Free West Media | November 29, 2022
Poland has hired two US PR companies for a pro-Ukraine campaign in the West. According to the official statement, Poland’s state bank has hired MikeWorldWide and AMW PR for “a global campaign to inform the general public about the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine”.
The PR company MikeWorldWide, is closely linked to the US Democratic Party, and was tasked in September with boosting Western support to Ukraine through influencers and social media.
The primary objective “is to raise awareness among at least 50 million people of the actual dimension of the war in Ukraine and the scale of the damages,” according to MikeWorldWide’s services agreement with Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego.
Poland’s national bank will be paying $3 million for media exposure, including advertisements on Facebook, Twitter, NPR, USA Today, Spotify and Vox, as well as for influencers.
In November Poland’s state bank hired AMW PR, a New York-based media relations company, to “pitch the refugee and humanitarian crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.
AMW will work with US and Canadian journalists, producers, bloggers, and podcasters.
Samizdat – 28.11.2022
MOSCOW – Media reports alleging that Russia plans to leave the city of Energodar and the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP) are not true, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
“There is no need to look for some signs where there are none and cannot be,” Peskov told reporters, commenting on the allegations.
Late on Sunday, Western and Ukrainian media reported about Russia’s alleged intention to withdraw from the region. Last week, Petro Kotin, the head of Ukrainian energy enterprise Energoatom, told a national television that there were signs of Russian troops preparing to leave the Zaporozhye NPP.
Located on the left bank of the Dnepr 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.
By Drago Bosnic | November 28, 2022
When talking about the political West, one of the most common misconceptions is that the thalassocratic power pole is a giant geopolitical monolith with a near-constant consensus on all matters. One of the pillars of the political West’s power is creating an illusion that precisely this is the case. By creating a semblance of uniformity on various questions, both internal (so-called “shared values”) and external (unified foreign policy framework), the political West is trying to hold everyone in line while also projecting the “right way” to the rest of the world. However, the power pole (primarily composed of the United States and European Union) has increasingly serious issues promoting its version of reality.
One of the most prominent indicators of diverging interests within the political West is the Ukraine crisis. Back in 2014, when the US-orchestrated coup brought the Neo-Nazi junta to power in Kiev, Victoria Nuland, then serving as the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, famously (or rather infamously) used a common profanity to show how the US feels about the EU. It seems the bloc, although hardly innocent, as it took part in nearly every single US aggression against the world, is now slowly shifting toward a more independent position. Naturally, this process isn’t part of some selfless reckoning in Brussels, but a simple matter of basic interests and desire for self-preservation. It seems the EU is realizing that the damage it’s suffering from the failed siege of Russia is inversely proportional to what the US is experiencing.
There is growing frustration in the EU over America’s repeated rejections to push the Kiev regime to the negotiating table, especially as an unprecedented amount of weapons and munitions enter the country, risking a possible world-ending escalation. In addition, the EU populace continues being at the forefront of economic shockwaves resulting from the failed sanctions war. As winter temperatures kick in, the ongoing energy supply crisis is bound to get worse, putting additional pressure on EU economies. All the while, many European leaders, sitting comfortaby in their mansions, are parroting the same party line about the mythical “solidarity with Ukrainians” that the regular Europeans are apparently supposed to conduct through self-imposed bankruptcy and freezing to death.
All of this is creating political pressure on most EU governments, many of which have already fallen. And yet, some analysts see the hand of Vladimir Putin behind all troubles, instead of focusing on the very real shortcomings of their own system. According to Politico, “nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West.” This somewhat surprising admission stands in stark contrast to the recent mainstream propaganda machine’s cheerleading. “Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer,” the analysis by Politico reads.
To add insult to injury, the Biden administration continues rolling out various controversial “green” subsidies and taxes, all of which are extremely damaging to EU industries at a time when the Old Continent is being ravaged by the sanctions boomerang, in addition to the largely forgotten (but still hardly irrelevant) fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement for Politico, an unnamed senior EU official also criticized the US policy of effectively using the Ukrainian crisis to fill the coffers of its Military Industrial Complex, while also turning a blind eye to European pleas for a peaceful resolution.
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the US because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” the senior EU official stated, adding, “We are really at a historic juncture,” arguing that “the double hit of trade disruption from the aforementioned US subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance. America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries,” the official concluded.
And yet, the US National Security Council keeps insisting that the crisis is solely Russia’s fault. At the same time, Washington DC is quite content with the massive windfall its natural gas industry is experiencing, while also presenting the exorbitantly priced LNG deliveries to the EU as some “purely altruistic” endeavor aimed at “diversifying away from Russia.” Even the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who is anything but sympathetic to Russia, is now showing frustration and questioning the concept of a “united front to help Ukraine,” acknowledging to Politico, “Americans — our friends — take decisions which have an economic impact on us.”
Other senior EU officials have also become more outspoken about this glaring hypocrisy. “The United States sells us its gas with a multiplier effect of four when it crosses the Atlantic,” European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said on November 23 during an interview on French TV. “Of course the Americans are our allies… but when something goes wrong it is necessary also between allies to say it,” Breton concluded.
According to the Politico report, another EU diplomat stated that the $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme the Biden administration earmarked “to support green industries” as part of the Inflation Reduction Act “unleashed panic” across European capitals. “The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything,” the EU diplomat said. “Is Washington DC still our ally or not?” he asked.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
By Maxim Minaev – Samizdat – 28.11.2022
On November 26, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian Armed Forces, said that Russia is concerned about US-controlled tests of infectious agents on military personnel and mental patients in Ukraine.
Russia has not received an exhaustive response from the United States and Ukraine regarding US biological and military activities on Ukrainian territory under the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), Russia’s permanent representative to the Geneva-based UN headquarters, Gennady Gatilov, said.
“We still have not received a proper and meaningful response to the documents and evidence presented, which shed light on the true nature of interaction between the Pentagon and its contractors and the Ukrainian side in the field of military and biological activities,” he said.
The diplomat added that Russia’s complaint was ignored and its proposal for an international investigation under the auspices of the UNSC under Article VI of the BWC was blocked by the United States.
Earlier, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian Armed Forces, said that a network of more than 30 biological laboratories had been formed on the territory of Ukraine, which worked in the interests of the Pentagon. According to him, everything for the continuation of the US military-biological program was removed from Ukraine after the start of the Russian special military operation.
Earlier this month, Kirillov recalled that former US President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton had participated in formulating the US drive for global dominance in bioweapons research. He said that Bolton led the US delegation to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention’s Fifth Review Conference in November-December 2001. Later, the US blocked the operation of the UN body’s verification mechanism, as well as proposed measures to check bioweapons storage sites, citing threats such verification measures would pose to US “national interests.” Bolton also characterized the BWC’s verification protocol as “dead,” and promised that it’s “not going to be resurrected.”
Igor Kirillov accompanied his presentation with a fresh trove of documents, including papers related to US efforts to build up the country’s military-biological potential.
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | November 27, 2022
It was only a matter of time. The recent Russian pull-back of troops clearly indicated a broad shift in tactics, and the one thing that the Kremlin avoided for several months seemed like the next most logical step – Full spectrum strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.
Initially, Ukraine’s media spin suggested that the precision strikes were “ineffective”, with western news outlets showing only a handful of images of craters in streets and some scarred apartment buildings. There were limited admissions of damage to the power and water grids, but Ukraine claimed that these systems would be back and functional within days. This did not happen.
Not surprisingly, Ukraine suffered far more damage to their utilities than the government and media let on. Later estimates ranged from 60% to 80% of the nation’s grid destroyed or unusable and the latest satellite photos of active lights at night support this. Below, we can see lights across Ukraine on February 24th at the start of the war.
Next, we have an image taken from November 24th.
More than half the nation is in total darkness and the comparison to neighboring countries is stark. For the majority of the war Ukraine enjoyed near full use of their power grid, internet, water, gas, and other amenities, which is highly unusual during an invasion. The reasons for Vladimir Putin seeking to avoid damage to infrastructure are unknown, but public optics are the most likely explanation. With power resources nearly destroyed, the citizenry of Ukraine is facing a long cold winter with little to no relief in sight.
No doubt the media will portray this as a cold weather holocaust, though, elimination of infrastructure is usually the first measure of a large scale attack. It is standard operating procedure for the US military, for example. At this point, the coldest temperatures have yet to hit Ukraine, with average lows of 21°F (-6°C) in December. This kind of weather is not a problem with infrastructure intact, but with the grid down there will be chaos.
Water pipes will freeze and bust across major population centers, leaving only well water. The effects of the cold will be cumulative, and without heating and electric most other operations including economic operations will grind to a halt. Ukraine’s population will have gone from relative comfort to brutal survival in the span of a couple months.
The next most obvious outcome is a refugee crisis, with millions of people seeking shelter in neighboring countries in order to escape the cold. Though mainstream analysts are finally admitting to the grid problem, there is still very little coverage of the actual consequences we are about to witness. The assertions that Ukraine is “winning” the war are harder to sell while at the same time acknowledging the massive economic and humanitarian disaster that is escalating in the wake of supposed victory.
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.
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!
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%.
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.
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By Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone | December 17, 2023
Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.
The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
