February 2024

Feb 29, 2024

Featured • DC Think Tank: West Seeks to Seize Russia's Assets to Prolong Ukraine Conflict Indefinitely, Ekaterina Blinova, Sputnik International, Feb 29, 2024
This would be yet another incredibly stupid and illegal act by this administration, which keeps doubling down on its horrific mistakes. This article ties together several aspects of this sordid situation: long-term destruction of relations with Russia, destroying global trust in the U.S. and the dollar, bypassing Congress and expanding the power of the administrative state, ignoring the will of the people who want negotiations and peace by a hefty majority, harming U.S. businesses in Russia (and also Western supply chains for key materials, not mentioned). Yellen seems as clueless as her boss. I do not subscribe to the theory of a single intelligence making all these mistakes. "It takes a village." Or in this case an arrogant, corrupt, frightened echo chamber operating outside constitutional limits and international law.

Feb 28, 2024

Featured • The Bitter Pill of Decisive Strategic Defeat, William Schryver, Feb 28, 2024
Not the NYT. This will be hard to swallow and digest. Not a few will choke. The Empire may thrash about, very dangerously. Now a second strategic defeat is being served up by Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah.

Featured • SITREP 2/27/24: Desperate Globalists Float Boots on Ground to Save Ukraine, Simplicius, Feb 27, 2024
Another tour de force from Simplicius.

 • More US Republican senators want Ukraine peace talks – Politico, RT, Feb 28, 2024

 • Two Can Play That Game: Here’s How Russia Could Hit Back If West Seizes Assets, Ilya Tsukanov, Sputnik International, Feb 27, 2024

Confiscation of assets of Western companies in Russia would seriously impact their respective bottom lines, meaning they could try to put pressure on governments, both in their home countries and in Russia, to try to avoid having their capital seized. “We have a lot of foreign companies working in Russia, including those from so-called unfriendly countries. We have more than 50 decently-sized American firms alone working here, and plenty of European companies,” Dr. Georgy Ostapkovich, director of the Center for Market Research at the Institute of Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, told Sputnik.

Kolganov says that as unpleasant as a seizure of Russia’s assets abroad might be it would not serve to tank the country’s economy, with Moscow able to continue its international payments using its sizable and healthy foreign exchange earnings after reorienting its trade toward developing countries. The money frozen in Western banks constitutes reserves, which “were not actively used for international trade and international payments” anyway, the professor explained. “For private businesses, the confiscation of assets would create a pretty big hole in their earnings and budgets. Therefore, it would be a rather sensitive measure if Russia had to resort to it in response to the confiscation of its assets,” the economist added. Dr. Ostapkovich emphasizes that Moscow will have to be strategic and precise in the foreign assets it may choose to seize, to avoid the risk of friendly countries and companies doing business in Russia feeling threatened.

The potential deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine will lead to a “catastrophic scenario,” and could be interpreted as a “declaration of war” on Moscow, top Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev has said.The Vice Speaker of Russia’s upper chamber, the Federation Council, offered his take on remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron on the possibility of sending troops in a Telegram post on Tuesday. The approach exhibited by the French leader carries a risk of the situation devolving into a “catastrophic scenario,” Kosachev warned, stating that the move would not be tolerated by the Kremlin. “This is the line beyond which it’s no longer just NATO’s involvement in the war – this has been happening for a long time, but can be interpreted as the alliance entering direct hostilities, or even as a declaration of war,” Kosachev wrote.

The senator’s comments echoed a statement made by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said the move would make a direct collision between the US-led bloc and Moscow not only “possible,” but actually “inevitable.” The idea of sending ground forces to Ukraine was raised by Macron on Monday while he was speaking to reporters after a meeting of European leaders in Paris. The president suggested that any scenario, including sending in troops, could not be ruled out, arguing that the West should stop at nothing to prevent Russia from prevailing over Ukraine. “In terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything. We will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning this war,” he stated, while admitting that there was no consensus among NATO members on the troop issue.

The remarks prompted NATO allies to publicly reject the suggestion, with the bloc’s leadership insisting no preparations to send forces to Ukraine actually exist. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated there were “no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine,” and several members of the alliance, including the US, offered separate statements denying any such intent.

Feb 27, 2024

Featured • NATO troops in Ukraine can’t be ruled out – Macron, RT, Feb 27, 2024

The French president has insisted that everything necessary must be done to ensure that Russian forces lose.

French President Emmanuel Macron has argued that deployments of troops to Ukraine by NATO members and other allies cannot be ruled out because Western powers must stop at nothing to ensure that Russia does not defeat Kiev’s forces.

“There’s no consensus today to send, in an official manner, troops on the ground,” Macron told reporters after hosting a meeting of European leaders on Monday in Paris. “But in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything. We will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning this war.”

France hosted Monday’s summit of Ukraine backers to demonstrate steadfast support and European unity amid concerns that US aid to Kiev may stop, especially if Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election. Macron said that while Ukraine’s European allies want to avoid escalating the conflict into a direct war with Russia, they agree that they must do more to ensure that Moscow doesn’t win.

“We have to take stock of the situation and realize our collective security is at stake,” the French leader said. “We have to ratchet up. Russia must not win, not only for Ukraine, but secondly, we are, by doing so, ensuring our collective security for today and for the future.”

Macron noted that the allies who say “never, ever” today about direct troop deployments to Ukraine are the same ones that previously ruled out escalations of military aid that were later granted, including long-range missiles and fighter jets. “Two years ago, a lot around this table said that we will offer helmets and sleeping bags, and now they’re saying we need to do more to get missiles and tanks to Ukraine. We have to be humble and realize that we’ve always been six to eight months late, so we’ll do what is needed to achieve our aim.”

There is broad consensus among the nations represented at Monday’s meeting that the allies must provide more aid to Ukraine and step up more quickly, Macron claimed. “We are not at war with the Russian people, but we cannot let them win in Ukraine,” he said, adding, “We are determined to do everything necessary for as long as necessary. That is the key takeaway from this evening.”

The New York Times published a major expose on Sunday about the Central Intelligence Agency’s operations in Ukraine, providing details on the creation of a dozen clandestine intel forward operating bases near Russia’s borders. Sputnik reached out to former CIA officer Larry Johnson to help separate the wheat from the chaff in the report.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has dissected Sunday’s NYT story on the CIA’s operations in Ukraine, challenging the newspaper’s assertion that Western intel services’ active involvement in the country began only after the February 2014 Euromaidan coup.

“The CIA has helped Kiev to train its spies, and not just spies, but outright militants, extremists, terrorists, thugs. Everyone. And one of the most striking examples of this chain being set in motion occurred in 2013-2014. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, reacting to the NYT’s reporting. “Under the guise of democratic forces and civilians, those which took part in the Maidan were primarily trained at bases in Poland and the Baltic states. And we have spoken about this,” she said.

NATO countries’ intelligence services worked to establish bases and other infrastructure in Ukraine long before the 2022 escalation, the spokeswoman said, and not only on the border with Russia, but across the country.

“This begs the question: why is the New York Times only now raising concerns about this? We have provided all the information publicly. Why was the American press silent for many years?” she asked.

According to the Times’ account, the CIA created a dozen secret spy bases in Ukraine near Russia over an eight year period going back to 2016, with the intelligence “partnership” supposedly taking “root a decade ago,” after Maidan-appointed spy chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko contacted then-CIA director John Brennan and the MI6 asking them to help rebuild the Security Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian acronym SBU) “from the ground up.”

CIA Set Up 12 Secret Facilities in Ukraine Along Russian Border Over Eight Year Period - Report

“They’re lying about the US role in those early stages,” says former CIA analyst and State Department Office of Counterterrorism expert Larry Johnson.

“They’re lying about the US and British role in helping create the coup and what happened in the Maidan. They’re acting like ‘oh, you know, the Maidan happened and then the CIA was contacted, after the fact’. Well that’s not true,” Johnson told Sputnik, suggesting that the NYT is looking to create a narrative on the coup, the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 incident, the ‘Russia the aggressor’ story which ignores Ukraine’s punitive ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ in the Donbass starting in 2014, etc.

“You’ve got once piece of disinformation after another” in the story, according to the observer.

“And then, they’re saying that it was the United States trying to rein in Ukraine from carrying out all these terrorist attacks. So it’s really like we’re trying to send the message that ‘these attacks on Russia were not the fault of the United States, it was the Ukrainians acting on their own,’” which is another patent falsehood, Johnson said.

“We’ve had connections [with Ukrainian anti-Soviet and anti-Russian elements] going back to 1955. I mean the CIA’s role in dealing with the Banderites goes back into the late 1940s and early 1950s. They’re trying to portray that this is like some new relationship or just over the last 10-15 years. That’s nonsense,” the former CIA analyst emphasized.

US-UK Spy Agencies Trained Spooks, Saboteurs in Ukraine Way Before 2022 - Russian MFA

Asked about the likely motivations to publish the expose at this stage of the proxy war in Ukraine, while Russia is advancing through the Donbass and US and European arms assistance to Kiev is under threat, Johnson suggested it may be a signal that Washington has decided to wrap up its Ukrainian project.

Feb 26, 2024

Featured • Surge of “Little Green Men,” and Metal is Poised to Strike – Part XIX: F-16s, TraderStef, Crush the Street, Feb 26, 2024
Well-researched analysis and warning of the abyss near at hand, rich with references.

Featured • CIA Built "12 Secret Spy Bases" In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, Bombshell NYT Report Confirms, ZeroHedge, Feb 25, 2024

On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine's intelligence services has "transformed" the former Soviet state and its capabilities into "Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today."

This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders' communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.

The statement comes as NATO members are sending longer-range weapons to Kyiv.

NATO Secretary-General Jen Stoltenberg said Ukraine has the right to hit Russian military targets outside of Ukraine. The remarks were made as members of the North Atlantic alliance are preparing to send Kyiv weapons with longer ranges. The Kremlin has explained that it will claim more Ukrainian territory to offset the threat presented by the long-range arms.

“Ukraine has the right to self-defense,” Stoltenberg told Radio Free Europe on Tuesday. “And that includes also striking legitimate military targets, Russian military targets, outside Ukraine. That is international law and, of course, Ukraine has the right to do so, to protect itself.” This is the first time the NATO chief endorsed Ukrainian attacks inside of Russia.

After Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, the US and its allies began massive weapons shipments to Kyiv. However, the Western arms shipments were limited to shorter-range munitions in an effort not to provoke a massive war with Russia. Over time, the concern that Moscow will escalate to direct war with NATO over Ukraine has lessened and the White House has provided Ukraine with more advanced weapons systems.

Several NATO members are working on training Ukrainian pilots of F-16s, then transferring dozens of the advanced, American-made fighter jets to Kyiv. Stoltenberg did acknowledge that some alliance members placed restrictions on the arms sent to Ukraine, but others did not. The F-16s are scheduled to arrive in Ukraine later this year, but the delivery has been delayed several times.

At the start of the war, President Joe Biden was only willing to sign off on munitions with a range of 50 miles. Over the course of the war, European nations began transferring cruise missiles to Ukraine within the 150 mile range. The White House has sent Kyiv rockets with a range of 100 miles and is considering sending missiles with a range of nearly 200 miles if Congress approves another round of funding for the war.

Russian forces are advancing in eastern Ukraine. As Kyiv loses more territory and struggles to find the men and arms to fight Moscow’s forces on the frontlines, Ukraine is launching attacks inside of Russia. The Kremlin often responds to those strikes by attacking Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

The money that Washington allocates for Kiev supports jobs in America, the high-ranking State Department official has said.

Washington spends most of the money allocated as aid for Ukraine on weapons production at home, Acting US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said in an interview with CNN this week.

Commenting on the pending aid package which Congress failed to approve before going on winter recess, Nuland said she has “strong confidence” that it will pass, as it addresses America’s own interests.

“We have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the US economy, to make weapons, including good-paying jobs in some forty states across the US,” she stated, adding that support for Ukraine in America “is still strong.”

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives blocked a bill requested by US President Joe Biden for an aid package for Kiev worth $60 billion, most of which is earmarked for weapons, earlier this month. They are expected to restart discussions on the package after they reconvene on February 28.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also recently said that roughly 90% of the financial assistance for Ukraine is spent on domestic production of weapons and equipment. At a press conference on December 20, he said additional tranches would “benefit American business, local communities, and strengthen the US defense industrial base.”

The arch-neocon has told CNN that Washington wanted a compliant leader installed in Moscow.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is “not the Russia that we wanted,” Acting US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has told CNN. Nuland explained that Washington wanted a compliant leader in the Kremlin who would “westernize” the country.

“It’s not the Russia that, frankly, we wanted,” Nuland told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday. “We wanted a partner that was going to be westernizing, that was going to be European. But that’s not what Putin has done.”

Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, enjoyed Washington’s support as he oversaw the rushed privatization of the Russian economy in the 1990s. Yeltsin’s reforms saw the rise of the so-called ‘oligarchs’, who amassed huge fortunes selling Russia’s natural resources to Western buyers, while the majority of the population dealt with declining life expectancy, soaring crime and homicide rates, and the collapse of the ruble.

Putin, who first took office in 2000, is widely credited with taming the oligarchs, imposing public order, and reversing the economic and social decline of the 1990s. Putin initially sought friendly relations with the West, telling American journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this month that he asked then-US President Bill Clinton whether Russia could one day join NATO, only to be rejected.

Putin nevertheless reached out to Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, with a proposal that the US, Russia, and Europe jointly create a missile defense system. While Bush’s team initially expressed interest, Putin said that “in the end they just told us to get lost.”

A combination of NATO expansion, American support for jihadist groups in the Caucuses, and Nuland’s orchestration of the coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014 made it clear that the US and its allies were not interested in cooperation, Putin told Carlson.

“Facts on the ground suggest that the EU’s foreign policy, or lack thereof, has failed to strategically weaken Russia or bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine. Rather, the narrative surrounding Russia serves as a pretext to consolidate power within the EU,” Adriel Kasonta, a London-based political analyst, said, adding that “the war in Ukraine, once seen as a rallying point for European unity, is now perceived as a smokescreen for a broader agenda of centralization.” The expert noted that von der Leyen’s vision for the EU has been criticized for making the bloc more federalist and dominated by unelected bureaucrats. “The foreign policy trajectory represented by von der Leyen is marked by a push towards increased militarization and defense spending. A looming specter of a unified EU army has fueled fears that member states will witness a gradual erosion of sovereignty,” Kasonta explained.

In the latter part of her term, von der Leyen has reportedly forged a strong relationship with US President Joe Biden, who is also up for reelection later this year, due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and Biden’s vocal internationalist stance, in contrast to his predecessor Donald Trump. Nevertheless, as Washington turns more attention to Asia, a trend that began during the Barack Obama administration, Europe is grappling with what it means for the continent. “As Washington pivots towards Asia to counter China, Europe finds itself urged to continue the proxy war on behalf of its transatlantic ally. This has translated into a recalibration of priorities, with more focus on military might and less emphasis on climate discussions. The EU’s trajectory, it seems, is bending towards aligning itself with American interests, even at the expense of its original environmental commitments,” Kasonta said, while also noting that growing discontent with the EU’s green policies also pushed von der Leyen “towards a shift in priorities.”

Srdja Trifkovic, the foreign affairs editor of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles, pointed to von der Leyen’s close ties to the US foreign policy establishment. “Thanks to the war in Ukraine, von der Leyen has managed to bring Europe under American control more firmly than it had been at any time during the Cold War,” Trifkovic said. He also observed that the anti-Russian sentiment displayed by van der Leyen and people like her goes beyond a simple antipathy to the government of President Vladimir Putin and instead constitutes “loathing all things Russian,” as Trifkovic put it. “There is a remarkable mixture of hostility and repulsion that is primarily culturally motivated, rather than geopolitically driven,” Trifkovic continued, adding that “if Russia continues to be treated as the ultimate Other, to be excluded from the European security architecture and treated as a pariah, Europe’s demise will be accelerated and its recovery difficult to envisage.”

Feb 25, 2024

Featured • Avdeevka Denouement: Russian Momentum Turning Point, Simplicius, Feb 24, 2024

As noted above, all the worst possible indicators are currently converging for the AFU: manpower is low, morale is low, weapons are low, political will and support from ‘allies’ is low, armor and critical types of ammunition are low. Ukraine has an increasingly smaller amount of critical weaponry to ‘juggle’ between fronts where lines are breaking....

We’ve long talked about Ukrainian lines showing ‘signs’ of buckling, but never have they actually been breaking to the extent they are now. For instance, even several months ago things looked bleak for the AFU, yet they were still advancing and conducting some successful operations at least in one or two places: for instance, in Klescheyevka and Andreevka area (south of Bakhmut), where they pushed Russian forces behind the railway line, and even in Khrynki, where they were initially making some minor outward expansions of their phantom ‘lodgement’.

But now, things have never looked so bleak for them: even all around the Bakhmut area Russian forces are advancing—mostly in Bogdanovka and Ivanovske. And Khrynki was just announced as “liberated”, though it’s a tad premature and it seems AFU still holds some buildings, but the entire beachhead has collapsed in from the sides to a fraction of its previous size.

It would be one thing if these circumstances presided under the promise of soon-to-come aid or massive mobilization. But the problem is, full-scale societal mobilization has failed, and Ukrainian citizens have a historically low confidence for victory, as well as tolerance for forced recruitment, as recent polling shows. Likewise, aid is no where nearer, and as you’ve seen from the recent articles and statements from officials, a “catastrophic” situation is being predicted for late March and onward.

Taking this totally intractable situation at face value: imagine, now, that March and April comes, Ukrainian lines are at the breaking point and Russian forces continue upping that impossible pressure, squeezing the life out of the AFU. And then: what if that fabled northern front is finally opened, and the already tattered AFU lines are forced to divest themselves of their last nonexistent reserves to desperately stop a new advance on Sumy and/or Kharkov....

The way Russia is prosecuting this boa constrictor style strategy is such that there is no particular operational goal, per se—there are of course longer term ones, but the way you accomplish them is by merely depleting your enemy with the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ strategy from every side, which can then later facilitate real conventional operational goals.

The “frustration” in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s office is “palpable,” Politico reported on Friday. According to the news site, the Ukrainian president is growing impatient waiting for more military aid from Washington.

The atmosphere in Kiev has been “quite grim, and frustration was palpable” in recent weeks, “a person close to Zelensky’s office” told Politico. “Almost everyone is convinced that the aid will come soon,” the source said, adding that “while the president’s office is waiting for good news from the US, it is also working to improve mobilization and war planning.”

The genocide in Gaza – or more precisely the major NATO powers’ active and practical support for the genocide in Gaza – has forced me to re-evaluate my views on Ukraine in a manner more sympathetic to the Russian narrative.

In particular, I was complacent in my dismissive attitude to the argument that the Western powers would back ethnic cleansing and massacre in the Donbass by forces including some motivated by Nazi ideology.

The same powers who are funding and arming Ukraine are funding and arming a genocide by racial supremacist Israeli forces in Gaza. It is beyond argument that my belief in some kind of inherent decency in the Western political Establishment was naive.

I apologise.

This does not mean that I was wrong to call the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian state illegal. I am afraid it was. You see, the law is the law. It has only a tenuous connection to either morality or justice. A thing can be justified and morally right, but still illegal.

The proof of this is that we have an entire legal structure governing transactions which is designed to achieve massive concentration of wealth. In consequence, the world is predicted to have its first trillionaires inside the next five years, while millions of children go hungry.

That is plainly immoral. It is plainly unjust. But it is not only legal, it is the purpose of the system of law.

...I now think Putin was justified in the invasion.

It is not that any of the arguments are new. It is simply that before I did not believe that the West would sponsor mass ethnic cleansing and genocidal attack on the Donbass by extreme Ukrainian nationalist-led, Western-armed forces.

I thought the “West” was more civilised than that. I now have to face the fact that I was wrong about the character of the NATO powers.

The alternative to Putin’s action probably was indeed massacre and ethnic cleansing.

The urgent need now is for negotiation to put an end to the war. On that my position has not changed. The war is a disaster for the people of Europe. The American destruction of Nord Stream has devastated the German economy and resulted in huge energy price increases for consumers all across Europe, including the U.K. There was a step jump in food inflation which has not been pulled back.

The continuation of the war will of course prime the pump of the military-industrial complex. Massive defence spending is the most efficient way to ensure kickbacks to the political class who control the flow of state funds, through both legal and illegal forms of corrupt reward to politicians.

As Julian Assange said, the object is not to win wars: the object is forever wars, to keep the funds flowing.

US Republican Senator J.D. Vance has been a vociferous opponent of aid for the Kiev regime, warning at the Munich Security Conference that America’s defense industry doesn’t produce enough munitions for this. On the stalled Ukraine aid package in the Senate, Vance claimed that it would not “fundamentally change the reality on the battlefield.” The US has spent decades’ worth of weapons on the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said in an interview at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). As a result, the US has been thrust into a situation where it might not be able to meet the needs of its own national security, the Republican from Ohio warned. “We have expended decades’ worth of supplies of American weapons” on the Ukraine conflict, Vance said. He deplored the destruction of the American manufacturing base over the years, which has resulted in that, “We don’t make enough of that stuff on our own.”

“Yet at the same time they want us to send all of our critical weapons overseas,” the politician pointed out. According to Vance, “the elites of America have fundamentally failed their own people” in several ways in their reaction to the Ukraine conflict, and he called out the Democrats for being “obsessed with Russia,” the “Russia collusion hoax,” which has clouded their judgment. “It is absurd for the US to devote so many resources, so much attention, and so much time to a border conflict six thousand miles away while out own US southern border is wide open,” insisted the Republican, adding: “We now no longer have the weapons in store to actually prosecute our own national security. Let’s focus on our own problems.” In a broadside targeting President Joe Biden, whose US foreign aid package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine is currently stuck in Congress, he succinctly pointed out: “If the thing you care most about is a conflict six thousand miles away you should not be a leader of this country.”

Elsewhere during the CPAC interview, Vance speculated that the Biden administration’s lack of effort to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine is rooted in financial interests. “I hate to say it, but I think it’s all about the money,” Vance said on Friday, adding that lots of money and resources being sent to Ukraine are getting “skimmed off the top.” The Ohio senator attempted to get across the same message at the recent Munich Security Conference. Vance argued that the US cannot continue to support Ukraine as its defense industry doesn’t produce enough munitions. “You don’t win wars with GDP or euros or dollars. You win wars with weapons, and the West doesn’t make enough weapons,” he was quoted as saying. Weighing in on the stalled aid package to Ukraine, and whether it could make an impact if it passed the US House, the Republican was cited by Politico as saying: “it doesn’t change the fundamental facts — that we are limited in the munitions that we can send, that Ukraine is limited in terms of its own manpower. The situation has to fundamentally change for them to make significant battlefield gains.”

There is a growing rift in Europe between the east and the west over continuing to aid the regime in Kiev, Bloomberg reported. Germany, Spain, Italy, and others are being pressured to dip deeper into their own stocks of arms, regardless of the fact that propping up Ukraine has been exhausting their own defense capabilities. Ukraine continues to fail on the battlefield, with the loss of its stronghold of Avdeyevka particularly painful for Kiev’s nationalists. Furthermore, Ukraine’s troops are also running critically low on stocks of artillery shells, feeding into the panicky sentiments gaining a foothold in diplomatic circles in countries that are staunch supporters of NATO’s proxy war against Russia. The latter are described as believing that once Moscow prevails in the Ukraine conflict, the entire “European integration project could be jeopardized,” with the aforementioned rift becoming “an indelible scar.”

Amid deepening fractures within the EU, governments in Western Europe “don’t understand that many in the east would never trust them again” if the Ukraine project fails, a top European official was cited warning. The West “doesn’t seem to get the urgency,” another official ostensibly said. How to scrape together funds to prop up the Kiev regime while not letting the EU exhaust its own defense capabilities was one of the concerns at the Munich Security Conference last weekend. With countries like France eager to kick start Europe’s own defense industry, as arming Ukraine has already resulted in depleted weapons and ammunition stocks, Eastern European countries are reportedly accusing the wealthier Western states of still not doing enough for Kiev. After sending billions’ worth of weapons to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s nationalist forces, the West is now facing a plethora of procurement problems.

Feb 23, 2024

Featured • Ukraine Can No Longer Win - It In Fact Never Had A Chance To Win, Moon of Alabama, Feb 23, 2024

By spring to summer 2023 the Russian forces had (re-)grown to full war power. The systematic destruction of the Ukrainian forces could finally begin.

As soon as the Ukrainian forces tried to challenge the revived Russian formations, most famously in their failed 'counter offensive, the got beaten the hell out of themselves. Pressed to produced more gains the political leadership of Ukraine demanded that its troops attack everywhere and never retreat.

That fitted the political Russian aim of demilitarizing Ukraine. Defending from well dug positions and with an increasing advantage of artillery and air power the Russian forces decimated attacking Ukrainian forces.

At the end of last year the Ukrainian military started to change its tactic. For a lack of forces and material it had to go into a defensive mode. The Russian forces, now fully equipped and battle ready, started their offensive campaign:

Today, the situation is grim. The fighting has slowed to a cruel slog that works to Russia’s favor. Ukraine runs low on troops and munitions, while Russia maintains both in plenty. The long-planned, high-risk, months-long Ukrainian spring 2023 counteroffensive failed, with Ukraine unable to regain territory seized by Russia. Support for Zelensky in Ukraine and the West has finally slipped. American aid is logjammed in Congress, and the U.S. seems tired of funding the war.

Over much of the past two years, following those predictions of immediate Russian victory, analysts and policymakers have gone in the other direction with a new set of misjudgments: that the Russian Army is a paper tiger; that the generals will turn on Putin; that Ukraine will bleed Russia out in Donbass.

The reality, two years in, is that there is no path to victory for Ukraine, at least not in the sense of pushing Russian troops back to 2021 lines of control. After Ukrainian troops abandoned Avdiivka following some of the war’s heaviest fighting — the most significant loss or gain by either side in nine months — almost all advantages accrue to Russia.

War, as seen by the Russians, is a slow process that requires that all elements, political, civilian and military, are synchronized. In that view winning this or that battle does not matter much. It is the long term approach that makes the difference. It takes time to achieve the steady state that over time creates victory. Only when that state is achieved can the real destruction of the enemy begin.

Russian forces are currently attacking in all directions. The Ukrainian forces lack personnel as well as munitions. It is only a question of time until the Ukraine has to give up and to seek peace under whatever unfavorable condition.

There never really was, and is no longer a way, to change that path.

The $60 billion aid package held up in Congress will not significantly change the future. This fight is a long haul one that will require additional aid. The spigot will close at some point — perhaps soon — turning off aid and sealing Ukraine’s fate.

The endgame in Ukraine is approaching fast. It may indeed come much sooner than many are today willing to admit.

Viktor Orban has reportedly said dissatisfaction with EU policies represents an opportunity for conservatives throughout the bloc.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said the immediate future is bleak for the European Union due to the way the Ukraine conflict is unfolding....

Orban’s prediction regarding the outcome of the Ukraine conflict appears to be consistent with the views of citizens in 12 EU member states who were surveyed recently by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

The results of the opinion poll were released on Wednesday and showed that only 10% of respondents believed Ukraine would beat Russia on the battlefield. Twice as many believed Russia would prevail, while 37% said a compromise settlement was the most likely outcome.

Supplying Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets poses a risk of triggering a nuclear conflict, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has warned.

NATO member states are currently training Ukrainian pilots to operate F-16s ahead of the expected transfer of the aircraft. Kiev has been asking for the Western fighter jets for months, saying they were needed to combat Russian air superiority.

”An accidental, unintentional outbreak of a nuclear conflict is not something to be discarded, which is why all those machinations around Ukraine are dangerous,” Medvedev said in an extensive interview with Russian journalists, as quoted by TASS on Thursday.

The deputy head of Russia’s National Security Council cited the US-designed aircraft as a possible trigger, noting that Kiev wants them despite having no ground infrastructure to operate them.

"So if one of those planes takes off from a NATO nation [on a Ukrainian mission] – what would that be? An attack on Russia. I shall not describe what could happen next,” he said. “Such a development may not be even sanctioned by the NATO leadership and the US.”

Russian officials previously warned that delivering F-16s to Ukraine would be highly problematic, considering that the jets can deploy nuclear gravity bombs.

Medvedev said Russia’s standoff with the US and its allies was not at a stage that would force people to hide in a nuclear shelter, but described it as worse than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The doomsday clock “is ticking” and has “sped up considerably,” he added.

READ MORE: Russia will treat F-16s in Ukraine as nuclear threat – Lavrov

Feb 22, 2024

Featured • Scott Ritter on Avdeyevka: Ukrainian Forces Failed to 'Hold Their Own on Battlefield’, Oleg Burunov, Sputnik International, Feb 21, 2024

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin earlier this week that an operation to take control of Avdeyevka was carried out with minimal losses. According to Shoigu, an area of 31.75 square kilometers has been freed as a result of the capture of the town from Ukrainian nationalists. Speaking to Sputnik, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter said that Ukraine lost the battle of Avdeyevka for several reasons, the most dominant of which is that they simply don’t have the firepower necessary to stabilize the battlefield. “They [Ukrainian forces] have no more artillery rounds that enable them to flood the battlefield, break up Russian attacks, and support counterattacks. They don’t have air defenses to stop Russian air power from coming in and dominating the battlefield. They have insufficient drones to replace artillery fire support. Simply put, the Ukrainians are unable to hold their own on the battlefield,” Ritter pointed out, describing the situation as “the Avdeyevka end game.”

When it comes to the unmanned aerial vehicles, “even when Ukrainian soldiers use the drones because they can’t stop the Russian air power, the drone operators are targeted and eliminated,” according to Ritter. He recalled that Ukrainian troops had been “pushed out of Avdeyevka, heavily fortified, if not the most heavily fortified, position in the entire Ukrainian defensive lines.” The former US Marine Corps intelligence officer underlined that when freeing the town, “the Russians didn’t suffer the heavy casualties that the Ukrainians claimed. “But the notion that the Russians lost everybody, there’s nothing left, is absurd. Russian strength grows every day. Not only are they not suffering horrific losses on the battlefield, but they’re getting stronger,” Ritter emphasized.

He suggested that the liberation of Avdeyevka could be “the beginning of the end of the Ukrainian combat cohesion along their entire front line.” “Avdeyevka is not a one-off situation, it is the situation that will be replicated again and again, until which time Ukrainian military is no longer able to mount a cohesive defense. At that point of time, the special military operation will come to an end, because the goal of demilitarization would have been achieved,” Ritter underscored. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) earlier said in a statement that the liberation of Avdeyevka “made it possible to push the front line away from Donetsk, significantly securing the city from terrorist strikes by the criminal Kiev regime.” The MoD added that the Russian military’s Tsentr (Center) Battlegroup continues offensive operations to further liberate the Donetsk People’s Republic from Ukrainian nationalists.

The White House is closing in on a decision to send missiles to Ukraine with a range of nearly 200 miles. The Biden administration is discussing the potential weapons shipment but lacks funding to finance the transfer. President Biden is pressing House Republicans to approve a massive war spending bill that includes $61 billion for Ukraine.

Feb 21, 2024

Featured • Superstition and taboo: Germany retreats into the Middle Ages as its economy declines, Henry Johnston, RT, Feb 20, 2024

An abandonment of reason is among the symptoms of a nation suffering from a collapse in the prevailing narratives.

Bloomberg recently foretold the end of Germany’s days as an industrial power in an article that begins with a depiction of the closing of a factory in Dusseldorf. Stone-faced workers preside with funereal solemnity over the final act – the fashioning of a steel pipe at a rolling mill – at the century-old plant. The “flickering of flares and torches” and “somber tones of a lone horn player” lend the scene a decidedly medieval atmosphere.

Intentional or not in their inclusion of such evocative detail, the Bloomberg writers offer potent imagery for Germany – not only because the country is regressing economically but because its elites are increasingly guided by an atavistic force: the abandonment of reason.

As hard economic realities lay bare the futility of its utopian energy plan and the consequences of numerous terrible decisions mount, Germany is experiencing what Swedish essayist Malcom Kyeyune calls “narrative collapse.” The peculiar offspring of this, Kyeyune argues, is a turn toward ritual, superstition, and taboo. It is a malaise afflicting the entire West, but Germany is suffering a particularly acute case.

Kyeyune defines this as an occurrence “when social and political circumstances change too rapidly for people to keep up, the result tends to be collective manias, social panics, and pseudo-religious revivalist millenarianism.”....

Kyeyune gives what may be the most vivid example of this principle at work. “Germany still has one functioning pipeline through the Baltic Sea but refuses to use it,” he correctly notes, referring to one line of Nord Stream 2 that was not damaged in the sabotage attack carried out in September 2022. “The problem is that the alternative approach to meeting its energy needs means buying liquefied natural gas… and some of this gas comes from Russia. In other words, Germany still buys natural gas from Russia, less efficiently and at a higher cost, in order to maintain a quasi-ritualistic prohibition against use of the pipeline.”

Meanwhile, he continues, a similar operation takes place with Russian oil, which is now sent to India or China to be refined before being imported by Europe. It is “as if the act of mixing it with other oil in a foreign refinery removes the evil spirits contained in it.” In other words, Russian oil must undergo some sort of purification process before it can enter the EU garden. European refiners, meanwhile, suffer, while all sorts of middlemen are enriched along the way, and consumers are left paying higher prices. There is not an ounce of economic logic to it – but we have now passed into a realm beyond economic logic.

Policies governing energy, the lifeblood of industrial civilization, are now subject to the tyranny of ritual, taboo, and superstition. Such is the predicament of the German elite as it seeks to navigate the country through a turbulent period of epochal transition. The abandonment of reason is quite a handicap in carrying out that job.

The Biden Administration continues its desperate attempts to persuade the Republican controlled House of Representatives to approve a $61 billion dollar aid package for Ukraine. Even if that money is approved it will not change the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. Ukraine is defeated and has no viable path forward to defeat Russia. The principal shortcoming is the lack of trained manpower. Even if Ukraine could magically produce 500,000 conscripts, those new soldiers would not be sufficiently trained to engage in simple combat operations for at least one year. Ukraine does not have a year unless Russia decides to halt its advance and call an end to missile and rocket attacks on Ukraine’s logistic and military hubs. And that is not going to happen.

It is natural for politicians and government officials outside the United States to assume that an article written by someone of the stature of William Burns is credible and based on sound intelligence. But that is not the case here. Burns is ignoring the realities on the ground in both Ukraine and Russia. You do not need to have access to Top Secret U.S. intelligence to realize that Ukraine is in trouble and that Russia – far from being weakened and isolated – is resilient, strong and busy forming a new world order with China and other countries of the Global South.

Just as the end of World War II brought about a new world order with the United States in dominant position, both economically and militarily, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has set off a chain of events that is eroding U.S. supremacy and creating a vacuum that Russia, China, Brazil, India and South Africa are working to fill. The era of the United States calling the shots and coercing other nations to accede to its policies is coming to an end. When the history of this period is written, the war in Ukraine coupled with the West’s effort to destroy Russia, will be seen as the spark that ignited the fire that burned down the power of the Colonial West.

The newspaper claims the “chaotic” nature of the retreat by Kiev’s forces contributed to the high numbers.

Russian forces may have captured up to 1,000 Ukrainian troops as they fled Avdeevka over the weekend, the New York Times has reported, citing anonymous Ukrainian and Western sources. The newspaper described the “chaotic retreat” from the long-time Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass as a “devastating loss” for Kiev that “could deal a blow to already weakening morale.”...

While US officials supposedly do not consider the loss of Avdeevka to be strategically significant for Ukraine, the NYT reported that the “capture of hundreds of soldiers, especially those with battlefield experience,” could pose a serious problem. The Ukrainian military has for months been grappling with a lack of manpower, the newspaper added, noting that Kiev’s failed summer counteroffensive had already made recruitment difficult.

International relations professor Andrew Latham opined in a recent piece that the idea of total Ukrainian victory is delusional....

The German government under chancellor Scholz is one group which has stuck to the fallen argument. There is no way the Ukraine can win or that Russia could lose that war and any additional price paid for attempts to invalidate that is just wasted.

Since the start of the war the EU's and Germany's reaction to it have been on the wrong path....

Unfortunately the change of mind is taking much longer than I had hoped for.

Commitment escalation has so far blocked any change. Instead of changing its path the EU seems to be willing to get more deeper into the morass.

In May 2022 I described the immediate reaction to the war as a kind of hysteria:

The European response to the U.S. proxy war against Russia was based on media driven hysteric moralizing or maybe moralizing hysteria. It was and is neither rational nor realistic.

The European 'leadership' decided that nothing but the economic suicide of Europe was sufficient to show Russia that Brussels was seriously miffed. Dimwit national governments, including the German one, followed that program. Should they stay on their course the result will be a complete de-industrialization of western Europe.

I had hoped for saner heads to gain the upper hand over this development. That, unfortunately, has not happened (yet?). Europe instead seems to drift towards even more lunacy.

Twelve rounds of sanctions against Russia have not hurt anyone but Europe's economy. Why then release round thirteen?

In Germany some politicians now dream of further arming the Ukraine, of getting Germany "battle ready" and of "carrying the war into Russia".

No thought is given to the rational responses Russia could take if such nonsense prevails....

Is it really difficult to understand that the path towards further fighting Russia will only lead to devastation?

Why then is there no effort made to prevent it?

This year’s Munich Security Conference was predictably all about the imaginary danger that Russians intend to proceed westward into Europe as soon as they finish in Ukraine....

Those purporting to lead the collective West are now executing a set of aggressive foreign and military policies that are not short of dangerous for their distance from the true circumstances of our time. These policies are costly — in themselves and as measured in lost opportunity — economically and socially distorting, and, straight to the point, unmoored from reality.

There is no need to wonder what causes this departure from observable facts, diabolically purposeful as it often is, and what comes of it. This may seem an unprecedented moment in human history, but there are, indeed, many precedents.

Barbara Tuchman told us all about them in The March of Folly (Knopf, 1984): These grand lapses reflect an absence of intellect, vision, and principle at leadership level and lead ineluctably to failure and one or another kind of mess....

This is how the West’s purported leaders insist on shaping the world we live in — a world based on deceptions and self-deceptions. This is what Tuchman meant by folly.

As Israel’s atrocities in Gaza continue daily, the delusions among the policy cliques in Washington and the European capitals are yet more grotesque....

Let’s call this the march of folly in real time....

The Biden regime, epicenter of the West’s delusional foreign policies, especially those concerning the non–West, has permanently altered its position in West Asia. Overexposed on the ground, it is likely to find itself more vulnerable than it has been for the past eight decades and more suspect on the diplomatic side even among those nations it has traditionally counted friends.

Policy unrooted in reality cannot address the challenges or crises of its time. Those who shape it, having no capacity to address such pressing circumstances, are on their march to folly.

Late last week, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu announced that Avdeyevka had been liberated by Russian forces, capturing the small city that has served as the stronghold for the Armed Forces of Ukraine for over ten years.

The operation was months in the making, with progress seeming to come slowly and then all at once as the Ukrainian defenses collapsed in the South and North, causing the remaining Ukrainians in the middle to become encircled. “It was monthslong, but then when [the Ukrainians] broke, it broke [with a] kind of real quickness at the end,” Mark Sleboda, a foreign relations and security expert told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Tuesday.

“It was a rout,” Sleboda explained. “The order to retreat was only given two days after the Kiev regime troops en masse were abandoning their positions.”

Sleboda explained that there were five major reasons why Ukraine lost what has been described by some military experts as “the most heavily fortified location on Earth.”

Russia has recorded cases of Ukrainian troops using US chemical munitions during the special military operation, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian armed forces, said on Monday.

"During the special military operation, cases of US chemical weapons used by the armed forces of Ukraine were recorded," Kirillov told a briefing.

The Ukraine military used US-made chemical grenades dropped from UAVs several times against the Russian armed forces in 2023, and this January, Ukrainian units used an unknown toxic chemical against the Russian troops, which led to burns, nausea and vomiting.

"Ukraine, with the complicity of Western countries, does not limit itself to the use of non-lethal chemicals, but actively using chemicals from the list. I would like to draw attention to the statement by representatives of the Ukrainian armed forces about the availability of such compounds at their disposal, including analogues of the combat toxic substance Tabun, which is included in List 1 of the Convention [on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction]," Kirillov said....

The Russian Defense Ministry reported on the facts of the use of poisonous substances by the Ukrainian military:

On August 19, 2022, a toxic chemical, an analog of the warfare poisoning agent "Bi-Zet," was used.

A similar substance was found on January 28, 2024, during operational-search activities in a cache in Melitopol. It was in vials labeled "Biosporin".

On February 8 and 16, 2023, cases of hydrocyanic acid use with drones were recorded.

On January 31, 2024, the Ukrainian Armed Forces used an unknown toxic chemical that caused burns. Analysis showed the presence of a compound known as anthraquinone.

On December 28, 2023, American-made gas grenades loaded with a substance called "CS" capable of causing skin burns and respiratory paralysis were dropped in the area of Krasny Liman.

On June 15, 2023, a drone carrying a plastic container with a mixture of chloroacetophenone and chloropicrin was used against Russian troops near Rabotino.

It’s sad, of course, that the man died, but it’s strange that the whole West is now cheerfully promoting conspiracy theories here, and his death has not even been investigated. Putin definitely didn’t need his death, Navalny would have had to spend the next decades in prison and he didn’t threaten anyone politically. According to officials, the cause of his death was a blood clot. We don’t know anything else, the case is being investigated, everything else is conspiracies. I will not pretend that I will cry all night because of Navalny now - thousands of children are dying in Gaza and all the media spit on them, they will now talk on air for a week only about this one American agent. They better look at what the British and Americans are doing to Julian Assange, who is in custody on the verge of death in this glorious West, which prides itself on freedom of speech and protection of journalists. Let them remember how they remained silent when the American journalist Gonzalo Lira, who criticized Zelensky, recently died in Ukrainian custody. They didn't even remember about it. And today they will moralize about Navalny’s death. Again, it’s always sad when a person dies, but this is pure hypocrisy.

Feb 19, 2024

Featured • SITREP 2/18/24: Avdeevka Liberated, Simplicius, Feb 18, 2024

Featured • The Ukraine War Runs on Prevarication, James W. Carden, The American Conservative, Feb 17, 2024

David Bromwich, a Yale University Professor and author of The Intellectual Career of Edmund Burke, has written,

The greater the improbability of an official explanation, the more pressing is the need to shore it up with unchecked reiterations, confirmations, enhancements. So the kingdom of untruth expands, without boundary or restraint. An officially sanctioned account of this or that event is affirmed by bureaucratic oversight and announced to the populace by a cooperative press and media. A consensus is thereby established that floats free of any concern with veracity.

If we are being lied to about the progress of the war—and we are—what do you suppose are the odds we are also being lied to about the causes of the war?

The war, we are serenely and repeatedly informed, was neither caused by NATO expansion nor by Ukraine’s post-Maidan ethno-nationalist agenda, nor by its refusal to implement the Minsk Accords, nor by Zelensky’s threat, made in Munich in February 2022, to acquire nuclear weapons—but by Putin’s revanchism.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat down for an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson to discuss the Ukraine conflict, the Nord Stream sabotage, Russia-NATO relations, artificial intelligence and other topics. Dmitry Kiselev, general director of the Rossiya Segodnya media group — Sputnik’s parent company — said he had sent a request to the White House for an interview with US President Joe Biden. “We believe that our countries lack the ability to listen and hear each other, and we believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin has set a worthy example by agreeing to an interview aimed at the American viewer,” the letter said. “The interview is planned to be conducted by me, Dmitry Kiselev, CEO of the Rossiya Segodnya Media Group and host of the highest-rated Sunday news and analysis program Vesti Nedeli on Russia 1, the country’s most popular TV channel.”

If it goes ahead, the interview would be translated into foreign languages and distributed on Sputnik’s Telegram channel, the ria.ru website, and numerous media platforms and social networks of the media group in Russia and around the world “In general, in a good way, US President Biden must respond to all this. The best and most spectacular option for the White House would be a mirror interview with a Russian journalist. As we have a saying, waiting for an answer, like the nightingale of summer,” Kiselev said in his program.

Denmark will transfer all of its artillery to Ukraine, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during a panel debate at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. According to her, despite production issues, Copenhagen and the EU in general have enough arms stockpiled to supply the country with the necessary weaponry....

“If you ask Ukrainians – they are asking us for ammunition now, artillery now. From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery to Ukraine,” Frederiksen stated, adding that other EU member-states should follow suit.

Feb 18, 2024

Featured • Will Biden Stop Wars to Salvage His Presidency?, Max Blumenthal, "Judging Freedom," Feb 16, 2024

Featured • Listen to What He's Saying, Patrick Armstrong, Russia Observer, Dec 30, 2023
The advice here is all-too obviously true. Our senior political leaders are clueless, as one can hear in and from Washington any day of the week. A gander at the videos 10 years apart in various places is eye-opening. Russia -- not the Soviet Union -- is back. I found this Donetsk travelogue by Pepe Escobar interesting, for the values he writes about. We would do well to consider the spiritual bases of resilience.

 • American Foreign Policy Seems to Have Nowhere to Go, Philip Giraldi, Ron Paul Institute, Feb 17, 2024
Hollywood could never produce and sell anything as grotesque, murderous, ugly, and stupid as U.S. foreign policy. Only a sick psychopath could like it.

 • Europe is losing dignity by obediently submitting to US — Lavrov, TASS, Feb 16, 2024

"Against the backdrop of economic problems, the Americans have openly engaged in pumping resources out of Europe. They are cutting off promising markets and reliable energy sources. For the sake of this, they blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines without hesitation and ordered Germany and the rest of Europe to swallow this humiliation. Europe quietly obeyed, forgetting about its former timid speculations about strategic autonomy and dignity," Lavrov emphasized.

He pointed out that now "the European industry is literally being forced to choose between transferring operations overseas and ruin."

"The Europeans are grown-up people. May they take care of their own fate," Lavrov said.

Feb 17, 2024

Featured • Scott Ritter: Mike Turner’s Folly, Consortium News, Feb 17, 2024
A very smart set of opinions. From where I sit, Turner's "revelations" look a lot like a relatively simple (-minded) psyop aimed at getting the House to vote for Ukraine war funds, but they could be more than that, as Ritter says. Ritter's explanation is far more sophisticated than just a psyop and is, it seems, in line with a speech at the recent Nuclear Deterrence Summit explaining the rapidity now available to put military satellites of various types into low-earth orbit. Taking them out one at a time would be ineffective. There may be just too many, and too easily replaced. This was discussed by Simplicius as well.

Featured • They Finally Killed Navalny ..., Moon of Alabama, Feb 17, 2024

Featured • Updated: Military Overview: Russia Won Battle for Adveevka (18+), SouthFront, Feb 17, 2024

The reports by the servicemen on the both sides confirm that the AFU suffered the heaviest losses just over the past day during the retreat. According to preliminary estimates, the total Ukrainian losses (killed, prisoners, died of wounds) will reach 80% of the entire garrison deployed in Avdiivka.

The Ukrainian command is lying about the desire to save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. The inevitability of losing Avdiivka has been obvious for a long time. And in recent days, Ukrainian losses have skyrocketed due to the collapse of Ukrainian defense in the city.

But hypocritical Kiev could not declare the withdrawal a day earlier, even if it costed the lives of thousands of soldiers. Obviously, Kiev’s Western patrons needed to mitigate the defeat. That is why Kiev was waiting for Navalny’s death in a Russian prison and the Munich Security Conference, where they could get the maximum effect from the last Navalny’s ‘media bomb’.

While Zelensky was accusing Putin of allegedly murdering Navalny, and all the MSM, US and European leaders were busy threatening Russia with response for allegedly “killing the main freedom fighter,” thousands more Ukrainian men were wounded and killed in the Avdiivka cauldron. (emphasis in original)

“If you want to get radicalized, don't just limit your visit to Moscow. See Russia, all of Russia. And what you find out is that what Tucker Carlson experienced in Moscow is an experience that can be replicated again and again and again over a multitude of time zones through a tremendous diversity of cultures. If you want to get radicalized, visit Russia, the real Russia,” Ritter summed up.

The American public, as with the European public, has become increasingly skeptical about the relentless funneling of taxpayer funds and weapons to Ukraine. Many citizens in the West – a majority, according to polls – have become critical of fueling a bloody war for the dubious cause of “defending democracy” in a regime dominated by NeoNazis. At a time of deep social and economic hardship in the U.S. and Europe, the Western public is rightly disdainful of hundreds of billions of dollars and euros being wasted on death and destruction and also being siphoned off by a corrupt cabal in Kiev. The $61 billion in military aid to Ukraine is just the latest tranche that Washington is seeking to throw at the black hole of its proxy war against Russia – a war that is really all about defeating Russia as a geopolitical obstacle to U.S. hegemony. Another driver is the massive profits that taxpayers are subsidizing the military-industrial complex at the rotten heart of Western capitalism....

Bruce Gagnon commented: “I believe the Russians have a long history of generally honoring treaties while the U.S. does not. And remember that Russia and China every year for at least the last 20-30 years go to the UN and introduce a new treaty called Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) to ban all weapons that fall outside of the 1967 treaty. The U.S. always refuses, saying there is no need for a new treaty.”

Feb 15, 2024

Featured • Looks Like We Made It and Mike Turner's Russian Threat Scam, Larry Johnson, Feb 14, 2024

Featured • Old sick men control US nuclear chain of command – Moscow, RT, Feb 14, 2024

First lady Jill Biden and President Joe Biden walk past Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during a casualty return for US troops killed in Jordan, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, February 2, 2024.

A high-ranking official in Russia's Security Council has voiced alarm over the risk of a nuclear “catastrophe” arising from the Pentagon chief's health problems and the declining faculties of US President Joe Biden, warning of a possible “management mistake” by America’s leadership.

Speaking to the Izvestiya newspaper for an interview published on Wednesday, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Mikhail Popov said Washington's political instability could trigger an accidental escalation.

”In the overall difficult and nervous internal political situation in the US that has emerged recently, the price of a management mistake, committed by the national leaders, either deliberately or involuntarily, has increased significantly,” he said. “And there won’t be much distance to a global catastrophe.”

Popov stressed that he was not referring to “a banana republic,” but rather “a state that has nuclear weapons and constantly claims to be the world hegemon.” He added that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s cancer diagnosis and Biden’s old age “have raised questions about the global security system” and the US chain of command, asking “How is the decision to use nuclear weapons generally made in the United States?”

“The secretary of defense is not there, and no one knows where he is or who is replacing him. The press writes that some of his responsibilities were assigned to Deputy Minister Kathleen Hicks. But she was on vacation in Puerto Rico at the time,” he said.

Feb 14, 2024

Featured • The Vladimir Putin Interview - Part One, William Schryver, imetatronink, Feb 13, 2024

Putin then started a “serious conversation” on his terms, and according to his agenda. And what he did first — although it no doubt befuddled a large proportion of his audience — was not only an exhibition of erudition, but more importantly, it was a type of thing one simply does not see in our day and age, although in ancient times it would have been considered entirely normal, and even de rigueur for a great national leader to do precisely what Putin did: present, as it were, the Russian nation’s Letters Patent; its genealogy dating back over a thousand years; its historical bona fides.

Vladimir Putin is the current leader of a great “civilizational power” — a nation whose history stretches back over a millennium, and whose voluminous archives document that history. And, given the fundamental importance of that fact in the context of what is in many respects a civil war taking place in Ukraine, it was imperative that certain elements of evidence be presented as a preface to the eventual discussion of the illegitimacy and demonstrable falsehoods of Ukraine’s presumptuous claims upon portions of the longstanding “Russian nation”.

Feb 13, 2024

Featured • Heavy Blow: Hundreds Killed and Wounded by Russian Strikes on Training Ground in Selidovo, SouthFront, Feb 13, 2024

Featured • What Has the Putin Interview Achieved?, Tony Kevin, Consortium News, Feb 12, 2024

 • The Biden-Schumer Plan To Kill More Ukrainians, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Antiwar.com, Feb 13, 2024

 • Western diplomacy ‘primitive’ – Moscow, RT, Feb 12, 2024

Russians have had to dumb down their speeches at the UN so other countries can understand them, deputy representative Dmitry Polyansky has said.

Russian diplomats perceive their Western counterparts' approach to international affairs to be “quite primitive,” Moscow’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, has said. Moscow's representatives are not certain what caused this, but have simplified their messaging in response, he added.

Feb 12, 2024

Featured • Sergey Karaganov: Here’s why Russia must permanently abandon Europe and turn fully to Asia, RT, Feb 10, 2024

By Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow.

We also need a national program for the development of Oriental studies, knowledge of Oriental languages, peoples and cultures in schools. Uniquely, culturally and religiously open Russia has a huge competitive advantage here, inherited from its ancestors who, unlike the Europeans, did not enslave and destroy but absorbed local 0peoples and cultures as they moved eastwards.

Sun Tzu, Confucius, Kautilya (or Vishnugupta), Rabindranath Tagore, Ferdowsi, King Darius, Tamerlane, al-Khozremi (the founder of algebra), Abu Ali ibn Sina (Avicenna – the founder of medical science) or Fatima al-Fihri – the founder of the world’s first university – should be as familiar to an educated Russian as Alexander the Great, Galileo, Dante, Machiavelli or Goethe. We need to understand the essence not only of Orthodox Christianity, but also of Islam and Buddhism. All these religions and spiritual movements are already present in our spiritual memory. We just need to preserve and develop them.

In addition, with the inevitable climate change in the coming decades, Siberia will expand the area of comfortable habitat. Nature itself is inviting us to a new Siberian eastward shift of Russia. I repeat once again, by creating and implementing the program of Russia’s eastward shift, we are not only returning to the source of our power and greatness, but we are also opening new horizons for ourselves and future generations, we are creating and implementing the reborn Russian dream: the aspiration for the greatness of the country, prosperity and will – Russian freedom, to embody the best in us – the Russian spirit.

The US has rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest offer for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, as the Biden administration has consistently discouraged diplomacy in the nearly two years since Russia launched its invasion.

Putin made the offer during an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which was released on Carlson’s website and X account last week.

“We are willing to negotiate,” Putin said. Referring to the US government, the Russian leader added, “You should tell the current Ukrainian leadership to stop and come to the negotiating table.”

Feb 11, 2024

Featured • Ukraine SitRep: A Hated New Commander - Critical Lack Of Infantry, Moon of Alabama, Feb 9, 2024
Good summary.

Featured • The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More Ukrainians, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Consortium News, Feb 9, 2024
Articulate recitation of the obvious. Except it's not obvious to most Democrats and many Republicans.

Featured • Eventful Events, James Howard Kunstler, Feb 9, 2024

Featured • Zaluzhny Finally Dismissed as Chaos Reigns in AFU, Simplicius, Feb 8, 2024

Following this news, a meltdown of epic proportions has ensued in the Ukrainian commentariat—the top names and influencers are not taking this news well...

This is partly why some are dubbing him ‘General 200’ or the ‘Boiler Master’. His specialty appears to be getting his troops into killboxed boilers wherein he waits to the last moment to withdraw, when the troops are already all ground down....

Recently it was claimed Zaluzhny likewise attempted to get Avdeevka totally withdrawn. It does not seem that he likes to waste men for what he knows to be fruitless efforts. Syrsky on the other hand appears glad to grind them down.

So, has it become obvious yet? Zelensky needs a commander-in-chief he can control, someone not universally loved by the troops; someone who cannot use those troops at a time of opportunity to ‘march on Kiev’ and oust Zelensky from his citadel. Syrsky appears to fit the perfect prototypical role: undefiant, unpopular, uncharismatic, and most importantly, untempted by political ambitions—the ideal subserviant factotum to Zelensky’s regime...

And in the past few days, reports on almost every frontline have been absolutely cataclysmic for Ukraine. The ammo shortage appears to be so bad now that they’re barely able to hold on, taking unprecedented losses in the process.

Most notably, heavy action is occurring on Sinkovka and Novomikhailovka where Russia is pushing through Ukrainian lines...

As more and more videos of female AFU platoons roll in, it was only a matter of time before we saw a POW. This one was reportedly captured in Khrynki, Kherson—a particularly shocking fact, given what we know about that cross-Dnieper meatgrinder: [video interview]: Female AFU POW taken: her husband is MIA, she has 3 kids, no job, went to the army to pay the bills, was sent to Krynki (Russian bank of the Dnieper), wounded, denied evacuation (not valuable enough), left to die, saved by the Russians.

Ukrainian troops are experiencing an acute shortage of infantry, the military is physically exhausted, and its morale is falling, US newspaper The Washington Post reported, citing soldiers and commanders of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Ukrainian military believes the shortage of personnel could have a domino effect, especially in winter, when weather conditions are difficult. “You can feel that people are morally and physically exhausted,” the publication quoted a Ukrainian commander, who identified himself as Sergei, as saying. Battalion commander Alexander told the publication that no one is joining the army, because “the state has failed to explain to them that they should go there.”

Within 24 hours of her [Clinton’s] concession speech, [Campaign manager Robby] Mook and [John] Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up,” according to an account by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.

“For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

Senator Bernie Sanders has also engaged in the McCarthy-esque argument. “Who’s paying you?” the Vermont politician who aligns with the Democratic Party angrily asked when confronted by a former campaign chief over his vote to arm Ukrainian neo-Nazis.

As relations between the US and Russia sink even lower amid the United States’ failed effort to defeat Russia in the US-backed proxy war in Ukraine, one increasingly senses that liberals have picked up the “neo-McCarthyist” mantle of demonizing Russia, as host Melik Abdul pointed out. The only way to secure peace and prevent World War III may lie in electing, or reelecting, a president unbeholden to the US’ political and foreign policy establishment.

Feb 8, 2024

Featured • The Vladimir Putin Interview, Tucker Carlson, X, Feb 8, 2024

Featured • Tucker Madness is Good for America, Scott Ritter, Feb 7, 2024

Featured • Ukraine SitRep: Finally A Wonder-Weapon That Does What It Promised To Do, Moon of Alabama, Feb 8, 2024

Featured • EU: The Closer to Kiev, the Further Away From Its People!, Hugo Dionísio, Strategic Culture Foundation, Feb 7, 2024

 • Ukraine’s top general sparing neo-Nazis from frontline slaughter – ex-CIA analyst, RT, Feb 6, 2024

”The guy with the gun usually wins and last time I checked Zaluzhny’s got more guns than Zelensky,” Johnson said.

Comparing the two men, he said the general should not be seen as a “great guy.”

“I don’t want to present Zaluzhny as some sort of military genius or really a good-hearted man,” the commentator remarked. He is “a bit of a scumbag” who “embraces the neo-Nazi ideology,” Johnson claimed.

”He’s been very careful to not insert the most ideologically driven troops – the Azov and the Kraken units – into the front lines where they get killed, because he wants to preserve them. Instead, he is sending the cannon-fodder guys.”

Feb 6, 2024

Featured • US Propaganda Machine Panicking Tucker Carlson Will Continue Objective Reporting in Russia, John Miles, Feb 5, 2024

 • Ukraine - An Army Without Officers Has No Chance Of Winning, Moon of Alabama, Feb 6, 2024

Lieutenant at age 28 is likely a seasoned one. But in the role of a 'deputy battalion commander'?

What happened to the S3, the Major and nominal deputy battalion commander? What happened to the six Captains the battalion is supposed to have? All of them should be better trained and qualified to take on the role of a deputy battalion commander than a mere Lieutenant.

This small detail, a Lieutenant as deputy battalion commander, tells me more about the battalion's state that any flowery description of casualties.

Such a battalion is done with. Its officer corps is mostly dead or wounded. Its companies and platoons or likely to be run by mere sergeants. While such a unit may still hold onto some trenches it is certainly no longer able to fulfill any operational task. It will not be able to counterattack. It will not even be able to organize an orderly retreat....

The Ukrainian army is lacking soldiers and munitions. It is lacking the officers to train and lead them. The Ukrainian state does not have the money to conscript and equip more soldiers. It does not have the officer corp needed to train new soldiers. It does not have the factories needed to produce weapons and munitions.

It is high time for Ukraine to give up this unequal fight and to save the lives of those soldiers who are still living.

It is high time for Zelenski (and Zaluzny and others) to leave.

Feb 5, 2024

Featured • The Russian Art of War: How the West Led Ukraine to Defeat, Jacques Baud, The Postil Magazine, Jan 1, 2024

 • "100% green screen. See around head, ears, shoulders ...," Moon of Alabama (X/twitter), Feb 4, 2024

 • Ukrainian leadership is delusional – historian, RT, Feb 4, 2024

Speaking to RT’s Oksana Boyko on Worlds Apart, the professor shared his thoughts on the insistence of both Kiev and its Western backers on inflicting a decisive defeat on Russia on the battlefield, which seemingly remains unchanged despite all the setbacks the Ukrainian military has suffered. For Kiev, such a belief might actually be genuine, he suggested.

“Regarding the Ukrainian leadership, I would not be able to tell. I have a guess that President Zelensky himself is, basically, delusional and has become drunk on his own rhetoric as well as the flattery that he used to receive from the West. I think it has really deranged him a bit and disturbed his relationship to reality,” the historian suggested.

In the West, however, the understanding that such a goal was not actually a viable one has seemingly become more prominent, yet it still remains unclear to what extent exactly. Therefore, the persisting talk about continuous support for Ukraine is, at least partially, a “negotiation tactic” on the West’s part, the professor suggested.

“Concerning the West, my guess is that quite a few people in Washington and in the EU as well understand that they have to get out of this war without a Russian defeat. Now do they understand already how much they have to concede? Again, I can’t tell,” Amar stated.

Western, and the US in particular, policy and decision makers apparently still “live in the 1990s” and refuse to realize that the age of “unilateralism” is over now. Russian leadership, as well as elites of other powers, such as China or Iran, on the contrary, live in the present, Amar suggested.

Without western interference, the conflict between Kiev and Moscow would have never started, while multiple opportunities to bring it to an end were deliberately sabotaged, including the Minsk agreement of 2015 or the Istanbul talks of March 2022, Amar noted.

President Biden struggles to secure a $60 billion funding package for Ukraine.

The speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, announced on Saturday that he would hold a vote on a “clean, standalone” aid package for Israel that will not entail any spending cuts.

The newly proposed legislation is set to include $17.6 billion in additional military funding as well as “important funding for US forces in the region.” The initial $14.3 billion package, rejected by the Senate last year, included an equal amount in spending cuts to the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) and was therefore branded by Democrats as a “poison pill.”

“Next week, we will take up and pass a clean, standalone Israel supplemental package,” he wrote in a letter to colleagues sent on Saturday afternoon. “The Senate will no longer have excuses, however misguided, against swift passage of this critical support for our ally.”

The announcement comes as the Senate prepares to vote on a long-anticipated national security supplemental requested by US President Joe Biden, which will include tougher US border controls paired with nearly $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, as well as more assistance to Israel and Taiwan. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Friday that he was preparing to release the legislation text “no later than Sunday” with the first procedural vote coming by midweek.

However, Johnson previously criticized the impending deal, calling it “dead of arrival” in the lower chamber if the provisions are what they are rumored to be. The Senate leadership “is aware that by failing to include the House in their negotiations, they have eliminated the ability for swift consideration of any legislation,” Johnson wrote.

The White House previously indicated that it would oppose a stand-alone Israel aid bill, with John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, saying President Biden would veto it.

The German economy is on the brink of a crisis as deindustrialization firmly takes root. Companies, driven by economic considerations, are increasingly relocating their production overseas, posing a significant threat to a nation heavily reliant on industrial output. This trend has immediate and profound consequences that extend beyond the evident impact on industrial sectors. The offshoring of production could entail a surge in layoffs, further aggravating the economic challenges faced by the workforce.

In November 2023, according to preliminary data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), German exports experienced a decline of 5.0% year-on-year, while imports recorded a notable decrease of 12.2%.

While the primary focus is on the industrial landscape, it is crucial to acknowledge the interconnectedness of these shifts. A case in point is the German chemical industry, which finds itself in a deep and prolonged downturn, having lost approximately 23% of its production capacity. Furthermore, leading managers have expressed considerable skepticism about a swift recovery. The challenges are exacerbated by Germany’s struggle with high energy costs, particularly affecting industries engaged in global competition. Despite government attempts to counteract these challenges, such as a billion-dollar electricity price package, success has been limited.

Meanwhile, according to a report by Deloitte, an alarming two out of three German companies have partially relocated their operations abroad due to the country’s ongoing energy crisis. This trend is particularly pronounced in critical sectors, such as mechanical engineering, industrial goods, and automotive industries, where 69% of companies have relocated their operations to a moderate or large extent.

Key findings from the Deloitte report shed light on the reasons behind this significant shift. Most businesses attribute their decisions to move operations overseas to the combination of high energy prices and inflation. Notably, companies in these industries are planning to relocate not only low-skilled component production but also, to a lesser extent, high-skilled production processes.

Feb 3, 2024

Featured • SITREP 2/2/24: Biden Launches Attacks as Russia Again Breaches Major Avdeevka Lines, Simplicius, Feb 2, 2024
A lot of detail, in the overall fog.

 • EU Leaders Squander Another €50 Billion on Propping up Kiev Regime… and Self-Destruction, Strategic Culture Foundation, Feb 2, 2024

 • Ukrainian military a terrorist organization – Putin, RT, Feb 2, 2024

The president recalled a story he heard last year about how Russian forces intercepted communications between two Ukrainian tank operators who were trying to enter Donetsk. One of the servicemen had just killed a man who had stepped out of his house, Putin said, when the other officer asked him “Why did you do that? He was just some guy wearing a tracksuit. He had a family, you can hear his children running around in the house.” The response, according to Putin, was “They’re all terrorists here.”

“What is this if not neo-Nazism? That’s not to mention the rounds of applause for actual SS officers in the Canadian parliament and the blatant attacks on medical workers and ambulance vehicles,” added the president.

Feb 1, 2024

Featured • Will the Hegemon Ever Accept a New Westphalian World Order?, Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture Foundation, Jan 31, 2024

A new book by scholar Glenn Diesen, The Ukraine War & The Eurasian World Order, out in mid-February, asks the make-or-break question of the young 21st century: will the Hegemon accept a new geopolitical reality, or will it go Captain Ahab on Moby Dick and drag us all to the depths of a – nuclear – abyss?

An extra touch of poetic beauty is that the analysis is conducted by a Scandinavian. Diesen is a professor at the University of Southeast Norway (USN) and an associate editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal. He had a stint at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, working closely with the inimitable Sergey Karaganov.

It goes without saying that European MSM won’t touch him; rabid yells – “Putinista!” – prevail, including in Norway, where he’s been a prime target of cancel culture.

That’s irrelevant, anyway. What matters is that Diesen, an affable, unfailingly polite man and an ultra-sharp scholar, is aligned with the rarified cream of the crop who is asking the questions that really matter; among them, whether we are heading towards a Eurasian-Westphalian world order.

Apart from a meticulous deconstruction of the proxy war in Ukraine that devastatingly debunks, with proven facts, the official NATOstan narrative, Diesen offers a concise, easily accessible mini-history of how we got here....

Everyone with a brain by now knows how Russia absorbed and re-transformed everything thrown by the collective West after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO). The problem is the rarified plutocracy that really runs the show will always refuse to acknowledge reality, as Diesen frames it: “Irrespective of the outcome of the war, the war has already become the graveyard of liberal hegemony.”

The overwhelming majority of the Global South clearly sees that even as what Ray McGovern indelibly defined as MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) cast the Russia-China partnership as the main “threats” – in reality those that created the “gravitational pull to reorganize the world order towards multipolarity” – they can’t bring Russia-China down geoeconomically.

So there’s no question “the conflicts of the future world order will continue to be militarized.” That’s where we are at the crossroads. There will be no peaceful road towards to Westphalian world order. Fasten your seat belts – it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Russia needs to create a large “demilitarized zone” in Ukraine, one that is big enough to ensure no longe-range weapons can strike Russian cities, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday

As I write this the Biden Administration has not produced evidence that the attack on the U.S. base in Jordan was carried out with the help of Iran. Despite that lack of evidence, the usual suspects in Washington are braying at full voice for the United States to strike Iran. This is one of the key rules of the “rules based international order (aka RBIO). If you provide the weapons to a third party that attacks me then you also are culpable for that crime. Do we all agree?

Well, if it is good for the goose then it must be good for the gander. The United States supplied Patriot Missiles to Ukraine and Ukraine used those missiles to attack and destroy a Russian aircraft ferrying Ukrainian prisoners of war to a site for a prisoner exchange. If it is okay for the U.S. to attack Iran and extract some measure of revenge, then it follows that Russia is entitled by the same principle to attack the United States. Are we still on the same page?

The ICJ found only that Russia was, “failing to take measures to investigate facts… regarding persons who have allegedly committed an offense.” It added that the court “rejects all other submissions made by the Ukraine.”

The ruling is highly significant in undermining Kiev’s claim to be fighting a war against terrorists in Donbass, an essential part of the Ukraine’s and the West’s narrative in justifying its brutal operation that left more than 10,000 civilians dead.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 amid indications that Kiev was beginning a new offensive against Donbass. Ukraine and the West had failed to implement two peace agreements negotiated in Minsk and endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.

Western and Ukrainian officials later admitted they never had any intention of implementing the deal and pretended to to buy time to build up its forces against Russia.

Rejected MH17 Claim

In its complaint to the Court, Ukraine had also claimed that Russia was responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, killing all 298 civilian passengers and crew on board. Kiev wanted Russia to pay compensation to the victims.

But the court refused to rule whether Russia was responsible and to order compensation. This ruling appears to contradict the results of the official investigation into the incident.

“But in Ukraine, two different Western groups are trying to solve their problems: one from Washington, the other from London, with slightly different visions of the future of Ukraine, how to use it and what to do with it now, and in general — there are forces through which they accomplish their tasks.”

It is these forces who are playing the Zaluzhny card right now, the researcher argued. According to Dudchak, the so-called pro-US faction includes Zaluzhny, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and some figures in the President’s Office. The other grouping is pro-British and includes the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (GUR), its chief Budanov and Syrsky.”So far the replacement has been cancelled. This does not mean that Budanov changed his mind or that Syrsky did not want to [assume the position]. Who’s asking them? Syrsky has no opinion of his own. He even changed the language he speaks. Because listening to him speaking Ukrainian is weird. And will he show some kind of opinion? No way,” Dudchak explained.

“So for now, the operation to replace Zaluzhny has simply been postponed. This does not mean that he will not be removed. Therefore, these figures which look suitable for replacing Zaluzhny have remained in a standby mode for now.” The decision to replace Zaluzhny could stem from the West’s changing goals in Ukraine. The researcher outlined two scenarios, apparently sought by Washington and London: London is more interested in the continuation of the conflict and in waging a “terrorist war.” But Washington is much more keen to freeze the conflict, given the forthcoming presidential elections in November 2024.

The US and Germany are resisting calls by other NATO members to invite Ukraine into the bloc at a major summit later this year, fearing that the move could trigger a full-scale clash with Russia, Foreign Policy (FP) magazine reported on Tuesday.

Russia needs to create a large “demilitarized zone” in Ukraine, one that is big enough to ensure no longe-range weapons can strike Russian cities, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

February 2024

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November 2022

 • ‘The Real Purpose In Making The Bomb Was To Subdue The Soviets.’ Now It’s Happening Again, On A Vast Scale. Why? – July 22 At Fuller Lodge, Los Alamos Reporter, Jul 19, 2023

 • Bulletin 330: "'The real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets.'* Now it's happening again, on a vast scale. WHY?" A conversation with acclaimed historian Peter Kuznick and Greg Mello in Los Alamos, July 22, Jul 7, 2023

 • Ukraine War Makes it Harder to be a Nuclear ‘Dove’ | Our Land, Laura Paskus, New Mexico in Focus, Jun 30, 2023

 • Bulletin 329: Russia rules out nuclear disarmament negotiations; second week of Ukrainian offenses fail; what will US and NATO do? Build 60 projects in LANL's Pajarito Corridor?, Jun 17, 2023

 • Ukraine; Biden's Manicheism; the U.S. cannot even conduct a nuclear arms race, let alone win one, LASG friends ltr, Mar 16, 2023

 • Ukraine protest and updates, pit production delays and cost increases in NNSA's new budget, LASG friends ltr, Mar 14, 2023

 • Antiwar rally 2 pm Saturday in Albuquerque; LANL pits delayed, endorse the "Call for Sanity"; Ukraine update; the Nordstream investigation (and likely impeachment) "imperative" LASG friends ltr, Mar 11, 2023
 • Ukraine losses mount toward critical point; ANSWER rally against the war is now 2 pm (not 1 pm), March 18, Albuquerque; nearly half U.S. citizens believe WWIII is near, LASG friends ltr, Mar 7, 2023

 • Ukraine news and views; antiwar rally March 18; pending guest editorial; pit production precis, LASG friends ltr, Mar 3, 2023

 • Bulletin 325: Understanding the Nordstream sabotage and punishing those responsible, Feb 18, 2023

 • Ukraine news with comments and excerpts; bookmark for future reference if desired,LASG friends ltr, Feb 8, 2023

 • Bulletin 324: Opposition to Ukraine war gains visibility in New Mexico and via our web site, more broadly, Feb 6, 2023

 • Anti-nuclear activist opposes helping Ukraine, encourages peace, Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 5, 2023

 • Bulletin 323: "Nuclear Hotseat" interview / Ukraine war updates, Feb 4, 2023

 • Bulletin 322: Right and Left To Join in D.C. Protest: ‘Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine’ / Bulletin of Atomic Scientists resets clock, blames Russia, Jan 25, 2023

 • $10 Trillion for Nuclear War: Racing to the Nuclear Cliff, The Socialist Program with Brian Becker, Jan 10, 2023

 • Bulletin 321: Last day for 2022 donations! / A few quick updates, Dec 31, 2022

 • Bulletin 320: Neocon humiliation -- or nuclear exchange / The centrality of war resistance in moral politics / 3 days left for 1:1 donation match!, Dec 29, 2022

 • Bulletin 319: Ukraine; NDAA: omnibus appropriations bill; fundraising --thank you; some matching funds still available, Dec 21, 2022

 • Stop the war now, Jean Nichols, The Taos News, Dec 19, 2022

 • Bulletin 318: Speak out now against further U.S. escalation in Ukraine; daily updates for your use, Dec 14, 2022

 • Agenda for tonight's emergency Ukraine meeting in Albuquerque, and by Zoom, Nov 15, 2022

 • Bulletin 314: Reminder re next week's antiwar, disarmament, & nuclear safety events: come if you can or tune in, outreach needed; pit interview on KNME tonight 7 pm; fundraising drive continues; erratum, Nov 11, 2022

 • Bulletin 313: Important meeting about Ukraine next week; DNFSB hearing in Santa Fe; more, Nov 7, 2022

 • Biden Administration releases aggressive nuclear strategy envisioning "first use" of nuclear weapons in wars like Ukraine, press release, Oct 27, 2022

 • Bulletin 310: Speak up! We urge you to take up the call for peace in Ukraine, Sep 25, 2022

 • Pope Francis: "World War III has been declared." We agree. Stop LANL's pit factory; Stop the U.S. war against Russia, presentation, Jun 15, 2022

 • Bulletin 301: Oppose the war! Demand and create accountability for lawmakers who fund and promote more war in Ukraine, May 16, 2022

 • Grave dangers loom in Ukraine war votes and escalations; opportunities open for journalists and citizens; We urge news media to widen debate, pose questions, create accountability, press release, May 16, 2022

 • LASG friends ltr: Thursday evening public discussion in Albuquerque: Ukraine, propaganda, progressives supporting Nazis and war, May 10, 2022

 • Escalation in Ukraine: The Nuclear War Danger is Real, Brian Becker & Greg Mello discuss the U.S. policy of waging proxy war on Russia, BreakThrough News, May 4, 2022

 • Bulletin 299: Emergency call to action: stop Biden's proposed $33 billion war escalation, Apr 28, 2022

 • Bulletin 298: Talk on pits & renewed U.S. nuclear weapons production Tuesday evening 4/26/22; antiwar billboard; what you can do, Apr 25, 2022

 • The core debate, Searchlight New Mexico, Mar 23, 2022

 • Bulletin 294: Please consider forwarding this fine statement from UNAC re Ukraine, Mar 23, 2022

 • Nuclear expert speaks on the dangers of war between the US and Russia, World Socialist Website, Mar 15, 2022

 • A Proposed Solution to the Ukraine War, Consortium News, Greg Mello, Mar 7, 2022

 • Bulletin 293: Ukraine conflict: If you want a ceasefire (as we do), stop firing, Mar 5, 2022

 • Bulletin 292: Statement on the Ukraine conflict and war with Russia, Mar 1, 2022

 • "What can we in New Mexico do?," LASG letter, Feb 23, 2022

 • Bulletin 288: US nuclear weapons since 2020: continuity and change, Dec 7, 2021 (see discussion of US, NATO, and Russia)

 • Nuclear experts speak on the dangers of war between the US and Russia, World Socialist Web Site, Apr 15, 2017

 • US Leaders Reject “Nuclear Winter” Studies, Ignore Existential Danger of Nuclear War. Turn a Blind Eye towards Armageddon, Steven Starr, Global Research, Nov 1, 2016

 • The Ukraine Conflict: What's Behind It? Why Is It Important?, Sep 26, 2015

 • Bulletin 200: Warhead budget bloat; U.S.-caused Ukraine catastrophe at the brink; hello peak oil, Feb 8, 2015