Top Crimea official responds to claims of ‘Iranian instructors killed’
RT | November 25, 2022
The head of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov has rejected Kiev’s claims that Iranian military instructors were killed in a Ukrainian strike on the Russian peninsula while helping Moscow’s forces operate drones.
Statements maintaining this happened by the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Aleksey Danilov, were “extraordinary nonsense,” Aksyonov said in a Telegram post on Friday.
Such “fairy tales” coming from Kiev are most likely aimed at a Western audience, which “gladly listens to them,” he suggested.
“The more the chair wobbles under the [Kiev] regime, the more fantastic those tales will become,” Aksyonov said.
He was commenting on an interview given by Danilov to The Guardian on Thursday, in which the Ukrainian official was asked to comment on reports in Israeli media last month that military instructors from Iran had been killed in a Ukrainian strike in Crimea. According to the broadcaster Kan, Tehran had sent experts to the peninsula to train Russian troops to operate Iranian-made drones.
Danilov told the British paper that the reports were accurate but didn’t reveal when exactly the strike took place or how many Iranians were affected by it.
“You shouldn’t be where you shouldn’t be. They [the Iranians] were on our territory. We didn’t invite them here, and if they collaborate… participate in the destruction of our nation we must kill them,” he explained.
Ukraine still claims Crimea as part of its territory, despite the peninsula joining Russia in 2014 after a referendum showed overwhelming support for doing so.
Speculation that Tehran has been supplying UAVs to Moscow surfaced in recent months after Russia started to actively use kamikaze drones during its military offensive in Ukraine. Kiev and the Western media have claimed that Russia’s Geran-2 drones are actually Iranian-made Shahed-136 UAVs.
Iran has denied providing Russia with drones or sending instructors to the country. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has confirmed, however, that Tehran supplied a “small number of drones” to Moscow months before the conflict in Ukraine broke out.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month that all weapons used by Russian troops in Ukraine come from domestic stockpiles.
Is the war in Ukraine about “autocracy against democracy”?
By Noah Carl | November 24, 2022
For the past eight months, Western leaders have emphasised that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is war against democracy, and by supporting Ukraine we are defending that form of government and the values it represents.
In a speech on 26 March calling for America’s allies to stand with Ukraine, President Biden referred to the “the great battle for freedom: a battle between democracy and autocracy”. He went to say that “in the perennial struggle for democracy and freedom, Ukraine and its people are on the frontlines”, adding that “their brave resistance is part of a larger fight for essential democratic principles”.
The EU Comission President Ursula von der Leyen characterised Russia’s invasion as a “war on our values” that is about “autocracy against democracy”. And two prime ministers ago, Boris Johnson argued the financial cost of supporting Ukraine is a “price worth paying for democracy and freedom”.
Fine words, but there’s one big problem: Ukraine isn’t particularly democratic. (Stephen Wertheim has already made this point in The Atlantic, but it bears repeating.) Two months before his “great battle for freedom” speech, Biden himself stated that Ukraine was unlikely to join NATO in the near future “based on much more work they have to do in terms of democracy”.
So on the one hand, we can’t let Ukraine into NATO because they’re not a democracy. But on the other, we can’t make concessions to Russia to end the war because this is a war against democracy!
Ukraine halts Russian oil transit to EU – Transneft
RT | November 23, 2022
Kiev has stopped the operation of a section of the southern branch of the ‘Druzhba’ (Friendship) oil pipeline that transits Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday, citing Russian oil-exporting company Transneft.
According to the report, oil transmission has been suspended for an indefinite period.
“In Ukraine, the section [of Druzhba] has been stopped, from Brod to the Carpathians,” said Igor Demin, an adviser to the president of Transneft.
He added that deliveries via the Belarusian section of the pipeline were continuing.
Last week, Kiev stopped oil flows to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, explaining the suspension was linked to a Russian air strike that reportedly had hit a transformer station near the border with Belarus. It stated that the service was suspended due to a “drop in voltage.”
Kiev later announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile attacks targeting the country’s energy infrastructure.
Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike, in April, reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%.
Ukraine to hike transit fees for Russian oil to EU
RT | November 22, 2022
Ukraine has announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the Druzhba pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile strikes targeting the country’s energy infrastructure.
Ukrtransnafta, the operator of Ukraine’s oil pipeline network, is expected to increase tariffs for transporting crude to Hungary and Slovakia by €2.10 per ton to €13.60 ($13.90) starting on January 1, according to a letter from the company seen by Bloomberg. Its Russian counterpart Transneft confirmed to RIA Novosti that it has received a letter and is studying it.
“We are studying these proposals, preparing relevant reports to the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Energy Ministry,” Transneft spokesman Igor Demin told the agency.
The Ukrainian company has attributed the price hike to the “continued destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure” which has resulted in “a significant shortage of electricity, an increase in its costs, a shortage of fuel, spare parts.”
Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike in April reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%.
Druzhba, one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, carries crude some 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
Russia threatens to cut gas exports due to Ukraine’s theft
RT | November 22, 2022
Russia’s energy giant Gazprom said on Tuesday that Ukraine was diverting natural gas supplies transiting to Moldova, and the company has threatened to curtail deliveries through a key pipeline in response.
“The volume of gas supplied by Gazprom to the ‘Sudzha’ gas measuring station (GMS) for transit to Moldova via Ukraine exceeds the physical volume transmitted at the border of Ukraine with Moldova,” Gazprom’s statement read.
Moldova paid for some November gas supplies on Monday, according to Gazprom, which said that Kiev had kept 52.52 million cubic meters of gas meant for Moldova on its territory.
The Russian energy company further warned that if the transit imbalance persists then it would begin slashing gas supply to the Sudzha GMS for transit via Ukraine from 10 am (7am GMT) on November 28, “in the amount of the daily underderlivery.”
The Sudzha transit line through Ukraine remains the only route to supply Russian gas to western and central European countries after the Nord Stream network was damaged by a suspicious explosion in September.
Meanwhile, land-locked Moldova, which has been suffering massive blackouts lately, has called for international assistance as soaring energy costs and skyrocketing inflation are set to put a huge strain on consumers in one of Europe’s poorest countries.
According to the French Foreign Ministry, support is all the more important as Moldova is facing an unprecedented energy crisis as winter approaches.
Putting an End to Volodymyr Zelensky’s Follies
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 22, 2022
One week ago, the Ukrainian government may have deliberately attacked neighbor Poland in an attempt to draw the NATO alliance into its war with Russia. The incident involved a missile that hit a grain processing site inside Poland and killed two farmers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately blamed Russia for the incident even though he surely must have known that the missile had been fired from Ukraine, meaning that he may have been using a so-called “false flag” to create a false narrative of what had occurred. He also immediately called upon NATO to intervene, citing Article 5 of the NATO treaty which requires all members of the alliance to come to the aid of any individual member that is attacked. An attack on one is an attack on all. Poland is a NATO member and it currently hosts a permanent US military base.
The US mainstream media, most particularly the Associated Press and NBC News, immediately repeated the tale being told by Zelensky, but the “blame the Russians” narrative began to unravel. The remains of the missile revealed that it was of a type used for air defense that is in the Ukrainian arsenal, but not currently used by the Russians, and both Moscow and Washington surely had access to satellite imagery that would demonstrate the actual flight path of the missile that struck Poland.
Those in government and the media who wanted to be supportive of Zelensky began to suggest that the Ukrainian missile must have somehow malfunctioned to land in Poland, making it an unfortunate accident. But others more familiar with the performance characteristics of the weapon were skeptical, seeing something possibly more sinister in the tale.
By last Thursday the story had effectively disappeared in much of the mainstream media as it no longer conformed to the acceptable narrative that it was a Russian-launched missile, which Zelensky has since continued to insist to be the case. President Joe Biden, who was at the G-20 Summit conference in Indonesia at the time, to his credit, responded to the news by stating that there was no intelligence to confirm that the missile had come from Russia and that its apparent trajectory did not support that view. Ironically, Biden had authorized an additional $37 billion in aid for Ukraine the day before the incident in Poland took place.
Biden’s message seeking to deescalate the potential crisis was repeated by Pentagon and intelligence personnel during the day, though Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin emphasized that the US would continue to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” He also added that even though the missile was Ukrainian, the incident was Russia’s fault. He did not explain why that was so. NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg also promoted the same line as Austin, commenting that the incident was “likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory… This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears responsibility for what happened in Poland yesterday because this is a direct result of the ongoing war.”
Given the fact that Zelensky has been saying and doing everything possible to draw the US and NATO into fighting Russia on his behalf, I believe that the missile strike was quite plausibly a deliberate “false flag” attempt to start a much broader war. That such a war could easily turn nuclear reveals just how reckless Zelensky can be. One NATO country foreign diplomat based in Kiev told the Financial Times that “This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”
To be sure, Zelensky is capable of anything and no lie is too mendacious for the former comedy actor who is now basking in the glow of his celebrity. Hollywood personalities like Sean Penn and Ben Stiller are increasingly making the pilgrimage to Kiev to shake hands, embrace and do photo ops. And Zelensky’s calendar is also featuring some trips to the United States. On November 30th, he will reportedly be in New York City at a “live event” hosted by the New York Times with Sam Bankman-Fried, Larry Fink (CEO of Blackrock), and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as the main speakers.
Yes, Zelensky will be side-by-side with THAT Sam Bankman-Fried, if he shows up, who has also been much in the news lately for his having pulled off the largest currency fraud in history, creating losses for investors totaling multi-billions of dollars as a consequence of the collapse of his exchange-trading company FTX! And it just might be that Zelensky and Bankman-Fried already know each other. Bankman-Fried has been a major financial supporter of Democratic Party politicians, having donated $40 million for “get out the vote” projects in the recently completed election cycle. He is second only to George Soros as a Democratic Party funder, and also has separated donated to causes like unconditionally supporting Ukraine that the Democrats overwhelmingly favor. In April he hosted a conference at his $40 million home in the Bahamas which featured appearances by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and he has also been a generous supporter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
There has been considerable speculation that the unregulated and unmonitored flow of billions of dollars of US taxpayer provided money through Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government provided a perfect mechanism for large scale money laundering. Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson has been following the FTX-Ukraine story closely and observes that “The financial collapse of FTX… is exposing evidence that the Democrats, some Republicans, the Ukrainians and FTX organized an elaborate financial kickback scheme. The scheme involved promising members of Congress who sent money to Ukraine a hefty contribution from a Democrat benefactor. In this case, the owner of FTX [Sam Bankman-Fried]. Once the US dollars were credited to Ukraine’s account, President Zelensky and his partners diverted some of the proceeds to purchase crypto currency from FTX. FTX, in turn, sent some of those funds back to the cooperating members of Congress and the Democrat National Committee.”
Other reporting reveals that Bankman-Fried had established a crypto donation “partnership” with the Ukrainian government which provided an estimated $60 million in “assistance” to Zelensky. The Ukrainian government website that reported some details of the arrangement mysteriously was “disappeared” two days before the FTX disaster was made public. The FTX tale, if it turns out to be largely verifiable, underlines just how corrupt a “money pit” called Ukraine is. Hunter Biden gets a well-paid sinecure place on a company board to get to his father and now Ukraine may be directly involved in a massive financial fraud. And Joe Biden obligingly is sending billions of dollars more to that crook Zelensky.
But the real issue is the war. Even assuming that the Ukrainian missile strike on Poland was due to some malfunction, Zelensky comes out of the process smelling really bad as he has worked assiduously at blaming Russia, which clearly is not true. He is using his contrived narrative to dramatically expand the war by creating a situation which would bring NATO directly into the conflict and which could easily go nuclear. Indeed, he is attempting to compel NATO participation. But potentially far worse, if it was a deliberate “false flag” provocation to bring about that end, his tactics should be harshly condemned by all the parties that are currently supporting Ukraine. Beyond that, the US and NATO, burdened with such an “ally,” should take immediate steps to disengage from supporting the fighting and call for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. Joe Biden, if he has any integrity left, and whoever is pulling his strings should not hesitate to take that step.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Russian Embassy in Washington Condemns US Reaction to Murder of Russian POWs by Ukrainians
Samizdat – 22.11.2022
MOSCOW – The Russian Embassy in Washington on Tuesday condemned the US reaction to the video believed to be showing a massacre of Russian prisoners of war by the Ukrainian military, saying that the US authorities enable a growing sense of impunity of neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
Earlier in the day, US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack said that the US was monitoring reports of the shooting of Russian prisoners of war in Donbass. She urged all parties to respect international law.
“We noted the statements of Ambassador-at-Large on International Criminal Justice Beth van Shack on the murder of captured Russian military personnel by Ukrainian neo-Nazis. The official refused to directly condemn the massacre of our unarmed soldiers, despite the confirmation of the authenticity of the relevant video materials by American journalists, who did not hush up the tragedy,” the Russian embassy said in a statement.
The US is nurturing an increased sense of permissiveness and impunity of neo-Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine by turning a blind eye to the violence of that kind.
“We have repeatedly stated that by supplying weapons to Kiev, by teaching criminals and mercenaries the art of war, by transferring intelligence the United States are becoming a side of the conflict. Russian-U.S. relations are thusly driven into a dead end,” the statement read.
Last week, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the Ukrainian military deliberately killed 10 captured Russian soldiers.
On November 17, a video was circulated on the internet showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting surrendered Russians lying heads down. The Russian Human Rights Council said it would send the video to the OHCHR, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and other international human rights organizations.
On November 18, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation into the execution of Russian POWs by the Ukrainian military.
On November 19, UN Spokesperson Farhan Haq said that the United Nations was calling for a full investigation of all reported human rights violations related to the execution of Russian POWs by Ukrainians.
Background to current US policy in Europe
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 21.11.2022
It is said not in vain that one man’s problem is another man’s opportunity. And the military action in Ukraine against Russia, unleashed by the US and NATO, has clearly demonstrated this. Every day there is more and more evidence to show what huge dividends the US tycoons are reaping from the policies that the current President Joe Biden is pursuing for their benefit alone. Suffice it to say that Washington has already made tens of billions of dollars from the military actions it has unleashed in Ukraine. Not to mention the distraction from US domestic issues in financial, economic and politico-racial fields, that the White House is using against this backdrop.
The US instigated this armed conflict, a conclusion that most political analysts are now coming to. Its aim is to force Europe to submit to US sanctions against Russia and stop buying cheap Russian natural gas. Washington can now sell huge quantities of liquefied gas to Europe at its own prices, and there is no price cap on US hydrocarbons, unlike Russian hydrocarbons, and it is unlikely there will be one. Europe’s economy has suffered a blow, and vast wealth has migrated from Europe to the US, allowing US leaders to maintain their dominant position in the EU.
Ensuring control over Europe is a major strategic imperative for the US. Since the EU has a population of 450 million, while the US population is only 330 million, and their economies are comparable in size, the EU is theoretically in a position to break free from the US and assert itself as an equal or greater superpower on the world stage. A truly independent Europe would prefer to make mutually beneficial trade deals with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia, pushing back the US and ending US imperial domination of the planet.
It is only natural that the US does not want this to happen. By implementing its divide-and-conquer strategy, Washington is preventing Europe from achieving the cohesion and economic strength that would enable it to free itself from the US occupation that has persisted since after the World War II. Inflation in Germany reached double digits in October for the first time since 1990. Italy is also experiencing the highest inflation in 40 years. The rest of the Eurozone is also suffering. The source of the European crisis is the rise in energy prices caused by US sanctions against Russia. Businesses that produce goods and services have to pay more for energy, and they pass the costs on to consumers. Now most of the extra money paid for what has become ultra-expensive energy goes straight into US coffers. This is the main reason why the euro is falling against the dollar. Furthermore, the dollar has historically been strong in times of panic or uncertainty, and the US has a habit of deliberately provoking panic and uncertainty by organizing wars and crises, of which there have been many examples.
The EU is not an ally of the US, but a coalition of vassal states that have been under US military and economic occupation since the end of World War II. The US committed a holocaust against Germany during and immediately after that war, bombing entire cities where only civilians lived, starving millions of German prisoners of war and civilians during the first few years of the occupation. The mainstream media and academia, owned by the Americans and their satellites, fabricated a story of a mythical World War II victor that essentially turned reality upside down and portrayed the US as a generous rebuilder of Germany through the Marshall Plan. But the reality is that the Marshall Plan was only implemented after the Morgenthau Plan to kill millions of Germans had done its bloody work.
The US is far from being a generous ally. Instead, it has always been and remains a selfish occupier of Europe. The current US-induced destruction of Europe, based on depriving EU countries of cheap energy in order to damage them economically and subjugate them politically, could be called the new Morgenthau Plan. Nevertheless, the United States may have to provide aid packages or loans to help the EU escape hunger and frost this winter. If this happens, the motives will not be altruistic. Instead, Washington will seek to prevent Europeans from overthrowing the US occupation and exercising control over their own destiny.
Before the hostilities unleashed by the US in Ukraine, Russia provided the lion’s share of Europe’s cheap energy imports. However, by artificially supporting the armed conflict, which is now in its ninth month, Washington has broken this partnership, and gas is no longer flowing through Nord Stream. Businesses across Europe are not just limiting their energy consumption. They are shrinking or moving to other continents. Europe, according to economists, may well be on the way to de-industrialization. Eurozone industrial activity fell to its lowest since May 2020. The October PMI from S&P Global signaled a looming recession, falling in November and becoming the fourth monthly reading below 50, indicating an economic slowdown. In its latest analysis of the energy crisis in Europe, published on November 3, the IEA said the EU could face a shortfall of up to 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas during the summer of next year to replenish its gas storage capacity.
In a report entitled “Never Too Early to Prepare for Next Winter: Europe’s Gas Balance for 2023-2024” the IEA warns that the safety cushion provided by current storage levels, as well as recent lower gas prices and unusually mild temperatures, should not lead to unduly optimistic conclusions about the future. A look at the IEA report shows that the European Union will face a major challenge in meeting its energy needs in the coming years. Given the high costs of transporting gas over long distances, Russia could still make a significant contribution to solving this problem. With the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, Russia could provide Europe with the energy it desperately needs if it were not for persistent US sanctions. Unlike oil, natural gas is difficult to transport in large volumes and is therefore exported either by pipeline or by conversion into liquefied natural gas (LNG), but this is expensive and requires large investments. Russia does not currently have the infrastructure to export large volumes of LNG to Europe. Given current experience and looking to the future, European governments should clearly see the huge negative impact that sanctions against Russia have had and will have on global energy security. More should therefore be done to help curb US self-serving agendas and negotiate a multipolar world.
By constantly unleashing wars, the United States always reaps huge profits and the military-industrial complex comes first, as one would expect. It is not surprising that the US military budget is equal to that of the rest of the world combined. And this is further clear evidence that Washington does not want to live in a world where all contentious issues are resolved at the negotiating table, but aims only at military actions.
But lately, all of a sudden, the energy complex, whose owners are making exorbitant profits from oil and gas supplies, mostly to Europe, has become the most profitable sector in the United States. It is only natural that many people became interested and it was primarily the military who were concerned and who simply “pressed” Joe Biden. And now the US President has suddenly become “interested” in these huge sums and has decided to “clip the wings” of the oil and gas industry by imposing an additional tax on the profits of the owners of the energy complex. The simple conclusion from this is that unleashing Ukraine on Russia will continue at an accelerated pace, and Europe will be completely deprived of Russian gas. Even the gas coming through NATO member, Turkey.
By starting any military conflict, the US is not aiming to win. Above all, it is to destabilize the region so that it cannot be a US competitor for decades to come.
Today, a large proportion of the world’s elite keep their reserves in the EU. Naturally, the US will not completely destroy it. But if US companies gain a foothold and dominate the European market, it will force Europe to become even more involved in the Ukrainian conflict, to abandon Russian oil and gas completely, and it will be a huge prize for Washington to implement a policy of solving all issues only through war.
Ukrainian Troops Shell Zaporozhye NPP, Damaging Strategic Facilities: Official
Samizdat – 20.11.2022
Ukrainian troops subjected the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP) to massive artillery shelling, damaging strategic facilities, an adviser to the head of Rosenergoatom, a subsidiary of Russian state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, told Sputnik on Sunday.
“The Ukrainian military launched a massive strike directly at the station. Twelve rockets were fired. It is known that six of them hit the cooling system of reactors, two — hit the dry cask storage [of radioactive waste]. The consequences of the shelling cannot be determined yet since the risk of repeated attacks remains,” Renat Karchaa said.
None of the Zaporozhye NPP personnel were injured, according to Karchaa.
Located on the left bank of the Dnieper River, the Zaporozhye NPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe by number of units and output. During the military operation in Ukraine, launched by Russia on February 24, the nuclear plant and surrounding area went under the control of Russian forces and have since been shelled many times. Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the attacks.
An international mission led by IAEA chief Rafael Grossi visited the plant from August 31 to September 5. IAEA observers have since been staying at the plant on a rotational basis. Following the visit by the mission, the IAEA published a report in which it confirmed the shelling of the ZNPP.
NATO’s Frankenstein Monster… Kiev Regime Exposed in Criminal False-Flag Attack on Poland
Strategic Culture Foundation | November 18, 2022
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has been caught telling bare-faced lies about a missile strike on Poland this week. Even the United States and NATO backers of the Kiev regime have repudiated initial claims blaming Russia. The missile came from the Ukrainian military as NATO acknowledges, yet Zelensky continued to assert that it wasn’t from his forces. It is clear that the deadly attack was a deliberate provocation by the Kiev regime to escalate the war into an all-out NATO-Russia conflict, even if that meant World War Three.
The Kiev regime’s proclivity for staging provocations is well documented, albeit assiduously covered up by the Western media. Further cover-up is bursting at the seams owing to the manic and utterly criminal conduct of the Neo-Nazi regime.
In nearly nine months of this conflict, which began on February 24 when Moscow launched its special military operation to end non-stop deadly provocations against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region, the NATO-backed Kiev regime has engaged in countless other criminal provocations. Those provocations include carrying out massacres like the one at Bucha at the end of March, shelling the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, and plotting to detonate a dirty nuclear bomb. As our weekly editorial on October 28 headlined: “Dirty Nuke Bomb Fits Kiev Regime’s Record of Foul Tricks and Corruption”.
The Kiev regime was born out of a dirty trick. The Maidan Square sniper massacres in February 2014 against Ukrainian civilians and police officers culminated in a coup d’état.
It was fitting too that this week saw a Dutch court blaming Russia for the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner in 2014. The real culprits for the crime – in which 298 people onboard were blown out of the sky – were the Kiev regime forces who tried to blame it on Russia-backed Donbass separatists.
All such dirty tricks are purposed to criminalize Russia for “atrocities” and to escalate the war by invoking even more military support from the United States and its NATO partners. The Western states and their pliant corporate media have totally indulged in this propaganda to demonize Russia, if not at times author it.
This week, when the missile hit the village of Przewodow in the Lublin region of eastern Poland – killing two civilians – on November 15, the Kiev regime immediately blamed Russia. The comic-actor-turned-president Zelensky said it was an “act of terrorism” and an attack on NATO, thus justifying the bloc’s collective defense clause. His foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba clamored for NATO to impose a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine and to supply F-15 and F-16 fighter jets.
The hysterical claims, much like the missile itself, completely overshot credibility. There were no Russian air strikes anywhere near the Ukraine-Poland border area at the time. Video footage of munition fragments also quickly indicated that it was an S-300 air-defense missile that was fired by the Kiev regime’s forces.
Remarkably, however, Zelensky’s incendiary claims were promptly rebutted by U.S. President Joe Biden, the Pentagon and other NATO leaders. They firmly said the missile that struck Poland was not a Russian weapon but rather it came from a Ukrainian air-defense battery which, it was claimed, missed its target, accidentally landing on Polish soil.
But even that benign account does not hold water. For a start, the Russian military was not targeting the area with their precision-guided missiles. There were no incoming Russian rockets whatsoever. So what was the Ukrainian S-300 aiming at? The fact that the S-300 was fired westwards toward Poland shows that the act was a deliberate one to hit the neighboring country and a member of NATO.
The rapid rejection of the Kiev regime’s claims by the United States and other NATO powers not only exposes Zelensky and his cabal as liars. It also inadvertently exposes them as criminal provocateurs who are willing to kill civilians for propaganda and political expedience.
Are Washington and its European vassals perhaps beginning to realize that they have created a Frankenstein monster in Kiev whose criminality and corruption know no bounds? The United States and its imperial minions certainly want to undermine and subjugate Russia in a grand scheme of geopolitical control, but even the arrogant would-be hegemon must realize that World War Three is an insane no-win prospect. The Kiev regime has milked the U.S. and the European Union for all their worth and created a fabulous money racket for the NATO military-industrial complex. But this regime’s desperation and its reckless attempts to incite World War Three appear to have become too much even for its Western patrons.
It seems significant that lately, Washington appears to be coaxing the Kiev regime to enter into a peace process with Russia. The U.S. top military commander, General Mark Milley, who is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has urged Kiev to “seize an opportunity for peace”.
Separately, astute independent American military analysts, such as Scott Ritter and Douglas Macgregor, have pointed out that Russia has the decisive upper hand in the conflict. As the war drags on over winter and beyond, the real danger is that the NATO and transatlantic alliance will collapse from the stresses and strains ensuing from devastating economic repercussions. That is why the United States and NATO leaders appear to be feeling the pressure to extricate from the war, or at least to tamp it down.
It was notable that the Kiev regime angrily lashed out at any suggestions of opening a peace dialogue with Moscow.
This would explain why the Zelensky cabal decided to raise the stakes by firing a missile at Poland. The selected target of Przewodow village would have been a tacit concession to limit the casualties, although making the deliberately murderous act no less despicable or unconscionable.
The trouble is the cabal has become so corrupt and wanton that it didn’t sufficiently think through its obvious criminal plan. The missile strike ended up backfiring spectacularly to blow up the regime’s criminality.
The question is: what will the NATO sponsors do about their Neo-Nazi construct in Kiev? The regime is patently out of control and liability for the Western powers. They know they can’t win a conventional war against Russia never mind a nuclear conflagration. So, will we see Zelensky and his cronies being taken out, in one way or another, having become too problematic for their foreign masters?
History shows that the Western powers have used Nazis and fascists in the past as their proxies against the Soviet Union and other adversaries, only for these powers to eventually be compelled to liquidate their proxies when their usefulness expires or becomes overbearing.
Poland and the Baltics plan to drag NATO into Ukrainian conflict – American military expert
By Lucas Leiroz | November 18, 2022
A deadly missile explosion in Przewodow, Poland, has recently raised fears about the possibility of NATO’s direct military involvement in the conflict. As the alliance’s norms provide that an attack on any of its members must be collectively responded to, debates began to arise around the possibility of calling NATO to respond militarily to the bombing on the border. Hours after the investigation began, the Polish and American governments concluded that the missile that hit Przewodow was of Ukrainian origin.
In theory, this conclusion should be enough to discourage any form of NATO hostility to Russia. Either the alliance should unite against Ukraine itself, since it is the perpetrator of the attack, or it should simply refrain from military responses, in case it was proven that the bombing was unintentional. However, the attitude so far has been different: NATO continues to blame Russia, despite the Ukrainian origin of the equipment.
Some analysts believe that NATO’s credibility is being severely affected by this case. The Organization increasingly seems to want to escalate the war at any cost, which is why it would be seeking to attribute responsibility to Russia for something that it evidently cannot be blamed for. This bellicose and extremely irrational anti-Russian position is stronger in the eastern European countries that are part of the alliance, such as Poland itself and the Baltics. These states have embraced the anti-Russian paranoia more fervently than the US itself, which is why they have incessantly clamored for NATO intervention.
This is the opinion, for example, of military expert and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter, who spoke in an interview about the unjustifiable attempts by these countries to involve NATO in a direct war against Russia:
“Poland together with the Baltic states were screaming for NATO to consider Article 5 and Article 4 procedures – in effect asking, demanding that NATO interfere in the Ukraine conflict (…) This tells you that these nations, Poland and the Baltic states, are operating on a hair trigger, that they are leaning forward when it comes to seeking any excuse to escalate the conflict in Ukraine so that NATO gets involved (…) And indeed, it appears that even though it’s now acknowledged that the missiles that hit Poland were Ukrainian S-300 air defense missiles, the blame is being shifted to Russia by these and other NATO players who claim that these missiles would never have been fired if it were not for Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. Therefore, Russia is to blame. And now they’re using this as an excuse to begin a larger discussion about air defense in Poland, air defense capabilities that would have the potential of reaching into Ukraine. So this in itself is an escalation”.
Scott Ritter’s words seem very accurate, considering there has been – and is still happening – utterly irresponsible agitation to bring NATO into the conflict. The narrative that Russia is to blame for the mere fact of starting its special military operation in February is obviously stupid and should not be used to try to justify military operations that put international security at risk. However, for some countries, such as Poland and the Baltics, what seems to interest them is making war against Russia at any cost.
The analyst also stresses the destabilizing role of the Western media. According to him, the big Western outlets work together with NATO governments to produce narratives that contribute to escalations in the conflict against Russia. For him, the media does not act independently or committed to the truth, but as an industry of false information, focused on developing justifications for the West’s anti-Russian interests. The aim is to blame Russia for all war crimes, territorial violations, civilian deaths and accidents, thus demanding foreign intervention.
“The media has long ago stopped asking the relevant questions. It’s not up to the media to wait for Poland to make a decision about the kind of missile that struck. The media is supposed to be able to carry out [an] independent investigation. Any expert on Russian military hardware could have seen, simply by looking at the debris, that these were S-300 missiles that belonged to Ukraine. This is something that the media should have reported and could have reported, but instead they got involved in the hype blaming Russia. Blame Russia first and then help turn that blame into an argument for intervention. The media was literally working with the Polish and Baltic authorities to try and manufacture a case for NATO intervention. You can’t rehabilitate that”, he said.
In fact, once again, military experts analyze the conflict rationally and point out the obvious reality: the NATO-Kiev axis acts in a destabilizing manner and threatens global security. The attitude of Poland and the Baltics needs to be condemned by international society and all forms of warmongering speech based on hate and anti-Russian racism immediately repelled.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
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Mutually Assured Delusion (MAD)
By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | November 5, 2013
Groupthink: A pattern of thought charaterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics.
Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets, by Roland Benabou, published in the Review of Economic Studies. Benabou also has a talk (ppt slides) on this subject.
First, a definition of groupthink (from the ppt slides):
Janis (1972)’s eight symptoms [of groupthink]:
- illusion of invulnerability
- collective rationalization
- belief in inherent morality
- stereotyped views of out-groups
- direct pressure on dissenters
- self-censorship
- illusion of unanimity
- self-appointed mind guards
Sound like any groups that we know? … continue
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