significant shortages.

Considering the Washington Post’s propensity to disseminate Ukrainian disinformation and fake news, the newspaper surprisingly acknowledged that “the difficult fight against Russia has exhausted Ukraine’s troops and hardware, making every day the war drags on an advantage to the larger Russian military.”

This is a point that has been argued for well over a year by military experts: Russia has all the time in the world to fight this war on its own terms; Ukraine does not have time as its military is exhausting, Ukrainian civilians are war weary, and European citizens are suffering from a self-inflicted economic and cost-of-living crisis.

As the newspaper noted, “the prospect of pouring billions of dollars into a military stalemate with only incremental gains in one direction or another could weaken the resolve” of those who are backing the Kiev regime, particularly Europe and the US, who could possibly sharpen “calls for negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.”

This too will prove difficult though as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has endlessly promised a total victory, including the conquest of Crimea. This is obviously a delusional belief that will never come to pass, and rather it is a fantasy that Zelensky must maintain to continue receiving Western funds and weapons.

None-the-less, as the latest Washington Post article exposes, prospects for success, even with the arrival of thousands of Western-trained Ukrainian soldiers, are very low. This suggests that there could be a catalyst for a narrative shift in Western media, especially if the expected offensive fizzles out to nothingness after making some initial gains.

Yet, as already said, none of these revelations should be considered shocking or surprising if one objectively looks at events in Ukraine.

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

April 12, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

‘Pentagon Leak’ Indicates US Allies Not Falling in Line With Washington’s All-In Ukraine Policy

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.04.2023

The apparent Pentagon leak has shown that Washington’s attempts to force its allies into following its military agenda is not working well anymore, as the Kiev regime is losing grip and ground, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, told Sputnik.

Alleged Pentagon documents, with some of them marked “top secret,” have found their way to the web over the past few weeks. The trove contains information ranging from American military plans in Ukraine, to sensitive data linked to China and the Middle East, and also shed new light on Washington’s spying on its allies. This is not the first time that Pentagon documents have been leaked: in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, turned over a batch of Pentagon files pertaining to the US’ involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 to The New York Times, which prompted a heated public debate. Meanwhile, the veracity of the latest trove is in question, as South Korea, the UK, Israel, and Bulgaria have dismissed the apparent leak as “false.”

“There’s so much speculation,” said Daniel McAdams. “Could it be someone from the Pentagon who understands that the White House has absolutely no idea what it’s doing and is dragging us into World War III? Could it be someone like that, a whistleblower? Possibly. Could it be someone in the White House understanding that this is a lost war? They’ve lost the war and they’re looking for an off-ramp. And if they could point out the fact that Ukraine’s resources are severely depleted when the so-called spring offensive comes and it fails like most people expect it to fail, they could say, ‘Well, the information was out there. You all knew that they didn’t have a chance anyway, so it’s not our fault. See you later.’ You know, that could be another thing.”

Judging from the documents in question, the US has recently been busy with persuading its allies to kick off deliveries of military equipment and lethal weapons to the Kiev regime. The alleged Pentagon files shed light on Seoul’s concerns that artillery shells provided to the US by South Korea could then be transferred to Ukraine. The batch also showed that the US has not given up hope on forcing Tel Aviv into sending missiles to the Kiev regime and even alleged that the Bulgarian government is considering sending Kiev its MiG fighter jets. However, the US allies have resolutely denied planning any of the aforementioned weaponrs deliveries to Kiev.

“I don’t think it’s anything unusual to see the US pressuring its so-called allies into doing what Washington wants done on foreign policy,” McAdams noted. “I mean, the leaks are very strange, because it’s not obvious what the purpose of leaking them was right now. The idea that the US is pressuring countries like South Korea and Israel is not a surprise, but it does show at least that the US is all-in on its Ukraine policy and it’s demanding that the rest of the world fall in line (…) There are two reasons [for the US pressuring its allies to give weapons to Ukraine]. First of all, the neocons (…) who run our foreign policy, they never back off. They never back away. That’s number one. And number two, this whole thing is a money-laundering scheme. The Central Europeans give up Soviet-era weapons, and then they use money given to them by Washington to purchase brand new weapons from the US military-industrial complex. This is a massive scam on a multi-tens of billions of dollars scale.”

The US sent Ukraine nearly $47 billion worth of military aid last year and still Washington is pressuring smaller allied nations to join its effort and fork out. However, the problem is that it isn’t working and those countries are pushing back and saying “no,” McAdams continued. He cited French President Emmanuel Macron as saying recently: “We can’t just follow the Americans on their foreign policy anymore.” According to the US scholar, this is a clear indication that “there is a shift coming.” In addition, it has also become clear that the Kiev regime is incapable of winning on the battlefield and negotiations are long overdue. The apparent Pentagon leak describes a gloomy picture of Ukraine’s depleted stockpiles and manpower.

“I think what it says is that it’s hopeless. But again, the strange thing about these leaks is that this is hardly a revelation. Anyone who follows the Ukraine-Russia conflict beyond just watching CNN understands that Ukraine is in a terrible situation. It’s already lost a thousand tanks. Another 100 tanks is not going to make a big difference. You can’t train a military on all of these different weapons systems and military systems and none of them are interconnected, none of them match. You’ve got a German tank over here, an English tank over here, and an American tank over here. You can’t win a war that way against any opponent, but certainly not against the Russian military. It can’t be won that way. So it’s not a revelation, it confirms what many people who are following this thing already know,” McAdams concluded.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Kiev to run out of its anti-air missiles

By Lucas Leiroz | April 11, 2023

Apparently, it is increasingly difficult to hide the catastrophic situation of Kiev’s war arsenal. According to a major Western media outlet, the neo-Nazi regime will run out of most of its anti-air missiles by next month. The source of the newspaper would be an alleged leaked Pentagon’s document. The case shows once again how unfavorable the military scenario of the conflict is for the Ukrainian forces.

The subject was discussed in a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal. According to the outlet, documents leaked on the Pentagon’s official social networks would have exposed an extremely pessimistic forecast about the future of the Ukrainian armed forces, pointing to the nearly total exhaustion of Kiev’s anti-aircraft defense capacity. Anti-air missiles are expected to run out in May, which will further complicate the Ukrainian situation and boost demand for new NATO weapons packages in order to prolong the alliance’s proxy war.

The forecast is based on a calculation taking into account the recent numbers of the Ukrainian army. Currently, Kiev is expending about 69 Buk missiles and 200 S-300 missiles a month to maintain its defense positions against the Russian air attacks. With these numbers, it is most likely that the Buk missiles will run out in early April and that the stock of S-300s will expire by May 3rd, according to Pentagon’s officials in the leaked document.

Indeed, some measures to mitigate the effects of Ukrainian anti-aircraft weakness have already been taken by Western forces. Kiev received three Iris-T anti-aircraft systems from Germany, in addition to eight American NASAMS systems. However, these devices allow a limited number of launches, which do not cover as much territory as the S-300 missiles. This limited aid has made it difficult to efficiently supply new Western missiles to Ukraine, making Kiev still heavily dependent on Soviet-era launch systems.

In this sense, a new wave of broad military support would be needed to overcome the Ukrainian deficit. The US military, according to what is exposed in the revealed paper, estimate that the necessary number will reach 16 Irist-T or NASAMS batteries and up to 12 Patriot or SAMP-T batteries. It is necessary to remember that recently the American president Joe Biden had already authorized the sending of a Patriot battery, at the same time that Germany, France and Italy promised to supply a SAMP-T system to the neo-Nazi regime. However, this equipment has not yet reached Ukraine, which is why the situation of Kiev’s defense has not yet improved.

Since late 2022, requests for military aid focused on anti-aircraft defense have been constant in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s speeches. He considers this type of equipment a “number one priority”, and his advisors have also requested, in addition to anti-missile systems, the well-known US F-16 fighter jets, which have been repeatedly banned by the US government. Some pro-Ukrainian analysts believe that these aid packages would be a kind of “game changer”, but renowned experts rule out any possibility of reversing the military scenario of the conflict, regardless of whether NATO weapons reach the battlefield.

It is important to note that the US government has not yet commented on the case, with the Pentagon being silent on the authenticity of the supposed leak. The matter comes amid a recent wave of releases of classified Pentagon’s documents. Other reports from the department were exposed on social networks, including information on sensitive topics such as China, the Middle East and terrorism. There has been strong distrust on the part of analysts about the veracity of these alleged leaks. Some commentators argue that if the releases were true there would be no room for the Western media to report their existence, with a strong censorship initiative trying to hide the incident.

Although there is not enough information to point out the veracity of these leakages, it is possible to say that at least with regard to the Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles, there is a great possibility that the numbers are real, considering the evident defeat of Kiev’s forces in the battlefield. In a more realistic perspective, it is possible to suspect that in fact there are no “leaks”, but that the Pentagon would be deliberately publishing the numbers to increase the fear of a Ukrainian defeat in public opinion, boosting support for the shipment of new weapons.

What we have seen recently is the absolute failure of the “Ukrainian victory” narrative, as Russian advances have made it clear which side militarily controls the combats. Due to this, there seems to be currently an attempt at “damage control”, with officials and mainstream media partially admitting Ukraine’s defeat. If before the justification for sending weapons was that Kiev would be winning, now it is said that Kiev is losing, but “must win”. The aim is to spread anti-Russian fear in public opinion and to convince ordinary citizens that the shipment of weapons is an urgent measure in order to save the West.

In a rational and strategic analysis, it is possible to see that at no time did Moscow show interest in expanding the limits of its military operation, therefore there is no reason for any kind of fear on the part of Western citizens. On the other hand, the exhaustion of Ukrainian forces seems to be good news, since, faced with the inability to continue fighting, the Kiev regime would be forced to surrender, which would end hostilities. This would be the best-case scenario for all sides except for NATO’s pro-war elites.

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

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Chinese Media Reveals Why Russia Unlikely to Have Leaked Sensitive Ukraine Docs

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 10.04.2023

The FBI and the Pentagon have kicked off investigations after the leak of a damning US intelligence assessment on the Ukrainian conflict. US officials and media immediately blamed Russia, while Kiev characterized the leak as “Russian propaganda.” The Kremlin said the docs show the dramatic extent to which NATO is entrenched in the conflict.

Russia is not likely to be behind the leak of the top secret US intelligence assessment of the situation in Ukraine, since it would prefer to keep the information under wraps and use it to its advantage, a major Chinese outlet speculates.

“If Russia has obtained these classified documents, it would not post them online, because this will make Russia lose the source or sources that had provided these documents,” an anonymous Chinese international security and intelligence expert told the Global Times. “The leak is unlikely caused by Russian intelligence agencies, because this does not make sense,” the expert said.

The source argued that there was “no reason for Russia to let its enemies know that it has obtained this intelligence, because this will also make its enemies change plans, making the hard-won military intelligence useless.”

Instead, GT noted, the leak goes to show to the world the “disunity, distrust and divergences” between the US, its allies and Kiev, and to demonstrate that Washington “is the biggest obstacle for the international community to promote a ceasefire and peace talks” to ending the Ukrainian crisis.

The documents demonstrate the precarious state of the Ukrainian military, and will both demoralize the Ukrainian military and reduce Western countries’ confidence in supporting Kiev against Russia, whether or not they are genuine, the Chinese newspaper suggested.

Whodunit?

US and Ukrainian officials immediately blamed Russian intelligence for the leak of the classified documents, and suggested that the assessment seems to combine a “statistical analysis of supplies, possible operational and tactical plans, as well as a large volume of fictitious information.”

The documents serve to confirm Russia’s public assessment on the state of the Ukrainian conflict, showing that Ukrainian air defenses have been depleted by months of strikes, and that Ukrainian casualties are over four times higher than those of the Russian side (contrasting sharply with public estimates by the Pentagon and the Ukrainian military of six-figure Russian losses).

The Pentagon’s reported efforts to scrub the documents from the internet were met with trolling by Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who sarcastically quipped that it was “totally” possible to “delete things from the internet,” and that doing so definitely wouldn’t “draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the leaks “quite interesting,” and said it was not surprising that Moscow has been blamed. “You and I know that there is a tendency to always blame everything on Russia. It is, in general, a disease,” the spokesman told reporters Monday.

Commentators speaking to Sputnik expressed a healthy measure of a skepticism over the documents’ authenticity, saying that although they serve to confirm Russia’s internal assessments on the state of the Ukrainian military, they provide Moscow “no benefit” as far as the strategic situation is concerned. Others pointed out that it would be highly unlikely for the documents to be published in legacy media outlets without the approval of the national security state.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine attempts to blame Russia for humiliating Pentagon leak

By Ahmed Adel | April 10, 2023

The Pentagon announced it was trying to remove from the internet a major leak of secret documents which have exposed plans relating to Ukraine’s war on Russia. For his part, Elon Musk sarcastically highlighted the vain attempt, saying on Twitter: “Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”

The American billionaire derided on Twitter the Pentagon’s attempt to remove social media posts containing leaked classified documents relating to the conflict in Ukraine. The day before his tweet, the New York Times newspaper indicated that officials were not successful in removing the publications from the internet.

The leak was described to the News York Times by a senior intelligence official as “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” the intelligence sharing apparatus between the Anglo countries – the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Some of the documents were found on Twitter and other sites on April 7, a day after US officials announced that they were investigating a potential leak of classified Ukrainian war plans. These war plans include an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defence capabilities and notes that 12 brigades are being formed for Ukraine, including nine trained by the US and other NATO allies.

One of the leaks, dated February 23, is labelled “Secret/NoForn,” meaning it was not meant to be shared with foreign countries, and thus confirms the secrecy of the documents.

It is the belief of Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, that the leak is “a significant breach in security” that could hamper Ukrainian military planning as it reportedly prepares for a spring offensive. “As many of these were pictures of documents, it appears that it was a deliberate leak done by someone that wished to damage the Ukraine, US, and NATO efforts,” he said.

The Kremlin said it had no doubts about the participation of the US or NATO, direct or indirect, in the conflict in Ukraine. None-the-less, the leaks would still provide a fascinating insight for decisionmakers in Moscow.

The New York Times reported that the leaks appear to be legitimate Defense Department documents. None-the-less, this did not stop Ukrainian officials from suggesting that the leak was only part of a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at influencing Ukraine’s possible spring offensive.

Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters that the data contained a “very large amount of fictitious information” and Russia was trying to seize back the initiative in its “invasion.” His claim, instead, is part of Ukraine’s disinformation campaign, one that has been insisted upon yet exposed consistently since the first days of the war when we consider incidents like Snake Island.

Podolyak, for his part, had only recently spread his own “fictitious information” by claiming that Ukraine will capture Crimea through military means in the next five to seven months because Russia does not have enough resources to control the situation.

Despite ridiculous attempts by Kiev to contradict Washington and blame Moscow, US authorities are trying to find the culprit of the leak. According to a US official, they are determining how the documents were leaked by first identifying which officials had access to them.

The documents are at least five weeks old, with the most recent dated on March 1. The plans did not provide specific action such as when Ukraine would launch the offensive, but experts strongly believe it will occur during the spring. This offensive will include Western-trained troops and newly supplied weapons, including dozens of battle tanks. Although initial gains might be made, it is expected that the offensive will quickly tire out before Russia ultimately launches its own counteroffensive.

In preparing for this offensive, Ukraine has received 49 battle tanks from Western countries; London said it finished training a second group of Ukrainian soldiers on the AS90 self-propelled howitzers it is donating; Washington announced it was providing another $500 million in ammunition for howitzers, rocket artillery, Patriot anti-air systems and other systems; and Poland said it had transferred four of the 14 MiG-29 fighter jets it is giving Ukraine, following a similar move from Slovakia last month.

Very evidently, there are nowhere near enough resources to take an entire peninsula that has been militarised for the better part of eight years, let alone the regions between Crimea and where the Ukrainian forces currently are. No serious analyst believes that Ukraine will capture Crimea, let alone in a time frame of five to seven months, but the propaganda is aimed at securing more Western funds and weapons.

It is for this reason that the leaks are an embarrassing humiliation as it will likely hamper these efforts, and also why Podolyak tried denying them as Russian disinformation. But as Elon Musk sarcastically said: “Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”

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

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

‘Awfully Convenient’: Leaked NATO Plans for Ukraine Should Be Taken ‘With Grain of Salt’

Sputnik | April 8, 2023

While the sudden leak of numerous classified US documents related to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine reportedly prompted the Pentagon to launch an investigation into the matter, the way the “revelation” was covered by the media makes it look somewhat suspect.

Classified documents that purportedly outline US and NATO plans for the Ukrainian military were leaked to the public this week, and if US media is to be believed, the Pentagon has already rushed to investigate this apparent breach of security.

During an interview with Sputnik, international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda pointed out that the story was broken by the New York Times. According to him, given that US officials are now claiming that part of the story is true and part of it is not, it begets the question: “why was it leaked and what did they want us to believe?”

The leak, Sleboda suggested, likely comes “from the American side or someone within the American side,” with the analyst noting that some of the leaked papers “confirm information that we really already knew,” such as the data about the newly-formed Ukrainian brigades. He suggests taking the leaked information “with a grain of salt.”

Regarding the rationale behind the sharing of the leaked information on social media, Sleboda argued that “a lot of it maybe [was] buttressing the public knowledge of US support for the offensive that is about to be launched.”

“We know that NATO considers it their last-ditch effort, they do not have the ability to continue to sustain the Kiev regime in terms of ammunition, artillery shells, other gear, and for them this is all or nothing,” he mused. “So they’re expecting success out of this and they do not appear to have a plan B in that regard. Plan B might default the Plan D, which is NATO troops enter Western Ukraine or some NATO member-states enter West Ukraine, say Poland and the US, possibly Romania.”

He also observed that the leaked information does not include any specific battle plans, “which seems awfully convenient.”

For more in-depth analysis, check out the latest episode of Sputnik’s podcast Fault Lines.

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Macron & Von Der Leyen’s Trip To China Served A Very Pragmatic Purpose

By Andrew Korybko | April 8, 2023

Many in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) dismissed the importance of French President Macron and European Commissioner Von Der Leyen’s trip to China, implying that President Xi wasted his precious time meeting with them over several days all for nothing. In truth, their trip actually served a pragmatic purpose in that it allowed each party to speak candidly about their concerns at this pivotal moment in the global systemic transition, hence why all sides made the time to meet with one another in Beijing.

While it’s true that the two European representatives wishfully hoped that they’d sway their Chinese counterpart around to seeing the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine the same way that they do, that wasn’t the primary reason why everyone took the time out of their busy schedules last week. What really brought them all together in Beijing was the impending inflection point that’s quickly approaching in that aforementioned conflict.

Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will be a make-or-break moment. On the one hand, it could wildly succeed in pushing Russia back to its pre-2014 borders, in which scenario China could then feel compelled to arm Moscow as a last resort in order to preemptively avert the possibility of it losing. That would in turn prompt the US to pressure the EU into sanctioning the People’s Republic, thus spiking the chances that they’ll swiftly decouple, which would harm both of their interests while advancing the US’.

On the other hand, however, Kiev’s counteroffensive might not ultimately achieve all that much as evidenced by the Washington Post’s report a month back about how poorly its troops are faring. In that scenario, Russia could either flip the momentum to make a major breakthrough across the Line of Contact and beyond or seriously encourage Kiev to agree to a ceasefire. The last-mentioned possibility would certainly be supported by China and most likely France now too.

Considering the grand strategic stakes connected to the outcome of Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive, which will probably lead either to a Chinese-EU decoupling per the first scenario or China and France jointly mediating a ceasefire per the second, it made sense why they’d all meet ahead of time. The real drivers of events are the US, its Polish-led Central European partners (which includes the Baltic States), and their proxies in Kiev, whose success or lack thereof will shape the future of Chinese-EU ties.

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course, but the fact of the matter is that the EU is unlikely to be able to effectively resist the US’ sanctions pressure in the event that China feels compelled into arming Russia as a last resort as was earlier explained. They know how painful it would be for their already struggling economies, especially since this dramatic scenario could push them over the edge into a full-fledged recession, but that’s precisely why two of their top representatives wanted to speak to President Xi.

He wanted to speak to them too in order to clarify that China hasn’t yet armed Russia but perhaps also explain why it might feel compelled to do so in the hypothetical sense without directly confirming this contingency plan due to how sensitive it is. Simply put, the EU wanted to know what would have to happen for China to cross Brussels’ “red line” by arming Russia, while China wanted to know whether the EU would be willing to cross Beijing’s “red line” in that scenario by sanctioning it in response.

Both sides also wanted to explore just how far the other would go if they felt compelled by circumstances or pressured by the US respectively, ergo another reason why they all felt it important enough to take the time out of their busy schedules to meet over the past few days. If the whole purpose was just for the European representatives to spew propaganda to President Xi aimed at swaying him to their side in the NATO-Russian proxy war, then the trip wouldn’t have taken place.

The AMC’s top influencers were therefore far off the mark in assessing the purpose of last week’s visit, which failed to account for the pragmatic reason why all three parties prioritized meeting at this specific time. It was important for them to speak candidly about how they’ll react to the two most likely forthcoming scenarios to emerge from Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive, which will result in them either decoupling under US pressure or working together to broker a ceasefire.

In the interim between their meeting and whichever of those two trajectories their ties are pushed along, all sides at least had something tangible to show with respect to the statements released by Macron and Von Der Leyen after their respective meetings with President Xi. Russia’s TASS drew attention to three highlights from the former concerning their support for a UN-enshrined multipolar world order, peace in Ukraine based on international law, and overlap on many other issues.

While cynics might claim that these statements have more symbolism to them than substance, they’re at least something that all parties can build upon in the scenario that China doesn’t feel compelled to arm Russia as a last resort or the EU largely resists the US’ pressure to sanction it if that happens. In any case, President Xi wouldn’t waste his valuable time staging a multi-day photo-op just for the sake of releasing several perfunctory statements so it should be taken for granted that China’s intent is sincere.

This insight further discredits the AMC’s over-simplistic conclusion that the whole trip was a gigantic waste of everyone’s time and failed to achieve anything worth the three parties’ while. It might not result in avoiding the worst-case sequence of events that was earlier described regarding their accelerated decoupling under US pressure, but the intent was to candidly discuss the future of their ties in that context in an attempt to mitigate the mutually disadvantageous consequences if that unfolds.

April 8, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

The West sets a disturbing new precedent over murdered Russian military blogger

By Rachel Marsden | RT | April 6, 2023

Apparently terrorism and murdering reporters get a free pass if the Western establishment doesn’t like the target’s profile – or if the perpetrator risks being linked to an ally.

The radio silence from the West is deafening in the wake of the murder of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky at a cafe in St. Petersburg. Tatarsky was killed after being handed a statue by a young woman, Darya Trepova, that subsequently blew up the entire venue.

For all of the Western officials’ differences with Russia, can they really not at least bring themselves to condemn a blatant act of terrorism in the middle of a major city center? We’re talking here about the same folks who spent two decades kicking down doors around the world under the guise of fighting a “Global War on Terrorism.”

Just a few years ago, cartoonists and writers for the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were gunned down in broad daylight at their Paris office by jihadists who objected to the publication’s portrayal of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. Western leaders roundly condemned that terrorist act, standing firmly on the principle that you couldn’t just go around murdering people who conveyed thoughts and views that you didn’t like. Many of these leaders even traveled to Paris to march alongside a massive crowd in defense of freedom of expression and the press.

Now, however, they can’t even bother to muster the most meager defense of the same principles in the wake of Tatarsky’s murder in an attack that investigators claim is linked to Ukraine.

It seems that whenever there’s any alleged involvement of Ukraine, the West conveniently turns a blind eye. The automobile explosion that killed Russian journalist and activist, Darya Dugina, near Moscow comes to mind. “American officials said they were not aware of the plan ahead of time for the attack that killed Daria Dugina and that they had admonished Ukraine over it,” reported the New York Times last October. Similarly, the Washington Post reported this week that the “unwritten rule” among Western officials is “don’t talk about Nord Stream” – the pipeline network carrying gas from Russia to Europe that was mysteriously blown up last year – since they “would rather not have to deal with the possibility that Ukraine or its allies were involved.”

Then there is the “Mirotvorets” list of journalists and activists maintained by Kiev-based NGO, the Mirotvorets Center, which names people “whose actions have signs of crimes against the national security of Ukraine, peace, human security, and the international law.” It has yet to either be shut down by the Ukrainian government or denounced by Western allies, despite a 2017 United Nations report on human rights in Ukraine urging Ukrainian authorities to address it.

Acts of terrorism and affronts to free speech are clearly in the eye of the Western beholder, which would explain why much of the media rhetoric focuses on Tatarsky’s pro-Russia stance. The void left by the lack of official reaction from Western officials is being filled with Western press articles focusing on the Ukrainian-born blogger’s prior involvement with Russian-backed separatist forces in 2014 in the Donbass. There, he got his start in covering events through his Telegram channel, which grew to become wildly popular, with CNN noting his “ardent pro-war commentary.” But if prior military experience of some kind, and taking sides in one’s coverage of armed conflict, was justification for murdering journalists, then every Western veteran who started a blog, and every opinion journalist, would be fair game.

There was no shortage of Western outrage over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul a few years ago, despite his longstanding activism against the Saudi leadership. Why should the death of this Russian blogger be treated any differently?

Bulgarian investigative journalist, Cristo Grozev, who was heavily featured in the Academy Award-winning feature documentary film about Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, apparently thinks that some people are just “legitimate targets”  for terrorism, and argues that the cafe may not have been a “purely civilian location.” Although it was previously owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russian private military enterprise, Wagner Group, that doesn’t magically transform a dining establishment, which welcomes anyone right off the street in the middle of a major city, into some kind of a military base. If an American general walks into the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Pentagon City, Virginia, it doesn’t suddenly turn the hotel or its bar into a legitimate military target for bombing by some entity that has a score to settle with Washington.

And what about every journalist who has been embedded as the guest of Western troops in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan and has promoted the talking points of their hosts while siding with their own country? Are they fair game for picking off now, too?

The prominent Washington Institute for the Study of War think tank, whose board members include American generals Jack Keane and David Petraeus, as well as Washington’s former ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, previously and routinely qualified Tatarsky as a prominent Russian military blogger whose work they apparently considered worthy of informing their research.

It seems like there’s an effort underway by some members of the Western establishment to reframe this egregious act of terrorism and murder as something trivial, all because the target was a Russian whose views they don’t like – and that’s an awfully slippery slope.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

April 7, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Zelensky’s Senior Advisor Brazenly Admitted To Kiev’s Genocidal Intentions

By Andrew Korybko | April 7, 2023

Senior Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak brazenly admitted to Kiev’s genocidal intentions in the NATO-Russian proxy war that’s presently being fought in his former Soviet Republic during an interview with US Government-controlled “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty” (RFERL). The relevant excerpt will now be shared in order to raise awareness of his words, which can be read in their original Ukrainian at that outlet’s website here for those skeptics who doubt that he truly said them:

“We have to completely close everything related to the Russian cultural space [in Crimea after its reconquest]. We have to eradicate everything Russian. There should be only Ukrainian cultural space or global cultural space. We should not have a dialogue about whether a person has the right to use the Russian language or not. At home, please use it, but it is not a tool of pressure, it is not a tool of protest, it is not a tool of blackmail.”

Podolyak admitted to precisely what Moscow has always accused Kiev of intending since the Western-backed fascist coup of early 2014 popularly known as “EuroMaidan”, namely the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Crimea’s indigenous Russian population. He therefore inadvertently justified its democratic reunification with Russia that was carried out for the purpose of defending its people’s UN-enshrined human rights, thus discrediting his side’s and its foreign patrons’ moral stance in this conflict.

Not only that, but the so-called “rules-based order” that’s aggressively being promoted by the US-led West’s Golden Billion was exposed as a hypocritical sham. That de facto New Cold War bloc isn’t waging their proxy war against Russia in order to defend “democracy” and “human rights” like its propagandists claim, but to advance Kiev’s publicly confirmed goals that stand in direct contradiction to those two concepts.

Any political force in the West that agitates for literally eradicating another culture and prohibiting its people from speaking their native language outside of their homes would rightly be condemned by society as fascist, yet there’s no chance that the US or EU will ever normalize describing Kiev in that way. These double standards speak to the ulterior motives connected to the previously mentioned “rules-based order”, which has always been about advancing American hegemony on any given pretext.

Returning to Podolyak’s candid admission, nobody can credibly claim that funding Kiev isn’t equivalent to funding fascism. There’s no other way to describe that side’s intention to eradicate Russian culture in its entirety and prohibit its people from speaking their native language in public. This bonafide fascism is being funded by the West in violation of its own self-proclaimed “values”, which reveals that everything it’s claimed about wanting to defend “democracy” and “human rights” across the world was simply a lie.

April 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

The ‘Holy Trinity’ behind Russian military dominance in Ukraine

By Drago Bosnic | April 7, 2023

If we were to believe a single word uttered by the mainstream propaganda machine about the performance of the Russian military, we’d be convinced that Moscow is using WWII-era equipment begrudgingly manned by conscripts armed with shovels. Not to mention that, according to CNN’s “well-informed” (and yet, anonymous) sources, the morale of the Russian military is supposedly plummeting due to heavy casualties inflicted by the victorious AFU. On the other hand, those interested in Russia’s top-of-the-line weapons will often (over)focus on its truly world-class hypersonic missiles, directed-energy systems, superfast high-flying interceptors, next-generation fighter jets, etc.

However, what both ends of these two extremes ignore either completely (in the first case) or overlook for the most part (in the second case) are Russia’s bread-and-butter weapons that are inflicting the vast majority of casualties suffered by the embattled Kiev regime forces. Distinguished Serbian defense expert Slobodan Djukic recently identified three such weapons – Krasnopol/Krasnopol-M precision-guided artillery shells, MPK kits for turning freefall gravity bombs into high-precision glide bombs and Lancet kamikaze drones. All three are being used by the Russian military, to devastating effect on hostile troops, while significantly reducing Russian casualties.

Krasnopol/Krasnopol-M precision-guided artillery shells

Owing to its stellar performance during ground operations against foreign-backed terrorist forces in Syria, the Krasnopol series of high-precision artillery munitions was mass-produced and more widely adopted by the Russian military in recent years. Krasnopol was developed by the Tula-based KBP. There are several basic and improved variants used by 152 mm howitzers such as the towed D-20 or 2A65 Msta-B and self-propelled 2S3 Akatsiya or 2S19 Msta-S. It uses inertial guidance at mid-course and semi-active laser homing at the terminal phase. The target is illuminated by an external laser designator and once the laser signal is detected, the onboard guidance system will maneuver the shell to the target. This allows frontline troops to call in fire missions on specific high-priority targets for almost immediate destruction by a single shell.

The baseline version’s hit probability of 70-80% was improved to over 90% in newer variants. Such advanced munitions have a devastating effect on Kiev regime forces, while drastically reducing the probability of damage to friendly forces and civilian infrastructure. Krasnopol is effective in destroying weapons and ammunition depots, entrenched enemy positions, dug-in artillery pieces, etc. Thanks to its enhanced accuracy, it can be used even against moving targets such as tanks and armored vehicles. Most importantly, it’s getting incremental upgrades as the designers are working closely with the Russian military on improving its performance, even extending the maximum firing range up to 25 km. The estimated price for a single Krasnopol-M is $35,000, less than half the price of NATO’s M982 Excalibur.

MPK smart bomb kits, aka “Russian JDAM”

Ukraine inherited approximately 30% of the enormous Soviet military, including its massive integrated air defense network with thousands of launchers, radars and missiles of all ranges. Although much of this was severely worn out and suffered due to virtually nonexistent funding, the systems’ functionality was largely restored with endless subsidies from the political West. This made it significantly more challenging for the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS), as it initially had a relatively limited amount of high-precision air-to-ground weapons, particularly smart bombs. The Russian military has a plethora of high-precision munitions, especially air-launched cruise missiles and new glide bombs. However, these are prohibitively expensive for use on the scale needed in Ukraine, limiting strikes to high-profile targets only.

The issue was resolved through a relatively inexpensive modification that turned Russia’s enormous stockpile of freefall gravity bombs into smart munitions. This enabled tactical strike aircraft to use the bombs beyond the range of Kiev regime air defenses. Folding wings are mounted on the body of the bomb via a steel rail, expanding after release and effectively turning the previously unguided weapon into a glide bomb capable of hitting targets at relatively long ranges. The MPK, short for Russian “модул планирования и корекреции”, literally “planning and correction module”, although perhaps better described as “gliding and correction module”, was developed by NPO Bazalt. It’s an upgrade kit for converting so-called “dumb” freefall bombs (in particular, FAB-500 M-62) into extended-range high-precision glide bombs.

The concept was inspired by a similar US program called Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM – hence the unofficial nickname for MPK being “Russian JDAM”) which NATO also recently transferred to Kiev. MPK’s effective range depends on the altitude from which the bomb is released, so estimates vary, but it’s generally expected that a bomb dropped from an altitude of 12-13 km can hit targets at distances of up to 50 km. Guidance is provided by Russian GLONASS. The Russian military has already upgraded a large portion of its massive Soviet-era stocks to MPK standard and is rapidly converting the rest of it, resulting in a virtually new weapon of extraordinary capabilities, all for a fraction of the cost needed to produce completely new bombs.

Lancet kamikaze drones/loitering munitions

Last but certainly not least – drones. These pesky little things have proven so deadly and effective that it would be ludicrous not to use them en masse. And this is precisely what the Russian military is doing, making it one of the first militaries around the globe to use loitering munitions on such a grand scale. Needless to say, to an absolutely devastating effect on the Kiev regime forces. There are several types of such drones, with perhaps the most (in)famous being the ZALA Lancet. Intended for the destruction of a wide range of ground targets, including APCs (armored personnel carriers), SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, artillery weapons (towed/self-propelled), etc. its effectiveness is wholly undeniable, as evidenced by hundreds of hours of battlefield footage.

Deployed in several variants, Lancet possesses a highly advanced seeker and a stable video link up until the moment it hits the target. This is primarily thanks to its state-of-the-art comms channel that has proven to be highly resistant to jamming and other forms of electronic warfare. Usually paired with the Fortuna tactical ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) drones, Lancet can effectively identify even heavily camouflaged targets, including small groups of infantry from high altitude. Kiev regime forces are doing everything they can to hide or at least minimize the Lancet’s devastating effect by establishing additional firing positions, enclosing them with wire barriers and extra camouflage nets. And yet, even these countermeasures have had a limited effect.

All of the aforementioned weapons might not seem as important as Russia’s hypersonic missiles or its doomsday strategic arsenal, but they are no less valuable on a tactical level. Thousands of towed/self-propelled howitzers, MLRS, tanks, air defense systems, command posts, weapons production facilities, ammunition, etc. have been destroyed by these extremely cost-effective weapons. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu pointed out that one of the main goals is destroying enemy military-industrial capacity, while increasing pressure on logistics and supply lines. According to Shoigu, by the end of March this year, 14 HIMARS systems, 59 M777, 12 Paladin and over 30 other howitzers of various types delivered by the US, UK, Poland, Germany, France and Czechia were destroyed. These weapons were all neutralized by Russian systems priced at less than 1% of the combined cost of the aforementioned Western systems.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

April 7, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainization is Destroying American Politics

Sputnik – 06.04.2023

The persecution of former US President Donald Trump takes a page out of the Zelensky regime’s playbook, Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk wrote in a commentary for The Other Ukraine Telegram channel.

Judge for yourself: the US government declares that it is ready to finance the war in Eastern Europe forever and indefinitely.

Of course, the American people have questions about why the country needs this war, why it has no end, and where the voters’ taxes are actually going. The American voter is not interested in funding a war on the other side of the globe because they see serious problems at home. Against this backdrop, the politics of peace becomes attractive to the American voter and is destined for a quick victory.

And now watch the hands. The country’s justice system is politically violated, and a peacekeeper is declared a criminal without any serious evidence, based solely on political desires. All this has already happened in Ukraine. First of all, we accuse politicians who stand for peace of crimes that do not exist. But it is impossible to stop here, as the Ukrainian experience shows. Next, the “wrong” media and parties with a pro-peace agenda must be shut down, churches that preach peace must be persecuted, the “wrong” political movements must be banned, and active citizens who advocate peace must be thrown in jail. And call all this a victory for democracy. This is what the American disciples did in Ukraine. But as far as the US is concerned, all this can only lead to a large-scale war, which Trump warns of in every speech.

All this means one thing: the much-praised Ukrainian “democracy” imposed by the United States in Ukraine has crawled into America and will destroy the state institutions of this country, just as Ukrainian statehood was destroyed before.

This is what Trump warns of: “We are in many ways a third world country. We are a country whose economy is floundering, whose supply chains are broken, whose stores are not full, whose deliveries are not coming in, and whose education system is at the bottom of every list…” And recently, he said, “Our country is going to hell.”

And here it is impossible not to agree with him, because Ukraine is already in hell, and it is dragging the US with it. Ukrainian students have surpassed their American teachers and have become teachers of legal chaos themselves. It only remains to add that Ukraine was pushed into a hell of lawlessness and arbitrariness by American policies, and today it is reaping the fruits of its own actions. As the saying goes, “God will repay each one according to his deeds.”

April 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Putin names cause of tensions with US

RT | April 5, 2023

The current standoff between Moscow and Washington came about because of American support for the 2014 coup in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

“Relations between Russia and the US, on which global security and stability directly depend, are unfortunately going through a deep crisis,” Putin told 17 ambassadors who gathered at the Kremlin to formally present their credentials. This crisis is “rooted in fundamentally different approaches to the formation of the modern world order,” he added.

Addressing the US envoy Lynne Tracy, the Russian president apologized for somewhat disrupting the “gracious atmosphere” of the credentialing ceremony.

“I cannot but say today that the US use of such foreign policy tools as ‘color revolutions’, and support in this regard for the coup d’état in Kiev in 2014, ultimately led to the current Ukrainian crisis and made an additional contribution to the degradation of Russian-American relations,” Putin said.

Moscow has repeatedly pointed to the Maidan revolt as the root cause of turmoil in Ukraine, as it ultimately resulted in the need for a military intervention to ensure Russia’s security. Speaking at an event in November 2022, Putin said that “none of this would have happened” if not for the February 2014 coup.

The violent overthrow of a democratically elected government, ‘midwifed’ by US diplomat Victoria Nuland and then vice-president Joe Biden, brought to power anti-Russian nationalists and gave Washington “total control” of Ukraine, according to the Russian president.

Putin told Tracy on Wednesday that Moscow remains committed to building relations with Washington “solely on the principles of equality, respect for each other’s sovereignty and interests, and non-interference in internal affairs.”

Addressing all ambassadors, the Russian president said Moscow did not intend to self-isolate and was open to constructive partnerships with everyone, without hidden or hostile intent, but expected them to be based on equality and mutual consideration. Russia’s actions will be guided by its internal priorities, but also the awareness of its “special responsibility for maintaining stability and security at the global and regional levels,” Putin said, citing the recently updated foreign policy platform.

April 5, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

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