Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov’s description of the Ukrainian-NATO relationship perfectly aligns with Merriam-Webster’s definition of a proxy. Their official website informs readers that “A proxy may refer to a person who is authorized to act for another or it may designate the function or authority of serving in another’s stead.” The objectively existing military-strategic dynamics of the Ukrainian Conflict coupled with Reznikov’s candid admission therefore leave no doubt about the fact that Ukraine is a NATO proxy by definition.
The US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) has insisted over the past 10,5 months that President Putin is supposedly insane for considering Ukraine a NATO proxy whose close military ties with that explicitly anti-Russian bloc pose a serious threat to his country’s national security red lines. Their perception managers subsequently expanded upon their gaslighting operation to discredit Russia’s special operation on the false basis that it’s driven by so-called “imperialism” and not self-defense.
Every single one of the countless information warfare products that they’ve since created was just exposed as fraudulent by none other than Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov, who admitted during an appearance on national TV on Thursday that their country is indeed a NATO proxy. In his own words, “Today, Ukraine is addressing [the] threat (of Russia). We’re carrying out NATO’s mission today, without shedding their blood. We shed our blood, so we expect them to provide weapons.”
Reznikov’s description of the Ukrainian-NATO relationship perfectly aligns with Merriam-Webster’s definition of a proxy. Their official website informs readers that “A proxy may refer to a person who is authorized to act for another or it may designate the function or authority of serving in another’s stead.” The objectively existing military-strategic dynamics of the Ukrainian Conflict coupled with Reznikov’s candid admission therefore leave no doubt about the fact that Ukraine is a NATO proxy by definition.
This senior official likely didn’t intend to discredit his patrons’ “official narrative” for redistributing approximately $100 billion of their taxpayer-provided wealth to Ukraine and thus vindicate everything that President Putin said about why he commenced Russia’s special operation. What appears to have happened is that Reznikov lost his cool after becoming frustrated that NATO isn’t giving Kiev all the weapons that it demands, hence why he spilled the beans in an attempt to put pressure on them.
This emotional reaction to the pressure that’s being put upon his side by NATO’s military-industrial limitations, which the New York Times reported upon in late November and therefore can no longer be denied by the MSM, caused him to finally crack. Had he remained calm like senior officials are supposed to do, especially those leading their country’s military like he does, then he would never have admitted that Ukraine is a NATO proxy out of desperation to guilt it into giving Kiev all that it demands.
The average person in the US-led West’s Golden Billion probably won’t ever be informed of what he said since it’s in the MSM’s obvious interests to suppress all reporting about this embarrassing incident, but those who rely on Alternative Media will almost certainly come across it sooner or later. What they should then do is pass this “politically inconvenient” news along to as many people as possible in order to prove to them that they’ve been lied to by their government and media this entire time.
Approximately $100 billion worth of their hard-earned tax dollars weren’t diverted from domestic socio-economic projects to “protect Ukraine from Russian aggression”, but for NATO to aggressively exploit Ukraine as a literal proxy for waging Hybrid War on Russia. Its Defense Minister, who can’t realistically be described as a so-called “Russian agent/propagandist” or even “Russian-friendly”, wouldn’t have admitted that Ukraine is a NATO proxy if this truly wasn’t the case.
With that in mind, everything that everyone’s been told about this conflict by the MSM is built upon the “Big Lie” that Ukraine is a “fiercely independent state” that was “randomly victimized” by “Russian aggression”. The reality is that it’s Russia that’s the fiercely independent state that was victimized by NATO’s proxy war aggression via Ukraine, though this wasn’t done randomly, but as punishment for its leading role in accelerating the global systemic transition to multiplexity away from US-led unipolarity.
The New Cold War isn’t between “democracies and dictatorships” like Western propagandists falsely claim, but between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the jointly BRICS– & SCO-led Global South of which Russia is a part over the direction of that aforesaid systemic transition. The top proxy war between these de facto blocs is the Ukrainian Conflict, the outcome of which will determine whether the US can reverse its declining unipolar hegemony or if the Multipolar World Order is inevitable.
These unprecedented stakes explain why such an astronomical sum of taxpayer funds has already been expended on perpetuating this proxy war that otherwise would have ended sometime last spring had NATO not rushed to its proxy’s rescue. The approximately $100 billion spent so far obviously hasn’t been sufficient for dislodging Russia from the territory that Ukraine claims as its own, which suggests that the West might accept the fait accompli of Moscow’s victory and thus explains why Reznikov is panicking.
He and his ilk from that US-installed fascist regime know that they probably won’t politically survive the scenario of Kiev de facto acknowledging Russia’s control over its former regions, hence why he desperately sought to put maximum pressure on NATO to finally give them all that they’ve demanded. To that end, he publicly admitted that Ukraine is a NATO proxy in the hopes of guilting his patrons into complying, but he also unwittingly humiliated its propagandists and discredited their “official narrative”.
January 15, 2023
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Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | NATO, Russia, Ukraine |
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By Svetlana Ekimenko – Samizdat – 15.01.2023
Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova has denounced alleged instances of extortion against relatives of Russian soldiers taken prisoner by Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
“I received this chilling footage on January 14 from the relatives of captured Russian servicemen Vladislav Kovalenko and Piotr Krikunov. Using unknown accounts, anonymous non-humans show mothers scenes of their sons being tortured, and threaten to kill them if they do not receive a ransom. Yet more evidence for the future tribunal over the Nazis!” wrote Moskalkova on her Telegram messaging app on January 14.
The Russian official accompanied her post with video footage allegedly showing proof of such extortion taking place.
The ombudswoman said that family members of Russian soldiers had reported cases when they were sent horrifying scenes of violence used against the prisoners. Such materials were allegedly accompanied by threats that the captives would be killed unless their relatives paid a ransom sum.
The ombudswoman underscored that such instances were proof that “fascism” is not some horrifying page of history, but that it is “here and now, among us.”
Tatyana Moskalkova added:
“I urge the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Committee against Torture, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Committee of the Red Cross to demand that the Ukrainian side immediately comply with the Geneva Convention of 1949, which prohibits torture, violence and acts degrading to human dignity.”
Moskalkova concluded by saying that she was working on an appeal to the Russian Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin on the reported cases, and voiced confidence that the captured soldiers would be successfully released, as has been the case before, in joint efforts by the Russian Defense Ministry and Russian Federal Security Service.
On Sunday, January 8, as a result of an exchange of prisoners, 50 Russian soldiers were released, the Ministry of Defense reported. The prisoner swap was the first in 2023. The previous such exchange, according to the MOD, took place on December 31, 2022, when 82 Russian servicemen returned from Ukrainian captivity.
January 15, 2023
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | Ukraine |
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German-made tanks, the Panzer Leopard 2, are to be deployed in Ukraine in a war that is increasingly becoming an open confrontation between the U.S.-led NATO alliance and Russia.
Germany’s Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck has given approval for the move following the announcement on Wednesday by Polish President Andrzej Duda that a “company” of Leopards was being supplied from Poland to Ukraine.
There are a reported 2,000 German-made Leopards in service across 13 European countries. Officially, Berlin has to give its approval for countries to re-export the tank, which is seen as one of the world’s best in its class of main battlefield armored vehicles. That approval was swiftly forthcoming in Habeck’s affirmative response.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now under intense pressure to authorize the additional supply of Leopards directly from Germany to Ukraine. For months, Scholz has been refusing to provide the heavy armor out of concern not to provoke Moscow which would perceive it as a definitive escalation. Figures within the Berlin government, especially Habeck’s Green Party, have been cajoling the chancellor to increase the supply of weapons. It is a foregone conclusion that Scholz will cave in and give the green light, as he has done on several previous occasions concerning prohibitions on other categories of weaponry.
What is abundantly clear is that the United States and its NATO allies are coordinating a larger-scale involvement in the war in Ukraine against Russia. They are marching in lockstep.
Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden announced an agreement with Germany to supply “light tanks” in the form of Bradley and Marder fighting vehicles. That move was coupled with an unprecedented decision by France to send AMX-10 RC light tanks to Ukraine. This week, Britain upped the ante by trumpeting that it was ready to supply Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine.
Polish President Duda was in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Wednesday accompanied by Lithuanian counterpart Gitanas Nauseda and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. The day before, on Tuesday, the German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock (another warmongering Green member), made a surprise visit to Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv where she hinted that Leopard tanks would be forthcoming.
Speaking alongside Germany’s top diplomat, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said cryptically: “I have no doubt Germany will send Leopard tanks to Ukraine… The German government somewhere deep down understands that the decision will be made and the tanks will be transferred to Ukraine.”
The implied fait accompli echoed the words of Joe Biden who warned just before the eruption of conflict in Ukraine in February last year that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia would never become operational regardless of Berlin’s position.
In Lviv, the Polish leader also spoke about the deployment of Leopard tanks as part of an “international coalition” for sending such weaponry.
“A company of Leopard tanks will be handed over as part of a coalition that is being built because, as you know, a large number of formal requirements, agreements, and so on must be met, but primarily we want this to be an international coalition,” said Duda.
What that means is the German-made tanks are going to be sent to Ukraine as part of a much larger, coordinated NATO effort. There is an air of inevitability that the Leopards will be joined by U.S.-made M1 Abrams as well as British Challengers.
The narrative that is being propounded is that the heavy weapons must be ramped up to Ukraine in order to prevent an alleged Russian offensive from taking the capital Kiev and also to consolidate supposed gains made by Ukrainian military. This narrative is obviously contradictory and belies the Western disinformation peddled by its news media and governments which swivels between imminent defeat or imminent victory for the Kiev regime.
The significant military victory by Russian forces this week in taking control of Soledar, the salt mining town in Donbass, is being cited by NATO figures as evidence that heavier weapons and tanks must be urgently supplied to Ukraine.
What is astounding is the dearth of public debate in the Western states about the relentless supply of weaponry to Ukraine. Hundreds of billions of dollars and euros are given away to a corrupt cabal in Kiev without the slightest oversight. Despite unprecedented economic and social hardships for their general populations, the ruling elites of Western states are pumping more and more weaponry into a conflict that has got nothing to do with alleged “freedom and democracy” in Ukraine.
Western nations are being dragged deeper into a war against Russia with no public knowledge let alone democratic consent about the real reasons for the war. Those reasons are to do with promoting U.S.-led Western imperialist interests, which are profoundly at odds with those of ordinary citizens.
The move to supply main battle tanks by NATO powers is typical of the stealth that has driven the build-up to this war. Typically, the decision has been made in secret and everything else is all about delivering on the decision. Shameless lies about “defending democracy and freedom” are spouted, even though the regime being supported in Kiev by Western taxpayers’ money is one infested with NeoNazis.
Nations are being swept towards an all-out war between the U.S./NATO and Russia by elite rulers in hock to corporate interests and unaccountable deep-state planners.
Despicably and criminally, there is no call among Western governments or media for diplomatic initiatives to end the conflict in Ukraine and to address the deeper geopolitical causes. All elite discourse is about the imperative of “defeating Russia” and “regime change” in Moscow as if it is a doctrinal ordinance.
The conflict in Ukraine was sown in 2014 by the U.S. and NATO-backed coup against democracy and the subsequent weaponizing of a NeoNazi regime. But the seeds for that were borne from a more evil fruit that goes all the way back to the Second World War and Nazi Germany’s failed conquest of the Soviet Union.
The imperial designs of the Third Reich and its expansionist “lebensraum” have been inherited by the U.S.-led NATO axis. The deployment of Leopard tanks – in place of Panzer Tigers – trundling towards Russia is a visceral sign of antecedent and of who stands on the right side of history.
January 14, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Germany, NATO, UK, Ukraine |
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Samizdat -13.01.2023
WASHINGTON – US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Friday that she and other House Republican lawmakers are preparing to move forward with an audit of US aid to Ukraine, an idea first proposed late last year before the House Republican majority took effect.
“We don’t even have committees filled yet but [Congressman Michael McCaul] and I are already preparing to move forward with the audit of Ukraine. No more blank checks to Ukraine,” Greene said via Twitter.
House Republicans are committed to transparency for US taxpayers, Greene added.
In November, Greene and several other House Republicans introduced a resolution to initiate an audit of funds appropriated by Congress to Ukraine. The measure failed during the “lame duck” session of the 117th Congress, but Greene vowed to reintroduce the idea in the new 118th Congress.
House Republicans now hold a majority in the lower chamber, with Speaker Kevin McCarthy having started the party’s mantra of ending “blank checks” from the US to Ukraine. McCarthy also backed the initial Ukraine aid audit proposal.
On Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder said that the Defense Department is responsive to oversight by Congress, adding that he looks forward to further bipartisan support for Ukraine.
However, defense budget cuts proposed by the new House Republican majority could force hard questions about funding for foreign operations related to Ukraine and NATO, former Pentagon analyst and retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.
Greene has also called for Ukraine to begin negotiations toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict, characterizing it as a “proxy war” between the United States and Russia.
January 13, 2023
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Corruption, Militarism | Ukraine, United States |
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Samizdat – 13.01.2023
The area around the strategic town, situated in the Donetsk People’s Republic’s northeast, has seen heavy fighting in recent days. The Soledar Salt Mine – opened in the 19th century and featuring a vast 201 km network of tunnels dug up to 288 meters underground, is the largest salt mine in Europe.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense has announced the complete liberation of the town of Soledar, saying the capture of the strategic settlement will make it possible to cut off supply routes used by Ukrainian forces in nearby Artemovsk (which was renamed Bakhmut by Ukraine’s post-coup government in 2016).
According to the MoD’s figures, over 700 Ukrainian troops were killed and 300 pieces of weaponry, including three planes and a helicopter, were destroyed in fighting for Soledar over the past three days. Russian air defenses were said to have shot down nine HIMARS, Olha and Uragan rockets in the course of fighting.
“The liberation of the settlement of Soledar, important for the continuation of successful offensive operations in the Donetsk region, was completed on the evening of January 12,” MoD spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a briefing on Friday.
The Russian military said the capture of Soledar was made possible thanks to constant strikes by army aviation, rocket and artillery units, which pinned down Ukrainian forces and prevented the transfer of reserves and the delivery of ammunition, and blocked attempts to withdraw to new defensive lines. At the same time, Konashenkov said, Russian Airborne Forces occupied dominant heights and blockaded the town from the north and south.
According to Konashenkov, the liberation of Soledar will allow Russian forces to block Ukrainian forces in the region and pocket them in a cauldron.
The first days of 2023 witnessed heavy fighting for Soledar between Russian and Ukrainian forces, with DPR head Denis Pushilin announcing Tuesday that the city center was under the control of fighters from Wagner Group, a Russian private military company.
DPR lawmaker Vladislav Berdichevsky told Sputnik Thursday that the victory at Soledar opened the door for the liberation of the remainder of the Donbass, and that the battle for the town itself had created a mini-cauldron containing Ukrainian troops.
Ukrainian forces aided by US and NATO advisors spent years building up a complex network of fortifications and entrenchments in the Donbass, and have used these positions to launch indiscriminate artillery and rocket attacks into the areas of the region controlled by the Donbass People’s Militias and Russian forces. Donetsk’s major settlements, including the city of Donetsk itself, continue to experience severe shelling, often using US-made artillery and HIMARS rounds, on almost a daily basis, with the intensity of fire becoming the worst in 2022 since 2014-2015.
Russia kicked off a military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 amid concerns that Kiev was preparing to launch an all-out offensive against the Donbass. In the weeks leading up to the escalation, the Donbass republics experienced a dramatic increase in Ukrainian shelling and sabotage attacks and attempted assassinations, and the regions’ leaders ordered the evacuation of the civilian population to Russia. The crisis in the Donbass was complemented by heightened tensions between Moscow and NATO in late 2021 and early 2022, with the alliance rejecting a pair of comprehensive security proposals tabled by Russia to dramatically ease the strain – on the condition that the US-led military bloc give up its ambition to expand further east toward Russia’s borders, including into Ukraine.
January 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | NATO, Russia, Ukraine |
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NATO will send a deployment of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) surveillance planes to Romania to “monitor Russian military activity” amid the Ukraine conflict, the US-led military bloc announced on Thursday.
In a statement, NATO said its “eyes in the sky” are expected to arrive in the Bucharest area on January 17, to strengthen the bloc’s presence in the region. Romania, which borders Ukraine, already hosts a number of NATO units, including the American 101st elite Airborne division.
The bloc did not specify how many planes will be stationed in Romania. However, the German press agency DPA reported that NATO plans to deploy three AWACS there.
The AWACS planes will begin reconnaissance flights, which will take place only over the alliance’s territory, in the coming days, with their mission scheduled to last “several weeks.” In addition, the surveillance mission will be supported by about 180 service members, who will be deployed at the Otopeni air force base near the Romanian capital, some 200km (124 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
The planes themselves are part of a fleet of 14 NATO surveillance aircraft usually based in Geilenkirchen in western Germany. These aircraft are equipped with long-range radar and passive sensors capable of detecting targets over large distances while staying in the air for hours.
The US-led military bloc has been conducting regular surveillance operations on its eastern flank, monitoring the conflict in Ukraine ever since Russia launched its military offensive against the neighboring state in February 2022.
The deployment of AWACS planes comes as a large number of US armor and military vehicles started to arrive in the Netherlands on Wednesday before heading out to NATO’s eastern flank, according to Reuters. In total, about 1,250 pieces of military equipment are said to be disembarking from the Dutch port of Vlissingen, US officials said.
On Monday, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s national security council, stated that the ongoing Ukraine conflict “is not a confrontation between Moscow and Kiev, but rather a military stand-off with NATO.”
January 13, 2023
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Aletho News | NATO, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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Samizdat – 13.01.2023
ANKARA – There is no progress in the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between Russia and the United Nations on promoting Russian food products and fertilizers to the world markets, Russian Ambassador in Turkey Aleksei Erkhov said on Friday.
“As of today, 17 million tons of Ukrainian grain have been exported. However, we still observe distortions in the geographic distribution of recipients of Ukrainian food products. The situation with our products does not inspire optimism either. There is no progress in the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between Russia and the UN on normalization of Russia’s agricultural export,” Erkhov said, as quoted by the Yeni Safak newspaper.
The ambassador also said that Russian producers of agricultural products and suppliers are still facing the blocking of payments via banks, high insurance rates, and limited access to sea ports.
The diplomat went on to say that Latvia, Estonia and Belgium were continuing to hold Russian agricultural products in ports, while Kiev had been blocking the export of ammonia supplies.
“There are delays even in the free delivery of Russian fertilizers to low-income countries. A small part of the cargo has departed from the Netherlands to Malawi. Latvia, Estonia and Belgium are continuing to hold our products in ports. The delivery of ammonia raw materials for the production of fertilizers from the Yuzhnoe port has not started, and the resumption of ammonia supplies is being blocked by Kiev only,” Erkhov added, as quoted by the newspaper.
The ambassador noted that the amount of detained products would be enough to provide 200 million people with food for a year.
On July 22, the deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations was signed by Ukraine and Russia to unblock shipments of grain, food and fertilizer in the Black Sea despite hostilities. The agreement was initially set to expire on November 19, with a possibility of extension if signatories consent. It was extended for 120 days on November 17.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that most vessels carrying Ukrainian grain do not reach the world’s poorest countries and have ended up in Europe. Putin has also voiced concerns that Russian grain and fertilizer products are not entering the global markets as stipulated by the agreement.
January 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Africa, European Union, Russia, Ukraine |
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Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, formerly the leader of the foreign ‘Soldiers of the Caucasus’ group in Syria, and now an official member of Ukraine’s international legion (Photo: Atlas News )
As the prospect of a rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus becomes more imminent, the most extreme elements of Syria’s armed opposition have been feeling a sting of betrayal, accelerating a trend that, over the past year, has seen many jihadists relocate to Ukraine.
This is especially true for foreign militants, particularly those from Central Asia or the Caucasus.
On 12 January, Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that after several months of disappearance, the well-known Chechen extremist and leader of the ‘Soldiers of the Caucasus’ militia, Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, has reappeared in Ukraine as a member of Kiev’s so-called ‘international legion,’ established in order to attract and recruit foreign fighters against Russia.
According to the report, there has recently been news of an increased number of foreign fighters leaving Syria to make their way over to the “new battlefield,” reinforced by “Turkiye’s lack of need for ‘jihadists’ on Syrian soil” and its “definite interest … to get rid of them.” This comes following recent talks aimed at reconciling Damascus and Ankara, over which the opposition has already expressed a great distaste for.
The report also highlights a leading role played by Turkish intelligence in facilitating this cross-country transfer of extremists, “at least during the first months of the Russian-Ukrainian war.” This could have been Ankara’s way of disposing of militants from Syria and clearing the way for a solution to the Syrian war (provided it was serious about reconciliation at the time, and still is). According to Al-Akhbar, Shishani himself passed through Turkiye on his way to the “new land of jihad,” just as he initially had on his way to join the war in Syria.
Syrian officials have also suggested Washington’s role in facilitating these transfers to Ukraine, as the US has been involved in the relocation of extremists between Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.
On 7 January, the official account of Ukraine’s intelligence agency posted a video on Twitter showing Shishani and a group of fighters engaging in clashes with Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. The video essentially serves as propaganda designed specifically to attract extremist militants from Syria to Ukraine.
Shishani’s disappearance coincided with the establishment of recruitment centers in northern Syria designed to send fighters off to Ukraine, as Al-Akhbar reported in March last year.
Soon after the start of the Ukrainian war, hundreds of fighters from ISIS and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly the Al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front, began making their way to Ukraine to take part in a newer, more direct front against Russia.
On 1 March, before these reports began emerging, Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Bashar al-Jaafari, predicted this.
“We, as a state, have evidence that the US military in Syria is transferring terrorists from one place to another, especially members of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra … So, one should not be surprised, and we do not exclude, that tomorrow ISIS terrorists will be sent to Ukraine,” he said.
If the plan for a restoration of ties between Syria and Turkiye is fruitful, and if Ankara chooses to officially abandon Syria’s armed opposition, which the extremists fear has already happened, then it is a likely possibility that the raging battlefield in Ukraine will emerge as a new safe haven for Syria’s jihadist movement.
January 12, 2023
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Militarism | ISIS, Syria, Turkiye, Ukraine, United States |
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BUDAPEST – Hungary and Serbia want peace in Ukraine as soon as possible. Above all, they are against the negative effects of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions on their economies. That is the conclusion of recent talks between Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic. Szijjártó pointed out how the two countries were experiencing the terrible consequences of the war – economically as well as in terms of safety due to their proximity to Ukraine.
Other countries, thousands of kilometers away from the conflict zone, do not have to face the same impact, he argued.
“It may not look so serious to them, but those who promote an escalation or prolong the war are acting against our national interests,” said the Orban minister, alluding to the US and its ongoing massive support for Ukraine. “Neither the Hungarians nor the Serbs are responsible for this war, but both peoples are paying for it. That is why we are interested in ending the armed conflict as soon as possible,” Szijjártó stressed.
Last month, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had warned that the Ukraine crisis would continue as long as the US supported the Kiev regime with money and weapons.
There was a real danger that the Ukraine conflict could drag on for decades and Washington is responsible for the escalation, he said. “Ukraine can only fight as long as the USA supports it with money and weapons. If the Americans want peace, there will be peace,” Orban told the newspaper Magyar Nemzet.
“It is not in our interest to cut off all our economic relations with Russia. We look at these issues through the Hungarian prism and not through that of other countries,” he noted.
January 12, 2023
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Economics, Militarism | Hungary, Serbia, Ukraine, United States |
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FILE PHOTO: Adrien Bocquet © Sputnik / Nina Zotina
A former French military serviceman and volunteer, Adrien Bocquet, has allegedly requested asylum in Russia, the RIA news agency reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed “source familiar with the situation.” The Frenchman had previously repeatedly traveled to Ukraine and Donbass and claimed that he had witnessed war crimes committed by the Ukrainian forces.
“A former French serviceman, Adrien Bocquet, has approached the Russian authorities and asked them to grant him political asylum,” the source told RIA, adding that the asylum application was supposedly filed in mid-December. The Russian authorities have so far not commented on the development.
Bocquet first traveled to Ukraine as a volunteer delivering humanitarian aid last spring. At the time, he reportedly visited Lviv and Kiev as well as its suburbs, including Bucha. Kiev accused the Russian forces of committing mass killings of civilians in that town, which the Russian troops withdrew from in late March. Moscow has repeatedly denied all of the accusations.
After returning to France in May, Bocquet gave an interview to French Sud Radio, where he claimed to have witnessed the abuse of Russian POWs at the hands of Ukrainian soldiers. The Frenchman accused the Ukrainian soldiers of torturing and killing civilians and claimed the French media was concealing that. He also said that he himself was detained by the Ukrainian soldiers for ten hours.
Last summer, he started traveling to the Donbass regions controlled by the Russian forces and local militias while publishing reports on the situation on the ground on his Telegram channel. There, he wrote weapons like Caesar howitzers, which France supplies to Ukraine, end up injuring civilians in Donbass.
In October, Bocquet claimed he was attacked by “militants” linked to the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) in Istanbul. The Frenchman also published a photo of himself lying in bed with some visible injuries to his face and one hand. The next day, France’s foreign ministry published a statement in which it said it had “no information” on the incident.
Bocquet himself has not commented on his reported asylum application so far.
January 11, 2023
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False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | France, Russia, Ukraine |
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Senator Angus King said the US should not put a timetable on support for Ukraine and remain involved in the war until “Putin is out.” Comparing the current situation with Russia to the Allies’ failure to stop Nazi Germany before World War II, the Maine senator insisted on more Western aid for Kiev.
During a virtual press conference following his recent visit to the Ukrainian capital, King was asked how long the United States should continue its role in the conflict, replying that support for Kiev should be indefinite.
“I believe we should remain there until Putin is out,” he said.
It is unclear if King was calling for Putin’s removal from power in a coup d’etat, or merely for Russian troops to vacate all Ukrainian-claimed territory. The two warring parties maintain conflicting territorial claims and King acknowledged the war is now in a stalemate, but he nonetheless claimed the conflict would not be a “20-year struggle” like America’s experience in Afghanistan.
Throughout the virtual presser, King referenced a historical need to prevail over Russia, saying nothing of the potential for escalation to nuclear war between the world’s largest atomic arsenals.
The senator noted that he often receives questions from constituents about the wisdom of US involvement in the war, but went on to cite his own version of a Bush-era epithet: ‘We fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.’
“I get letters every now and then, people saying, ‘Why are we doing this? Ukraine’s far away. It’s not our fight.’ Well, it is our fight, because if we don’t fight it now, it will spread,” King said. “And it will become something that we can’t avoid being involved in, just as occurred in the late 1930s at the beginning of World War II.”
He went on to claim that if Putin was not stopped in Ukraine, he would go on to conquer more of Europe, comparing the Russian leader to Adolf Hitler several times.
King also suggested the US could give additional aid to Ukraine, pointing to allies who are giving more when compared to their overall gross domestic product. “If you measure it in terms of GDP, we’re between fifth and tenth in the world, and other countries are contributing actually larger shares of their GDP to the defense of Ukraine,” he continued, “Why? Because they recognized, as hopefully we will continue to recognize, that this is really a fight for Western values.”
Since Russia’s invasion kicked off last February, Congress has authorized nearly $120 billion in aid for Kiev, including more than $21 billion in direct military assistance and a series of other financial and humanitarian aid packages. King claimed the American tax dollars are being well spent and accounted for, arguing “The software that they’re using, working with Deloitte and SAP, to track everything coming in – every spare part, every dollar.”
However, CNN has reported that US arms sent to Ukraine quickly fall into a “black hole” and are nearly impossible to track. In October, Finland’s national law enforcement agency warned that weapons being shipped to Ukraine are ending up in the hands of criminal gangs, while Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari warned weeks later that “the situation in the Sahel and the raging war in Ukraine serve as major sources of weapons and fighters that bolster the ranks of the terrorists in the Lake Chad Region.”
King’s latest presser followed a trip to Ukraine last week, where he said he held a “thrilling” meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky and described him as among “the great leaders of the century.”
While the senator claimed Zelensky and Ukraine are champions of democracy, some analysts have argued that Kiev has only continued its transformation into an authoritarian state under his rule. As commentator Ted Galen Carpenter wrote in The American Conservative, “genuine democracies do not ban multiple opposition parties or close opposition media outlets. Nor do they rigorously censor (and put under strict government control) media outlets that they allow to remain open. Genuine democracies do not outlaw churches that advocate policies the government dislikes.” He added, “yet the Ukrainian government has committed not just one or two, but all of those abuses.”
January 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Russophobia | Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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Is Joe Biden willing to destroy the world to “weaken Russia”?
Even though one has become accustomed to seeing the United States government behaving irrationally on an epic scale with no concern for what happens to the average citizen who is not a member of one of the freak show constituencies of the Democratic Party, it is still possible to be surprised or even shocked. Shortly before year’s end 2022 an article appeared in the mainstream media and was quite widely circulated. The headline that it was featured under in the original Business Insider version read “A nuclear attack would most likely target one of these 6 US cities — but an expert says none of them are prepared.” The cities were New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco.
The article seeks to provide information and tips that would allow one to survive a nuclear attack, repeating commentary from several “experts” in emergency management and “public health” suggesting that a nuclear war would be catastrophic but not necessarily the end of the world. One should be prepared. It observes that “those cities would struggle to provide emergency services to the wounded. The cities also no longer have designated fallout shelters to protect people from radiation.” It is full of sage advice and off-the-cuff observations, including “Can you imagine a public official keeping buildings intact for fallout shelters when the real-estate market is so tight?” Or even better the advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s “nuclear detonation planning guide” that for everyday citizens in a city that has been nuked: “Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.” Dr. Ron Paul asks “Are they insane? They act as if a nuclear attack on the United States is just another inconvenience to plan for, like an ice storm or a hurricane.”
The article argues that the six cities would be prime targets as they are centers for vital infrastructure. The bomb blasts would kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans with many more deaths to follow from radiation poisoning, but the article makes no attempt to explain why Russia, with a relatively sane leadership, would want to start a nuclear war that would potentially destroy the planet. Also, the targeting list of the cities provided by the “experts” is itself a bit odd. Surely Russia would attack military and government targets as a first priority to limit the possible retaliation while also crippling the ability of the White House and Pentagon to command and control the situation. Such targets would include both San Diego and Norfolk where the US Atlantic and Pacific fleets are based as well as the various Strategic Air Command bases and the underground federal government evacuation site in Mount Weather Virginia.
Reading the article, one is reminded of the early years of the Cold War that sought to reassure the public that nuclear war was somehow manageable. It was a time when we elementary school children were drilled in hiding under our desks when the air raid alarm went off. Herman Kahn was, at that time, the most famous advocate of the school of thought that the United States could survive the “unthinkable,” i.e. a nuclear war. An American physicist by training, Kahn became a founding member of the beyond neocon nationalist Hudson Institute, which is still unfortunately around. Kahn, who served in the US Army during the Second World War as a non-combat telephone lineman, started his career as a military strategist at the RAND Corporation. Kahn endorsed a policy of deterrence and argued that if the Soviet Union believed that the United States had a devastating second-strike capability then Moscow would not initiate hostilities, which he explained in his paper titled “The Nature and Feasibility of War and Deterrence”. The Russians had to believe that even a perfectly coordinated massive attack would guarantee a measure of retaliation that would leave them devastated as well. Kahn also posited his idea of a “winnable” nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War for which he is often cited as one of the inspirations for the title character of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film Dr. Strangelove.
The appearance of the Business Insider article dealing with a cool discussion of the survivability from a nuclear war suggests that the nutcases are again escaping from the psychiatric hospital here in the US and are obtaining top jobs in government and the media. While one continues to hope that somehow someone will wake up in the White House and realize that the deep dark hole that we the American people find ourselves in mandates a change of course and a genuine reset, there is little daylight visible in the darkness.
My particular concern relates to the entangling relationships that have kept our country permanently at war in spite of the fact that since the Cold War ended in 1991 no potential adversary has actually threatened the United States. Now, the federal government appears to be in the business of cultivating dangerous relationships to justify defense spending and placing the nation on the brink of what might prove to be catastrophic. The current US mission to “weaken Russia” and eventually also China in order to maintain its own “rules based international order” includes such hypocritical and utterly illegal under international law anomalies as the continued military occupation of part of Syria to deny that country’s leaders’ access to their oil fields and best agricultural land. A recent UN humanitarian agency investigation determined that the Syrian people are suffering and even starving as a result of that and US imposed sanctions that the Biden Administration maintains against all reason and humanity.
At the present time, however, the most entangling of all relationships, even more than with Israel, has to be the engagement of the US in the proxy war being fought against Russia on behalf of Ukraine, which is exactly what threatens to turn nuclear if someone blinks at the wrong time. Billions of dollars in direct aid as well as billions more in the form of weapons stripped from arsenals in Europe and the US have been given to the corrupt regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky while Zelensky continues to work assiduously to milk the situation and draw Washington into a deeper war directly confronting Moscow.
In fact, by some reckonings the war has already begun, with the US and its allies clearly dedicated to crippling the Russian economy while also getting rid of President Vladimir Putin. The 101st Airborne is now in place in Romania next to Ukraine to “warn” the Kremlin while the Pentagon has recently admitted that some American military personnel are already in Ukraine, contrary to the denials by White House spokesmen. The British have also revealed that some of their elite Special Ops personnel are on the ground. And there are reports that more American soldiers will soon be on the way, ostensibly to “track the weapons” being provided to Zelensky, which will include US-made, Patriot Missile batteries some of which might even be placed in NATO member Poland to provide air cover over Western Ukraine, a definite act of war as seen by Russia, which has warned that such a move would mean that the US and its allies had “effectively become a party” to the war in Ukraine and there will be “consequences.” “Consequences” means escalation.
The soldier-“trackers” mission may be in response to reports that weapons provided by NATO have been corruptly sold or given to third countries by the Ukrainians. The several US initiatives taken together could produce a rapid escalation of the conflict complete with dead Americans coming home in body bags and an inevitable direct US involvement in combat roles that could lead anywhere, but at this point it is the Russians who are acting with restraint by not targeting the NATO and US “advisers” who are already active in Ukraine.
Suspicion is also growing that the United States “green-lighted” in advance recent cruise missile attacks carried out by Ukraine against military targets deep inside Russia. Since the attacks, the White House has declared that Ukraine has “permission” to attack Russia and has basically conceded to the unbalanced Zelensky the right to make all the decisions and run the war that the US is largely funding, which is a formula for disaster. It is already known that Ukraine is receiving top level intelligence provided both by the US and also other NATO states. The precision attacks on Russia suggest that the Ukrainian army was given the coordinates of possible active targets, something that the US would be capable of providing but which would have been beyond the abilities of Ukraine, which possesses no satellite surveillance capability. If it is true that the White House was involved in escalating the conflict it would be a very dangerous move, inviting retaliation by Moscow.
To be sure, some idiots in Washington, mostly of the neocon variety, continue to see war against Russia as something like a crusade for world freedom. Rick Newman, Yahoo’s top Finance Columnist, observes how “Budget hawks in Congress are worried about granting President Biden’s request for an additional $38 billion in aid for Ukraine to help defeat the invading Russians.” He concludes “They’re right. Thirty-eight billion isn’t enough. Make it $50 billion. Or even $100 billion. The more, the better, until the job is done.”
Apparently, the bellicose Rick does not quite get that Russia has made clear that if it is about to be defeated by force majeure it will go nuclear. And Congress and the White House don’t seem to get it either, with both the Republican and Democratic parties oblivious to the real danger that confronts the American people. Nuclear war? Sure! Just hide in your basement, if you have one, and tune in.
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.
January 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | UK, Ukraine, United States |
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