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Ukraine plans to adopt law allowing foreign debt payments suspension

Al Mayadeen | July 18, 2024

Ukraine intends to pass legislation allowing the government to freeze foreign debt payments while the country and its international creditors negotiate conditions for restructuring more than $20 billion in bonds, Bloomberg reported.

The proposed law, filed by the chairman of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party, aims to allow for the suspension of payments on foreign sovereign debt and state-guaranteed obligations due to a coupon payment scheduled for August 1.

The parliamentary budget committee convened Thursday morning and suggested that the measure be approved by the assembly, according to chairman Danylo Hetmantsev’s message on Telegram.

The clock is ticking for Ukraine and bondholders on debt restructure, as a payment freeze agreed upon 2 years ago will soon expire.

Unless a settlement is reached or a two-year moratorium is extended by the end of this month, Ukraine will legally default on its obligations in September.

“It is necessary to introduce, for the period of transactions to change the terms of borrowing, temporary measures related to the servicing and repayment of debt obligations and a moratorium on satisfaction of creditors’ claims,” the bill that was released by the president’s office said.

July 18, 2024 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

Odessa Leads Violent Resistance to Mobilization as Poll Shows Ukrainians’ Sympathy for Draft Dodgers

© AFP 2023 / SERGEI SUPINSKY
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.07.2024

The southwestern Black Sea port city of Odessa is rapidly becoming the center of resistance to Kiev’s increasingly chaotic efforts to scoop up more souls for the war effort. Meanwhile, new polling and statistics released this week reveal that support for draft dodgers is growing across Ukraine, particularly its western regions.

On the night of July 16 alone, a wave of arson attacks targeting the service and personal vehicles of Odessa’s territorial recruitment center employees left five cars burned to a crisp. Similar incidents were reported in Vinnitsa, Rovno, Dnepropetrovsk, and Kharkov the same night. Two more cars were burned in Odessa the next night, with the weekly total approaching a dozen.

The situation has gotten so bad in some cities that servicemen have reportedly resorted to putting “Not Territorial Recruitment Center” signs on their vehicles to avoid being targeted.

The ‘car-nage’ is no trifling matter for its perpetrators. On Tuesday, authorities in Rovno detained a 22-year-old suspect for the suspected arson of two military vehicles. He now faces up to 10 years in prison.

Arson is just one of the tools in the Ukrainian anti-war underground’s toolbelt. This week, unknown individuals attempted to blow up a territorial recruitment center in the town of Busk, Lvov region. Elsewhere in recent weeks, media have reported a stream of sabotage attacks targeting railway, electricity and other infrastructure, physical attacks on recruiters, and daily attempts by fighting-age men to escape Ukraine by crossing the border into neighboring Hungary, Poland, Romania or Moldova.

Ukrainian authorities have attempted to blame the unrest, including arson attacks on recruiters’ cars, on Russia, claiming suspects are being promised money or other rewards by the FSB via instant messengers.

But statistics and a fresh crop of sociological surveys suggest otherwise, indicating that Ukrainians are not only becoming increasingly tired of the conflict with Russia, but hostile to authorities, especially after the passage in May of a controversial law designed to strengthen mobilization, which obliges all men aged 18-60 to carry military ID with them at all times, allows summons to be served, and does not provide for demobilization. Combined with President Zelensky’s move this spring to lower the recruitment age from 27 to 25, the measures have proven a mental Molotov Cocktail encouraging resistance for Ukraine’s fighting age male population.

Punishments for dodging the draft are stiff. Earlier this month, the Kiev District Court in Kharkov sentenced a man with developmental disabilities to three years in prison for refusing to accept a summons after being deemed fit for service by a medical commission. Other men are grabbed in the streets, stuffed into vans, beaten and detained extrajudicially until they submit to conscription, reports have documented.

Ukrainians also have to worry about astronomical levels of corruption in recruitment offices, where bribe-taking has become the norm, rather than the exception. Shortfalls in recruitment rates resulting from wealthier Ukrainians being let off are inevitably made up by the poorer strata of society.

Western Ukraine Leading the Way in Dodging Draft, Stats Show

Unwillingness to fight has paralyzed much of the country, including –perhaps curiously, its most westernmost, anti-Russian, and pro-European regions.

Last week, Ukrainian media revealed, citing official government data, that enlistment offices had filed reports on over 417,000 draft dodgers since February 2022 (316,100 of them between 2023 and 2024), with western Ukraine lighting up bright red on the map among draft evader numbers despite being far more sparsely populated than the country’s center and east.

The figures show, for example, that while draft dodging in eastern, central and southern areas of the country range from as little as 200 people in the Ukrainian-controlled areas of Kherson, 4,500 in Kharkov and 14,300 in Kiev, in western areas, which include regions like Lvov, Zakarpatye, Ivano-Frankovsk, Rovno and Khmelnitsky, they total some 334,200 men.

In a recent report, Kiev-based journalist-turned Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier Artyom Ilyin said that most of the recruits from western regions of Ukraine he’s serving with are highly demoralized, asking why they should fight for a country that “has given them nothing but a machine gun in their entire lives.”

“Arguments about Putin and Moscow authorities do not work,” the journalist lamented, adding that “rumors” about the Kiev elite’s corrupt activities are rampant among the ranks.

Dodging the Draft Isn’t Shameful, Polling Says

Finally, shock polling this week by the Razumkov Center, generally regarded as one of Ukraine’s most respected public policy think tanks, revealed that a whopping 46% of Ukrainians do not consider it “shameful” to dodge mobilization, with 29.1% saying it is shameful, and 24.8% finding it difficult to answer. Among respondents aged 18-29, 50% said it is not shameful.

The same polling also found that 44% of respondents think the time has come peace talks with Russia, with 35% against the idea, and 21% undecided.

Draft Dodging Among Western Ukrainians Shows Local Fence-Sitter Mentality

Western Ukrainians had gotten “used to the fact that there was some kind of war going on in the east after the [2014] coup and before the start of Russia’s special military operation. The attitude was that ‘it doesn’t concern us, let the Donbass sort it out.’ They thought that the Ukrainian army’s terrorizing of the eastern regions would last forever,” Alexander Dudchak, a Ukrainian politics expert and leading researcher at the Institute of CIS Countries, told Sputnik, commenting on the unexpectedly high draft dodger rates among western Ukrainians.

When it came time to enlist for the current conflict, “they still prefer that the people from those [eastern] regions be sent to the front first,” Dudchak said. Today, the observer noted, the recruiters sent to major eastern and southeastern cities like Kharkov, Nikolayev and Odessa to collect fresh recruits often come from Ivano-Frankovsk, Lvov and other western regions.

As for the rising instances of arson and other acts of sabotage targeting recruiters, the military and infrastructure, Dudchak characterized the phenomenon as a fledgling form of popular resistance and guerilla warfare.

“This is the protest of the local population which in principle does not perceive this government as its own, or this military as their defenders. They act as best they can, using whatever capabilities they have,” he explained.

Ukrainian society today in general is in a state of apathy, and “doesn’t see any point any longer to continue the war,” according to the observer.

“Such tendencies are growing stronger. That’s what the sociological services are talking about, although they may also be preparing the population to accept the inevitable and the possibility of negotiations, and ceding territory. But of course, not under the current regime, not under Zelensky, most likely,” Dudchak summed up.

July 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian language rejected by children in Russian-majority regions

By Lucas Leiroz | July 18, 2024

The forced imposition of the Ukrainian language in regions with a non-Ukrainian ethnic majority appears to be failing. There has been a decline in the use of the Ukrainian language in the country’s schools, according to a report recently published by the Kiev media. The case clearly shows how, despite the use of force and violence, the neo-Nazi regime will have great difficulty in imposing its cultural agenda in the country’s remote regions.

Since 2014, the official use of Russian and other non-Ukrainian languages ​​has been sharply reduced. The de-Russification measures were further intensified after the start of the special military operation, when the Kiev regime received a “carte blanche” by Western sponsors to commit all sorts of crimes, including ethnic and cultural genocide, an almost total ban on the Russian language and literature having happened since then.

However, despite efforts to eradicate the cultural and linguistic identity of ethnic Russians, the rejection of the Ukrainian language has been increasing throughout the country. A recent survey by the State Service for the Quality of Education showed that in the 2023/2024 academic year, only 74% of students stated that Ukrainian was their mother language. The previous year, the figure was 91%, which shows that there has been a significant drop in the number of children who identify as native speakers of Ukrainian.

Moreover, the drop is not limited to children. Similar data were also revealed in surveys of parents (93% to 82%) and teachers (94% to 86%). In practice, it is possible to say that there is a massive decline in the use of the Ukrainian language, with all the efforts of the neo-Nazi government to assimilate other ethnic groups having failed.

New statistics indicate that currently less than 40% of children in the country use Ukrainian exclusively in their informal activities. The figures naturally vary according to Ukraine’s geography, with more Ukrainian speakers in the western regions, where there are fewer ethnic Russians. Around 17% of children speak Ukrainian in the east of the country, while around 74% speak this language in the west.

It is important to remember that, in addition to Russian, other non-Ukrainian languages ​​are used in the country by ethnic minorities, who are also suffering the impacts of cultural genocide policies. This is the case of the Hungarian language, for example, which is used in the Transcarpathian region, where Hungarians currently live in a situation similar to that of Russians in Donbass, being victims of apartheid-like measures. Despite all the persecution, however, these ethnic minorities refuse to abandon their cultural identity and continue to speak their languages.

This scenario in Ukraine was already expected by some experts. Implementing measures of ethnic and cultural cleansing is not easy. People affected by the measures tend to react by using their language even more intensely, as an act of political activism to preserve their cultural heritage. Amid the current conflict situation, some Russian families in Ukraine see the use of their native language as the last chance to preserve their identity amid the Russophobic madness that the authorities want to impose on all citizens.

In addition, there are basic sociological issues that explain the continued use of the Russian language. The authorities have no way of monitoring which language is being used in informal and family activities. Ethnic Russian citizens use their native language to engage in unofficial sociability, rejecting the Ukrainian language during casual conversations in shopping malls, in churches and other places.

With the survey data revealed, it is possible that Kiev will increase its repressive measures against Russian speakers even further from now on. The total banning of this language throughout the country remains one of the main goals of the neo-Nazi regime. Knowing the failure of the efforts so far, it is very likely that the violence will be intensified in an act of desperation to make the cultural genocide successful.

However, any action in this direction is likely to fail. Kiev will only further expand social and ethnic tensions, polarizing Russians and Ukrainians within the country and generating a crisis of instability that could seriously affect the regime’s mobilization plans during this war. Destroying an ethnic and cultural identity is not easy and Kiev will certainly not succeed, given the current Ukrainian state’s inability to maintain full control over what happens in the country.

Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.

You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.

July 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Russia Ready for Ukraine Peace Talks With Focus on Clear Security Agreements

Sputnik – 17.07.2024

Russia is ready for negotiations on Ukraine and European security issues and will incorporate safeguards against dual interpretations in any future European security treaty said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“We are ready for negotiations, but considering the sad experience of talks and consultations with the West and Ukrainians… I hope a treaty will be reached at some stage on European security, and in this context the Ukraine crisis will be resolved,” Lavrov stated during a press conference following a UN Security Council meeting.

“We will, of course, be very careful with the wording and will incorporate safeguards into this document against repeated unscrupulous, unreliable interpretations,” the foreign minister added.

Lavrov emphasized that, unlike China, the West does not address the root causes of the conflict in its initiatives on Ukraine.

“This already concerns the content of the dialogue; China has very clearly indicated in its first initiative the need to start with addressing the root causes of the current crisis in Europe and to work on agreements to eliminate these causes,” he said.

He noted that “no one at the Copenhagen or Burgenstock meetings even mentioned the root causes.”

Thus, the West is trying to push through Volodymyr Zelensky’s plan by all possible means.

“A course has been set to push through at any cost the so-called Zelensky plan, which has a clearly defined form of an ultimatum,” Lavrov emphasized.

Lavrov’s comments were in response to a question about Russia’s possible participation in the second summit on the Ukraine conflict and the outcomes of the recent conference in Switzerland.

On Russia-US Unofficial Contacts Regarding Ukraine

Russia and the United States have held unofficial and so-called “second level” expert level contacts to discuss issues related to the conflict in Ukraine, Minister Lavrov added.

“I will tell you in confidence — we have had unofficial contacts with the Americans involving political experts, political experts who know each other and understand the policies of their governments,” Lavrov told the press conference, adding that Ukraine was on the agenda of such contacts.

Despite the fact that the two countries are holding phone conversations from time to time, there is nothing significant in these talks, he noted.

On Russia’s Readiness to Work With a New US President

Russia will be ready to work with any elected president of the United States, the foreign minister claimed.

“Once again I want to say: we will work, we will be ready to work with any American leader that the American people elect and who … will be ready for an equal, mutually respectful dialogue,” Lavrov said at the press event.

On Israel Seeking to Involve the US in Regional Escalation

It appears that Israel’s goal is to involve the United States in the escalation of tensions with Iran, the minister observed.

“The sense is that they want to provoke them into full-scale involvement with Hezbollah. The purpose of such a provocation, analysts suggest, is to draw the United States directly into the involvement of its armed forces in this [regional] conflict,” Lavrov emphasized.

Russia hopes the West will do everything to ensure that such ideas, “if they exist in the Israeli leadership,” will remain only ideas.

Moscow is doing everything to “calm down the situation,” Lavrov added.

On the Nord Stream Explosions

Russia will continue seeking the truth regarding the explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Lavrov said.

“We will pursue the truth – since I’ve mentioned the Nord Streams, we’re going to seek the truth,” he highlighted.

July 17, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US claims Russia threatened by ‘democracy’

RT | July 16, 2024

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller has rejected Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s call for resolving the “root causes” of the Ukraine conflict, arguing that Moscow illegitimately fears a “functioning democracy” in Kiev.

Lavrov spoke at the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday, describing Russia’s military action in Ukraine as the consequence of a security threat by the US and its allies.

“The problem with the formulation from the foreign minister is that there’s no one in Europe that is threatening Russia,” Miller said at a State Department press briefing. He insisted that there is no military threat to Russia by NATO and that no one has threatened to take Russian territory.

“What Russia seems to see as a threat is a democracy functioning on its borders. And that’s just not a legitimate view,” Miller added. “We reject that view.”

Miller did not specify which country he considered a functioning democracy. Multiple US officials and foreign policy pundits have described Ukraine that way in the past, especially following the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev.

The new Ukrainian authorities, “midwifed” into place by US envoy Victoria Nuland, sicced nationalist militias to kill and intimidate dissidents in Odessa and Kharkov, while triggering a civil war by sending tanks to pacify Donetsk and Lugansk.

Since Russia intervened in February 2022, Vladimir Zelensky’s government has suspended all elections and banned most opposition parties, while taking control of all TV stations. Zelensky’s own term expired in May.

Last month, at the so-called “Peace for Ukraine” conference in Switzerland convened by Zelensky, Polish President Andrzej Duda called for dismembering Russia, describing the federation as a “prison of nations.”

“Russia remains the largest colonial empire in the world,” Duda argued, advocating for his neighbor to be “decolonized” among some 200 ethnic groups living there.

In late 2021, Moscow sent the US and NATO a comprehensive security proposal in line with existing international treaties. In February 2022, Washington and Brussels rejected it, ignoring what Russia described as its “red lines,” at which point Moscow said it would have no choice but to resort to “military and technical measures.”

Russia also considers Ukraine to be unlawfully occupying parts of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, all of which voted last September to join Russia. President Vladimir Putin has conditioned any ceasefire talks on Kiev’s withdrawal from the administrative borders of these regions and a legal commitment to never join NATO.

July 16, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Potential Ukrainian Trace in Trump’s Attempted Murder – Ukrainian Opposition Politician

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 16.07.2024

Volodymyr Zelensky and his backers in the Biden administration would do whatever it takes to destroy those advocating a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, the Other Ukraine movement’s Council Chair Viktor Medvedchuk warned Trump.

Attacks on politicians advocating negotiations and peace in Ukraine have become a worrisome trend, Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian opposition politician and chairman of the council of the Other Ukraine movement, wrote in an open letter to Donald Trump, the US Republican frontrunner.

“The terrorist [shooter of Trump], whoever he is, was clearly not a lone wolf,” Medvedchuk noted. “On the campaign trail, you [Trump] have repeatedly stated that you will be able to bring peace to the long-suffering Ukrainian land. But this peace means the loss of power by the [Volodymyr] Zelensky [neo-] Nazi regime and its American handlers in the Biden administration.”

“It is because of this, dear Mr. Trump, that you have become a personal enemy of Ukrainian neo-Nazi Zelensky, this scoundrel would do whatever it takes to prevent you from winning the presidential election. I think that a Ukrainian trace will appear in the attempted murder case.”

Medvedchuk drew attention to the fact that a day before the assassination attempt, the chief of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov bragged to the Ukrainian press that there had been several attempts, “albeit unsuccessful so far,” to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In May 2023 in one of his interviews, Budanov acknowledged that the Ukrainian intelligence had been involved in terrorist attacks against a number of Russian public and media figures. However, he did not name the victims and refused to answer clarifying questions.

Prior to that, Russian military blogger Maxim Fomin, known to the public by his nom de guerre Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed in April 2023. In August 2022, a Ukrainian sabotage group used a car bomb to kill Daria Dugina, the daughter of Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, as per Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee.

Medvedchuk didn’t rule out that the May attempted murder of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who ardently advocated halting the flow of EU weapons to Ukraine, was carried out by “another supporter of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime.”

“The struggle for peace in Ukraine is increasingly causing open aggression on the part of war supporters and is becoming more and more dangerous,” Medvedchuk stressed.

“Former President of Ukraine and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Zelensky has lost his legitimacy since May 21, 2024; the power has been usurped by a group of conspirators; fundamental human rights have been violated by the incumbent criminal regime; the rule of law and political pluralism have been completely destroyed,” the Ukrainian politician continued.

Zelensky’s personal interest in prolonging hostilities in Ukraine in order to stay in power could lead to an aggravation of the conflict and create a threat to the entire world, concluded Medvedchuk.

July 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian MP placed on state-backed ‘kill list’

RT | July 16, 2024

Notorious Ukrainian website Mirotvorets has blacklisted MP Mariana Bezuglaya for repeatedly targeting the country’s senior military officials.

The database was created to collect and track personal data on people whom anonymous moderators consider enemies of Ukraine. Some of the individuals have been killed after being doxxed by the website.

Bezuglaya, who is a member of Vladimir Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, was added to the “kill list” on Monday along with a list of accusations against her. These included “interference with the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” “discreditation and demoralization” of the army, and working to cause a “split” in Ukrainian society.

Mirotvorets also claimed that the MP had leaked state secrets that Russia could use to its benefit. The website added that Bezuglaya had deliberately projected an image of an “irredeemably stupid f**king fool” as part of her subversive ploy.

Days earlier, the MP, who sits on the National Security, Defense and Intelligence committees, accused Ukraine’s top general, Aleksandr Syrsky, of mismanaging the army. The lawmaker claimed that the senior military official wanted to capitulate to Russia and prevent more competent officers from stopping that.

Bezuglaya has a record of verbally attacking Ukrainian generals, including Syrsky’s predecessor, Valery Zaluzhny. Zelensky fired the top commander in February, after he publicly acknowledged that attempts to push Russian forces back had resulted in a “stalemate,” contradicting the Ukrainian leader.

Following her allegations, Bezuglaya was stripped of her role as the head of a parliamentary subcommittee, but remains the deputy chair of the security committee. She has described the development as irrelevant and an attempt to punish her for “telling the truth.” Her inclusion on Mirotvorets was part of the same pressure campaign, she claimed.

The controversial online project was launched in 2014 and is strongly associated with Anton Gerashchenko, a former Ukrainian MP and adviser to the Interior Ministry. The database features a number of prominent journalists and other public figures, including citizens of Western nations, as well as many ordinary people.

July 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

NATO chief explains why Poland won’t intercept Russian missiles

RT | July 15, 2024

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has ruled out the possibility of Poland intercepting Russian missiles over Ukrainian territory, insisting that the bloc does not want to become directly involved in the conflict with Moscow.

Kiev has urged NATO member Warsaw to use its air defense capabilities to protect western Ukraine without moving the systems away from Polish soil. The idea was floated in the context of a recent Polish-Ukrainian bilateral security agreement, and was reportedly discussed at last week’s NATO summit in Washington.

In an interview given on the sidelines of the event for Ukrainian state television, Stoltenberg said NATO’s position had not changed, and that the best that Kiev can expect is help in targeting Russian warplanes with weapon systems operated by Ukrainian forces.

The idea of NATO intercepting Russian missiles over Ukraine was previously rejected by member states, including Poland. Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has said that Warsaw won’t engage Russian missiles without the backing of other members.

“If NATO does not make such a decision, Poland will not make it individually,” the minister stressed.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan claimed that providing air defenses to Kiev is “by far and away the best method of stopping the Russian aerial attacks,” when asked about Poland’s stance last week.

Moscow has described the Ukraine conflict as part of a US-led proxy war, in which NATO nations are involved in every way except by directly fighting Russian forces on the battlefield. Being de facto parties to the hostilities means Western nations share responsibility for Ukrainian war crimes, Russian officials have argued.

July 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Mainstream Media Downplays Tremendous Losses of Western Military Equipment in Ukraine

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 15.07.2024

The Western public has little, if any, knowledge of the scale of losses in troops and equipment sustained by Ukraine since the beginning of the special military operation, international observers say.

The Western press is concealing information about the real state of affairs on the ground in Ukraine, including the mass destruction of NATO weapons provided to the Ukrainian military, and the loss of Ukrainian soldiers, Irish journalist and entrepreneur Chey Bowes wrote on X on July 15.

“Here, yesterday, another €150 million [$163.4 million] of German taxpayers’ money was vaporized in Dictator Zelensky’s Ukraine,” Bowes continued, attaching a video showing the elimination of the German-made IRIS-T anti-aircraft missile system (SAM).

“Russian Iskander missiles completely destroyed the entire complex consisting of an IRIS-T SAM launcher and its TRML-4D radar station – these are the high-tech systems Zelensky is so desperately begging the EUSA for,” the journalist pointed out.

According to Bowes, the reason “the Western media doesn’t want” the public to see this, is “to maintain your ignorance and, therefore, your complicity in the ‘Ukraine can win’ fantasy.”

“After all, you’re paying for it all,” the journalist remarked.

Ukraine has received almost 108 billion euro ($115.9 billion), including 39 billion euro ($41.8 billion) of military aid from the EU since February 2022. The US’ Ukraine expenditures have so far reached $175 billion, of which $107 billion directly aided the Kiev regime, with $34.2 billion being disbursed for budget needs, and another $69.8 billion spent on arms and military assistance.

On Sunday, the Russian Ministry of Defense released footage of the destruction of an IRIS-T launcher in the Dnepropetrovsk region. The air defense missile launcher, the TRML-4D radar station, and the crew operating the system were eliminated, per the ministry.

As of July 14, 551 air defense missile systems, including those supplied by NATO, have been destroyed since the beginning of the special military operation.

July 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia could challenge NATO’s historical air dominance – media

By Ahmed Adel | July 15, 2024

Business Insider reported that NATO had never faced an adversary of Russia’s calibre after World War II, and it would have been difficult for the alliance to establish air superiority over Russian forces. The warning comes as experts have explained the sombre reality that the F-16 fighter jets, a key aircraft in many NATO air force fleets, provided to Kiev will not be a “magic bullet” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Western allies expect them to be.

“Russia could challenge NATO’s historical air dominance,” reported the media on July 13 after explaining that this is a change from the scenario that emerged after the Cold War when the West had a clear advantage. “Russia would be a very different opponent. It has the territory and industry to build and field massive and sophisticated air defenses that an opponent may struggle to destroy.”

“The US and its allies, even with fleets of fifth-generation stealth fighter jets, likely would find it difficult to establish the same level of air dominance they’ve largely had since the end of World War II,” the New York-based outlet said.

According to experts cited by the portal, Western aviation has never had the experience of combating air defence systems at a level similar to that of Russia’s. During the conflict in Ukraine, the Russian military proved that it could establish extremely difficult air defence areas for the enemy with powerful radars, electronic warfare systems and missiles.

“The Russians could attempt a surprising and impactful opening attack,” the article warned. “For example, the Russians could target vulnerabilities like satellites to try to disrupt the space-based communications and navigation NATO airpower depends upon.”

The worry that Russia could establish air superiority over NATO, particularly over the bloc’s 30 European members, became a more serious consideration after Russian forces methodically obliterated Ukraine’s air force. Russia so impressively dismantled the Ukrainian air force that the Kiev regime is desperately seeking F-16 fighter jets from Western allies to replenish its fleet, even though experts are saying that the aircraft is now obsolete and unlikely to survive the conflict.

“As soon as the Ukrainians encountered Russian-controlled air space, the F-16’s value would diminish markedly, as would its likelihood of survival,” Harrison Kass wrote for the National Interest. “In a conflict with a great power, China for example, the F-16 would remain on the backbench.”

This is a telling revelation considering the US still uses over 900 F-16s, NATO members, including Turkey, Greece, Poland, and Romania, use hundreds more, as well as US non-NATO allies Israel, Taiwan and South Korea. In effect, the F-16 would be rendered almost useless against Russia given that the Eastern European country’s military is ranked second, one above China, according to the 2024 PowerIndex.

Kass warns Kiev that the good performance of the F-16 fighter jets in Iraq and Afghanistan does not say anything about their capabilities against Russian air defences.

After stressing that “the F-16 fighting falcon era is coming to a rapid end,” Kass concludes that the US-made fighter jet “will not offer a magic bullet for Zelensky” and will merely “buy a little more time.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the F-16s supplied to Kiev will be destroyed just like other Western military equipment. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also warned that their appearance in Ukraine will not change anything on the front and that they will be destroyed in the same way as other types of weapons.

Nonetheless, in 2023, several NATO states agreed to supply the Ukrainian armed forces with the fighter jets and launched training programs for Ukrainian pilots. On July 10, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US and its allies are “underway” in sending the promised F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

As Europe and the US are not interested in a viable, pragmatic, and lasting peace agreement in Ukraine which recognises Russian interests in the region and establishes a lasting solution, they are actively prolonging the fighting despite not only the humanitarian consequences but even the weakening of their own military. Whilst NATO members are distracted with training Ukrainian pilots to use fighter jets that are effectively obsolete in any combat with a great power, Russia, as Business Insider has acknowledged, has successfully challenged the air dominance NATO largely enjoyed since the start of the Cold War despite the introduction of fifth-generation fighter jets.

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

July 15, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian children still speaking Russian – regulator

RT | July 12, 2024

Ukrainian children don’t know their official state language well enough because they’re still using Russian in their daily lives, Kiev’s Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremin has complained, urging citizens to report violations of language restrictions.

The commissioner said there are also many violations being recorded in the sphere of education, as well as on the internet and in the service industry. He cited a recent study that suggested one-third of children in some Ukrainian regions prefer to speak Russian.

“A child outside of school uses services, visits shopping and catering establishments, sees external advertising and signboards in non-state language, hears non-state at home,” Kremin wrote on Facebook on Thursday.

He suggested that many schoolchildren were therefore prone to bilingualism and do not have sufficient knowledge of the Ukrainian language.

Kremin said Kiev should strengthen control over compliance with the law on state language, which defines Ukrainian as the only language approved for education, and called on citizens to be more involved in recording and reporting violations of the law.

Since gaining its independence in 1991, Ukraine has largely been a bilingual nation, with most citizens able to speak or understand both Russian and Ukrainian, particularly in the eastern half of the country. After the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, however, Ukraine’s new authorities abolished Russian as an official regional language and have adopted policies aimed at suppressing and outlawing it, arguing that it represents a threat to national unity and security.

In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law requiring Ukrainian to be used exclusively in nearly all aspects of public life, including education, entertainment, politics, business and the service industry, obliging all Ukrainian citizens to know the language. It also requires that 90% of TV and film content produced in the country be made in Ukrainian. From July 17, the use of the Russian language in Ukrainian media will be virtually outlawed, Kremen has said.

This forced Ukrainization was one of the reasons why Russian-speaking residents living in the east of the country rejected the post-coup authorities in Kiev in 2014. Many of these regions, namely the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, have since joined Russia after overwhelmingly voting to do so in public referendums in 2022.

Kremin, however, has denied that the term ‘Russian-speaking’ could be applied to any Ukrainian citizens, stating in an interview last year that the word is a “marker introduced by Russian ideology,” and declaring that “everyone in the country must have command of the Ukrainian language.”

July 13, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

As Zelensky visits Poland, Ukraine’s silence about the Volhynia massacre underscores one-sided alliance

BY GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK | REMIX NEWS | JULY 11, 2024

July 11 marks the 81st anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the most tragic episode of the Ukrainian-perpetrated genocide of Poles in Volhynia, which was a Polish territory before the Second World War in the “borderland” region, but is now part of Ukraine. On this day, tens of thousands of people were slaughtered in 99 villages, and to this day, the exact number of victims remains unknown. These victims have yet to be exhumed and given a dignified burial, a process continuously blocked by Ukrainian authorities, including the current administration.

Last year, on the 80th anniversary of this horrific crime, Poland received not a single word from the Ukrainian president, much less any substantive discussion. The issue of exhuming the victims and providing them with a proper burial remains at a stalemate. Tragically, the steadfast guardian of this cause, Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, is no longer with us.

This year, just three days before the anniversary, Volodymyr Zelensky visited our country. His visits, typically centered on what more Poland can offer Ukraine, did not deviate from expectations. The fact that the Ukrainian leader did not mention the impending anniversary is unsurprising and is reflective of a “Kyiv standard.”

However, it is scandalous that this omission was mirrored by every Polish politician he met. Both the left-liberal Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the conservative President Andrzej Duda seem to prefer that the Volhynia issue be forgotten, wishing away the uncomfortable problems of memory and the unburied dead.

Simultaneously, Poland signed an agreement with Ukraine on defense commitments that, in reality, encompasses much more. The format of this document is crucial: It is not formally an international treaty, thus it does not require legislative approval for ratification. If it were a treaty, such approval would be necessary given it involves a military alliance — a detail highlighted by the content of the agreement. The choice of agreement format also conveniently avoids parliamentary debate, which would likely raise uncomfortable questions about the benefits Poland receives from the arrangement and what it demands in return. Clearly, in this “bilateral” deal, Kyiv is practically the sole beneficiary.

The entirety of the 24-page document is staggering: a litany of Polish obligations to Ukraine, underpinned by a tally of what we have already done. The document does not address a single issue where Polish and Ukrainian interests might conflict, such as in agricultural production. In Poland, based on this agreement, a Ukrainian legion is to be formed, which we are of course expected to equip. No one has clarified how this will affect our security, especially given that Ukrainian soldiers will effectively be entering combat from Polish territory.

Tucked away at the very end of the agreement, on page 14, there is a vague mention of “enhancing cooperation in conducting searches, exhumations, and other activities aimed at the dignified burial of victims of conflicts, repression, and crimes.” Exactly which “conflicts, repressions, and crimes” are referred to remains unclear.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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