September 2024

Sep 30, 2024

Featured • Here’s why Putin decided to send a nuclear message to Washington, Dmitry Suslov, RT, Sep 29, 2024

Incidentally, Washington’s recent calls to resume negotiations on the START treaty were precisely to make it easier for it to wage a hybrid war against us, and even to make it easier for the Americans to enter into a direct war against Russia. The US wants to take the issue out of the picture and pretend that there is no connection between atomic weapons and the proxy war they are already waging. To this end, they want to drag us into negotiations on nuclear armaments.

That is why Russia is now rejecting these negotiations, because first the US must stop trying to inflict a strategic defeat on us. Only then will we return to a dialogue on strategic stability. This is absolutely right, because the link between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons has always been there. Since Washington’s own first use of the atomic bomb in 1945, the aim of this instrument has been to ensure superiority in conventional warfare and then in nuclear warfare. The US, I repeat, wants to destroy this logic, and Russia, of course, is not interested.

US President Joe Biden has not been honest with the American public about his administration’s plan for Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote in an article on Friday. Despite Biden styling himself a supporter of Ukraine’s freedom in his speech to the UN General Assembly this week, he refuses to level with Congress and the American public about his strategy to achieve victory, the editorial stated. In April, lawmakers passed a nearly $61 billion supplemental budget for Ukraine, after months of wrangling between Democrats and Republicans. One of the conditions stipulated was that the Biden administration articulate a strategy regarding US support for Ukraine within 45 days of the budget’s enactment, and quarterly moving forward. “Biden knew this commitment was necessary to get aid through Congress, and he signed the bill,” WSJ observed.

Despite this, the strategy was submitted “months after the congressionally-mandated deadline,” the newspaper said, citing a press release from GOP lawmakers. “Also, and this is typical of the Biden stonewall: The document is entirely classified,” WSJ wrote, adding that congressmen want the strategy made available to the American public. ”Don’t count on the Administration following this order before Nov. 5, if it ever does,” the board said.

In Kursk Region too, Ukraine’s powerful 82nd Assault Brigade, which spearheaded the incursion, is now threatened with encirclement. Russian forces are making battlefield gains all across the 800 km frontline.

The Russian stance continues to be that the war will continue till the objectives are fulfilled. On September 25, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told TASS in an interview, “Victory is needed [in the war. They [West] do not understand any other language. This victory will be ours, we have no doubt. We have become truly united in the face of the war that the West unleashed against us.” (emphasis added)

Ukraine shrinks every time proposed talks with Russia are upset, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference following his participation in the high-level week of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly. “Each time an agreement Russia always goes for is derailed, Ukraine shrinks,” he said, citing Ukraine’s refusal to implement the Minsk agreements and Kiev’s disruption of the negotiations in 2022 as an example. Lavrov recalled how Ukraine’s chief delegate to the talks with Russia in 2022, David Arahamiya, said that then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had come to Kiev and advised Ukraine to go on fighting. “If Ukraine continues along the same path, if it continues to use some gimmicks again in order to buy time, it will not succeed,” Lavrov emphasized. Ukraine has “forever undermined” its legitimacy, at least as long as the current regime is in power.

“I very much hope that our Chinese and Brazilian friends and all those who have joined this group of ‘friends of peace’ will fully take into account the manners and ways of the current Ukrainian leadership and its endless attempts to lure everyone by deception on their very quick and shifting sand,” Lavrov pointed out. Lavrov also noted that Russia is glad to see any initiatives concerning the Ukrainian settlement, including the one proposed by former US President Donald Trump, provided they will help eliminate the root causes of the crisis. “Trump said some time ago that he would need 24 hours. Now the wording is different,” Lavrov recalled. “We will welcome any initiatives that will bring about the desired result.” “And there can be only one result – a settlement of this problem on the basis of eliminating the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis,” Lavrov stated.

Sep 29, 2024

Featured • Dennis Kucinich: Mistaking Militarism for Statecraft, Empire for Democracy and Debt for Prosperity, Scheerpost, Sep 28, 2024
There's a lot in here to unpack. Really good writing and content. I am inspired.

Featured • Lukashenko predicts Russia-Ukraine reconciliation, RT, Sep 28, 2024

Russia and Ukraine will eventually overcome their animosity after the conflict between the two neighbors comes to an end, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday. The two sides need to start looking for a negotiated solution right now, he added. “We need to find common ground with Ukrainians to stop this war,” Lukashenko told students from the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radio Electronics. Neither side should “go any further,” he said, as they have already done “more than enough.” The Belarusian leader predicted that Russia and Ukraine will eventually restore good relations, pointing to his own country’s relations with Germany after World War II. “Belarus was entirely destroyed,” he said, referring to the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Republic of Belarus, which was part of the USSR at the time.

“Yet… your generation, even mine, were already talking normally to the Germans,” he explained. ”Human memory… heals these wounds,” Lukashenko said. He also stated that Minsk maintains contact with Kiev, all while being a close ally with Moscow. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “does not want to hear” about peace only because “Americans are pushing him towards war,” the Belarusian president said. According to Lukashenko, Washington is the only party that is benefiting from the conflict, and is doing so at the expense of Ukraine and even its allies in Europe. The US is using Ukraine to develop its own defense industries by pouring money into weapons production for military aid to the country.

Europe could also be stronger if it worked with Russia instead of simply following the US, Lukashenko said. The combination of European technology and Russian resources could give the continent a boost in development, he said, arguing that instead of this, German companies have been deprived of cheap Russian energy and are shutting down. “Don’t think that Americans and Europeans are one family. Americans do not need a strong Europe,” he warned.

The Ukrainian military has been so depleted by attrition that new infantry troops are often unfit for combat and flee at the first sign of fighting, the Financial Times reported on Friday. In some units, around two thirds of soldiers are reportedly killed or wounded within days of arriving at the front. Manpower shortages have plagued the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) for well over a year, according to reports in Ukrainian and Western media outlets. After multiple rounds of conscription, the average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now 45, and many of those sent to the front are unfit for combat, multiple commanders and soldiers told the British newspaper. “When the new guys get to the position, a lot of them run away at the first shell explosion,” a deputy commander fighting near Ugledar in Donetsk Region said.

Another commander whose unit is attempting to hold the nearby town of Khurakove said that “some guys freeze [because] they are too afraid to shoot the enemy, and then they are the ones who leave in body bags or severely wounded.” The commanders estimated that 50-70% of new infantry troops are killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation. Russian forces have gained ground near Ugledar, Khurakove, and the key logistics hub of Povrovsk in recent weeks. Many of the AFU’s most experienced troops were pulled from this sector of the front in August to take part in the invasion of Russia’s Kursk Region, an operation that has cost Kiev more than 17,750 servicemen, over 130 tanks, and hundreds of other combat vehicles, according to the latest figures from the Russian Defense Ministry.

Experienced soldiers “are being killed off too quickly” and replaced by older and less fit men, another commander told the Financial Times. “As infantry, you need to run, you need to be strong, you need to carry heavy equipment,” he said, adding: “It’s hard to do that if you aren’t young.” As of May, the Ukrainian military has been drafting 30,000 soldiers per month. However, AFU Commander-in-Chief General Aleksandr Syrsky admitted earlier this month that these new recruits are often sent to fight with as little as six weeks’ training. The commanders who spoke to the Financial Times said that they consider this training worthless, as many of the AFU’s instructors haven’t seen combat themselves. “Some of them don’t even know how to hold their rifles,” one officer said. “They peel more potatoes than they shoot bullets,” he complained, explaining that he had bought paintball guns in order to teach his new men how to shoot without wasting ammunition.

Vice President Kamala Harris pledged support for Ukraine on Thursday and - in a veiled reference to Donald Trump, her U.S. election rival - said those who would have Ukraine swap land for peace with Russia were supporting "proposals of surrender."

Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House, a day after Trump assailed him for not making a deal with Russia that Trump said could have ended the war.

The vice president said she would work to ensure Ukraine prevails in the war, now in its third year, and achieves a just peace. She then criticized former President Trump, her Republican rival in the Nov. 5 election, without naming him.

Trump later said he would meet Zelenskiy on Friday morning at Trump Tower in New York. While Trump and Zelenskiy spoke by phone in July, they have not met in person since Trump's presidential term ended in 2021.

She said "there are some" in the United States who would force Ukraine to give up large parts of its territory and abandon its security relationships with other nations.

"These proposals are the same as those of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, and let us be clear, they are not proposals for peace. Instead, they are proposals for surrender, which is dangerous and unacceptable," she said.

Trump has said U.S. aid to Ukraine is a waste of money and has declined to say whether he wants Ukraine to win.

This week Trump said the U.S. gives "billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal: Zelenskiy" and added: “There was no deal that he could have made that wouldn’t have been better than the situation you have right now. You have a country that has been obliterated.”

Volodymyr Zelensky left Washington on Thursday without approval to launch long-range strikes at targets deep inside Russia using NATO missiles, prompting observers to suggest his “star power” has faded as Americans grow increasingly tired of or indifferent toward the conflict. A former DoD insider explains told Sputnik what’s really going on. Ukraine’s self-proclaimed president made last-ditch pre-election appeals to President Biden, Vice President Harris and lawmakers on Capitol Hill during his trip to Washington this week to sell his so-called “victory plan” – aimed at forcing Russia to sue for peace by greenlighting Ukraine’s use of long-range NATO strike systems to attack Russia, and applying for membership in NATO “within months,” rather than years. US and European legacy media proved surprisingly cool in their coverage of the visit by Zelensky, who until recently was treated with rock star status in Western capitals.

...A big part of the problem for Zelensky is that the US is now so deep into the 2024 presidential campaign “that everybody is distracted by it,” according to Maloof, with the Biden-Harris White House likely seeking to avoid making “any decisions that will have long-term impact,” or prove unpopular among voters as support for additional Ukraine aid fades. “Clearly, Trump has an entirely different idea and approach than Harris and Biden have toward support for Ukraine. And I think that if he were to win, it would have a dramatic impact on…any future decision-making toward what arms Ukraine does have,” Maloof said. “Trump agreed to meet with [Zelensky], but he made it clear that he would be talking to President Putin. And he has a relationship there.”

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s so-called ‘victory plan’ is being undermined by the reality that his nation does not have enough manpower or resources to prevail over Russia, The Economist reported on Thursday. Zelensky is currently visiting the US to promote his proposal, which reportedly boils down to the West increasing its backing in terms of cash and weapons so Kiev can continue fighting. The British magazine described the dire situation affecting the Ukrainian economy and dwindling military manpower. Unlike Moscow, which is fielding volunteers, Kiev relies on forced conscription, it noted. ”Officers complain that many of those drafted into service are ill-suited to fighting: too old, too ill, too drunk. There is no clear path out of the army once in it, which makes being mobilized seem like a one-way ticket to the morgue,” The Economist said.

”Some 5-10% of soldiers on active duty are absent without leave,” it added, noting that “fewer than 30% of Ukrainians consider draft-dodging shameful.” There is a generational gap, with younger men eligible for military service being far less inclined to support Zelensky’s uncompromising stance, compared to those too old to be recruited, the report added. In a separate editorial article on Thursday, the magazine accused Zelensky of “defying reality” with his military strategy, warning that he would “drive away Ukraine’s backers and further divide Ukrainian society” if he keeps pursuing it.

Ukraine needs to redefine victory over Russia as “becoming a prosperous, Western-leaning democracy,” after making concessions for the sake of peace. In return for “embracing this grim truth, Western leaders need to make his overriding war aim credible by ensuring that Ukraine has the military capacity and security guarantees it needs,” it suggested.Moscow has stated that NATO’s intention to draw Ukraine into its ranks was one of the key triggers for the hostilities. Its vision for a stable peace includes a cap on Ukraine’s military strength and its non-alignment. Kiev agreed to those terms during peace talks in the early phase of the conflict, but then reportedly made a U-turn at the West’s suggestion.

US President Joe Biden announced nearly $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine on Thursday, releasing the remaining funding authorized by Congress. Lawmakers recently declined to extend the availability of certain funds beyond next week’s deadline. The funding includes $2.4 billion under the Pentagon’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and $5.5 billion under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA). The mechanisms allow payments to arms manufacturers and permit weapons to be drawn directly from American military stockpiles. The latter sum was set to expire at the end of this month, which marks the end of the fiscal year in the US. The White House had hoped that the US Congress would allow the PDA money to be spent at a later point. However, legislation passed on Wednesday did not include any such clause, reportedly following resistance from Republicans skeptical of the continued bankrolling of Kiev.

Biden announced the decision on military aid during a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, who is in the US to promote his ‘victory plan’ in the conflict with Russia. Zelensky has said he wanted the US president to be the first to see the proposal as it heavily relies on American aid. According to the Wall Street Journal, US officials have previewed the plan but found it “unimpressive.” The US president said Kiev will receive an additional Patriot surface-to-air system, more munitions and drones, as well as a new capability, the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW). The glide bomb has a range of up to 130km when dropped from a high-flying aircraft.

Sep 27, 2024

 • The Wait is Over: Putin Unveils New Nuclear Doctrine in Final Warning to West, Simplicius, Sep 26, 2024

 • Biden drains remaining Ukraine aid funds, RT, Sep 26, 2024

US President Joe Biden announced nearly $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine on Thursday, releasing the remaining funding authorized by Congress. Lawmakers recently declined to extend the availability of certain funds beyond next week’s deadline. The funding includes $2.4 billion under the Pentagon’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and $5.5 billion under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA). The mechanisms allow payments to arms manufacturers and permit weapons to be drawn directly from American military stockpiles. The latter sum was set to expire at the end of this month, which marks the end of the fiscal year in the US. The White House had hoped that the US Congress would allow the PDA money to be spent at a later point. However, legislation passed on Wednesday did not include any such clause, reportedly following resistance from Republicans skeptical of the continued bankrolling of Kiev.

Biden announced the decision on military aid during a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, who is in the US to promote his ‘victory plan’ in the conflict with Russia. Zelensky has said he wanted the US president to be the first to see the proposal as it heavily relies on American aid. According to the Wall Street Journal, US officials have previewed the plan but found it “unimpressive.” The US president said Kiev will receive an additional Patriot surface-to-air system, more munitions and drones, as well as a new capability, the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW). The glide bomb has a range of up to 130km when dropped from a high-flying aircraft.

Sep 26, 2024

Featured • The US Empire Does Not Seek Peace; Its Existence Depends On Endless War, Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 26, 2024

Everything about the US-centralized power structure is pointed at continuous military expansionism and mass military violence. Once you’ve decided that it’s your job to try to bring the entire population of your whole planet under the rule of a single power umbrella at any cost, you’ve accepted that you will be using violent force in perpetuity, because that’s the only way to subdue populations who have no interest in such an arrangement. You might tell yourself that you want peace, and at times you might even actively try to avoid war, but everything about the way you’ve arranged your operation makes war inevitable.

This is the kind of environment that western empire managers spend their careers being groomed into accepting as normal. So they might actually believe they are telling the truth when they say their government wants peace, but this is the same as a fire saying it’s doing everything it can to cool down the firewood.

It is the fire’s nature to burn, and it is the US empire’s nature to make war. War is interwoven into every fiber of its existence. It’s written into every part of its code. As soon as the mass-scale use of violence ends, the globe-spanning power structure that’s loosely centralized around Washington will end. War is the glue that holds that power structure together.

Russia should update its nuclear doctrine to clearly define circumstances that could prompt Moscow to launch a nuclear strike, President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of the national security council on Wednesday. He also suggested an expanded list of threats that would include “reliable information” of a major airstrike being launched against Russia. The list of criteria that would justify Russia’s use of its nuclear deterrent should be expanded in the updated version of the doctrine, Putin told the meeting. “Aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state… supported by a nuclear power should be treated as their joint attack,” the president said. Moscow would also “consider” resorting to a nuclear response if it gets “reliable information” about a “massive” missile or air strike launched by another state against Russia, or its closest ally, Belarus, according to Putin.

The weapons used in an enemy’s potential strike could include anything from ballistic or cruise missiles to strategic aircraft and drones, he stated. “We reserve a right to use nuclear weapons in case of aggression against Russia and Belarus,” the Russian president said, adding that the principle had already been coordinated with Minsk. Nuclear weapons can be used if an enemy poses a “critical threat to either state’s sovereignty through the use of conventional weapons,” he explained.

President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.

The decision to change Russia's official nuclear doctrine is the Kremlin's answer to deliberations in the United States and Britain about whether or not to give Ukraine permission to fire conventional Western missiles into Russia.

Putin, opening a meeting of Russia's Security Council, said that the changes were in response to a swiftly changing global landscape which had thrown up new threats and risks for Russia.

The 71-year-old Kremlin chief, the primary decision-maker on Russia's vast nuclear arsenal, said he wanted to underscore one key change in particular.

"It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation," Putin said.

"The conditions for Russia's transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed," Putin said, adding that Moscow would consider such a move if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft or drones against it.

Russia reserved the right to also use nuclear weapons if it or ally Belarus were the subject of aggression, including by conventional weapons, Putin said.

Putin said the clarifications were carefully calibrated and commensurate with the modern military threats facing Russia - confirmation that the nuclear doctrine was changing.

Russia's current published nuclear doctrine, set out in a 2020 decree by Putin, says Russia may use nuclear weapons in case of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

The innovations outlined by Putin include a widening of the threats under which Russia would consider a nuclear strike, the inclusion of ally Belarus under the nuclear umbrella and the idea that a rival nuclear power supporting a conventional strike on Russia would also be considered to be attacking it.

..."The nuclear triad remains the most important guarantee of ensuring the security of our state and citizens, an instrument for maintaining strategic parity and balance of power in the world," Putin said.

Russia, he said, would consider using nuclear weapons "upon receiving reliable information about the massive launch of aerospace attack vehicles and their crossing of our state border, meaning strategic or tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft."

“Ukraine is gone. It’s not Ukraine any more,” he said. “You can never replace those cities and towns, and you can never replace the dead people, so many dead people. Any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than what we have right now.”

President Vladimir Putin’s warning that Russia would update its national nuclear doctrine is “irresponsible,” according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

On Wednesday, Putin suggested that under a revised version of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, any aggression against the country by a non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state could be considered a “joint attack” and cross the nuclear threshold. The proposed change implies that the new rules could apply to a Ukrainian strike deep inside Russia with advanced weapons supplied by the US, Britain or France.

“It’s totally irresponsible,” Blinken said in an interview with MSNBC on Thursday, accusing Putin of “rattling the nuclear saber.”

Republican officials have accused Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of interfering in US electoral politics and “campaigning” for presidential candidate Kamala Harris, after he visited an arms factory in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro gave Zelensky a tour of the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant over the weekend, where both signed 155mm artillery shells that will presumably be shipped to Ukrainian troops. Republican officials have taken issue with the photo op, as well as Zelensky’s recent interview with the New Yorker magazine, in which he criticized former President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, the party’s nominees in the November presidential election. “Zelensky is openly campaigning for Democrats in battleground Pennsylvania today some 50 days out from our Presidential election. Unreal,” Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt wrote on X.

Sep 25, 2024

Featured • US must get out of Ukraine – Trump, RT, Sep 25, 2024

The United States needs a clear exit strategy for the Ukraine conflict, Donald Trump has told supporters at a campaign rally, insisting that neither his Democratic rival Kamala Harris nor President Joe Biden has any such plan.

“Biden and Kamala got us into this war in Ukraine, and now they can't get us out. They can't get us out,” the former president told the crowd in Savannah, Georgia, on Tuesday, reiterating his promise to end the conflict immediately if he is re-elected.

“I think that we're stuck in that war unless I'm president. I'll get it done. I'll negotiate; I’ll get us out. We gotta get out. Biden says, ‘We will not leave until we win,’” Trump claimed.

"What happens if the Russians win? That’s what they do – they fight wars. As someone told me the other day, they beat Hitler; they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do. They fight. And it’s not pleasant,” Trump said.

At another campaign rally on Monday, the Republican candidate claimed that Vladimir Zelensky wants Harris to win “so badly” because, as long as Democrats remain in power, the Ukrainian leader walks away with $60 billion every time he comes to the US.

Two key posts – in foreign and defense policy – reveal the militarist and anti-Russia direction of the European Union. Ursula Von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission – which works as the executive branch of the European Union – announced her new team of commissioners for the next five years. Taking over as foreign affairs minister for the 27-nation bloc is Kaja Kallas who is a staunch Russophobe and vigorous supporter of Ukraine. Kallas has called for more EU and NATO military funding for Ukraine to “defeat Russia” and the break up of the Russian Federation. The former Estonian prime minister has led the movement to destroy Soviet Red Army monuments across the Baltic states. (This is while her investor husband continues to profit from doing business with Russia.)

Working closely alongside Kallas will be another rabid Russophobe, the former Lithuanian prime minister Andrius Kubilius, who is taking up a newly created EU post as defense commissioner. The creation of that post is an alarming sign of how the EU bloc has transitioned from a trade and political union to a military organization. But what’s even more alarming is the assigning of such an anti-Russia hawk as Kubilius to oversee military policy. At a time when relations between the EU and Russia have become so fraught with tensions, the European bloc is giving politicians from hostile Baltic states a driving seat to push relations even further towards conflict. Indeed, the first announcement Kubilius made as the prospective new defense commissioner was that the European Union would likely be at war with Russia in the next six to eight years. That assessment is shared by Kaja Kallas.

Kubilius said the sole focus during his tenure is ramping up military spending by the EU nations to boost NATO and aid Ukraine. He said that he will be working closely with foreign policy chief Kallas to tap funds. What this means is that the European Union is moving towards making it mandatory for national budgets to allocate more to military procurement. That’s a breakthrough for all the worst reasons. Kubilius is reportedly aiming for a budget of €500 billion over the next five years to be spent on the military by the EU. That increase would represent about half of the projected EU total budget. His comments indicate the purpose of the massive redirection of finances – to boost NATO. Kubilius noted that “the European Union has instruments to get larger financing, which NATO doesn’t.”

It is wrong that “peace” has become a curse word in international politics, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has insisted. The fighting between Russia and Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East are at risk of escalating and could “undermine global security at any moment,” Szijjarto said in his speech at the Summit of the Future at UN headquarters in New York on Monday. Humanity could be faced with two “sad” scenarios if tensions keep mounting: the outbreak of the Third World War or the world being divided into blocs again, he warned. The question now is whether such outcomes could be avoided and “whether the global pro-peace majority can ensure that the word ‘peace’ is not used as a swear word in international politics,” the foreign minister stressed.

There are many reasons why Europe wants to prolong the war in Ukraine. Irrational liberal ideology and commitment to the project of a unipolar global order are undoubtedly the most important reasons. However, business and private profit cannot be ignored. According to many recent reports, there has been a huge increase in the profits of military-industrial companies in a number of Western countries, which explains the thirst for war of the pro-Ukrainian oligarchies. One of the most notorious cases of this war profiteering is taking place in Germany. The military giant Rheinmettall is seeing its profits growing amid a wave of systematic support for the Kiev regime. By continuously and incessantly sending weapons, the German company has managed to escape a serious financial crisis and now has a chance to once again rank among the world’s leading defense companies.

Sep 23, 2024

Featured • A Nuclear War in Ukraine Is a Distinct Possibility, C.J. Polychroniou, Common Dreams, Sep 21, 2024

Did NATO provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Even if so, didn’t Moscow have any other options other than to resort to the use of military force?

NATO provoked the invasion and sabotaged all paths to peace. The NATO countries affirmed on several occasions that the UN-approved Minsk agreement was the only path to a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine, yet then admitted that it was merely a ruse to militarize Ukraine. This convinced the Russians that NATO was pursuing a military solution to the conflict in Ukraine that would also involve an invasion of Crimea. As argued by a top advisor to former French president Sarkozy, the U.S.-Ukrainian strategic agreement of November 2021 convinced Russia it had to attack or be attacked.

Russia considered NATO in Ukraine to be an existential threat, and NATO refused to give Russia any security guarantees to mitigate these security concerns. The former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, argued during the Biden-Putin discussions that no agreements should be made with Russia as “success is confrontation.” This war is a great tragedy as it has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians and Russians, made Europe weaker and more dependent, and taken the world to the brink of nuclear war. By failing to admit NATO’s central role in provoking this war, we also prevent ourselves from recognizing possible political solutions.

Russia and Ukraine were close to war-ending agreements in April of 2022, but apparently certain western leaders convinced Ukrainian president Zelensky to back down from such a deal. Is Ukraine a US pawn on a geo-political chessboard?

Zelensky confirmed on the first day after the Russian invasion that Moscow had contacted Kiev to discuss a peace agreement based on restoring Ukraine’s neutrality. On the third day after the invasion, Russia and Ukraine agreed to start negotiations. Yet, the American spokesperson suggested the US could not support such negotiations. When the negotiations nonetheless began, Boris Johnson was sent to Kiev to sabotage them. Johnson later wrote an op-ed warning against a bad peace. The Ukrainian negotiators and the Israeli and Turkish mediators all confirmed that Russia was willing to pull back its troops and compromise on almost everything if Ukraine would restore its neutrality to end NATO expansionism. The mediators also confirmed that the US and UK saw an opportunity to bleed Russia and thus weaken a strategic rival by fighting with Ukrainians. The US and UK told Ukraine they would not support a peace agreement based on neutrality, but NATO would supply all the weapons Ukraine would need if Ukraine pulled out of the negotiations and chose war instead. Interviews with American and British leaders made it clear that the only acceptable outcome for the war was regime change in Moscow, while other political leaders began to speak about breaking up Russia into many smaller countries.

Yes, I believe that Ukraine is a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard. Why do we not listen to all the American political and military leaders who describe this as a good war and an opportunity to weaken Russia without using American soldiers?

...Ukraine has become increasingly a de facto NATO member. What are the chances that Russia might introduce tactical nuclear weapons in the battlefield to achieve its aims?

Russia permits the use of nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or if its existence is threatened. NATO becoming directly involved in the war is considered an existential threat by Russia, and Russia has warned that NATO would become directly involved by supplying long-range precision missiles. Such missiles will need to be operated by American and British soldiers and navigated by their satellites, thus this represents a NATO attack on Russia. We are very close to a nuclear war, and we are deluding ourselves by suggesting we are merely helping Ukraine defend itself.

In 2022, Vance said that he did not “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” stating that he was more focused on domestic issues like illegal immigration and the fentanyl crisis. Vance has backed Trump’s claim that he would end the fighting purely through diplomatic means. He suggested that the settlement could resemble the “current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine” and include “a demilitarized zone.” He also argued that Russia should receive a “guarantee of neutrality” from Ukraine, and that Kiev should renounce plans to join NATO.

Russia has no alternative to achieving victory in its military operation in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “For Russia, there have been no other alternatives in history, and there is no alternative to our victory now,” Peskov said in an interview with Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin published on his Telegram channel. Russia should regard the West’s stance seriously, given its intentions to defeat the country both “strategically and tactically,” the spokesman added. “They openly say that their goal is to defeat Russia strategically and tactically. This obliges us to take this position very seriously, to shape our actions in consideration of this threat and to continue the special military operation in order to achieve all our goals, fulfill all set objectives and achieve victory ourselves,” Peskov said.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has taken flak from the political class of his home country over his support for continued dialogue between Russia and Europe amid the Ukraine crisis. The Social Democrat politician was the architect of the German ‘economic miracle’ of the 2000s, facilitated by boosting energy cooperation with Russia. Anyone dreaming about “defeating” Russia militarily needs a history lesson, Gerhard Schroeder has said. “I recommend that everyone who believes this look at the history books. From Napoleon to Hitler, everyone failed because of this,” the veteran statesman told German media. The Ukrainian crisis has served to consolidate Russian society, with Russians “convinced that the West is only using Ukraine as a spearhead to bring Russia to its knees,” Schroeder added.

The latest WaPo piece describes a state of disarray in the West political class when it comes to a way forward against a clearly defiant and unbending Russia. You see, all the provocations, games, and peace ‘tricks’ were meant to bow Russia to the West’s leverage, but the Empire is finding that, after decades of dealing with shallow vassals, confronting one of the last remaining truly sovereign nations in the world is a glaringly different endeavour.

Most vexing is Putin’s national consensus, another cryptic koan to the West so habituated to their leaders’ gutter status as pariahs amongst a populace ruled only by ‘virtue’ of stolen elections, mass propaganda, and an iron fist.

Even as Putin faces Western efforts to isolate him, he seems increasingly invincible at home. Putin’s most formidable challenger, Alexei Navalny, died in prison in February. Any sign of political dissent is quickly crushed. What is left of the Russian opposition is now largely in exile. And even embarrassing military setbacks, such as Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, have not weakened Putin’s grip on power.

Flummoxed, the West finds itself between pillar and post:

“There are no good choices here — it’s just degrees of bad going forward,” said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at Rand, adding that “accepting Russian conditions that are unacceptable” would be a mistake. Instead, he urged “a combination of deterrence and potential negotiations.”

The article finishes on the grand vision of combating Putin, which is in effect, creating a supranational new totalitarian deep state order to rule over the West permanently, in order to Trump-proof and, in general, future-proof the West’s anti-Russian hostility, so no truly democratic force can emend it later on:

Because Russia is a long-term threat, Hill said, the structures to address that threat must also be long-term or Putin will always claim the advantage. She urged a more consistent response, spanning administrations — creating “a kind of permanent secretariat” with allies to maintain a consistent Russia policy.

Trump, meanwhile, has stirred uncertainty. He has boasted that his rapport with Putin, Xi and Kim would allow him to swiftly sort the world out on American terms. But the deepening ties between Moscow, Beijing and other adversaries complicate the picture.

A “permanent secretariat” to maintain a “consistent” policy in perpetuity. I’ll translate the Newspeak: create a permanent central authority which no “sovereign” nation can question to make sure populist leaders can never revolt against the globalist totalitarian dictatorship and its quest to enslave the planet under one hegemonic rule.

Sep 22, 2024

Featured • SITREP 9/20/24: Ukraine Allies Squeezed by Weapons Drought as Clock Ticks, Simplicius, Sep 21, 2024

Featured • The Madness of Antony Blinken, Joe Lauria, Consortium News, Sep 20, 2024

On March 7, 2022, two weeks after Moscow entered the civil war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS News from Moldova that the U.S. would give NATO-member Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to enforce a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer then also backed the no-fly zone. But within days the Pentagon shot down the idea as it engaged in a consequential battle with the State Department and members of Congress to prevent a direct NATO military confrontation with Russia that could unleash history’s most unimaginable horrors.

...

(The administration plan was, and apparently still is, to bring down the Russian government through a proxy counteroffensive and an economic and information war, not a direct military one.)

Blinken, who stepped out of line to speak above the heads of the president and the Pentagon, lost that round. It’s surprising he kept his job. But he survived and now he’s come back for more.

Relentless

Blinken’s recklessness emerged yet again last week when he peddled a story — eagerly picked up by The Guardian and The New York Times — that Biden would approve a British request to fire its Storm Shadow missiles deep into Russia.

...To fire British Storm Shadows, Ukraine would have to depend on British technical soldiers on the ground in Ukraine to actually launch them and on U.S. geolocation technology. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz revealed those British soldiers are already in Ukraine.

In other words, it would be a NATO attack on Russia, dressed up as a Ukrainian one. It would mean the U.S. and Britain were at war with Moscow, something Blinken seems to want and said was going to happen.

The next day Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that launching such missiles into Russia “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

Nevertheless, The New York Times ran a story on the same day with the headline: “Biden Poised to Approve Ukraine’s Use of Long-Range Western Weapons in Russia.”

The Guardian added:

“British government sources indicated that a decision had already been made to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia, although it is not expected to be publicly announced on Friday when Starmer meets Biden in Washington DC.”

Blinken’s words evidently raised British Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s hopes that he would satisfy his desire to strike Russia with his nation’s arsenal of long-range missiles, despite Putin saying that meant direct war with NATO.

Blinken and the British are trying to lead us to the brink.

Sanity in Arlington

Except that the Pentagon, the purveyor of the most monstrous violence in world history, has pulled the world back from it.

For at least the second time — publicly known — the Department of War secured peace from neocon recklessness fronted by Blinken.

Sep 20, 2024

Featured • SCOTT RITTER: 72 Minutes, Consortium News, Sep 19, 2024
Subtlety has been largely stripped from Ritter's analysis so readers will get the point, the very big, sharp point. We seem to be a nation of children.

Featured • Let Ukraine strike into the heart of Russia, MEPs urge EU countries, Joshua Posaner and Max Griera, Politico, Sep 19, 2024

European Parliament lawmakers want all capitals to allow Ukraine's military to use long-range missiles against targets on Russian territory, according to a non-binding resolution adopted on Thursday.

The text asks EU countries to "immediately lift restrictions on the use of Western weapons systems delivered to Ukraine against legitimate military targets on Russian territory."

A failure by governments to agree to allow Kyiv to deploy donated long-range missiles undermines efforts by Ukraine to protect its cities and infrastructure, the MEPs agreed in a 425 -131 vote with 63 abstentions.

While Germany has so far refused to send its Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, France and Italy have both dispatched their Scalp missiles. As reported by POLITICO, the United States is working on a deal with the United Kingdom to approve the use of its Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia.

The resolution also demands that EU countries increase financing for Ukraine, boost humanitarian aid and do more to protect airspace around the country's borders.

"Ukraine should have a right to use Western weapons against legitimate targets on Russian territory," said one of the resolution's authors, German Green Sergey Lagodinsky. "Just like international law allows it to."

Between the war-planning and the shifting political loyalties, what have we witnessed over these past couple of weeks? This is our question.

When the Cheneys, père et fille, enlisted in the Harris campaign’s ranks, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign’s chairwoman, lauded the former for his courage and the latter for her patriotism. Elsewhere in the Harris “hive,” as I gather we are calling it, liberal commentators stopped just short of gushing over Liz and Dick Cheney’s political migration, ignoring the fact it appears to be mere opportunism.

James Carden had a pithy piece on this, “Cheneymania Seizes the Democrats,” in the Sept. 12 edition of The American Conservative. “The wild applause that met Liz’s announcement … is indicative of where liberals now place their priorities,” the longtime Washington commentator wrote, “and goes a long way toward explaining why they cannot be trusted on matters of national security.”

...

Stephen Cohen used to joke, except that he wasn’t joking, that there is one party in Washington and it is rightly called the War Party. We have just had a reminder of the late and eminent Russianist’s prescience. There is no intent among the people telling Kamala Harris what to profess to question this nation’s numerous aggressions and illegalities, or even to reconsider the Biden regime’s disastrously miscalculated foreign policies, which are indistinguishable from the neoconservative agenda Democrats, once upon a time, pretended to oppose.

Read A New Way Forward, a 13–page document. The one and a half pages given to national security and foreign affairs amount to a screed dedicated to Russophobia, Sinophobia, NATOphilia and “the most lethal fighting force in the world,” which seems to be Harris’s idea of a diplomatic corps. This is how Steve Cohen’s War Party thinks and what it sounds like. As a statement of intent, the Harris–Walz platform is entirely accommodating of the Biden White House’s very likely decision to escalate the Ukraine conflict to the point of risking the World War III Biden pretends not to want.

...

These proposals, if confirmed as Zelensky makes his next trip to Washington, all align in one direction: The Kiev regime’s running theme remains dragging the West further into the war rather as the Netanyahu regime in Israel is forever trying to do the same in West Asia. Zelensky, the Israeli prime minister, Biden: The world’s problem right now, or one of them, is that none of these people can afford to lose the wars their hubris led them to start.

The Anglos and the Americans are likely to make an official announcement about the use of long-range missiles against Russia after the U.N. General Assembly concludes its business on Sept. 28. Starmer has recently indicated as much. In the best outcome we will find that Putin has rattled Washington and London such that they will step back from this latest plan to escalate. It is possible. But the U.S. and the other NATO powers have not done much stepping back to date, we are well to remind ourselves.

The Russian military is set to receive ten times more drones in 2024 than it did in the year before, President Vladimir Putin announced on Thursday during a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission on the development of unmanned aircraft systems. The president stated that in 2023, the Russian Armed Forces received nearly 140,000 drones of various types and their production rate has since gone up significantly. “This year, the production of drones is planned to increase several times, or to be more precise, almost ten times,” Putin said. He said that the range of unmanned systems is being expanded and that unmanned boats are being developed as well.

“The key task is to produce a wide range of unmanned aerial vehicles and to set up serial production of such promising technology as quickly as possible,” Putin explained, adding that it is necessary to “fully meet” the needs of the armed forces and increase drone production and the technical and tactical characteristics of UAVs, which includes actively introducing elements of artificial intelligence. “Along with the development of drones, we need to look for means of their electronic and conventional destruction. This will save the lives of our military personnel, civilians and more reliably protect military equipment, civilian infrastructure, and critically important facilities,” the president said.

On its part, Moscow estimates that although no official decision on the matter has been announced, it has already been made and communicated to Kiev, and that Moscow would have to respond with actions of its own.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, Moscow’s point person on the diplomatic track, was quoted as saying on Saturday, “The decision has been made, the carte blanche and all indulgences have been given (to Kiev), so we [Russia] are ready for everything. And we will react in a way that will not be pretty.”

Sep 19, 2024

 • Putin Has Allowed the West to Cross So Many Lines That He Is Now Under Pressure to Respond, Anatol Lieven, The Nation, Sep 18, 2024

By far the best chance for a peace settlement that avoids Western humiliation and further Russian gains, but that Russia could accept, would be one advanced by leading countries in the Global South through the United Nations. India, South Africa, and Brazil greatly desire an end to the war through a compromise peace, and have no sympathy with either Russian or Western maximalist aims. As I was told in Moscow, given the effort that Russia has invested in wooing these countries, it would be very difficult for the Kremlin to reject a peace plan from this source, as long as it met basic Russian conditions. If it chose to behave as a political great power, rather than posturing as a military one, Britain could help encourage such an effort.

Ukraine launched another major drone barrage against targets inside Russia on Wednesday and hit a Russian military warehouse in the town of Toropets in the Tver Oblast, causing a massive explosion.

Toropets is about 300 miles from the Ukrainian border and 250 miles northwest of the Russian capital of Moscow.

A Ukrainian official speaking to The Associated Press said the attack was carried out by Ukraine’s Security Service, along with Ukrainian Intelligence and Special Operations Forces. The official claimed the warehouse housed Iskander and Tochka-U missiles, glide bombs, and artillery shells.

Sep 18, 2024

Featured  • Russian National Guard Destroys Ukraine's Starlink Station in Chernigov Region Strike, Sputnik International, Sep 18, 2024

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Wednesday that dismissing Russian President Vladimir Putin's warnings about the dangers of Ukraine using Western weapons to attack Russian territory is both provocative and perilous.

"Such a ostentatious desire not to take seriously the statements of the Russian president is an absolutely short-sighted and unprofessional step," Peskov told reporters.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg denied in an interview out on Tuesday that allowing Ukraine to use long-range Western weapons to strike deep into Russia would cross country's "red line" despite warnings from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"There have been many red lines declared by him [Putin] before, and he has not escalated, meaning also involving Nato allies directly in the conflict," Stoltenberg told The Times newspaper.

Stoltenberg said that he supported the United Kingdom and France in their decision to lift restrictions on Kiev's use of long-range weapons against Russia. He argued that their use by Ukraine would not draw the alliance into conflict with Russia.

The war fever in the U.S. foreign policy establishment is at such a pitch that it is hard to tell whether they believe their own rhetoric. In last Tuesday’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris conjured up images of Russian forces rolling across Europe. Surely she must know how absurd that is. For one thing, Russia can barely wrest a few provinces from Ukraine, which is by no means one of Europe’s great powers.

Secondly, Russia made its war aims very clear at the outset — most notably Ukrainian neutrality and a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion. Hundreds of thousands of lost lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars later, no one is better off — not Europe, not America and certainly not Ukraine.

It is past time to de-escalate this conflict. This is more important than any of the political issues our nation argues about. Nuclear war would mean the end of civilization as we know it, maybe even the end of the human species.

Former President Donald Trump has vowed to end this war, but by the time he takes office, it might be too late. We need to demand, right now, that Harris and President Biden reverse their insane war agenda and open direct negotiations with Moscow.

The situation in Europe is getting so bad on so many different levels, the Brussels crowd had to bring in “Super” Mario Draghi to save the day — or at least write a report telling them what to do.

Draghi has spent time at Goldman Sachs, the European Central Bank (ECB) during the sovereign debt crisis, and as unelected prime minister of Italy during the early days of the Covid pandemic and runup to Project Ukraine. Depending on where you sit, he could be an odd choice to chart a path forward; while Draghi knows his way around a crisis control center, he’s also plenty experienced at creating them.

He was one of the chief architects of the EU’s disastrous economic war against Russia and he’s always been a grim reaper for working class citizens of his native country of Italy. No wonder that for months the neoliberal, war-loving spreadsheet crowd in Brussels has eagerly awaited the report as if it is manna from heaven that will help deliver them from the corner they have backed themselves into.

Curiously, his report was delayed by months, which only increased the anticipation, and it finally dropped last week, conveniently timed at another crisis point. Project Ukraine is quickly unraveling and pressure is coming from all directions for Berlin to give the go ahead for joint EU debt in order to make the EU “competitive” again and buy a bunch of weapons to do something (nobody is too sure of what exactly) about Russia. Indeed, Draghi’s report doesn’t say, nor does it ever consider making nice with Moscow....

This is not a plan to “save” Europe. It is part of the ongoing effort to recreate Europe as a neoliberal paradise for the financial sector and an anti-Russian servant to Washington.

No hundreds of billions in weapons purchases and streamlining will make a difference in Ukraine or in some hypothetical war agaisnt Russia, but it does take advantage of the self-inflicted crisis to shift more power to Brussels, reward investors, and punish workers holding back productivity. The report laments how the US is so much more “successful” in the realms of private equity and venture capital, and has such higher productivity in sectors like healthcare. Yes, who wouldn’t want to emulate the US healthcare system? Maybe all the military hardware will be useful in disciplining the local population in the name of competitiveness ...

This week, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) joined members of the bipartisan Congressional Ukraine Caucus in calling on President Bidento lift the restrictions on Ukraine that are currently preventing them from using long-range weapons to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia.

“In the spirit of our shared commitment to the defense of Ukraine, we write to request that you immediately end your Administration’s limitations on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons provided by the US and other NATO allies to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia. Unless these restrictions are lifted, Ukraine will continue to struggle to achieve victory in its fight to defend its sovereignty and its people. The Ukrainian people will continue to suffer unnecessary death, loss, and hardship as Russia capitalizes on this policy and escalates its bombardments across Ukraine,” the lawmakers wrote.

Some of Ukraine’s top military commanders opposed President Volodymyr Zelensky’s plans to invade Russia’s Kursk Oblast, but he went through with the assault anyway, POLITICO reported on Tuesday.

The report, which cited Ukrainian military officials, said that Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief and current ambassador to the UK, opposed the offensive when Zelensky first broached the idea earlier this year.

Zaluzhny opposed the offensive because there was no clear second step once the border was breached. “He never got a clear answer from Zelensky,” one of the Ukrainian officials said. “He felt it was a gamble.”

Another Ukrainian officer who opposed the invasion was Emil Ishkulov, the former commander of Ukraine’s 80th Air Assault Brigade. He was removed from his position in July, which drew protests from senior Ukrainian military officials, who said they didn’t understand why Ishkulov was dismissed.

Sep 17, 2024

Featured  • The Odd Couple To Decide the Fate of Humanity, Edward Lozansky, Antiwar.com, Sep 17, 2024

However, no one has done so much damage to the US and the world as Joe Biden during his eight years in the White House as Vice President and President with his Ukrainian project. It is not just the close to $200 billion taken out of US taxpayers’ pockets, or using his son Hunter to make millions abroad for his family, but provoking the war in Ukraine and preventing its end that might bring us to Armageddon.

Here are three key dates to remember (there were other important dates, but I believe these three were crucial): February 2014 – Biden coordinated the regime change coup in Ukraine to replace an administration that preferred the country’s neutral status with a pro-NATO one; December 2021 – Biden rejected Russia’s call for strategic stability negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutral status that could have prevented the February 2022 war; April 2022 – the president derailed with the help of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Istanbul peace negotiations that took place in the weeks after the start of the war, from March to April of 2022, and prevented resumption of these negotiations since then.

The second participant, Zelensky, should be credited with taking his popular but provincial comedy show “95th Quarter,” funded by the above-mentioned criminal Kolomoisky, onto the world stage with the audience representing Who is Who in the West and others. To achieve such huge success, Zelensky paid with Ukrainian lives and bodies by the hundreds of thousands, displaced millions more, overseen the destruction of his country’s infrastructure, ruining its economy, and potentially selling off the remaining Ukrainian wealth to BlackRock’s collective sharks.

Now, he wants to do what he did to Ukraine to the rest of the world by involving the US and NATO in a direct military confrontation with nuclear Russia, basically plagiarizing the classic Barry Levinson story “Wag the Dog.”

Actually, the Russia-West war is already on, when the West is training Ukrainian troops, supplying them with money, weapons, advisors, and intelligence, but so far not the regular military. It looks like no one cares about killed mercenaries, while Ukraine, in the words of John Wight, is “merely a convenient and blood-soaked proxy — a cat’s paw whose manhood has and is being sacrificed on the altar of US-led Western hegemony.”

Additional grim context of this story is not just what this odd couple and the Deep State are doing by pushing us to the brink but the obedient flock of sheep that is called the leadership of the collective West that applauds and follows them. What happened to their dignity, traditions, culture, and values that we admired?

Many in the US and Europe understand what is happening and, like John Wight, are unafraid to speak out. However, their voices have not been heard widely due to unprecedented censorship in the Western media. As a result, the threat of nuclear war is not the main subject bothering the electorate, including the one in the US, where elections are very close.

US tech giant Meta has “discredited itself” by banning Russian media outlets, including RT, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The move further complicates the prospects for “the normalization of relations” with the Facebook and Instagram owner, Peskov added.

The California-based corporation said in a written statement on Monday that it was deplatforming Rossiya Segodnya, RT, and other related entities from its apps due to “foreign interference activity.” The measures will be implemented globally over the next several days.

Put frankly, a new (cleansed) dispensation in Kiev likely would conclude that it has little option other than capitulation on the battlefront, to offer formal neutrality and limits to future militarisation. And Moscow is quite able to discuss ‘that’ with Ukrainians, without ‘help’ from outside.

Of course, a chorus will arise that the U.S. will not be able to accept the complete collapse of Ukraine’s military capabilities – In the run-up to the November elections, that is quite true (rhetorically). That is why Putin keeps the ‘mediation narrative’ alive.

There is the BRICS summit ahead (in Russia, in late October) which needs managing. The West will push mediation until the last, in order to keep the existing Russophobic Kiev regime on life support for as long as possible – and to keep the frozen-conflict notion to the fore in the mind of some BRICS attendees. However, the frozen-conflict proposal is a trap to lay foundations for a future platform of pressures on Russia.

The U.S. and UK intelligence service chiefs may toy with the idea of striking deep inside Russia with ATACMS, but the resort to measures (frankly) aimed to terrorise the Russian civilian population, and to undermine Putin’s popularity, serves more to underline western strategic failure. Yet again, the West has failed to stand up a credible military force to overthrow a target, even one painted in full demonic hues.

The war is lost, and the struggle to keep the ‘enforced pretending’ going is breaking through, to be seen by all as a false reality.

Poland will fulfill its promise to help finance a Czech initiative to buy ammunition for Ukraine from outside the EU, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has told the European Truth news outlet. The Polish diplomat was responding to reports that Warsaw was the only country among Kiev’s backers that had yet to contribute to the scheme, despite vowing to do so earlier this year. According to the Polish newspaper Wyborcza, as of August this year, over a dozen countries had provided funds to buy more than half a million artillery shells, sourced from manufacturers outside the European Union, with Germany providing the largest share. Sikorski acknowledged that Warsaw has yet to make any payments towards the scheme, citing temporary obstacles.

President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree that officially increases the number of personnel in Russia’s armed forces to almost 2.4 million people, including 1.5 million servicemen. The latest increase comes after a similar decree in December 2023, when the president boosted the number of employees in the Russian military to just over 2.2 million, including 1.3 million troops. In his order on Monday, Putin also instructed the Russian government to allocate the necessary funds for the Defense Ministry to carry out the increase, which formally takes the number of personnel in the armed forces to 2,389,130.

Sep 16, 2024

Featured • West Experiences Blowback From Fostering Fascists In Ukraine, Moon of Alabama, Sep 16, 2024

Members of Azov and other 'nationalist' groupings in Ukraine are now experienced fighters. The[y] have the means to fight as there are lots of Ukrainian weapons in unaccountable hands (machine translation):

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine, more than 270,945 weapons have disappeared or been stolen.

...

In less than 2024, more weapons were stolen or lost than in the whole of last year - 78,217 units. At the same time, it is 4 times more than before the start of a full-scale war.

These weapons can be easily smuggled into Europe to target any politician who dares to pressure Ukraine into accepting an end of the war.

The attempted assassination of Trump is only one of the first of such incidents. (The motives for the assassination attempt against the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico are still unknown.)

Many such incidents, predominantly in Europe, are likely to follow.

The US and its ever-loyal followers Canada and Great Britain have launched a fresh information war offensive. If “fresh” is the word: In a new season of the long-running, apparently never-ever ending Russia Rage show (aka “Russiagate”) that at least the American “elites” simply cannot get enough of, it is again – drum roll – RT that is the target. This time, it stands accused not “merely” of spreading “disinformation” (that is, any information Western governments do not like) but of intelligence work as well.

And then some. Such as trying to influence the American elections (yaaawn) and somehow being linked to collecting volunteer contributions for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine – a form of outreach, by the way, which is exactly the same as what Ukrainian organizations do. There also is an even more terrifying revelation. It has dawned on some troglodytes in the US State Department that RT is not relying on mechanical typewriters and the telegraph but has a “cyber” capability!

Or something. That charge really seems to boil down to being internet-literate, a very special skill set that must appear fiendishly futuristic to some in the US administration. And who can blame them? Can you imagine its – official – leader, Joe “Kind-of-Still-President-When-he-Can-Remember” Biden handling even something as almost antediluvian as a laptop? That is better left, as we know, to his son Hunter “The-Naked-and-The-Paid” Biden. And even then, the consequences tend to be dire.

Former British Ambassador Craig Murray reports that in Britain honest news reporting of Israel’s destruction of Palestine is a felony for which journalists are arrested and face long prison sentences. In the US universities are gearing up to prevent any student protests of Israel’s destruction of Palestine. It is becoming ever more impossible to acknowledge reality. Official narratives have taken reality’s place. Manifestations of moral conscience are to be prohibited. In America the Biden regime has characterized RT’s new reporting as “Russian disinformation” and amounts to espionage. For reporting news that the US presstitutes carefully keep from the people, sanctions designed to shut down RT have been imposed. A September 13 report from a NY Times presstitute, “U.S. Accuses Russian TV Network of Conducting Covert Intelligence Acts,” establishes Washington’s false narrative. Honest information is “Kremlin-friendly content.”

I have long reported that truth was being criminalized throughout the Western world. The process has now been completed. It seems that analysts and commentators of foreign policy developments will have to terminate interviews with Russian journalists. As I previously warned, stopping communication between nuclear powers and limiting the narrative to one side’s version enhances the acceptance and likelihood of nuclear war. Neither truth nor freedom can exist without free speech, and free speech is being everywhere suppressed in the Western world. The “free” media itself has abandoned it. The tyranny that has been created in the West is worse than the tyrannies imagined by writers of dystopian novels. It will take time for the full impact to be felt, but it is on its way. With the US and Russia at the point of war, why is Washington stirring the pot with aggressive steps toward Russian media? The charge that RT and Sputnik are committing espionage by reporting differently from the official US narrative is unsupportable.

Such atrocious judgment by Washington seems to indicate a death wish for humanity. At this critical time we need maximum communication, not a cut-off of communication. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Washington is intentionally driving the world to war. As a “free American” I cannot read the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the actions Washington has taken against RT and Sputnik published in Telegram because “this channel can’t be displayed because it violated local laws.” So, we seemed to have reached the point where official statements of the Russian government violate local laws. What is meant by “local laws?” There is certainly no such law in my town or state. Censorship and controlled narratives are tools tyrannies use to protect lies from truth. That Washington uses these tools so extravagantly indicates that Washington’s agenda requires suppression of the truth.

Washington seeks to silence any dissenting voices, as its celebrated “freedom of speech” applies only to those who support the official narrative and obey instructions from US intelligence services, RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said following the latest crackdown on Russian media. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the latest round of sanctions against the news outlet on Friday, accusing it of engaging in “covert influence activities” and “functioning as a de facto arm of Russian intelligence.” Earlier in September, Washington imposed sanctions on Simonyan and three other senior RT employees over alleged attempts to influence the 2024 election. Simonyan asserted that this latest attack on Russian media is a clear effort to clamp down on the information space ahead of the elections.

“They need to silence everyone. This is the story of freedom and democracy in the so-called free West. It seems to me that only clinically insane people or those who are obviously biased can believe in it,” she stated. In practice, the US idea of a free press doesn’t extend to others, she added. It’s very easy to promote freedom of speech and practice it when it’s only your speech that counts and no one else’s. Simonyan argued that Washington’s claims about RT collaborating with Russian intelligence are a “classic case of projection.”

Sep 14, 2024

Featured • US can’t hide from nuclear war – Moscow, RT, Sep 14, 2024

Washington will be unable to hide from a nuclear conflict if it starts across the ocean, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov has said. Fears of a potential escalation between Russia and NATO over Ukraine have been intensifying in recent days, as Western powers reportedly mull the possibility of allowing Kiev to conduct missile strikes deep in Russian territory.

Speaking with Rossiya 24 channel on Friday, Ambassador Antonov said that he is surprised at the “illusion” that “if there is a conflict, it will not spread to the territory of the United States of America.”

“I am constantly trying to convey to them one thesis that the Americans will not be able to sit it out behind the waters of this ocean. This war will affect everyone, so we constantly say – do not play with this rhetoric,” Antonov stated.

He also mentioned that while Western countries accuse Russia of “sabre-rattling,” the US wants to investigate the consequences a nuclear strike would have for Eastern Europe. Antonov was apparently referring to a study ordered by the US Defense Department to simulate the impact of a nuclear conflict on global agriculture. According to a solicitation notice posted on a government procurement platform, the study will focus on regions “beyond Eastern Europe and Western Russia,” which in the simulation is the epicenter of the hypothetical nuclear attack. (emphasis added).

Granting Kiev permission to use Western-supplied weapons would constitute direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict by NATO, Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said. Moscow will treat any such attack as coming from the US and its allies directly, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, explaining that long-range weapons rely on Western intelligence and targeting solutions, neither of which Ukraine is capable of. NATO countries would “start an open war” with Russia if they allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons, Nebenzia told the UN Security Council on Friday.

"If such a decision is made, that means NATO countries are starting an open war against Russia,” Moscow’s envoy said. “In that case, we will obviously be forced to make certain decisions, with all the attendant consequences for Western aggressors.” “Our Western colleagues will not be able to dodge responsibility and blame Kiev for everything,” Nebenzia added. “Only NATO troops can program the flight solutions for those missile systems. Ukraine doesn’t have that capability. This is not about allowing Kiev to strike Russia with long-range weapons, but about the West making the targeting decisions.”

Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk gave an interview to EADaily on September 12 about the causes of the Ukrainian crisis, Russia’s mission and the destructive influence of the collective West. “For a long time an independent Ukraine has not been existing politically, economically, or legally,” Ukrainian opposition politician and Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk told EA Daily. “The country is ruled by an illegitimate president who has usurped power, becoming a dictator.” The Western-backed Euromaidan coup d’etat of 2014 dealt a heavy blow to Ukrainian sovereignty and legitimate power. For 30 years the West has fuelled anti-Russian sentiment, distorted history and facilitated the rise of Nazism in Ukraine.

The Minsk agreements of 2015 corresponded to EU interests, but the UK and US, who sought to start a war, deliberately disrupted the settlement process. Washington’s plan was “to destabilize the situation on Russia’s borders, and then inside Russia. The first step succeeded, the second did not. The US managed to break Ukraine and Europe, but not Russia.” In 2020 Ukraine got a chance to nullify the adverse consequences of the 2014 regime change through democratic means. “Our party ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’ won local elections in 2020, after we were ranked second in the 2019 parliamentary elections, and began to lead in polls across the country,” Medvedchuk said.

But in February 2021 the Zelensky regime illegally blocked broadcasting of opposition channels, slapped sanctions on Medvedchuk and his wife, groundlessly accused him of treason and arrested him in May 2021. Other Ukrainian opposition politicians were also subjected to persecution. The special military operation in Ukraine would not have begun if Zelensky had abandoned the idea of joining NATO.The situation in Ukraine and in the world will improve after the West stops pouring billions into propping up Zelensky, who is a “political Frankenstein”.

The West has received and understood the latest warning by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. Putin stated earlier that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia would make these countries directly involved in the conflict. The UK was the first country to announce the shipment of its own long-range missiles to Ukraine in May 2023, followed by France several months later. Washington revealed that it had supplied Kiev with ATACMS missiles this spring. However, Kiev’s backers have publicly prohibited Ukraine from using the weapons against targets located deep inside internationally recognized Russian territory. Kiev has been demanding that these limitations be lifted since at least May. Several media outlets have suggested that Washington and London will soon do so, or secretly have already.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Peskov described Putin’s latest warning as “very important.” The Russian president’s statement was “clear, unequivocal, and doesn’t lend itself to multiple interpretations,” the spokesman said. He added that “we have no doubt that this statement has reached its recipients.”

Sep 13, 2024

Featured • Raising the Stakes in Ukraine, John Wight, Consortium News, Sep 13, 2024
For crying out loud why doesn't everybody see this? Wight puts a lot of the pieces together in a beautifully-written piece. It's hard to pick out any part to showcase. Maybe this:

Lammy’s announcement that London is to donate an additional £600 million ($800 million) to Ukraine’s coffers, when placed against his same government’s recent decision to cut a winter fuel allowance that will affect 10 million of the country’s old age pensioners, tells us all we need to know.

It tells us that when it comes to wars abroad there is always money to be found, but when it comes to keeping vulnerable pensioners warm at home there is none available.

Ukraine is engaged in a conflict it cannot win, while Russia is fighting a war it cannot afford to lose.

The former has neither the manpower nor industrial capacity while the latter possesses both. The result is Kiev being turned into a NATO/U.S. dependency and the latter uncoupling from the West geopolitically and economically to the point of accelerating the formation of an Eastern post-hegemonic which points, increasingly, the way to the future.

For Moscow this is an existential struggle with its security in mind, while for the West the geostrategic stakes have never been higher.

Western ideologues have never forgiven Russia from recovering from the demise of the the Soviet Union and emerging with its sovereignty intact under Putin’s leadership.

The Russian president’s real crime in their eyes — his demonization aside — is that he has had the temerity to assert that decisions pertaining to Russia’s security should be taken in Moscow instead of in Washington, London or Brussels.

So now military escalation rather than diplomacy is the name of the game — at least for those who send the sons of the working class to fight and die in wars rather than their own. In his classic antiwar novel, Dalton Trumbo lays it out much more powerfully than this writer ever could:

“So did all those kids die thinking of democracy and freedom and liberty and the safety of the home and the stars and stripes forever? You’re goddamn right they didn’t. They died crying in their minds like little babies … They died yearning for the face of a friend. They died whimpering for the voice of a mother a father a wife a child.”

It bears repeating again and again that this ugly and bitter conflict was eminently avoidable. It is a conflict not of Russia’s but of the West’s choosing.

A few month ago a leak of a call between high ranking German officers appeared. They were discussing the possible deployment of a German Taurus cruse missile to Ukraine to be used against Russian targets.

It became obvious from the leak that any such deployment, aiming and firing of such a weapon can not happen without the participation of staff from the country that donated the weapon. This applies to the U.S. ATAMCS missiles, to the French/British SCALP/Storm Shadow missiles just as it would apply to the German Taurus cruse missile...

The U.S. is currently discussing (archived) to allow Ukraine to use of long range weapons against targets within Russia, that is beyond targets on Ukrainian and former Ukrainian ground.

This would be qualitative transformation of the war in Ukraine into a NATO war with Russia.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin made this unequivocally clear....

Russia has many means to respond to such threats. This includes direct fire on targets within France, the UK and the U.S. itself.

Vladimir Putin is not known for making empty threats.

The Ukraine conflict could have been stopped back in 2022 soon after it started, according to Aleksandr Chaly, former Ukrainian first deputy foreign minister and one of Kiev’s key negotiators at the time. The diplomat said that Moscow and Kiev had a real chance of inking a peace deal at negotiations in Istanbul a mere month after the beginning of hostilities, but that chance has since been lost. “While there were opportunities for a political settlement at the talks in Istanbul… now, in my personal opinion, there are no such opportunities,” Chaly stated at a panel discussion at the Xiangshan defense forum in Beijing on Thursday, as cited by RIA Novosti. Ukraine and Russia held several rounds of peace talks in the spring of 2022, and the Istanbul round was considered the most productive, as the parties managed to develop and pre-approve a draft peace treaty.

The document reportedly included clauses on Kiev formally adopting neutral status, limiting its armed forces and vowing not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. Moscow, in return, was willing to withdraw troops from Ukrainian territories and offer Kiev security guarantees. However, the treaty was never finalized, and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky later issued a decree banning peace talks with Putin.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has laughed off “ridiculous” claims by German media outlets that the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up by a small group of divers on a “little boat.” Commenting on the issue of protecting critical energy infrastructure at a press briefing on Thursday, he said investigations into the sabotage of the Russian natural gas pipelines in 2022 had been turned into a “spectacle.” Despite submitting numerous requests, Lavrov said Russia had still not received any information about the investigation from the German authorities, and claimed their investigation lacked transparency. Meanwhile, Denmark and Sweden, who have also ignored all of Moscow’s requests, have stated that they had closed down their national investigations into the Nord Stream explosions, the minister noted.

Ukraine sent thousands of troops into the Russian region last month in what was the largest cross-border operation undertaken by Kiev in the ongoing conflict with Russia. Officials in Kiev have offered a number of explanations for the Kursk incursion. The stated aims have included capturing Russian soldiers for prisoner exchanges, instilling fear in Russian society, humiliating President Vladimir Putin, forcing Moscow to redeploy troops from the Donbas front, and seizing Russian territory that could be used as a bargaining chip in eventual peace talks. The operation is supposedly part of a secret “victory plan” that Zelensky has said he would present to US President Joe Biden. Washington is supposed to provide the military capabilities necessary for it to be achieved, he added. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kiev on Wednesday. According to the Wall Street Journal, he and his British counterpart David Lammy met with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss “how best to define a Ukrainian victory.”

Sep 12, 2024

Featured • Putin Puts West On Notice: Long-Range Arms For Ukraine Will Mean 'NATO At War With Russia', ZeroHedge, Sep 12, 2024
Below is the breaking AFP note:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the West giving Kyiv a green-light to use longer-range weapons to strike Russian targets would mean NATO will be "at war" with Russia.

"This would in a significant way change the very nature of the conflict... It would mean that NATO countries are at war with Russia," Putin told a state television reporter.

Just prior to this warning, Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov wrote on Telegram in response to the UK prepping more, longer-range Storm Shadow missiles for Ukraine, "The decision to strike Russian territory is clearly being prepared."

The Russian lawmaker continued, "There are too many conversations and hints about it for it to be reversed. Even if it has not been made yet, it looks like it will be a matter of days. The leak via The Guardian is not accidental. Public opinion is being prepared."

Below are the full Thursday Putin comments, translated and issued by Russian state media:

"I have already mentioned this, and any experts will confirm, both in our country and in the West, that the Ukrainian army is not capable of [independently] carrying out strikes using Western modern, long-range precision systems. It cannot do this. This is possible only with the use of intelligence from satellites which Ukraine does not have. This data is only available from satellites of the European Union or the United States, in other words, from NATO satellites. That's the first point," Putin said.

"The second and very important, perhaps key point is that only NATO servicemen can make flight assignments to these missile systems. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this," Putin said.

"So this is not about whether or not to allow the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia using these weapons, but of deciding whether or not NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict or not. If such a decision is taken, it will mean nothing short of direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, European countries, in the war in Ukraine. This would constitute their direct participation, and this, of course, changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict. It will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries, are at war with Russia. And if this is so, bearing in mind the change in the very nature of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be posed to us," Putin said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy meet with Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev.

Washington and London may have already decided to let Kiev use long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia and are now seeding the narrative through the media, Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov has said.

Britain has already given the green light for the use of ‘Storm Shadow’ missiles, the Guardian reported on Wednesday, citing anonymous government sources. London, however, is not expected to announce the move publicly, the sources claimed.

“The decision to strike Russian territory is clearly being prepared,” Pushkov wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday. “There are too many conversations and hints about it for it to be reversed. Even if it has not been made yet, it looks like it will be a matter of days. The leak via The Guardian is not accidental. Public opinion is being prepared.”

Russia’s nuclear doctrine urgently needs to be revised to allow a nuclear response to any major military aggression against the country, former Kremlin adviser Sergey Karaganov stated on Wednesday.

The former foreign policy adviser to the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration told the Kommersant daily that the existing document is “woefully outdated” and no longer serves as an effective deterrent.

1. Russia will take all of Donbass soon, regardless of anything Ukraine does.
2. The Ukrainian troops in the Kursk offensive will all retreat, be killed or wounded, or will surrender. Russia will not allow that salient to affect negotiations.
3. Ukraine and its sponsors will engage in more dangerous and terroristic attacks against Russian strategic and civilian objects.
4. Russia will not take the bait to the extent of overtly attacking NATO -- Zelensky's objective -- but Russia will hurt Ukraine all the more as a result of these increasing attacks, hoping by doing so to bring a more rapid and favorable conclusion to the war and also to control or at least temper Western escalation.
5. As long as Russia believes its basic security needs will remain unmet after negotiations, the war will continue. Russia will take more territory, and more Ukrainians will be killed. Possibilities include a buffer zone in the north and/or along the Black Sea, including Odessa.
6. By continuing the war, Ukraine is risking total economic collapse.

The last several years have brought the United States closer to conflict with a nuclear-armed power than any time since the 1960s, one former CIA analyst claimed.

“They want to provoke Putin [into] doing something really drastic before the election, before the [presidential] election here on November 5th,” suggested McGovern, a critic of neoconservative US foreign policy....

“It's really hard to know what Biden and [National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan, who are running things, really think,” he claimed. “Some of my best friends and analysts think they're insane. And it’s really, really hard to predict what they're going to do if they're insane.”...

“So I think when this is directed at the Europeans, saying, ‘look at what happened to your fellow country in Europe, Ukraine. You want the same thing to happen to you? So, please, rein these guys in.’”

Washington wants to see Kiev win the conflict against Moscow and join NATO, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said. Blinken is visiting Kiev with his British counterpart David Lammy to reiterate Anglo-American support for Vladimir Zelensky’s government. “At the July summit, we declared that Ukraine’s path to NATO membership is irreversible,” Blinken said on Wednesday, reminding his hosts that the US-led bloc has “established a command dedicated to support Ukraine’s membership.” Blinken has made the case for Kiev’s membership in NATO before. However, the bloc has officially declared, both in Washington this summer and last year in Lithuania, that this could only happen “when allies agree and conditions are met.” Hungary and Slovakia have already said they will not agree under any circumstances, as bringing Ukraine into NATO would mean war with Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated Wednesday that there was a “high degree of probability” that a decision approving the use of US long-range strike systems by Ukraine has already been taken, and that the Biden administration is simply trying to “formalize” the measure using an information campaign through the media.

That was Moscow’s reaction to President Biden’s comments earlier in the week that Washington was in the process of ‘working out’ whether to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of its US-made long-range weapons to attack targets deep inside Russia.

Long-range US weapons already delivered to Kiev (or reportedly under deliberation) include:

ATACMS: The US ‘Army TACtical Missile System’, which has a range of up to 300 km, and can be fired by tracked M270 and wheeled M142 HIMARS self-propelled multiple launch rocket systems, which have been delivered to Kiev in large numbers. Russia has found the systems’ weak spots, destroying scores of launchers and incoming fired rockets. Nevertheless, the launchers and their payload (a single 214 kg warhead or cluster bomblets) remain dangerous due to their shoot-and-scoot ability. The Pentagon began the delivery of ATACMS to Kiev last October, but apparently not in numbers Volodymyr Zelensky would prefer. Last week, Zelensky complained about a “shortage of missiles and cooperation” with NATO countries.

JDAM-ER: The ‘Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range’ is a guidance and wing kit converting ‘dumb’ munitions weighing between 230-910 kg into guided smart munitions and delivering them to targets over 70 km away. The weapons are air-launched, meaning Ukrainian aircraft must stay far enough away to avoid dense Russian air defenses while firing them.

ADM-160 MALD: The ‘Miniature Air-Launched Decoy’ is a decoy missile designed to distract air defenses while real threats make their way toward their targets. Thanks to their lack of warhead, these missiles can fly up to 930 km. Deployable aboard a broad array of American aircraft and drones, Ukraine probably fires these weapons from its dwindling fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 jets.

AGM-88 HARM: The ‘High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile’ is an air-to-ground missile with passive, GPS and millimeter-wave active radar homing, has a range of between 25 and 300 km, depending on variant, and a 68 kg warhead. Adding to the threat is the missile’s flight speed – up to Mach 2.9. The US began deploying these weapons to Kiev in 2022, and, in addition to modifications to allow Ukraine’s jets to fire them, reportedly provided their client with intelligence to enable attacks against Russian radar systems.

Not yet known to have been delivered but widely discussed in recent days is the AGM-158 JASSM (‘Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile’) – a long-range cruise missile with a 450 kg penetrator warhead that can hit targets up to 925 km away (or 370 km in the case of standard range variants). These missiles can be fired from Ukraine’s recently arrived F-16 jets.

Sep 11, 2024

Featured • Ukraine conflict ‘much worse’ than Americans are being told – Trump, RT, Sep 11, 2024

The former US president has said he wants to save millions of lives from being unnecessarily lost.

Former US President Donald Trump has claimed that President Joe Biden’s Ukraine policy – now fully adopted by his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris – is dragging the country into a third world war. He reiterated that he would settle the conflict “in 24 hours” if reelected this November, even before being sworn in.

During a debate with Harris on Tuesday, Trump said the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would never have happened had he still been in the White House in 2022. When asked if he wants Kiev to win, the Republican replied that he wants “the war to stop.”

“I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being wasted… People are being killed by the millions… It’s so much worse than the numbers you’re getting, which are fake,” he claimed, without clarifying the source of the estimates.

The moderator pressed for a direct answer, inquiring whether Trump believes “it’s in the US’ best interest for Ukraine to win this war.”

“I think it’s in the US’ best interest to get this war finished and just get it done. We need to negotiate a deal because we have to stop all these human lives from being destroyed,” Trump said.

The former president then claimed that he had a “good relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that everything has “gone to hell” since he left office. “When I saw Putin building up soldiers on Ukraine’s border, I thought: ‘Oh, he must be negotiating; it must be a strong point of negotiation,’” Trump stated.

“Well, it wasn’t, because Biden had no idea how to talk to him. He had no idea how to stop it… And it is only getting worse; it could lead to World War III,” he added. “Don’t kid yourself... We are playing with WWIII, and we have a president that… Where is our president?”

“They threw him out of the campaign like a dog... We have a president that doesn’t even know he’s alive.”

“I will get it settled before I even become president,” Trump promised. “If I win, when I’m president-elect… I’ll get them together.”

Harris countered by claiming that the only reason Trump says “this war would be over within 24 hours” is that he would simply give it up. “And that’s not who we are as Americans,” she added.

The vice president went on to tout her role in consolidating Western support for Ukraine, claiming that because of “the work that I and others did,” along with the provision of “air defense, ammunition, artillery, javelins, and Abrams tanks,” Ukraine remains an “independent and free” country.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, believes the Biden administration will lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US missiles to allow long-range strikes inside Russian territory, which would mark another significant escalation of the proxy war.

McCaul made the comments ahead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s next visit to Ukraine, which will take place on Wednesday. Blinken will be joined by his British counterpart, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Ukraine has been using US missiles and other weapons in its invasion of Kursk and has been pushing for the use of longer-range capabilities, including Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of about 190 miles and can be fired by the HIMARS rocket systems.

“[Blinken’s] as supportive as I am, and he just said, ‘I have some good news. I’m going to Ukraine with my counterpart from the UK to talk about ATACMS. And what I’ve seen and what I’ve been briefed on, it looks like that’s the message they’re going to give them, that they can use them cross-border,” McCaul said, according to POLITICO.

McCaul joined a group of other senior House Republicans in sending a letter to President Biden on Monday urging US support for long-range strikes. “It is far past time the administration reverses course and lifts the remaining restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US-provided weapons against legitimate military targets in Russia,” the letter reads.

In an interview with Sky News on Tuesday, Blinken said that the administration was not ruling out supporting the long-range strikes. “We never rule out, but when we rule in, we want to make sure it’s done in such a way that it can advance what the Ukrainians are trying to achieve,” Blinken said.

. . . the near certainty that the United States and Britain have just agreed to give the Zelensky regime permission to use the long-range missiles which have been delivered to Ukraine, certainly including Storm Shadow and likely also the 1500 km range stealth missile known as JASSM to strike deep into the Russian heartland, and so 'to bring the war to Russia' as the Zelensky gang put it.

That is the sense of the trip this week by Secretary of State Blinken to Kiev and of the visit to the White House on Friday by British Prime Minister Starmer.

Collective Biden is doing this in the full knowledge that the Russians have issued direct threats of attack on the United States and other countries involved in strikes on its heartland using such Western supplied and directed weapons. However patient and averse to a hot war with NATO President Putin may be, he will have no choice but to rise to the challenge.

People eager to condemn the atrocities committed by the Third Reich are at the same time turning a blind eye to Ukrainian troops wearing Nazi symbols today, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has lamented. The head of the government gave a speech at the holocaust museum located at the former site of the Sered concentration camp on Monday in western Slovakia, in which he highlighted the need to educate new generations about the crimes committed by Nazis during World War II before bringing up the Ukraine conflict. “We all talk about fascism, Nazism, while silently tolerating units moving across Ukraine that have a very clear label and are connected to movements that we consider dangerous and forbidden today. Since it is a geopolitical fight, nobody cares,” Fico said.

“I want to pay tribute to the victims, not with pathetic speech, but I want to call for action,” he added. “The international community should recognize that troops using Nazi insignia, who often appear to act as such, cannot fight in Ukraine.” Kiev has embraced as heroes Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with Nazi Germany while the symbols and ideology of the Third Reich have been popular among growing right-wing forces in the country for decades. The Azov battalion, accused of war crimes and atrocities, is infamous for its open embrace of bigotry and white supremacism, although its successor unit claims to have mostly eradicated such people from its ranks. Ukrainian troops have repeatedly been filmed brandishing Nazi iconography on their uniforms and weapons, including during the ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region.

Sep 10, 2024

Featured • Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion, Ivana Kottasova and Kostya Gak, CNN, Sep 8, 2024

 • Germany’s Scholz Calls for Push Toward Peace in Ukraine, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Sep 9, 2024

On Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a diplomatic push toward peace in Ukraine and said he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zekensky agreed that Russia should attend a future peace summit.

“I believe that now is the time to discuss how to arrive at peace from this state of war, indeed at a faster pace,” Scholz said. “There will certainly be a further peace conference, and the president and I agree that it must be one with Russia present.”

Scholz’s comments mark a rare call for peace in Ukraine from a leader of a NATO country. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been consistently calling for an end to the fighting, but he’s been out of step with other NATO and European leaders.

Sep 9, 2024

Featured • Russia offsets Ukraine’s Kursk offensive, M.K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, Sep 8, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin has outwitted the West by his response to Ukraine’s Kursk offensive one month ago, which was widely celebrated as a tipping point in the conflict. The conflict is indeed at a tipping point today, but for an entirely different reason insofar as Russian forces seized the folly of Ukraine’s deployment of its crack brigades and prized Western armour to Kursk Region to reach an unassailable position in the most recent weeks in the battlefields, which opens the door for multiple options going forward.

As the collapse intensifies, the winning side in a war typically increases its pressure. Russia has increased its deep missile strikes, and its military is pushing through what used to be well-defended front lines. Russia’s more powerful bombing campaign is also motivated by retaliation for the invasion of Kursk and to restore its deterrence by warning NATO against further escalations. Furthermore, Russia has retaliated by further destroying Ukraine’s energy network which reduces the mobility of the military, and reduces the industrial production and the ability to get through the next winter. Millions of Ukrainian civilians who are suffering greatly under these deteriorating conditions will likely leave the country when winter approaches, a humanitarian disaster that will bring further problems to both Ukraine and Europe.

A Proxy War: How Will NATO Respond to Defeat?

What makes the Ukraine War different from many other wars, is that this is a proxy war in which NATO uses Ukrainians to fight Russia. The uncertain and unpredictable variable is therefore how NATO will react as it loses its war against Russia. NATO is already providing weapons, ammunition, training, intelligence, target selection, war planning, managing complex weapon systems, and sending Western mercenaries. NATO’s support for strikes inside Russian territory and the invasion of Russian territory has already taken us to the brink of a direct war. The Americans appear to get ready to cut their losses and instead shift focus on a wider war in the Middle East or confronting China, but the Europeans have bet everything on defeating Russia militarily. In terms of capabilities, it is the US that matters.

There are simply no good solutions anymore. The only two options are to either negotiate or get increasingly involved in direct fighting. NATO has largely rejected diplomacy and placed itself in a rhetorical trap in which victory is the only acceptable outcome, and the EU even punishes member states such as Hungary that attempt to restore diplomacy and negotiations with Russia. However, more direct NATO involvement will likely trigger a direct war with Russia, the world’s largest nuclear power, and it is unclear what a “victory” would look like that would not first trigger a nuclear exchange.

The US, UK and other backers of Ukraine told Kiev to reject the deal reached at the 2022 Istanbul peace talks with Russia, former US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland has said.

In an interview with Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, former editor-in-chief of the liberal news channel Dozhd, which aired on Thursday, Nuland was asked to comment on reports that the peace process between Moscow and Kiev in late March and early April 2022 collapsed after then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Ukraine and told Vladimir Zelensky to keep fighting.

“Relatively late in the game the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going and it became clear to us, clear to the Brits, clear to others that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's main condition was buried in an annex to this document that they were working on,” she said of the deal being discussed by the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Türkiye’s largest city.

The proposed agreement included limits on the kinds of weapons that Kiev could possess, as a result of which Ukraine “would basically be neutered as a military force,” while there were no similar constraints on Russia, the former diplomat explained.

“People inside Ukraine and people outside Ukraine started asking questions about whether this was a good deal and it was at that point that it fell apart,” Nuland said.

The veteran diplomatic hawk, who during her time in the State Department was renowned for her hostility towards Russia, quit the post of under secretary of state for political affairs in March this year. Nuland played a key role in the violent Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, which toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.

The global order is under threat from a number of state actors, the heads of the American and British foreign intelligence agencies – the CIA and MI6 – claimed in a joint op-ed published by the Financial Times on Saturday.

In the piece, Bill Burns and Richard Moore pledged that Washington and London would work in lockstep to retain the status quo in a world where technology has considerably accelerated geo-political trends....

The piece singles out an “assertive Russia” in the context of the Ukraine conflict, which both the CIA and MI6 “saw… coming.” The spy agencies’ chiefs noted that the hostilities have demonstrated the increased role of technology in modern warfare, in particular unmanned systems and satellite reconnaissance.

In addition, Burns and Moore accused Moscow of waging a “reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe” as well as spreading “lies and disinformation designed to drive wedges between us.”

However, according to the op-ed, in the eyes of the CIA and MI6 “the principal intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st century” is the “rise of China.” Both agencies have already reorganized their processes to “reflect that priority.”

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has urged NATO countries to pressure Russia to agree to Kiev’s peace terms this fall. He made his statement during a meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Regular gatherings at Ramstein are designed to coordinate military aid to Kiev. Zelensky urged Western countries to help arrange joint production of weapons on Ukrainian soil, including drones and missiles. “To achieve this, we need funding – we are ready to quickly produce everything that will help us bring this war to an end, namely, by putting decisive pressure on Russia for real peace,” Zelensky said, according to his website. “Let’s make this fall a time for Russian aggression to fall – in a way that will end the war and restore a reliable international security order.”

Bill Burns calls Vladimir Putin a ‘bully’ whose ‘sabre-rattling’ should not always be taken literally.

Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, amid a debate over whether Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles should be used inside Russia.

Bill Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally.

“Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time,” Burns said. “We cannot afford to be intimidated by that sabre rattling … we got to be mindful of it. The US has provided enormous support for Ukraine, and I’m sure the president will consider other ways in which we can support them.”

Sep 5, 2024

Featured • Massive Iskander Attack Sends Rats Scurrying, Simplicius, Sep 5, 2024
The scope of the political shakeup is a tell, reflecting staggering battlefield losses and political losses as well. The resignation of the Swedish foreign minister, on whose watch Sweden lost its neutrality, immediately after the deadly Poltava strike against Swedish troops in Ukraine is also pretty interesting. When will stupid Western leaders wake up? Only with defeat, loss, and sorrow I am afraid. RFK's citing of Aeschylus on the occasion of MLK's assassination comes to mind (video).

Featured • RAY McGOVERN: Conditioning Americans for War With Russia, Consortium News, Sep 4, 2024

 • If US Gives Long-Range Weapons To Kiev, Occupied Buffer Zone May Reach Poland: Medvedev, ZeroHedge, Sep 5, 2024

 • Ukrainian Army facing collapse – Putin, RT, Sep 5, 2024

Kiev’s incursion in Kursk Region has failed to achieve its goal and may lead to a complete defeat, the Russian president has said.

High casualties incurred by the Ukrainian military since Kiev launched its incursion in Russia’s Kursk Region could render its armed forces useless, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

The Russian leader shared his assessment of the frontline situation on Thursday during a panel discussion at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. He said the Ukrainian attempt to disrupt the Russian military with the massive attack across the border last month had backfired.

”Our military has stabilized the situation and is now gradually pushing the opponent from the border territories. More importantly, there is no resistance to our advancement [in Donbass],” he explained. “The opponent has weakened itself on the key axis by moving those relatively strong and well-trained units to the border areas.”

Ukrainian officials expected Moscow to redeploy some of its forces from the east to repel the incursion in the north. However, the gamble has not paid off, Aleksandr Syrsky, Kiev’s top general, acknowledged last week.

Putin said Russian troops had been securing more land in Donbass, which is a priority for Moscow, at a pace unseen in a long time. Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops are “suffering very high losses in manpower and hardware.”

“Because of that, [Kiev] risks a collapse of the front line on the most important axis. The casualties may result in a loss of fighting capability of the entire armed forces, which is what we are looking to achieve,” the president added.

On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry estimated that Ukrainian casualties in the Kursk operation had surpassed 9,700 troops. Kiev also lost 81 tanks, dozens of other armored vehicles, hundreds of cars, and multiple heavy weapons, the military said.

Sep 4, 2024

 • US ‘close’ to giving Kiev long-range missiles – Reuters, RT, Sep 3, 2024

 • Ukraine Criminals Guilty of Serious International Crimes to Be Brought to Justice - Moscow, Sputnik International, Sep 3, 2024

“Such a step cannot be regarded otherwise than as an undisguised intention to give their military carte blanche to commit serious war crimes,” Zakharova added. Neither Ukraine nor the International Criminal Court have anything to do with law and justice, Zakharova said. “The reputation of both the Kiev regime and the ICC is well known. Neither of them are independent and have anything to do with law or justice,” Zakharova said. On August 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law to ratify the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC. Ukraine will not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over its citizens for seven years after the adoption of the draft law.

Sep 3, 2024

Featured • SITREP 9/2/24: Zermak on Escalation Begging Tour as Pokrovsk Clock Unwinds, Simplicius, Sep 3, 2024
Per usual, a whole bunch of news and analysis.

Featured • 50 countries united against Russia under ‘Nazi banners’ – Lavrov, RT, Sep 2, 2024

The West has always wanted to dismantle Russia and has gone as far as joining forces with the Nazis in Ukraine in an attempt to achieve this goal, Moscow’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov has said. The foreign minister made the statement during a meeting with students and educators at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Monday, the first day of the new academic year in Russia. The West has always been concerned that Russia is “too strong, too independent,” and has wanted to do something about it, “preferably breaking it up,” said Lavrov. “A very indicative story is repeating itself because today, 50 countries have gathered against Russia under Nazi banners, considering the essence of the [Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky regime,” he continued, referring to the military assistance provided by the US and its allies to Kiev amid the conflict with Russia.

The foreign minister noted that Ukrainian troops have on numerous occasions been filmed wearing Nazi patches or carrying banners similar to those used by Adolf Hitler’s forces during the World War II. The “denazification” of Ukraine was identified by Russian President Vladimir Putin as one of the main goals of Moscow’s military operation against Kiev when it was launched in late February 2022. Lavrov asserted that Moscow was not going to play by Western rules and will not “embed itself into various schemes created without our participation and without taking Russia’s interests into account.” However, he said Putin had made it clear that Moscow remains “open to contacts with the countries of the ‘collective West,’ with the understanding, of course, that they will abandon their openly hostile policies towards our country.”

If the US and its allies do not change their ways, “we will continue to respond resolutely to any unfriendly steps,” Lavrov added. Elsewhere on Monday, Putin said the conflict between Moscow and Kiev had broken out because of “the destructive strategy of the West” regarding Ukraine. For decades, the Americans and their allies “sought total control over Ukraine. They funded nationalist and anti-Russian organizations there; they persistently worked to convince Ukraine that Russia was its eternal enemy and the main threat to its existence,” the Russian leader said. Washington and its “satellites” orchestrated the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, which was driven by “radical neo-Nazi groups” that continue to determine Ukraine’s policies to this day, he added.

Dmitry Peskov indicated there are no foreseeable prospects for a recovery in ties between the nations.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Russia-US relations are at a historic low, dismissing the idea that the two sides could gradually improve them in the foreseeable future.

In an interview with national broadcaster, Russia 1, the top official emphasized that Washington has been consistently trampling on Moscow's interests and exerting pressure for several decades.

Ties between the two states have reached “a cracking-up point” during Joe Biden’s presidency, according to Peskov, who stressed that the US administration is demonstrating an openly hostile position towards Russia by supporting Ukraine.

“Right in the middle of Mr. Biden’s presidency all these processes have culminated […] Bilateral relations are now at probably their historical low point with no prospects for entering a growth trajectory to be seen,” he said.

“The US, despite many statements to the contrary, is directly involved in the Ukraine conflict,” Peskov concluded.

Bilateral ties between Russia and the US took a nose-dive in 2022 when Washington and its allies attacked Moscow with a barrage of economic sanctions following the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict. Moreover, the White House has been providing Kiev with substantial economic and military aid, drawing reprobation from Russian officials, who have accused Washington of playing a direct role in the conflict.

In addition, the US withdrew from two security treaties, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty and the Open Skies treaty, under the administration of Donald Trump. While the White House under President Joe Biden has extended the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) through 2026, last year Moscow suspended its participation, citing the US role in the Ukraine conflict.

Peskov also cast doubt on statements made by former US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly pledged to resolve the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours if elected a second time. The Republican presidential frontrunner has also claimed that he had an excellent relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin while in office, adding that the conflict would have never started on his watch.

“I don’t think there is a magic wand, it is impossible to do anything in a day,” Peskov said. “Although, if we assume that the next US president will make a statement during his inauguration speech that the US stands for peace and is therefore ending its support for Ukraine […], then something in someone’s brain will change.”

Among the various methods of attacking Russia and Belarus, it is no coincidence that the first thought is of a nuclear leak. The easiest way to overcome the “obstacles” to deploying NATO weapons, or even NATO troops, in Ukraine is through a nuclear leak in the region and the creation of a perception that Russia and Belarus are “unable to control the disaster.” Therefore, in military developments like the attack on Kursk, the most critical point to monitor is not which town is controlled by whom, but how close they are to nuclear power plants.In light of the recent developments on the Kursk front, the Belarusian army has decided to strengthen the units in the Gomel and Mazyr regions. Mazyr is a Belarusian region close to the Dniester River and Kyiv, while Gomel is near Kursk via Bryansk. Special operations forces, ground forces, and missile units, including Polonez and Iskander missile systems, have begun new training and exercises in the designated regions.

Sep 2, 2024

Featured • Putin's Remarks About Biden True for VP Harris - Kremlin, Sputnik International, Sep 1, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent remark about the predictability of US President Joe Biden also applies to his vice president turned presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday. Asked whether Russia would prefer to see Joe Biden or Donald Trump as the next US president, Putin described Biden as more preferable because he was more experienced and predictable. “We do not have a favorite candidate, but the Democrats are certainly more predictable. What Putin said about Biden’s predictability applies to almost all Democrats, including Mrs. Harris,” Peskov said in a recorded interview published on social media. Peskov lamented the state of US-Russian relations, saying tensions between the two were at their highest, having reached a breaking point under the Biden administration. “They have reached the breaking point… The last drop fell,” he said.

When asked about the future of Democrats’ policy on Russia and the European Union, Peskov said it was also easy to predict. “It is all predictable. They will stick to the same policy toward us, they will predictably continue to put pressure on EU member states, and they will continue to enslave those countries politically and economically,” he said. The United States is directly involved in the Ukrainian conflict, despite numerous statements to the contrary, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added. “The United States, despite many statements to the contrary, is directly involved in the conflict around Ukraine. It is demonstrating a tendency toward increasing the level of involvement in this conflict,” Peskov said in a recorded interview published on Telegram on Sunday. The spokesman accused Washington of “an undisguised hostile attitude” toward Russia. He said the US had spent decades piling pressure on Russia and trampling on its interests. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will not be able to resolve all problems overnight if elected, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

Trump has repeatedly promised during the presidential campaign to settle the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in 24 hours after coming into the White House. “I do not think he has a magic wand or that anything can be done overnight,” Peskov said in a recorded interview published on social media, commenting on Trump’s campaign promises. The Kremlin spokesman rejected as impossible speculations that a new US president could announce an end to US military support for Ukraine and call on the parties to sit down at the negotiating table in their inaugural speech in January 2025. Peskov said relations between Russia and the United States had hit rock bottom under Biden and looked unsalvageable for the time being. “Mr Biden’s presidency has become the culmination of all processes in our bilateral relations. They are probably at their historic low at the moment,” Peskov said, adding that so far, he had seen no prospects for them “entering a growth trajectory.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Sunday that Moscow will change its nuclear doctrine in response to Western escalations related to the war in Ukraine.

“As we have repeatedly said before, the work is in the advanced stage, and there is a clear intent to introduce a correction [to the nuclear doctrine],” Ryabkov told the Russian news agency TASS.

Ryabkov said the doctrine would be updated based on “the examination and analysis of development of recent conflicts, including, of course, everything connected to our Western adversaries’ escalation course in regards to the special military operation.”

Ryabkov said it was too early to say when the doctrine would be updated. “The timeframe for its completion is a rather complicated issue, considering that we are talking about the most important aspect of our national security,” he said.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine was last updated in 2020. It allows for the use of nuclear weapons if Russia faces a nuclear attack or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the Russian state.

Ryabkov’s comments come amid fighting in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, an offensive Ukraine is carrying out with US and NATO support. The US is allowing Ukraine to use US-provided armored vehicles, bombs, and missiles inside the Russian territory, marking a significant escalation in the proxy war.

The US claims that it was not involved in the planning of the Kursk invasion, but a Ukrainian soldier said last week that Western intelligence was crucial for carrying out the cross-border assault.

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region has failed to achieve its intended goal of halting the advance of Moscow’s forces in Donbass, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday.

He stated that Russia has been making great strides in key areas of Donbass, advancing at a pace that has not been seen in a “long time.”

“The Russian armed forces are taking control of territories not by 200, 300 meters at a time, but by square kilometers,” Putin said.

The president added that Kiev’s provocation in Kursk Region would inevitably fail and that Moscow would “deal with the Ukrainian bandits” who have entered Russian territory with the aim of destabilizing the situation at the border.

After that, Putin suggested, Kiev may come to realize that it needs to resolve the conflict through negotiations, and reiterated that Moscow has never refused to hold such talks.

However, the president noted that the Ukrainian leadership was likely not interested in ending the fighting, given that it would have to hold new presidential elections as soon as martial law in the country was lifted.

“The current authorities are clearly not ready for this, they have little chance of being re-elected,” Putin said. “That is why they are not interested in ending the fighting, that is why they tried to carry out this provocation in Kursk Region, and before when they tried to carry out the same operation in Belgorod Region.”...

According to Moscow’s latest estimates, the incursion has proven costly for Kiev’s forces, which have lost more than 7,800 servicemen, 75 tanks, and over 500 armored vehicles since the start of the operation on August 6.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has revealed to CNN that the Zelensky government has presented a list of significant targets which lie deep inside Russia to the Biden White House for approval to strike.

His words in the new CNN interview come as Kiev is engaged in intensive lobbying with Washington to get President Biden to greenlight the use of US missiles for longer range attacks. Ukraine has also been begging to receive long-rage missiles toward that end.

Sep 1, 2024

Featured • ‘Getting along with Russia is good’ – Trump, RT, Aug 31, 2024

Engaging positively with such countries as Russia and North Korea is a “smart” thing to do, the former US president says.

Engaging with Russia and North Korea, and “getting along” with them, would be a “good thing,” former US President Donald Trump has argued.

Speaking at an election rally in Pennsylvania on Friday, the Republican nominee touted his diplomatic efforts to fix Washington’s ties with Pyongyang, referring to his 2019 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.

“I got along with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Remember I walked over… the first person to ever walk over from this country,” Trump claimed.

“We also looked at his nuclear capability. It’s very substantial,” he added. “You know, getting along is a good thing. It’s not a bad thing.”

“Getting along” with Moscow is also not “a bad thing,” Trump said. He went on to harshly criticize the incumbent administration, claiming President Joe Biden has a very low IQ “and maybe now it’s nonexistent,” as he has “completely lost his mind.” Getting along with Russia is good, not bad. Remember, getting along with these people is smart.

A total of 158 drones were shot down or intercepted by electronic warfare during a large-scale Ukrainian attack on Russian territory overnight, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

UAVs were shot down over more than a dozen Russian regions, according to a statement issued by the ministry on Sunday morning.

“During an attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack using unmanned aerial vehicles,” Russian air defenses eliminated 46 drones above Kursk Region, 34 above Bryansk Region, 28 above Voronezh Region, and 14 above Belgorod Region, it said.

Moscow was also the target of an attack, with seven drones shot down over Moscow Region and two more above the capital itself, the statement read.

The U.S. government has so far gradually increased its military support to Ukraine. The purpose of this approach is to test the Russian red lines, to see how Moscow reacts to the deployment of each new weapons system or each new Western sanction and, most recently, of course, the donation of frozen Russian assets, mainly in Europe, to Ukraine. The situation has come to a head, in my humble opinion. Regarding Kursk, there has actually been an attack on Russia; Russian people have been killed, and slaughtered whereby civilians have been taken from their homes in trucks and executed. There is even footage of Ukrainian soldiers with SS helmets and with the detachment of Adolf Hitler’s Leibstandarte Regiment on their sleeves, harassing an old man, who was later killed.

The West is trying to push Russia to the limit, knowing that the Second World War is an extremely sensitive subject for Russian society where every family is related to a victim, a fallen soldier, a grandfather, an uncle, a cousin, or aunt who was killed during the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, in which more than 26 million people died. The recent action in the Kursk region, where most Russians perceive that the U.S. and its NATO accomplices are involved, is a brazen provocation. Indeed, more than a provocation, it has violated the Russian soul and there we have landed in a totally different dimension. Perhaps one might say, the “road of no return.”

The administration of US President Joe Biden has rejected a Pentagon plan to send American contractors to Ukraine to maintain Western hardware, including F-16 fighter jets, the Wall Street journal has reported, citing officials in Washington. The longstanding debate about deploying US civilians to Ukraine to service the hardware supplied to Kiev by its foreign backers has intensified since the delivery of the first batch of six F-16s to Ukraine in late July, the outlet said in an article on Friday. The White House National Security Council looked into the proposal coming from the military, but deemed it to be too risky, officials familiar with the discussion told the WSJ. “The intelligence community raised concerns over the prospect of Russia targeting American contractors in Ukraine,” one of the sources told the outlet. The Biden administration has not ruled out sending US contractors to Ukraine completely, but it is not going to happen any time soon, the report read.

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 • ‘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