updated 11 Dec 2024, 16:19 MDT

After our 11/15/22 emergency meeting on the Ukraine War we committed to providing near-daily updates of what we think are some of the most valuable news and analyses for fellow activists. This is that selection. If you find this page helpful please forward it to your friends and contacts. Beginning Nov 16, 2023 we will be updating this page on a semiweekly basis. Stopping this war is of critical, emergency importance. Please do whatever you can.

Unless otherwise noted, the italicized comments below are Greg Mello's.

Highly recommended resource: Judge Andrew Napolitano's video podcast on YouTube.

Dec 11, 2024

 • After U.S. ATACMS Strike On Strategic Target Russia Announces To Retaliate, Moon of Alabama, Dec 11, 2024

 • US Disburses $20 Billion Loan for Ukraine That Will Be Repaid Using Russian Assets, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Dec 10, 2024

The step marks a significant escalation of the US economic war on Russia.

On Tuesday, the US announced that it disbursed a $20 billion loan for Ukraine that will be paid back using interest earned on frozen Russian Central Bank assets, a step that marks an escalation of the Western economic war against Russia.

The $20 billion is part of a total $50 billion loan being provided by the Group of Seven (G7) nations. The entire loan will be paid back using the Russian assets.

“These funds — paid for by the windfall proceeds earned from Russia’s own immobilized assets — will provide Ukraine a critical infusion of support as it defends its country against an unprovoked war of aggression,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

Dec 10, 2024

 • Ukrainian Garrison Flees From Kurakhovo, South Front, Dec 10, 2024

 • Zelensky rules out lowering draft age, RT, Dec 10, 2024

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected the idea of lowering the military mobilization age in his country, dismissing calls from the West to do so. Earlier this year, Ukraine lowered the mandatory conscription age from 27 to 25. Some former Western officials have urged Kiev to drop it further to 18, and the administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden has reportedly pushed for this behind closed doors. “The priority should be providing missiles and lowering Russia’s military potential, not Ukraine’s draft age,” Zelensky said, commenting on the idea in a post on X on Tuesday morning. “We must focus on equipping existing brigades and training personnel to use this equipment. We must not compensate the lack of equipment and training with the youth of soldiers,” he wrote.

Georgia has prevented an attempted overthrow of the government orchestrated by foreign powers, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said. He compared the scenario allegedly prepared for the nation with the situation in Ukraine in 2014. Speaking on Monday, Kobakhidze referred to the US-backed Maidan coup in Kiev a decade ago, which ousted Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, and precipitated the current conflict between Moscow and Kiev. “It took the [Georgian] Ministry of Internal Affairs exactly five days to neutralize the resource of violence of the radical opposition,” Kobakhidze said at a cabinet meeting, thanking the head of the ministry, Vakhtang Gomelauri, and police officers. He added that the ministry had acted in accordance with standards “higher than the American and European ones.”

“This is how the attempt of Maidan in our country was stopped in exactly five days,” Kobakhidze concluded. The Georgian capital, Tbilisi, has been rocked by anti-government and pro-EU rallies since late November, when Kobakhidze announced that the country would halt negotiations on potential accession to the bloc until 2028, citing “blackmail and manipulation” from EU officials. Brussels has since imposed personal sanctions against members of the Georgian government. Protestors have repeatedly clashed with law enforcement, shot fireworks, and thrown Molotov cocktails at riot police, who have deployed tear gas and water cannons in an effort to disperse the demonstrators.

Dec 9, 2024

 • Syria Is Absorbed Into the Empire, Caitlin Johnstone, Consortium News, Dec 9, 2024

And tomorrow the imperial blob will move its crosshairs on to the next unabsorbed nation. That’s the underlying dynamic behind all the major conflicts on earth.

This dynamic gets redacted from the mainstream western worldview with the assistance of the western propaganda services known as the mass media, as well as the western indoctrination system known as schooling.

This dynamic is redacted from our worldview and hidden from our attention by the plutocrats and empire managers who work to manipulate our information systems, because otherwise we would realize that the U.S. empire is the most tyrannical and abusive power structure on this planet today.

And it unquestionably is. No other power structure has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars of aggression while circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and working continuously to crush any group which opposes its dictates anywhere on earth.

Not China. Not Russia. Not Iran. Not Cuba. Not Bashar al-Assad. Only the U.S. empire has been tyrannizing and abusing the world to this extent in modern times.

And now the imperial blob rolls on to absorb its next target, having grown one Syria-sized increment larger after spending years digesting that nation via proxy warfare, sanctions, relentless bombing campaigns from Israel, and a military occupation designed to steal its food and fuel.

Our world cannot know peace as long as we are ruled by an empire that is fueled by endless rivers of human blood. Here’s hoping the end of that empire comes sooner rather than later.

There was a time, just before and just after the war began, that Ukraine might have lost no territory but Crimea and few lives. But America said no.

In December of 2021, Putin presented the U.S. and NATO with a proposal on security guarantees. Then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the “promise [of] no more NATO enlargement… was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine.”

The U.S. was not then, nor are they yet, willing to offer NATO membership to Ukraine. Ukraine was then willing to abandon its pursuit of NATO membership, as signaled by both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and by his advisors. According to polls, only 24%-39% of Ukrainians even wanted NATO membership. But the U.S. said no.

...One day, when after all the death and debility, Ukraine negotiates a peace with Russia that it could have negotiated in the first days of the war minus all the vast land it has lost since then, Ukrainians may come to hate the States for blocking the peace, pushing the counteroffensive and sacrificing a generation of young people.

Why did Gabbard meet with Assad? Likely because our policy toward the region was deeply immoral and strategically counterproductive. And we know this because the man serving as Washington’s chief diplomat at the time of Gabbard’s meeting was caught on tape admitting as much. Here is a transcript of then Secretary of State John Kerry in September 2016 admitting the US led ISIL run wild in the hope that it would topple Assad:

…And we know that this [ISIL/Daesh] was growing, we were watching, we saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened…We thought, however, we could probably imagine that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him.…The reason Russia came in is because ISIL was getting stronger. Daesh was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus at some point and that’s why Russia came in. Because they didn’t want a Daesh government and they supported Assad.“

They, the Russians, didn’t want a Syrian government controlled by ISIL/ISIS.

The question remains: Why did we?

What Gabbard knew then and so few else did or claimed not to (the argument over the nature of the Islamist beast attacking Syria was particularly venomous among publications on the left, as I remember all too well from my time at The Nation) was that Assad – dictator that he might have been – had been the target of a decade long coup attempt perpetuated by some of the most violent religious fanatics in the Middle East.

One hardly expects someone like Wasserman-Schultz, who would flatline an electroencephalogram, to understand the difference between an Alawite ophthalmologist and a Salafi-jihadist. But for the US Senators now tasked with considering Gabbard’s confirmation, there is no excuse.

There are indications that the president-elect may intend further escalation.

That Kellogg was appointed to such a sensitive position in the first place should worry those who supported Trump on the assumption that he would bring much needed change to the conduct of US foreign policy. Reasonable people might ask: Where are men of experience and imagination, like the retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, senior fellow at The American Conservative? Unlike Macgregor, Kellogg knows nothing about Russia or its interests, let alone its historic sensitivity to Ukraine’s strategic importance. Macgregor has decades of scholarship invested in Russo-German relations and Moscow’s role in Europe and Asia. But Macgregor is nowhere to be found among the incoming team. Perhaps Howard Luttnick and Linda MacMahon were too busy campaigning for cabinet appointments to do what they should have been doing: selecting the most competent men and women for the most sensitive positions.

Alas, we will have to leave for another time the question of why the president-elect has staffed his national security team with a veritable roster of Fox News personalities and a recent immigrant with suspected ties to foreign intelligence such as Sebastian Gorka. The British-Hungarian Gorka has claimed that Trump will “force” Putin to the negotiating table by threatening a massive increase in military aid to Ukraine. Faux-machismo aside, there is little to indicate that—even if Trump pursues such a plan—there is much left to provide. Indeed, there is little evidence Putin is likely to be swayed by inducements from Washington.

With regard to Ukraine, the playbook of the bipartisan Washington blob still rules. And while it has only been a month since the election, the president-elect has provided few signs that he plans on deviating from the script left by Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan.

Dec 8, 2024

Featured • Pepe Escobar: The Syria Tragedy and the New Omni-War, Sputnik International, Dec 6, 2024

Until recently, a serious geopolitical working hypothesis was that West Asia and Ukraine were two vectors of the standard Hegemon modus operandi, which is to incite and unleash Forever Wars. Now both wars are united in an Omni-War.

A coalition of Straussian neo-cons in the US, hardcore revisionist Zionists in Tel Aviv and Ukrainian neo-nazi shades of grey is now betting on a Final Confrontation – with several overtones ranging from expanding lebensraum to provoking the Apocalypse.

What stands in their way is essentially two of the top BRICS: Russia and Iran.

China, self-protected by their collective lofty dream of “community of a shared future for mankind”, warily watches on the sidelines, as they know that at the end of the road, the true “existential” war by the Hegemon will be against them.

Meanwhile, Russia and Iran need to mobilize for Totalen Krieg. Because that's what the enemy is launching.

The invalidation of Romania’s presidential election results by the country’s top court is a formalized coup d’etat, according to independent candidate Calin Georgescu, who clinched a surprise win in the first round last month. Georgescu outperformed the other candidates in the first round of the election with 22.94%, beating out liberal leftist candidate Elena Lasconi, who received 19.18%, and the country’s Social Democrat Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who finished third with 19.15%. On Friday, Romania’s Constitutional Court dismissed Georgescu’s victory, citing a clause in the nation’s laws that emphasizes the need to ensure the correctness and legality of the election. The judiciary body announced that the whole process would be resumed later.

“Essentially, this is a formalized coup d’etat. The rule of law is in an induced coma, and justice subordinated to political orders has practically lost its essence. It is no longer justice, it obeys the orders,” Georgescu, a known critic of Romania’s pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine policy, said on Friday, as cited by Realitatea TV. The politician also stressed that the court’s decision represents more than a legal controversy, adding that “the corrupt system in Romania showed its true face by making a pact with the devil.” Georgescu also said that the power of the people is the basis for a democratic state, and the authorities are obliged to respect the results of the national vote. He stated that the current Romanian government is afraid of losing power and facing revelations.

Many Ukrainian teenagers are planning to leave the country and never return as the US increases pressure on Kiev to lower the mobilization age, the Times has reported. Earlier this week, outgoing US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said it was not right that “18 to 25-year-olds are not in the fight” against Russia. “Getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary,” he stressed.In an article on Thursday, the British paper quoted a teenager from the city of Kharkov, who said that “many” of his friends are now choosing to study abroad because “it is safer there.”“There is no risk of being taken into the army at a foreign university,” he explained, adding that he plans to study in Poland, and may not return after graduation.

“When I have finished, I will decide whether to return to Ukraine or stay there. It will be safer there, there are no bombs falling and there is no danger that I will be mobilized for the war without my consent,” he said. Another teenager who spoke to The Times said he also wants to attend higher education in a foreign country. Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksandra Ustinova told the paper that a decision to lower the mobilization age to 18 would be met with “huge opposition inside Ukraine and we would not get the results [on the battlefield] that we want because this is not such a large amount of people.”“It would also be a clear signal for families to get their children out. So, if we want to lose our future generation, then, yeah, this is the thing to do,” Ustinova stressed.

Dec 7, 2024

Featured • Craig Murray - The End of Pluralism in the Middle East, Moon of Alabama, Dec 7, 2024
Doesn't directly concern Ukraine, but indirectly it does and it is too important not to post.

Featured • JCS Chief General Charles Brown Just Proved that Nothing Short of Ukraine's Surrender is Negotiable with the US — That's Capitulation, Not Negotiation, John Helmer, Dances with Bears, Dec 5, 2024

The head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Charles Brown (lead image, right), has just revealed by press leak that he and the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, had talked by telephone last week, on November 27, and agreed not to disclose the contents of their call. If that was the point of agreement the two generals reached, Gerasimov has honoured it. Brown has just now decided to break his word. “At the request of General Gerasimov, General Brown agreed to not proactively announce the call,” the New York Times has reported Brown’s spokesman saying “after he was approached by a reporter about the call”. The newspaper omitted to say that Brown had leaked information about the call in advance, in order to prepare reporters to publish the exchange.

As an exchange of positions between the two generals, the Russian assessment is that once again the American side proves that nothing it says in private, agrees to in public, or signs on paper can be trusted. Sources say in Moscow that Gerasimov and the General Staff will dictate the terms for the end of the Ukraine war “proactively”; that is, when the battlefield is ready, and there is nothing left for Brown to fight or leak.

...“Brown spilled the beans as part of a warfighting exercise to show light between Gerasimov and Putin,” a NATO military veteran comments. “It was underhanded, but typical.” A source close to Moscow speculates that Putin and Gerasimov had agreed they would try to sound out Brown, just as they have been sounding out President-elect Donald Trump.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to deploy the latest Russian weapons, including the Oreshnik system, on Belarusian soil on Friday following a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State.

"The decision to deploy the Oreshnik system on the territory of the Republic of Belarus was made in response to the actions taken by the United States and Germany regarding the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. The Americans and Germans have repeatedly stated this before," the Belarusian Ministry of Defense's Telegram channel quoted Sergei Lagodyuk, deputy chief of staff of the Belarusian Armed Forces, as saying on Saturday.

US interference triggered the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. His comments come after Moscow accused Washington of lacking “common sense and restraint” in its approach to the conflict. In an interview with public broadcaster Kossuth Radio on Friday, Orban said the United States had played a decisive role in the conflict. ”America is one of the main players in this war. Without America, this war would never have happened. Ukraine would not have been able to resist without America’s support,” the prime minister said, as quoted by the Magyar Nemzet newspaper. According to official figures, as of September 30, Washington had allocated a total of nearly $183 billion in aid for Ukraine, with $130.1 billion committed and $86.7 billion disbursed.

The backbone of Washington’s action will be the same. For now, despite the changing world, the empire is still the empire.

The approval by the Washington Administration and immediate execution by the Nazi regime in Kiev of the launch of U.S.-produced tactical missiles known as ATACAM against Russian territory is a sign of the desperation that NATO and the Western world are going through in the face of the perceived military defeat, once again, now on Ukrainian territory.

The most tragic and dangerous element of this decision by the real head of NATO to directly involve the alliance in the war against Russia is the fact that it was taken by a defeated and transitional U.S. president, senile and admittedly demented – always a sociopath – considered incapable of running for re-election but not of creating an imminent situation of nuclear war.

This is how the West works today: despair in the face of military defeat ... leads to decisions calling into question the survival of the eight billion people, as many as there are on the planet, to be taken (or at least announced) by a single sick individual, with cognitive capacities visibly and admittedly reduced to the tiniest species – but still enough for the warmongering and murderous impulses that marked his long life in the dominant imperial structures to come to the fore.

...And the empire does not admit defeats in its strategic objectives, under penalty of ceasing to be so. So, the Russian Federation has to be torn to pieces, as happened with the Soviet Union, China has to be put in order on the trade, military and infrastructural aid fronts to needy countries on all continents, Iran will have to change regime to the lap of the West and Israel will have to continue to expand “Western civilization” in the Middle East by occupying the territories it wants. slaughtering and banishing hundreds of thousands of people.

So, it was with Bush father and son, Clinton, Obama, Trump, Biden – to name the most recent ones – and so it will be with Trump II.

Dec 6, 2024

Featured • Full Lavrov-Tucker Interview: US & Russia Need To Cooperate 'For The Sake Of The Universe', ZeroHedge, Dec 6, 0224

(0:00) Is the US at War With Russia?; (12:56) Russia’s Message to the West Through Hypersonic Weapons; (17:47) Is There Conversation Happening Between Russia and the US?; (23:18) How Many Have Died in the Ukraine/Russia War?; (28:21) What Would It Take To End the War?; (36:11) What Happened to Alexei Navalny?; (39:45) Boris Johnson Wants the War to Continue; (45:43) Sanctions on Russia; (56:31) The Chinese/Russian Alliance; (1:02:18) Who Is Making Foreign Policy Decisions in the US?; (1:05:05) Biden Pushes the US Toward Nuclear War Before Trump Takes Office; (1:08:52) What’s Happening in Syria?; (1:13:08) Lavrov’s Thoughts on Trump.

Payed, trained and coordinated by the British military, the Armed Fores of Ukraine are upgrading their unmanned boats, trying different attack strategies. This time, the groups of their boats had a well coordinated structure, with speedy attackers, who were aimed to reach the target when they were cowered with boats armed with machine guns. However, all the efforts of the Ukrainian and NATO militaries are yet to bring results. After a prolonged pause, they definately accumulate large reserves of unmanned boats (if not destroyed by Russian strikes throughout the Odessa region), and more waves of massive strikes on the Crimean Bridge and Russian military infrastructure in Crimea should be expected, especially since the Ukrainian military refrains from strikes with NATO missiles in Russian rear regions after the Oreshnik medium-range missile was presented in action.

What Putin is saying – very politely – to the West is that: You still ‘don’t get it’. To seek a deal on Ukraine is to treat the symptom and to ignore a cure. The West has its policy back-to-front, in other words. Putin is clear: A definitive solution would be to delineate the frontier between Atlanticist security ‘interest’ and the security interests of the ‘World Island’ (in Mackinder’s terminology): i.e. to settle the security architecture between the ‘Heartland and the Rim-land’. Once that is done, Ukraine falls naturally into its place. It’s at the end of the agenda, not first.

One highly-regarded foreign policy sage, Professor Sergei Karaganov, explains (original only in Russian):

“Our [Russian] goal is to facilitate the U.S.’s incipient retreat, as peaceably as possible, from the position of global hegemon (which it can no longer afford) to the position of a normal great power. And to expel Europe from being any international actor. Let it stew in its own juices …The conclusion is obvious. We must end the current phase of direct military conflict with the West, but not the broader confrontation with it. Trump will offer to ease pressure on Russia (which he cannot guarantee) in exchange for Russia refraining from a close alliance with China. The Trump administration will propose a deal, alternating threats with promises … but the U.S. already understands that it cannot win. America will remain an unreliable partner for the foreseeable future. Fundamental normalization of our relations with the U.S. should not be expected in the coming decade. Trump’s hands are tied by the Russophobia fanned by liberals for years. The inertia of the Cold War is still quite strong, and so are anti-Russian feelings among most Trumpists”.

US President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to resolve the Ukraine conflict could soon become a reality and Budapest intends to help the Republicans achieve that goal, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto has said. Following a meeting in Washington on Wednesday with Trump’s candidate for National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, Szijjarto noted that the current US administration under President Joe Biden appears to only wish to prolong the Ukraine conflict and is trying to make it harder to establish peace after Trump takes office in January. Szijjarto stated that in the US, the Democrats appear to be “on the side of war” while the Republican party is “on the side of peace.” Because of this, the issue of establishing peace in Ukraine became one of the key topics in his conversations with Waltz, the Hungarian diplomat said.

Lavrov also reiterated that Moscow welcomes any constructive initiatives to bring the Ukraine conflict to an end. However, Russia does not believe any Western-based organizations will be of any help, and is seeking to strengthen security for everyone in “our whole continent” of Eurasia, he said.

“All those initiatives floated by our partners on different continents, which are aimed at finding a political solution, they, of course, must take into account the issue of ensuring the security interests of each country and, of course, the issue of respecting human rights,” the top diplomat stressed. Relations between Russia and the collective West have changed and will not return to the situation prior to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in early 2022, Lavrov warned. “All the previous years after the end of the Cold War, the West agreed on some right things, rhetorically praised these right things, but in reality grossly violated all the agreements and did everything to suppress the legitimate interests of Russia,” Lavrov said.

And although relatively few prominent analysts are willing to admit it, the fact remains that the Russian military is now the single most potent and battle-hardened fighting force on the planet. The Russians will dictate the terms of surrender in this war because their strength affords them that privilege, and there is nothing the US and its impotent European vassals can do to alter that reality. That said, a decisive strategic defeat is going to be a very bitter pill to swallow for this second Trump administration. Hopefully they won't opt to set the world on fire in a fit of humiliated madness.

Dec 5, 2024

Featured • The West’s Lies About Ukraine Are Refuted by Their Own Words, Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, Dec 5, 2024

The strategy of constructing a narrative of lies to justify going to war is certainly nothing new. There is a long history in the U.S. that appeared to reach its apogee with the lie that Iraq had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. That false narrative was reused with various faces with chemical weapons in Syria and, currently, with nuclear weapons in Iran.

“T]ruth is invariably the first casualty of war, but,” as Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent and this generation’s most distinguished specialist on Russia, says in his soon to be published book, The Culture of the Second Cold War, “propaganda in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is exceptionally intense.” Sakwa argues that “[a]t its heart” the Second Cold War, “is the struggle to control narratives, to shape popular perceptions of reality. This is an age-old endeavour,” he says, “but in Cold War 2 the misrepresentation of situations is exacerbated by the decline of high modernist ideals of fact-based journalism and impartial scholarship.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated the US government’s new position that Ukraine needs to start sending 18 to 25 year-olds to fight in its war with Russia, telling Reuters on Monday that “getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary.” This comes even as polls have begun showing that Ukrainians favor making a deal with Russia to end this war as quickly as possible.

This is one of those things that looks more evil the longer you stare at it. They’re pushing for teenagers to be thrown into the fires of an unwinnable war like it’s nothing — like a corporation saying they need to hire more staff to accommodate their growing business. And why? To tie up Russia so that Syria can be turned into a smoking crater and allow the US war machine to focus its crosshairs on Iran and China, with the end goal of total planetary domination. All because some swamp monsters decided after the fall of the Soviet Union that the US must maintain unipolar global hegemony no matter the cost.

Ukraine barely even has anyone in the country from ages 18 to 25 for various reasons (many of which predate this war), but the managers of the US-centralized empire are pushing to scrape out the few they do have and toss them into the landmines and artillery fire just to keep this unwinnable war going for a few more months. Whether they succeed or not, the fact that they even tried is so profoundly psychopathic it’s actually hard to wrap your mind around.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. poured military aid into Ukraine in defense of the “core principles” of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the “sovereign right” every country has “to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances.”

As Western support for military aid became harder to maintain, the warning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperialism rose from a background note to a dominant message. Putin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained, has “made clear that he’d like to reconstitute the Soviet empire.” “If Ukraine loses the war,” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky said, “other countries will be attacked. This is a fact.” He warned that “this aggression, and Putin’s army, can come to Europe.” “[A]t the moment,” he said, “it’s us, then Kazakhstan, then Baltic states, then Poland, then Germany.”

This narrative was effective on U.S. President Joe Biden. Biden is, by his nature, an old cold warrior who looks out from the White House on a Manichean world of democracy versus autocracy. “If Putin takes Ukraine,” he told Congress, “he won’t stop there… He’s going to keep going. He’s made that pretty clear.”

But support for military aid to Ukraine is getting softer and Biden’s time in the White House is setting. Trump is a new president. Zelensky’s team followed him from television to government: they are masters of marketing. A new president needs a new message. They see Trump as less of a cold warrior and more of a transactional business man. So, the message for selling the war to the West is taking on a new tone.

The new message made a quiet debut in the Ukrainian Victory Plan that Zelensky pitched to Washington. The new note went largely unnoticed underneath the louder notes of NATO membership and permission to fire U.S. supplied long-range missiles deeper into Russia. But behind those notes came a new point: “[j]oint protection by the US and the EU of Ukraine’s critical natural resources and joint use of their economic potential.” In exchange for sustained and increased military aid, Zelensky offered the U.S and EU “an agreement… that would allow for joint investments and use of Ukraine’s natural resources, which Zelenskiy said were worth trillions of dollars.” As part of that agreement, Zelensky advertised “uranium, titanium, lithium, graphite and other strategically valuable resources that will strengthen either Russia and its allies or Ukraine and the democratic world in global competition.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had her visa already issued by Malta canceled on the eve of the meeting of OSCE foreign ministers, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. “An unprecedented case [of non-issuance of visas to members of the Russian delegation] was the cancellation on the eve of the event of the visa already issued by the Maltese Presidency to the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova, with the wording ‘due to circumstances beyond their control,” the statement read. The current OSCE crisis was the result of the destructive actions of a number of Western countries using this platform in their own interests, the statement read.

“Let me remind you that this a ministerial event of the very same OSCE that claims to advocate for freedom of movement. Previously, they talked about the ‘three baskets’ of the OSCE that defined the basic principles of cooperation and interaction within the organization. Now, there is neither cooperation nor interaction, and instead of principles, there is a lack of principles.

The US House of Representatives will not consider President Joe Biden’s request to include $24 billion in additional aid to Ukraine in a government funding bill, Speaker Mike Johnson has said. In the absence of a formal budget, the US government has been funded through “continuing resolutions” periodically approved by Congress. The White House has requested the $24 billion as part of its latest proposed legislation, which the House would need to adopt before adjourning for Christmas holidays. “I’m not planning to do that,” Johnson said on Wednesday, at a press conference on Capitol Hill. “It is not the place of Joe Biden to make that decision now.” The Louisiana Republican reminded reporters that he had predicted Donald Trump’s election would change the dynamics of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and make further US funding unnecessary, adding that this is precisely what’s been happening in recent weeks.

“We have a newly-elected president and we’re going to wait and take the new commander-in-chief’s direction on all of that,” Johnson said. “So I don’t expect any Ukraine funding to come up now.”

Donald Trump’s advisers have presented him with three plans for resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Reuters has reported, citing several sources close to the US president-elect.

Despite certain differences, all of the proposals include Kiev ceding territory to Moscow and giving up on its aspiration to join NATO, the agency said in an article on Wednesday.

A former Trump national security official, involved in the ongoing government transition in the US, has told Reuters that one of the plans came from the president-elect’s incoming Russia-Ukraine envoy, retired Army Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg.

The other two were authored by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and Trump’s former acting intelligence chief, Richard Grenell, respectively, according to the official.

Trump’s advisers reportedly intend to try to pressure the two countries into negotiations by using a “carrots and sticks” strategy, Reuters said. It would see Washington halting military aid to Kiev if Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky refuses to negotiate, and more arms deliveries if Russian President Vladimir Putin expresses an unwillingness to engage in diplomacy, the outlet explained.

As of last week, Trump had yet to convene a central working group to flesh out a unified peace plan, four advisers told the agency on condition of anonymity.

It's no secret that the Biden administration has been pressuring Ukraine's Zelensky behind the scenes to drop the age of conscription down to 18 from the current age of 25. But now the White House is becoming much more direct and out in the open about it.

With less than 50 days to go of Biden in office, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Kiev to make "hard decisions" about expanding mobilization efforts to fight the Russians. He's urging that younger men be forced into the fight.

"Getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary" Blinken stated in a NATO press conference on Wednesday. "Right now, 18- to 25-year-olds are not in the fight," he explained.

... If Zelensky pulls the trigger it would be hugely unpopular among Ukrainians, and could result in internal dissent and mass protests, even as the war rages in the east.

Dec 4, 2024

 • US embassy in Kiev blocking Zelensky interview – Tucker Carlson, RT, Dec 4, 2024

American journalist Tucker Carlson has said the US government has been blocking his attempts to organize an interview with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky for more than a year. On Wednesday, Carlson published a video on X in which he previewed the upcoming release of an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The journalist said the conversation with Russia’s top diplomat was aimed at providing a perspective on how close Washington and Moscow could be to a direct clash, after the administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden granted Ukraine permission to fire American-made long-range weapons deep into Russian territory.

President Putin faces the possibility of a second Ukraine, a second war front that could result from Washington’s success in staging a coup d’etat in Georgia with a color revolution. Riots ongoing since the “Russian party” defeated the “Western party” by 54% to 34% have convinced the Prime Minister of Georgia that the West is in the process of launching a color revolution to overthrow, as was done in Ukraine, the democratically elected government. Putin is silent and consequently could find himself fighting on two fronts. Then the West will open a third front. This is what Putin can expect from consistently presenting himself as a non-interventionist unless Russia is attacked. Russia, certainly the most powerful military entity on earth, carries no weight in Western councils. Georgia, the country, became a part of Russia in early 1800. In 1917 Georgia became one of the provinces of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine will not accept any kind of security guarantees as a substitute for NATO membership, according to a Foreign Ministry statement published on Tuesday. In the document issued ahead of the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels this week, Kiev blasted the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal for security guarantees from Russia and the West. The Foreign Ministry called the pact a “monument to short-sightedness in strategic security decision-making,” and urged its Western backers to issue it an invitation to the US-led military bloc during the meeting in Brussels. “Having the bitter experience of the Budapest Memorandum behind us, we will not settle for any alternatives, surrogates, or substitutes for Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” the ministry said in a statement, marking this week’s 30th anniversary of the memorandum’s signing.

The EU approach to the Ukraine conflict has ultimately weakened the bloc “a lot,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said, branding the decision to blindly follow Washington’s polices a “big mistake.” The top diplomat made the remarks while speaking exclusively to RT’s Saskia Taylor in an interview on Monday. Comparisons between EU and US aid to Ukraine by the bloc’s leaders are a “very bad and harmful approach from the European perspective,” Szijjarto said. While the US is hardly affected by the enduring hostility between Moscow and Kiev, the conflict has taken a heavy toll on the EU, according to the minister. “There is destruction taking place in Europe, and the European economy is faced with the impacts and the consequences of this war. So therefore, following the US policies without any kind of criticism, that’s a big mistake and I do believe that the strategy the European Union has been following in the recent 1000 days is a failed one,” Szijjarto said.

Dec 3, 2024

Featured • SCOTT RITTER: Congress Must Prevent Nuclear War, Consortium News, Dec 3, 2024

Today is the gravest danger of nuclear war than at any time in the nuclear era. This is a reality so stark and intimidating that many people feel powerless to do anything about it. But something can be done.

A Call to Action: Congressional intervention is needed to prevent a nuclear war with Russia.

Democracy works when we make it work.

Today Americans from all walks of life are confronted with the real threat of nuclear war — many experts, me included, believe that there is a greater danger today that at any time in the nuclear era for a nuclear war — greater than during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This is an overwhelming reality, one so stark and intimidating that many people feel powerless to do anything about it.

But there is something that can be done.

Stop the ATACMS

When one breaks down the myriad of factors that contribute to the risk of a nuclear conflict between the U.S. and Russia, one issue emerges as the principle trigger for conflict — the decision by President Joe Biden to authorize Ukraine to fire U.S.-made ATACMS missiles (with assistance of U.S. personnel and satellites) against targets on Russian soil.

If you are looking at the war in Ukraine, the attempted Maidan coup in Georgia and the Salafist jihadi offensive in Syria as separate, unconnected events, you are mistaken. The United States, with the collaboration of several NATO countries — the UK in particular — has embarked on a desperate campaign to try to salvage victory from looming defeat.

...The fascism that is at the heart of the American establishment — i.e., a cozy, corrupt relationship were corporations grow wealthy from supplying over-priced military technology by bribing the Congress to pony up billions of dollars — continued to look for enemies abroad and launched meaningless, but profitable, wars of expedition in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia and Syria. None of those ventures succeeded in bringing peace and stability to those nations.

Why fight these wars? To what purpose? The answer is simple: gain control of the vast resources controlled by Russia, China and Iran.

...Unfortunately, most Americans are still willing to accept the propaganda and will support these efforts until there is an economic or military crisis that inflicts pain and suffering on the US.

The Biden administration on Monday announced a new $725 million weapons package for Ukraine, which includes anti-personnel mines, ammunition for the HIMARS rocket systems, and other equipment.

President Biden just recently approved the provision of anti-personnel mines for Ukraine, a step that goes against his own policy meant to limit the use of the indiscriminate weapon. In 2022, Biden re-implemented an Obama-era policy that prohibited the transfer and use of US anti-personnel mines outside of the Korean Peninsula.

Biden’s decision to send the mines has been condemned by arms control groups and many countries that are signatories to a treaty banning the weapon. The mines, which are designed to kill or maim people, have been banned by 164 countries under the Ottawa Treaty. The US and Russia are not signatories, but Ukraine is and has been in violation of the treaty.

According to The Associated Press, the purpose of the mines is for Ukraine to use them inside Russian territory in the Kursk Oblast, where Russian troops are gradually pushing out an invading Ukrainian force.

The provision of ammunition for the HIMARS systems means the US could be sending more Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of about 190 miles and are fired by the HIMARS. Two US officials who spoke to the AP wouldn’t confirm if the new package includes ATACMS.

...The Biden administration is looking to flood Ukraine with as many weapons as it can before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20, 2025. President Biden has asked Congress to authorize another $24 billion for the proxy war before he leaves office, which would bring total US spending on the conflict to at least $210 billion. (emphasis added)

The European Union has morphed into an “aggressive political bloc” and a “war union,” the Vice Speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper chamber, Konstantin Kosachev, has said. The senator criticized the EU in a Telegram post on Tuesday, pointing to the bloc’s support for the ongoing turmoil in Georgia, which has been hit by mass anti-government, pro-EU protests. The unrest has been going on since Thursday, when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that he would freeze accession talks with the bloc until 2028. He accused Brussels of persistent “blackmail and manipulation” of Georgia’s internal affairs in justifying the decision.

“The first Molotov cocktails were thrown by protesters at Georgian police immediately after the new EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, publicly called the crowd’s protests legitimate and the response of the authorities – illegal,” Kosachev wrote. The vice speaker was apparently referring to remarks made by Kallas during her visit to Kiev, where she threatened Georgia with “consequences” and openly took the protesters’ side. “It is clear that using violence against peaceful protesters is not acceptable, and the Georgian government should respect the will of the Georgian people,” she stated.

Members of the bloc’s foreign service are acting as “instigators” of the unrest, according to the Russian lawmaker. Kosachev recalled the 2020 Capitol Hill rioting in the US, stating that the EU kept silent on it at the time and did not mention any “citizens’ right to protest.” The bloc has grown out of its original economic cooperation framework into an “aggressive political bloc with military inclinations,” acting as the main divisive force in Europe, Kosachev said. “The contemporary European Union is the main factor in dividing Europe and provoking conflicts. [It’s] a union of war,” he stressed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence in global affairs is growing, new EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said. Speaking to reporters in Kiev during her first official visit on Sunday, Kallas, who stepped down as Estonia’s prime minister to take the EU post, reiterated that the European Union “wants Ukraine to win this war.” She doubled down on support for military aid to Ukraine, insisting that providing the country more weapons is not “charitable aid,” but an investment in the security of the EU, since Russian President Vladimir Putin “shows no signs of abandoning his goals.” Kallas has advocated tougher sanctions on Russia and is known for her strident stance against Moscow. She also stated Sunday that supporting Ukraine is in the interests of the US.

“If America is worried about China, it should be worried about Russia first,” Kallas claimed, according to the outlet Suspilne, adding that Russia, Iran, North Korea and China are working together. She also admitted that despite Western efforts to isolate Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin’s political influence has been amplified. “And we also see what Putin is doing in other countries, really increasing his influence. So, if the United States wants to be the strongest state in the world, they will eventually have to deal with the Russian Federation. And the easiest way to deal with this is to support Ukraine so that it wins the war,” the diplomat concluded. Kallas also did not rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine.

Dec 2, 2024

Featured • The Long War to reaffirm Western and Israeli primacy undergoes a shape-shift, Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, Dec 2, 2024

Over the years, that (1940s Kennan) doctrine has ossified into an entire network of security understandings, based on the archetypal conviction that America is strong, and that Russia was weak. Russia must ‘know that’, and thus, it was argued, there could be no logic for Russian strategists to imagine they had any other option but to submit to the overmatch represented by the combined military strength of NATO versus a ‘weak’ Russia. And should Russian strategists unwisely persevere with challenging the West, it was said, the inherent contrariety simply would cause Russia to fracture.

American neocons and western intelligence have not listened to any other view, because they were (and largely still are) convinced by Kennan’s formulation. The American foreign policy class simply could not accept the possibility that such a core thesis was wrong. The entire approach reflected more a deep-seated culture, rather than any rational analysis – even when visible facts on the ground pointed them to a different reality.

So, America has piled the pressure on Russia through the incremental delivery of additional weapons systems to Ukraine; through stationing intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles ever-closer to Russia’s borders; and most recently, by shooting ATACMS into ‘old Russia’.

The aim has been to pressure Russia into a situation where it would feel obliged to make concessions to Ukraine, such as a to accept a freezing of the conflict, and to be obliged to negotiate against Ukrainian bargaining ‘cards’ devised to yield a solution acceptable to the U.S. Or, alternatively, for Russia to be cornered into the ‘nuclear corner’.

American strategy ultimately rests on the conviction that the U.S. could engage in a nuclear war with Russia – and prevail; that Russia understands that were it to go nuclear, it would ‘lose the world’. Or, pressured by NATO, the anger amongst Russians likely would sweep Putin from office were he to make significant concessions to Ukraine. It was a ‘win-win’ outcome – from the U.S. perspective.

Unexpectedly however, a new weapon appeared on the scene which precisely unshackles President Putin from the ‘all-or-nothing’ choice of having to concede a bargaining ‘hand’ to Ukraine, or resort to nuclear deterrence. Instead, the war can be settled by facts on the ground. Effectively, the George Kennan ‘trap’ imploded.

For almost three years, NATO countries have boycotted diplomatic contact with Russia, even as hundreds of thousands of men die on the Ukraine conflict's battlefield. The decision to reject diplomacy is morally repugnant. Diplomacy could have reduced violence, prevented escalation, and even opened a path to peace. Instead, political and media elites skillfully presented this rejection as a sign of moral righteousness, labeling dialogue as treason and war as virtuous.

More than twice as many Ukrainian soldiers have been charged with desertion this year than in 2022 and 2023 combined, the Financial Times has reported. The spike in desertions has hampered Kiev’s ability to replenish its thinned-out ranks. Ukrainian prosecutors opened 60,000 cases against deserters between January and October of this year, the British newspaper reported on Saturday, noting that those convicted face prison terms of up to 12 years. For some of these men, desertion is seen as the only way of getting off the front lines to rest. Ukrainian lawmakers dropped a provision from a bill earlier this year that would have allowed the country’s longest-serving conscripts to be demobilized in the coming months, and service members told the Financial Times that the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) lacks the manpower to give troops shorter four-week rotations off the front lines for rest and retraining.

"They’re just killing them, instead of letting them rehabilitate and rest,” one officer told the newspaper. Those killed are replaced by ill-trained and unfit draftees. In an earlier article, Ukrainian commanders told the Financial Times that on some busy sectors of the front, 50 to 70% of these new conscripts are killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation. Those who survive often go AWOL as soon as they can, the newspaper reported. Some choose to desert while at training camps in NATO countries. An anonymous Polish security source told the Financial Times that around 12 Ukrainian men abscond from training centers in Poland every month. Earlier this week, a Ukrainian MP told the Associated Press that as many as 200,000 soldiers may have deserted since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022.

Nov 30, 2024

Featured • Zelenskyy Offers To End 'Hot Phase' Of War In Exchange For NATO Membership, ZeroHedge, Nov 29, 2024
In short, to end the war, Zelenskyy wants the thing that started the war.

Featured • Zelensky Finally Breaks: Willing to Accept NATO Membership for Territory Swap, Simplicius, Nov 29, 2024
The U.S., including the people around Trump, is still operating from badly-mistaken perceptions of Russia's strengths (which are many, in Russia itself and in the conflict zone) and weaknesses (which are few). I don't see anything valuable in Team Trump's initial proposals. They are almost certainly aimed at the thoroughly-brainwashed domestic audience more than at Russia. As Simplicius says, Trump has a tightrope to walk. Going further, I think that if Russia were to accept anything less than their stated objectives of permanent neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification of Ukraine, and the acceptance that the five breakaway provinces are now de jure part of Russia, the situation would end up being more dangerous for all concerned, not less. Russia also wants an end to all sanctions. Trump's problem is how to end the war while looking "strong," i.e. how to accept defeat. In my opinion there is nothing gained by playing to the Blob. The American people can handle the truth, even if the Blob can't. The Ukraine War was unwinnable from the start. It was a huge mistake, not all that different from Vietnam in many respects. Trump should end it quickly and move on. He cannot ever placate the military-industrial state enough. He needs to focus on doing things for the country as he sees those things, and let the chips fall where they may as far as this war is concerned. Yes, they will go after him. They will do so in any case. Needless to say, if he is killed, that will be the permanent end of the United States.

Featured • Oreshnik missiles could be used to strike Kiev – Putin, RT, Nov 28, 2024

The Russian military is selecting targets in Ukraine for further possible strikes using the country’s new Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missiles, President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday.

Targets could be “decision making centers,” the Russian leader said during a meeting with Moscow’s key regional allies in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Military facilities could be targeted, along with defense and industrial enterprises – “especially since the Kiev regime has repeatedly attempted to strike at facilities of national importance in Russia,” Putin explained.

Moscow already has several Oreshnik missiles at its disposal and has begun the large-scale production of the advanced weapon system, he added.

...“[The system has] dozens of homing warheads that attack their targets at Mach-10 speed… Their temperature reaches 4,000 degrees,” the president added. “Anything located in the strike center is obliterated into elemental particles, reduced to dust.” (emphasis added)

The argument sounds like a thinly veiled threat: If the US tries to force a peace deal, then Britain will send troops, escalate the war and ensure that no peace is possible. Johnson also asserted that if Russia gets the upper hand in the conflict then Britain may deploy it’s forces regardless in order to “defend Europe.” Ukraine’s eastern defenses are currently being overrun by ongoing Russian attrition tactics. This reality in combination with Trump’s avalanche election win seems to have triggered establishment ghouls into a frenzy of escalation with Joe Biden giving the greenlight on long range missile strikes coordinated directly by NATO forces. To be clear, Ukraine is not part of the EU nor is it a member of NATO. NATO warhawks like Johnson have consistently claimed that Russia’s intent is to invade greater Europe (domino effect propaganda similar to the Vietnam War), yet there is still no evidence to support this.

The western media has spent the better part of the conflagration claiming that Russian forces have been chewed up beyond repair in Ukraine; at the same time they suggest Russia somehow has the strength to invade the EU. The majority of the US and European public have confirmed time and time again that they will not support direct conflict with Russia. They will not volunteer to fight in such a war and will not submit to military conscription. Around 70% of Americans say they prefer negotiations to end the war. Only 10% of Europeans believe Ukraine can win and 52% of Ukrainians say they want negotiations and a quick end to the war. Despite this, establishment politicians continue to ignore the overwhelming calls for peace in Ukraine.

The damage assessments of yesterday’s November 28 electric war strikes against targets across the Ukraine spell the countrywide collapse of electricity supply before January 20, when the new Trump Administration will take office. By then, the Russian General Staff will have deprived Keith Kellogg, the retired US Army general newly appointed to serve as Trump’s negotiator for end-of-war terms, of the options he has publicly declared for himself, and also for Trump, in their war to make America great again in Europe. ...

Negotiating to prevent the US from losing its military dominance in Europe, and to conserve the forces and weapon supplies “needed in other conflicts, especially if China invades Taiwan” are Kellogg’s running orders from Trump.

Russian sources say that reviving the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” weapons systems to combat Russia’s Kinzhal and Oreshnik missile advantage is the unstated “geo-strategic” priority, not only of Kellogg but of others in the Trump administration. They believe Elon Musk will lobby the president to make himself “chief US rocketeer to get a trillion-dollar contract to build missiles to counter us. But if they want a new arms race, they are already trailing. They will lose in space what they’ve already lost on the ground.”

According to a US veteran of the Afghanistan War, the career military experience Kellogg brings to his new job is “losing, not winning on the battlefield. He’s a typical empire enforcer. The last time Kellogg fought a competent military force, it was the Vietnamese, and Kellogg lost. For Trump to pick a man whose military victories are the invasion of Panama, the defeat of Iraq in Gulf War-1, and running a nuclear war bunker with Paul Wolfowitz during 9/11, tells you that it’s lights-out in the minds of both the soldier and his commander.”

The West is secretly planning to occupy Ukraine and freeze the conflict with Russia by deploying tens of thousands of supposed peacekeepers to the country, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said. In a statement on Friday, the spy agency cited intelligence sources as saying that NATO is increasingly in favor of halting the hostilities along the current front line, as the US-led military bloc and Ukraine have come to realize that they are failing to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. Freezing the conflict would allow the West to rebuild the shattered Ukrainian military and “prepare it for an attempt at revenge,” the SVR stated. It further claimed that NATO is already setting up training centers to process at least one million Ukrainian conscripts. A possible respite would also help the West restore Kiev’s military industry, which has been regularly battered by Russian missile and drone strikes, the SVR added.

“To solve these tasks, the West will need to essentially occupy Ukraine. Naturally, this will be done under the guise of deploying a ‘peacekeeping contingent’ in the country… According to the plan, a total of 100,000 so-called peacekeepers will be deployed in Ukraine.” According to the SVR, the plan would also involve Ukraine being partitioned into four large occupation zones. Romania would take the Black Sea coast, Poland would control Western Ukraine, and the UK would occupy the north, including Kiev. The central and eastern parts of the country would be taken by Germany, the agency claimed. The SVR also alleged that Germany plans to revive practices implemented by the Nazi regime during World War II to “police” Ukraine. In particular, Berlin wants to create special “death squads” made up of Ukrainian nationalists to maintain order in the occupied territory, the st atement read.

Mass desertion is “starving” the Ukrainian Army and “crippling” Kiev’s battleplans, as troops flee in their tens of thousands, the Associated Press reported on Friday, citing two soldiers who went AWOL, as well as lawyers and a dozen officials, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We have already squeezed the maximum out of our people,” an officer with the 72nd Brigade told the American news agency, explaining why the problem became so acute.

The Prosecutor General’s office lists more than 100,000 soldiers who have been charged over desertion, nearly half of whom quit this year alone, but the actual number is likely significantly higher, AP said. It may be as high as 200,000, one MP told the agency. In some cases, entire units have fled their frontline positions, it was told.

“If there’s no end term [to military service], it turns into a prison – it becomes psychologically hard to find reasons to defend this country,” said one of the deserters, who was named by AP. He was charged shortly after being interviewed.

The country’s former top general, Valery Zaluzhny, would be supported by 27% if an election were held now, according to the survey.

Only 16% of Ukrainian voters would back Vladimir Zelensky if a long-overdue presidential election were held now, a survey has revealed.

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump tapped retired General Keith Kellogg as his envoy to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Kellogg advocated for the Joe Biden administration strategy in Ukraine and even called for implementing a no-fly zone over the war-torn country.

“I am very pleased to nominate General Keith Kellogg to serve as Assistant to the President and Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Keith has led a distinguished Military and Business career, including serving in highly sensitive National Security roles in my first Administration,” Trump posted on TruthSocial, adding, “Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!”

While Kellogg served in the first Trump administration, his views on Ukraine are starkly different from what Trump said on the campaign trail. As a candidate, Trump promised, on day one, to end the Ukraine war. Though, he never explained how he would accomplish that ambitious goal.

Nov 27, 2024

Featured • How The New Russian Missiles Are Changing The Game, Moon of Alabama, Nov 27, 2024

Featured • PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s ‘Samson Option’, Consortium News, Nov 25, 2024
Make no mistake. The Ukraine War was fervently sought and set up by the U.S. and its allies. As Lawrence says, one of the biggest questions in this century in the U.S. has been how gently the U.S. could let go of its collapsing empire.

Featured • On the Brink, Scott Ritter, Nov 23, 2024

 • White House Pressing Ukraine To Draft 18-Year-Olds for War, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Nov 27, 2024

The White House is pressuring Ukraine to increase the size of its military by lowering the minimum age of conscription from 25 to 18, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

A senior Biden administration official said the outgoing administration wants Ukraine to start drafting 18-year-olds to expand the current pool of fighting-age males. The pressure from the US comes as polling shows the majority of Ukrainians want peace talks with Russia to end the war.

Ukrainian war veterans and illicit arms will emerge as new threats to EU nations if Moscow prevails in its conflict with Kiev, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing intelligence community assessments “across Europe.” The perceived dangers were mentioned in a report based on an interview with Michal Koudelka, the head of the Czech Republic’s Security Information Service (BIS). The counter-intelligence chief told Bloomberg why he believed the US and its allies should continue pouring money into Kiev rather than seeking a negotiated peace in the Ukraine conflict. “If Ukraine loses, or is forced to accept a bad peace deal, then Russia will perceive that as victory,” Koudelka said. “Russia would spend perhaps the next ten to 15 years recovering from its huge human and economic losses and preparing for the next target, which is Central and Eastern Europe,” he predicted.

The Czech spy chief was repeating a common line of reasoning among proponents of prolonging the Ukraine conflict. US President Joe Biden claimed earlier this year that Russia would attack NATO after Ukraine, while calling on American lawmakers to authorize more spending to prop up Kiev. Moscow has denied having any such intentions. Koudelka has previously accused Moscow of waging “hybrid warfare” on his nation. In another recent interview, he claimed that a series of bomb threats sent via email to Czech and Slovak schools in September had “a clearly visible Russian trace.”

US officials are beginning to concede that Ukraine may be forced to negotiate with Russia and may ultimately have to give up territory it considers its own, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources. With Donald Trump returning to the White House in January and Kiev’s forces suffering mounting battlefield losses as Russia reclaims occupied territory in Kursk Region, Ukraine is in perhaps its “weakest position in nearly three years,” the paper said. Many White House officials believe that “within a few months, Ukraine could be pushed into negotiations with Russia” and that it “could be forced to give up territory,” according to the report. The “quiet recognition” that Kiev may need to give up territory is also spreading among its European backers, the Post said.

US President Joe Biden’s recent decision to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied ATACMS missiles to strike deep into Russian territory, as well as his move to provide Kiev with banned landmines, were made in the hope that it would give the country the “the strongest hand possible” before any potential negotiations with Moscow after Trump takes office in January. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected any suggestion of territorial concessions to Russia. However, Biden’s officials have “largely resigned themselves” to the likelihood that Trump “will not provide Ukraine more assistance,” the report said. According to the paper, many of Ukraine’s European allies are “frustrated” that it took Washington so long to provide the country with the latest capabilities and that this should have happened when Ukraine’s military position was “more robust.”

But this has not been a war to defend Ukraine. It has been a war to overthrow Russia’s leader, as Biden admitted, and to humiliate Russia back into its 1990s servitude, a war that still goes on.

In his speech, Kennedy sought world peace. He asked:

“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

Biden and other Western leaders have invested too much of their pride, their credibility and their citizen’s money into trying to use “American weapons of war” to enforce a Pax Americana on Russia. They are forcing a choice on Moscow of either a humiliating retreat or nuclear war.

Ukraine could be extremely useful to the US because it is brimming with valuable natural resources and is willing to negotiate an agreement with Washington on extraction, Senator Lindsey Graham has said. The Republican senator from South Carolina told Fox News that the Ukraine conflict is ultimately “about money.” An extract of the interview was published on the senator’s YouTube channel on Wednesday. “You know that the richest country in all of Europe for rare earth minerals is Ukraine?” he said, estimating the worth at 2 to 7 trillion dollars. Graham added that Ukraine is ready to “do a deal with us,” but not Russia. “So it’s in our interest to make sure that Russia doesn’t take over the place,” he said, describing Ukraine as the “breadbasket of the world.” “We can make money and have an economic relationship with Ukraine. It would be very beneficial to us, with peace,” Graham went on to say.

“Donald Trump is going to do a deal to get our money back, to enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals. A good deal for and us.” The president-elect, he added, will also help settle the conflict by concluding an “honorable deal” that would avoid “humiliating” Russian President Vladimir Putin and setting the stage for another conflict. “Donald Trump knows how to end wars. All Joe Biden knows how to do is start wars,” he said. Graham is known for his hawkish stance on aiding Ukraine and containing Moscow. In February, he was added to Russia’s list of ‘terrorists and extremists’, after the senator advocated for designating Russia as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’. In 2023, Moscow expressed outrage over Graham’s remarks during a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, when he said: “The Russians are dying. The best money we’ve ever spent.”

The Biden administration has asked Congress to approve $24 billion in additional spending on Ukraine as it’s working to ramp up the proxy war as much as possible during President Biden’s final weeks in office.

POLITICO Pro obtained a request from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget that asked Congress to include additional Ukraine spending in a continuing resolution that’s expected to be voted on next month. Two congressional aides said Congress received the proposal on Monday.

The UK and France have “reactivated” talks on sending troops to Ukraine, French newspaper Le Monde reported on Monday. The idea has already caused a rift among Europe’s NATO members. Back in February, French President Emmanuel Macron caused controversy by declaring his willingness to send ground troops to Ukraine “to prevent Russia from winning this war.” The statement was quickly disavowed by NATO officials, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters that Ukraine’s Western backers were “unanimous” in their opposition to the idea. The plan was seemingly shelved, Le Monde has reported, until British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Paris earlier this month. Citing anonymous sources, the French newspaper claimed that talks on a possible Franco-British deployment to Ukraine were “reactivated” by Starmer and Macron.

France’s greenlight for Kiev strikes on internationally-recognized Russian territory will only hurt Ukraine and further escalate the conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Saturday. Her remarks followed a statement by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot. In an interview with the BBC, Barrot said that Paris does “not set and express red lines” on its support for Kiev, and that long-range strikes on Russian soil may be carried out by Ukraine “in the logics of self-defense.” “This is not support for Ukraine, but rather it is a way to finish it off,” Zakharova told TASS, referring to Barrot’s statements. The French minister did not confirm whether missiles from his country had already been used by Kiev for long-range strikes on Russia. When asked by the BBC whether his “no red lines” comment meant Paris could send French troops to fight alongside Ukrainians, he said he “does not discard any option.”

According to the New York Times, US and European officials have discussed a range of options they believe will deter Russia from taking more Ukrainian territory, including providing Kiev with nuclear weapons. The outlet reports that Western officials believe the Kremlin will not significantly escalate the war before Donald Trump is sworn in as President in January.

Following the election of Trump earlier this month, the US and its NATO allies began taking steps to rush weapons to Ukraine and give Kiev the ability to strike targets inside Russian territory with long-range weapons.

Desperate to bolster Ukraine’s standing in the war before the transition of power on January 20, the Biden administration is looking at a range of serious escalations. “US and European officials are discussing deterrence as a possible security guarantee for Ukraine, such as stockpiling a conventional arsenal sufficient to strike a punishing blow if Russia violates a cease-fire.”

According to some officials who spoke with the Times, the administration believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t significantly escalate the war until Trump returns to the Oval Office.

“But the escalation risk of allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with US-supplied weaponry has diminished with the election of Mr. Trump,”

Nov 24, 2024

Featured • Jeffrey Sachs on NATO expansion and Russia, Media Lens, Nov 19, 2024

 • Putin announces mass production of Oreshnik missiles, RT, Nov 22, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on Friday the decision to begin serial production of the new Oreshnik ballistic missile system.

The announcement came after the system was used in combat for the first time earlier this week in Ukraine.

Speaking during a meeting at the Kremlin with the leadership of the Defense Ministry and defense industry representatives, Putin outlined that the Oreshnik missile system, one of Russia’s latest military advancements, is not a modernization of an old Soviet weapon.

Instead, it is a new development based on cutting-edge hypersonic technology and modern materials. “It is the result of work done in the conditions of New Russia,” Putin said, highlighting that the system was created to meet contemporary defense needs.

Putin confirmed that several Oreshnik systems are currently undergoing testing in Russia, and that the decision to embark on mass production had already been articulated. “You can assume that the decision on production has been made. In fact, it is organized,” he added. More of the missile systems are expected to be delivered to Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces in the coming months.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has confirmed that Russia has a stockpile of the new Oreshnik medium-range missiles, following its successful combat test on Thusday.

Nov 22, 2024

Featured • Why These New Russian Missiles Are Real Game Changers, Moon of Alabama, Nov 22, 2024

Featured • Biden’s Lust for War, Andrew P. Napolitano, Consortium News, Nov 21, 2024

Much of the military equipment that the U.S. has sent to Ukraine — most from America’s substance, not surplus — required U.S. troops and other personnel to train Ukrainian troops in the use of it.

But last weekend, Biden — whose presidency has been thoroughly repudiated by American voters — authorized the use of offensive weaponry that can reach 190 miles into Russia and which can only be manned by U.S. personnel. At this writing, the U.S. equipment has attacked and destroyed a warehouse holding artillery ammunition some 70 miles inside the Russian border.

Who is firing U.S. offensive weaponry?

There is no dispute but that the U.S. is waging war on Russia — without a congressional declaration, without the consent of the United Nations (as the U.S. is obliged to do under a treaty that the U.S. wrote) and solely on its own.

Ukrainian officials are reportedly planning to demand that Washington send Tomahawk missiles to Kiev and allow their use against targets deep inside Russia before President Joe Biden’s term is up, a Ukrainian lawmaker has told Politico.

Russia has added the recently opened US missile defense base in Poland to its list of possible priority strike targets due to its “obvious potential” to weaken Moscow’s deterrent forces, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

During a weekly briefing on Thursday, Zakharova was asked to comment on the official opening of the US-NATO anti-missile base in the Polish village of Redzikowo last week and the statements by Warsaw that this facility is directly aimed against Russia.

The spokeswoman replied that the opening of the base is “yet another provocative step in a series of deeply destabilizing actions by the Americans and their allies in NATO in the strategic sphere.”

Zakharova stated that the move is part of the “decades-long destructive policy of bringing NATO military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders” and leads to the “undermining of strategic stability” and an increase in strategic risks and “the overall level of nuclear danger.”

...

The Aegis Ashore facility on the Baltic Sea coast was initially proposed in the early 2000s, after the US repudiated the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty. Washington had assured Moscow at the time that the future bases in Romania and Poland were not aimed against Russia but against “rogue states” such as Iran or North Korea.

Nov 21, 2024

Featured • Putin outlines Moscow's response to Ukraine escaltion (FULL SPEECH), RT, Nov 21, 2024

Featured • US military prepared for nuclear strikes – spokesman, RT, Nov 21, 2024
They expect to be able to prevail in a nuclear war. They expect to lose a good part of the U.S. population in such a war but they want to be the winner. By having more nuclear weapons left after (an) enemy strike(s), the U.S. would be the "winner." They do not believe in nuclear winter and I think to some extent this reflects targeting strategies.

Douglas MacGregor, commenting on this, said Buchanan has way overstepped his job. The military should never, never express itself in this way. He should be immediately fired, and if he is not, the Kremlin will have to assume his incendiary comments represent U.S. policy. Policy should be made and explained by civilians, not the military. Of course it isn't, but these remarks offer a window into the degree to which civilian government is weak. There is a leadership vacuum in the Oval Office, and the negative pressure field goes out from there.

I have personally heard enthusiasm for nuclear war at Nuclear Deterrence Summits, as a roomful of defense contractors cheer while simulated ICBMs launch. The purpose of civilian control of the military is to keep these primitive emotions in check.

Featured • Russia Showed Its Doom’s Day Weapon In Action, SouthFront, Nov 21, 2024

 • Biden planning to write off billions in Ukrainian debt, RT, Nov 21, 2024

Outgoing US President Joe Biden has decided to write off about $4.7 billion in taxpayer-funded loans to Ukraine as part of a broader effort to bolster Kiev before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year. Since February 2022, the US Congress has approved more than $174 billion in aid packages to support Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. The latest tranche, approved in April, included over $9.4 billion in “forgivable loans” to help fill the gap in Kiev’s budget. “We have taken the step that was outlined in the law to cancel those loans,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Wednesday, confirming that Biden seeks to write off half of that amount, or roughly $4.7 billion. Cancelling the debt is in the “national interest of the United States and its EU, G7+, and NATO partners,” the State Department claimed in a letter to Congress dated November 18, according to Bloomberg.

Nov 20, 2024

Featured • Who Is Authorizing Biden’s Nuclear Brinkmanship While The President’s Brain Is Missing?, Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 20, 2024

It’s so fun how the Biden administration is using its lame duck months to skyrocket hostilities between nuclear superpowers and we don’t even know who’s really making these decisions because the president’s brain is cottage cheese.

These escalations happen as Ukrainians begin moving into a majority consensus that it is time to seek peace. A new Gallup poll has found that a majority of Ukrainians throughout the country now support peace talks to end the war with Russia, with 52 percent favoring peace and 38 percent wanting to fight on.

As usual people are more opposed to continuing the war the closer they are to the frontline, with 63 percent of the respondents in eastern Ukraine supporting peace talks and only 27 percent wanting to continue fighting. The further you are from the effects of this horrific proxy war the more likely you are to support it; it’s just as true inside Ukraine’s borders as it is when you include all the western armchair warriors who want to continue fighting to the last Ukrainian.

“Listen to the Ukrainians,” we were told when all this started. Well, here they are. This proxy war has been waged in the name of defending Ukrainian democracy, and yet it continues to dangerously escalate against the will of the majority, at the direction of a president in Kyiv whose elected term ended months ago.

Fighting a war with Russia always seems like a swell idea until you actually try it. The fact that the majority of Ukrainians now support ending the war is yet another example of this oft-repeated history lesson.

The only way to view Trump as significantly worse than Biden is to take very little interest US foreign policy, and the only way to take so little interest in US foreign policy is to care very little about non-western lives.

Allowing Ukraine use American missiles against Russia is an impeachable act, Congressman Thomas Massie has claimed.

President Joe Biden has violated the US Constitution and ought to be impeached for permitting Ukraine to fire American-supplied long-range missiles into Russia, Congressman Thomas Massie has said.

Multiple US outlets reported over the weekend that Biden had lifted the restrictions on Kiev’s use of US-supplied rockets. While the White House has neither confirmed nor denied the news officially, a volley of missiles was fired at Russia’s Bryansk Region early on Tuesday.

“By authorizing long range missiles to strike inside Russia, Biden is committing an unconstitutional Act of War that endangers the lives of all US citizens,” Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.

“This is an impeachable offense, but the reality is he’s an emasculated puppet of a deep state,” he added.

Emails and internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal details of a cabal of British military and intelligence veterans which plotted to escalate and prolong the Ukraine proxy war “at all costs.” Convened under the direction of the British Ministry of Defense in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the cell referred to itself as Project Alchemy. As British leadership sabotaged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow, the cell put forward an array of plans “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.” The leaks obtained by The Grayzone expose a hidden hand behind Britain’s policy in Ukraine, showing in unusually granular detail how it aimed to engineer a long, grinding war through covert operations that stretched the bounds of legality.

Project Alchemy’s proposed schemes spanned every conceivable field of warfare, from cyber attacks to “discreet operations” to outright terrorism. The secret cell even put forward a plan to “aggressively pursue” and “dismantle” independent media outlets – including The Grayzone – through an aggressive campaign of legal harassment and online censorship, so they “would be forced to close.” The incendiary blueprints were fed to the highest levels of the British state and national security structure, where they were apparently well-received. Founded by a senior British Ministry of Defence official, Project Alchemy is composed of veteran military and intelligence operatives united by a desire for all-out war between the West and Russia. Some have trained Ukrainian forces in clandestine sabotage tactics. Members of the national security cabal tacitly acknowledged that their proposed operations stretched the bounds of British law.

Thus they suggested that London should be “prepared to creatively use the law” to meet its goals, and even be willing to erase “legal restrictions on UK deniable ops” against Russia.

In an interview with PBS News Hour, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called for Ukraine to step up its mobilization efforts as Kiev is facing a manpower shortage. President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy adviser also admitted that advanced American weapons systems have had little battlefield impact.

In his conversation with Nick Schifrin on Monday, Sullivan said, “Our view has been that there’s not one weapon system that makes a difference in this battle. It’s about manpower, and Ukraine needs to do more, in our view, to firm up its lines in terms of the number of forces it has on the front lines.” He continued, “Where is the straightest line between Ukrainian performance and inputs? It’s on mobilization and manpower.”

Kiev has used conscription to fill its ranks as war morale in Ukraine has sunk, and the Ukrainian military has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. Earlier this year, Ukraine dropped its conscription age from 27 to 25. Still, American politicians, such as Senator Lindsey Graham, demanded that Kiev go even further.

Russia’s military operation was initially aimed at Ukraine but quickly became a conflict with NATO, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said. Putin sent troops towards Kiev in February 2022 after the Ukrainian government openly rejected the Minsk Agreements and began shelling the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the Donbass. In an extended interview with Indian media on Tuesday, Peskov was asked why the hostilities have taken 1,000 days and counting, and if he could predict when they might end. “When all this started, it started against the Kiev regime. And now it is continuing as a war between Russia and NATO. That is why it took a little bit longer and will take a little bit longer,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

“It will come to an end as soon as we reach our goals,” Peskov said, adding that Russia would prefer to achieve its objectives through negotiations, but Ukraine has literally outlawed any talks with Moscow. “So that’s why we’re continuing the military operation, because the possibility of peaceful negotiations is now being denied, both by Kiev and their [bosses] in Washington,” Peskov told the Indian media. The initial spring 2022 peace talks between Russia and Ukraine were reportedly derailed by Boris Johnson, the British prime minister at the time, who told Kiev that the West was not ready to make peace with Moscow. The US and its allies have funneled almost $200 billion worth of aid to Ukraine since 2022, including weapons, ammunition and combat equipment such as artillery, tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles, while insisting this did not make them a party to the conflict.

The new Russian nuclear doctrine recently signed by President Vladimir Putin features several notable articles that were absent from the doctrine’s previous iterations, Russian military analyst Ret.Col. Viktor Litovkin tells Sputnik. “Firstly, the 2020 edition of the doctrine contained no mention of Belarus where we deployed our nuclear weapons and whom we had taken under our ‘nuclear umbrella’,” Litovkin explains. “Secondly, the previous version of the doctrine contained no mention of Russia being authorized to use nuclear weapons if attacked by a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power.” According to him, Russia thus sends a direct warning to the United States and NATO who supply Ukraine with long-range missiles and urge Kiev to use them, effectively waging a war against Russia by proxy.

“This is a serious warning that, if they go too far and long-range missiles are used against Russian territory – and these long-range missiles are programmed by NATO specialists because Ukrainian specialists lack the necessary equipment and expertise, not to mention NATO aircraft and heavy UAVs guiding these missiles – we would be empowered to strike against the sites these missiles are launched from,” he adds. Dmitry Stefanovich from the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the Russian Academy of Sciences also points out that the new edition of the nuclear doctrine states that nuclear weapons could be used in case of a threat to Russia’s “territorial integrity and sovereignty” rather than in case of a threat to “the country’s very existence” as before.

Nov 19, 2024

Featured • To Prolong The War In Ukraine U.S. Allows ATACMS Use On Russia, Moon of Alabama, Nov 18, 2024

Nothing has been shown that would provide that there are any North Korean soldiers in Russia. The claim that a division sized contingent of North Korean soldiers is preparing to fight in the Kursk region was made by Ukraine only after a U.S. think-tank had proposed to use it as an item of larger propaganda campaign.

Russia has sufficient forces to eliminate the Ukrainian troops on its ground. It is highly doubtful that any Russian command would agree to include North Korean units in any Russian operation. Thus the 'North Korean soldiers' propaganda claim continues to be just that.

The incoming President Donald Trump has publicly said that he will seek to end the war in Ukraine as soon as possible. The Biden administration has not only helped to start that war but is seeking to prolong it as long as possible.

Militarily the use of ATACMS against targets in Russia will not provide any significant advantage to the Ukrainian forces. There is no way left for them to sustain or win in this war. Their defeat is inevitable.

But allowing the use of ATACMS against Russia will escalate the war into a new dimension. It will prolong the path to any peace agreement. This to the sole benefit of those who are politically and financially invested in this war.

Nov 18, 2024

Featured • Operation 'Dark Winter' Resumes as Massive Russian Strikes Again Cripple Ukrainian Power Grid, Simplicius, Nov 17, 2024

The NYT piece is remarkable in its admissions. It says that Trump forcing Ukraine to give up land would look like a major defeat of the West, but no matter—the author writes it is necessary because Ukraine is being devastated and Putin has no reason to stop; finally reality dawns on them!

Despite flashes of spectacular success by Ukrainian forces, the Russian position has gradually strengthened, and there is no reason to expect Mr. Putin to lose the upper hand now. That may sound like defeatism, but it’s also realism.

The even bigger admission is the now naked truth that the war is in fact a proxy war, spurred on by NATO and the West:

I believe it’s right to call Ukraine a proxy war, because I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the Biden administration has supported the war not only in deference to righteous Ukrainian determination to fight off Russia but also because the war was a chance to debilitate our enemy without directly engaging it.

For the first time, MSM makes headway in acknowledging the West’s participation in the Ukraine’s exploitation, even if only by a halfway measure:

Now another cold winter bears down, and Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure is so bomb-wrecked that people are expected to endure daily blackouts of up to 20 hours through the dark and bitter months.

This bleak landscape contains the most extreme and tragic results of the power games that have been played out mercilessly on Ukrainian soil by greater powers. Both Russia and the United States have for decades exploited Ukraine’s internal divisions to undermine each other and jockey for regional influence, usually at the expense of ordinary Ukrainians.

Diplomats and spies from successive U.S. administrations waded into the swamps of post-Soviet Ukrainian power-brokering, where corruption was thick and sharp divisions separated politicians backed by Mosocw from those who saw Ukraine's future - and sought protection from Russia - with Europe.

Well, well, well…

The author even goes on to admit the Bush administration heavily backed the Orange Revolution of 2004, “shower[ing] the pro-Western groups with funding and training.”

The final flourish says it all:

It is this uneasy dynamic — a Ukraine close to the West, striving for inclusion in the West, but not truly part of it — that has defined the U.S. management of this disastrous war. We want Ukraine to function as a protectorate, but ultimately, we are unwilling to protect it. A sensible, ugly strategy — tactically defensible but morally reprehensible.

America is not going to save Ukraine. Maybe we need Mr. Trump — brazen and unscrupulous — to finally say so out loud and act accordingly.

The Politico article strikes the same note, essentially arguing that Trump will be doing the West a huge favor by saving them from their own self-wrought unwinnable catastrophe. According to them, Kiev secretly knows that Trump is a better option than Harris because Trump is more likely to get a deal ‘favorable to Ukraine’ from Putin, whereas Harris and co. would have just prolonged the slaughter indefinitely, keeping to this waffling noncommittal track.

According to the author, everyone will get a ready excuse:...

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a close confidant of US President-elect Donald Trump, has weighed in on President Joe Biden’s apparent decision to officially sanction the use of American missiles on targets deep within Russian territory, agreeing with a post stating “libs love war.” With just two months left in office, Biden reportedly gave in to one of Ukraine’s long-standing demands on Sunday afternoon, authorizing Kiev to use its American-provided Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) in strikes on Russia’s Kursk Region. The decision was simultaneously reported by multiple US media outlets. Ukraine plans to conduct its first long-range attacks in the coming days, Reuters reported, citing “two US officials and a source familiar with the decision.” Biden’s decision marks a significant escalation in the conflict. [gm - maybe.]

While Ukraine has possessed ATACMS missiles since April, the US president did not at that time give Kiev permission to use them on internationally recognized Russian territory. To date, they have been used in strikes on Russia’s Crimea, Donetsk, and Lugansk regions, which Washington considers Ukrainian. Responding to the news on X, Utah Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, declared that “Libs [liberals] love war,” adding: “war facilitates bigger government.” “True,” Musk replied. While SpaceX has provided the Ukrainian military with Starlink internet terminals, Musk has long argued that Kiev cannot hope to defeat Russian forces on the battlefield, and that the conflict must end in a negotiated settlement. The tech tycoon endorsed Donald Trump – who has vowed to bring a swift end to the fighting – earlier this summer, and following Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris last week, he has emerged as one of the president-elect’s closest advisers.

Musk is not the only figure in Trump’s orbit to condemn Biden’s decision. Richard Grenell, a close adviser to the president-elect who served as acting director of national intelligence in 2020, accused Biden of “escalating the wars before he leaves office.” “The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., wrote on X. “Gotta lock in those $Trillions. Life be damned!!! Imbeciles!” Trump has vowed to bring the conflict to a speedy conclusion, and is expected to push Moscow and Kiev to agree to peace talks. Musk reportedly joined Trump on a phone call to Vladimir Zelensky last week, speaking directly to the Ukrainian leader at one point, according to reports in the US media.

Putin has made clear that US-supported long-range strikes in Russia would risk nuclear war.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that President Biden had authorized Ukraine’s use of long-range US-provided missiles in strikes on Russian territory, an escalation Moscow has made clear risks nuclear war.

US officials told the paper that Ukraine can now use Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 190 miles, to strike Russian territory. The ATACMS are fired by US-made multiple rocket launch systems, including the HIMARS. Ukraine can only fire the HIMARS with coordinates provided by or confirmed by the US and its allies, meaning the US will now directly support strikes deep inside Russia.

The US officials said the ATACMS will likely initially be used to hit Russian troops fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Ukraine and the US have also said North Korean troops are deployed in Kursk. The US has said the North Korean troops are engaged in combat, but that hasn’t been confirmed by Moscow.

The EU can’t survive without cooperating with Russia and the BRICS states, Russian Federation Council Deputy Speaker Konstantin Kosachev said in an interview with RT on Saturday. Russia, however, needs the EU far less, he said. Kosachev noted that the sanctions imposed on Russia create a significant barrier to any real cooperation with the EU. The bloc has imposed 14 rounds of sanctions against Russia following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. These measures have targeted Russia’s central bank reserves held abroad, major banks, various companies, entrepreneurs, politicians, and officials, along with bans on numerous imports and exports. The Russian Foreign Ministry has condemned the sanctions as illegitimate, while President Vladimir Putin has described them as irrational.

Nov 17, 2024

Featured • Moscow continues to warn the West about the risk of nuclear escalation, Lucas Leiroz, Strategic Culture Foundation, Nov 16, 2024

Tensions over the issue of “deep” strikes continue to escalate. Kiev continues to demand permission to strike targets in the Russian Federation’s demilitarized zone, while Moscow continues to make it clear that it will interpret such maneuvers as a declaration of war by NATO. In a recent statement, Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, emphasized how Ukrainians and their partners are “playing with fire” with such threats, promising an “immediate and devastating” response in the event of a long-range strike.

The Russian government has repeatedly stated that the long-range weapons systems supplied by the West to Ukraine cannot be operated without the presence of NATO specialists, who would provide the necessary training and logistical support to the Ukrainians. This is because such weapons are not compatible with the Ukrainian military infrastructure, which depends on continuous intelligence support and strategic guidance provided by the Atlantic alliance. Moscow’s position is clear: authorizing the use of these missiles for strikes outside the official conflict zone, in addition to representing an expansion of Western involvement, would constitute direct NATO intervention in the conflict. Russia would regard any use of these weapons in such circumstances as a direct aggression against its sovereignty by the Western countries themselves, which would require an “immediate and devastating” retaliation.

The discussion about the deployment of Storm Shadow missiles and other advanced weapons systems in “deep” Russian territory is a clear demonstration of the dangerous game the West is playing, ignoring all the limits imposed by Russia. NATO’s role in the war in Ukraine has been a sensitive issue since the beginning of the conflict. Although Western powers insist on their position of supporting Ukraine as a legitimate right to defend it against what they call a Russian “invasion”, many analysts and officials point out that the interventions of the powers of the Atlantic alliance, both in terms of weapons and intelligence, have led to an unnecessary prolongation of the conflict, dragging Ukraine into a proxy war that puts the world on the brink of a nuclear confrontation.

The nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as the United States intelligence supremo has sent shockwaves through the American and NATO establishments. The Western news media – always a dutiful echo chamber for deep-state policymakers – is reverberating with horror at her nomination by President-elect Donald Trump.

That reaction is a good sign that something significant has happened.

The potential appointment of Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) could be the most consequential decision yet by Trump in forming his cabinet.

If one move could signal the foreign policy direction under the 47th president, Gabbard’s nomination is the most salient and potentially the most constructive on the key issue of world peace.

Time magazine headlined with the U.S. intelligence community’s response to Gabbard’s selection. “We are reeling,” it was reported. Reuters reported that the Western “spy world is vexed.” Meanwhile, in The Atlantic, an establishment mouthpiece, Gabbard was denounced as a “threat to the security of the United States.”

Ukraine could face civil unrest and even a full-blown “collapse” if US President-elect Donald Trump reverses the outgoing administration’s policy of unconditional support for Kiev, former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has warned. The election of Trump on November 5 prompted fears in Kiev that Washington would end financial and military aid and would strong-arm the country into an unfavorable settlement with Russia. “If the money were to dry up, a new dynamic would come into play, and not all of it on the battlefield. True, bereft of funding, Ukraine could lose ground completely,” Kuleba wrote in an op-ed published in The Economist on Wednesday. He argued that Ukraine could plunge into a civil conflict if the US forces it to sign a bad peace deal.

“If the Trump administration then imposed unpalatable peace terms on Ukraine, and if Mr. Zelensky agreed (an unlikely scenario), part of Ukrainian society would resist. Domestic unrest would risk the country’s internal collapse,” Kuleba wrote. This would give Russian President Vladimir Putin “the victory he has long desired, painting Ukraine as a failed state,” Kuleba suggested, warning that Trump “cannot afford for Ukraine to become his Afghanistan.”

Signed by Washington and Moscow in 2011, the New START is the last agreement of its kind and is set to expire in February 2026.

The US will observe the “central limits” imposed on its nuclear arsenal by the New START Treaty as long as Russia does so as well, a recent Pentagon report has indicated. The document also points to the need for Washington to be able to simultaneously deter several adversaries.

The tightening of mobilization rules earlier this year has failed to solve Ukraine’s manpower shortage on the battlefield, Vladimir Zelensky has admitted, adding that the relevant legislation should be adjusted. In an interview with Ukrainskoye Radio on Saturday, Zelensky said that Ukraine “has not mobilized” enough troops under two new laws were passed this spring after significant back-and-forth in parliament. The first lowered the draft age from 27 to 25, while the second cracked down on draft dodgers, forcing all citizens eligible for conscription to report to military authorities for “data clarification.”

At the same time, Zelensky rejected speculation that Ukraine had drafted half a million men while pointing to problems with the available replenishments for frontline units. “The brigades in the East are exhausted, rotation is needed. The guys are getting tired and leaving. They must be replaced with fresh units,” Zelensky said. He also admitted that the frontline situation is “really difficult” and that Russia has indeed managed to accomplish “slow progress.”

Nov 16, 2024

Featured • Trump Team To Write Off 'Project Ukraine' as Sunk Cost - Analyst, Svetlana Ekimenko, Sputnik International, Nov 16, 2024

Donald Trump repeated his pledge to end the Ukraine conflagration as he addressed a gala organized by the America First Policy Institute at his Mar-a-Lago resort on November 15, saying that "the conflict has got to stop."

There is a general consensus within President-elect Donald Trump’s team that the failed “Project Ukraine” needs to be shut down, British political analyst Alexander Mercouris speculated on his YouTube channel.

“Overall, despite different opinions and nuances among them, they have reached a general consensus that ‘Project Ukraine’ has absorbed a huge amount of energy and resources on the part of the United States, but it has not delivered what it promised. Ukraine has not been successful on the battlefield, there has been no economic collapse in Russia, and President Putin is still very firmly in control of things in Moscow,” the expert said.

In his opinion, these people, who come from the business world in many cases, have taken a simple “cost-benefit view”, and have agreed that “the time has come to close the whole thing down.”

They don’t feel “invested” in propping up Zelensky’s corrupt regime in the same way that the current Biden administration does, according to the analyst.

Iran likely will launch a painful response to Israel before the 20 January Presidential Inauguration. Its riposte will demonstrate Iran’s unexpected and unforeseen military innovation. What the U.S. and Israel will then do may well open the door to wider regional war. Sentiment across the region seethes at the slaughter in the Occupied Territories and in Lebanon.

Trump may not appreciate just how isolated the U.S. and Israel are among Israel’s Arab and Sunni neighbours. The U.S. is stretched so thin, and its forces across the region are so vulnerable to the hostility that the daily slaughter incubates, that a regional war might be enough to bring the entire house of cards tumbling down. The crisis would pitch Trump into a financial crisis that could sink his domestic economic aspirations too.

Nov 15, 2024

 • Fourth Time The Pentagon Is Faking The Books For Ukraine, Moon of Alabama, Nov 15, 2024
It is tedious, but feels necessary, to record here the ongoing fraud.

 • Trump vows to ‘work very hard’ on Ukraine, RT, Nov 15, 2024

In the run-up to the presidential election, the Republican – who has been critical of unconditional US support for Kiev – promised to end the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours if elected, even before being sworn into office.

While that pledge remains far from fulfilled, media reports have claimed that Trump is already reshaping US policy on Ukraine. A Wall Street Journal report earlier this month indicated that one potential peace plan would force Ukraine to suspend its ambitions to join NATO for at least 20 years and would freeze the conflict along the current front lines in exchange for continued US military assistance to Kiev. In addition, Trump has nominated several critics of Ukraine aid for top government positions, including Senator Marco Rubio for secretary of state, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and Matt Gaetz for attorney general. The nominations must be confirmed by the Senate, which the Republicans regained control over in this year’s election.

Moscow has said it is open to dialogue, but has ruled out freezing the conflict, insisting that the goals of its military operation – including Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – must be met. President Vladimir Putin has signaled that Russia is willing to immediately declare a ceasefire and start peace talks as soon as Kiev begins withdrawing troops from the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, which voted in referendums to join the country in autumn 2022. Moscow has also ruled out talks with Kiev as long as Ukrainian troops occupy part of the border region of Kursk.

Nov 14, 2024

Featured • Thawing Russia-US Relations?, Ray McGovern, Antiwar.com, Nov 14, 2024

Putin’s words on Friday are as interesting now as his New York Times op-ed was 11 years ago: “The Western-centric world has embraced certain clichés and stereotypes concerning the global hierarchy. There is supposedly a developed world, progressive society and some universal civilization that everyone should strive to join – while at the other end, there are backward, uncivilized nations, barbarians. Their job is to listen unquestioningly to what they are told from the outside, and to act on the instructions issued by those who are allegedly superior to them in this civilizational hierarchy.

It is clear that this concept works for a crude colonial approach, for the exploitation of the global majority. The problem is that this essentially racist ideology has taken root in the minds of many, creating a serious mental obstacle to general harmonious growth. [Emphasis added.]

The modern world tolerates neither arrogance nor wanton disregard for others being different. To build normal relationships, above all, one needs to listen to the other party and try to understand their logic and cultural background, rather than expecting them to think and act the way you think they should based on your beliefs about them. Otherwise, communication turns into an exchange of clichés and flinging labels, and politics devolves into a conversation of the deaf.”

It is possible to hope that, on Ukraine at least, U.S.-Russian talks can quickly move beyond cliches and labels, to stop the killing. Mutual trust is also possible, but it will take some time to rebuild it.

Perhaps it helps to recall that it almost happened just 13 years ago.

The Ukrainian military and civilian leadership are keeping Vladimir Zelensky in the dark about the desperate situation of his country in the conflict with Russia, The Economist reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

As Kiev is forced to gradually yield to Russian troops, and with the prospects of continued US military aid unclear following Donald Trump’s election victory, the “deteriorating situation on the front lines is already rippling through society,” the outlet reported.

According to The Economist, to avoid spreading panic and defeatism, the Ukrainian military is attempting to censor the most negative news from the front line. One unnamed senior military official confirmed this, telling the magazine that some Ukrainian leaders are seeking to insulate Zelensky from the hard truth. “It’s not even that he’s being kept in a warm bath,” he said. “He’s being kept in a sauna.”

Nov 12, 2024

Featured • The West’s very fundamental accumulating contradictions, Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, Nov 11, 2024

They tell us that on the one hand that the world does not accept the western vision as being of universal application – and on the other hand, the West doesn’t have the financial clout to pursue global primacy – if it ever did: Zugzwang.

Nov 11, 2024

Featured • Why Is WaPo Reporting A Trump-Putin Call That Did Not Take Place?, Moon of Alabama, Nov 11, 2024
Talk about the fog of war. What actually happened? Is the real story the uncertainty?

Featured • Russia's Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Gives Credit to Trump for Admitting Sickness of US Society, Sputnik International, Nov 10, 2024

Donald Trump, who won the US presidential election, must be given credit for a more realistic assessment of the United States as a sick society, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told Sputnik. Donald Trump, who served as US President from 2017 to 2021, won the presidential election that took place on November 5. “We must give credit to Trump, he certainly said it as it is. American society is sick, that’s what he said. If before the election the slogan was ‘let’s make America great again,’ now it’s ‘let’s make America healthy again,'” Zakharova said. “This is a more realistic assessment. In these circumstances, we will need to interact with this country in some way.” She added that there were wonderful moments of cooperation in the history of relations between Russia and the United States that are worth striving for.

But today it is noticeable how Russophobia is encouraged in the United States, which “is becoming a sector of the general American philosophy,” she added. Trump became the first US politician since the 19th century to return to the White House after a four-year hiatus. Trump’s victory was announced by all leading media outlets counting votes: the Associated Press, Fox News, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS.Democratic candidate Kamala Harris addressed supporters and announced that she would concede, while incumbent US President Joe Biden spoke with Trump and congratulated him. The Electoral College from the states must vote for candidates in accordance with the will of the voters on December 17, and the new Congress will approve the voting results on January 6.

The inauguration will take place on January 20. The outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden may create problems for Russia for another couple of months while still in power, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman added. “Regarding bilateral relations, we need to understand and be realistic. The US presidential election has taken place. It has been recognized as such within the United States. The losers acknowledged the winner, but he [US President-elect Donald Trump] still needs to take office. Please do not forget that the outgoing administration still has a couple of months in their pocket. During this time, and we know them, a lot can be done to make a mess, I think their Russophobia has not gone away,” Zakharova said. The current administration has failed in implementing much of its Russophobic policy, Zakharova added. “The concept of creating an anti-Russia on the territory of Ukraine has failed. The idea of isolating Russia has failed. After all, this is not just a myth. This was an attempt to bring it to life. And much was done for this,” Zakharova said.

The outgoing Biden administration is seeking to fully use funds allocated for Ukraine to deliver additional weapons to the country, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing unnamed White House officials. The plan, however, is reportedly facing logistics hurdles as the US further depletes its already thinned out stockpiles. Washington has more than $7 billion left in drawdown authority, enabling the Pentagon to transfer weapons and ammunition to Kiev, as well as another $2 billion to fund long-term equipment contracts for Ukraine, the WSJ noted. The pending delivery involves some 500 anti-aircraft missiles for various systems, including Patriots and NASAMS, a senior Biden administration official has said. The cache of missiles is expected to get delivered to Ukraine in the next few weeks, where it will meet the country’s air defense needs for the rest of the year.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is deeply concerned about Donald Trump’s triumph in the US presidential election, fearing it could lead to a suspension of military and financial aid from Washington, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said. In an interview with Radio Slovensko on Saturday, Fico discussed how Trump’s policies could impact global politics and the Ukraine conflict. The prime minister claimed that when he saw Zelensky during the EU summit in Budapest, Hungary, on November 7, the Ukrainian leader appeared visibly shaken. “Have you ever seen a person who is afraid that the war will end? I saw him, and his name is Vladimir Zelensky,” Fico told the host, adding that Zelensky seemed “shocked that Trump won and that there could be a halt to aid from the United States....There is still an opinion that if we keep supporting Ukraine, we will bring Russia to its knees, but that does not work,” he argued, urging the bloc to recognize that this logic is flawed. “The EU is a peace project, and the war must be stopped.”

The administration of outgoing President Joe Biden has lifted a de facto ban on deploying US defense contractors to Ukraine to repair American-made armaments, Reuters and CNN reported on Friday, citing anonymous Pentagon officials. This reversal of previous US policy comes as Donald Trump, who has been skeptical of providing funding and military assistance to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, secured his second term in the White House. While it is unclear whether Trump would have continued the prior policy, he has promised not to put American lives at risk and to rapidly conclude the conflict once in office again. The potential American presence on the ground will be “small” and located “far” from the front lines, and they are not expected to engage in combat, Reuters wrote on Friday, citing an anonymous US official.

The Biden administration has brought the US to the edge of World War III while completely failing at domestic policy, Dennis Kucinich has said.

US president-elect Donald Trump will have his hands full fixing the mess in foreign and domestic policy left by incumbent leader Joe Biden’s administration, according to Dennis Kucinich, two-time Democratic presidential primary contestant and retired eight-term US congressman.

In an interview with Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi broadcast on RT on Saturday, Kucinich said that the success of Trump’s presidency will depend on his ability to shift the focus of US politics from the “globalist aspirations of the State Department” to problems at home.

The veteran politician welcomed Trump’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris in this week’s election, saying that it represents a “historic shift” in US politics towards “populism.”

“[The US] has come through a very dark period where the government put this country to the edge of World War III, and people don’t want that,” Kucinich stated, noting that ordinary Americans worry about simple things like paying bills and generally “making ends meet,” which he called “very practical aspirations they have in common with people around the world.” He said Trump’s presidency “will depend on not getting further involved in foreign entanglements.”

Nov 9, 2024

Featured • SITREP 11/8/24: Trump's Arrival Throws Things Askew, Simplicius, Nov 8, 2024
Excellent overall review of the Ukraine war and the possibility spectrum of Trump's impact. Short version: a lot of trial balloons, a fantastic non-starter, and dangers.

Featured • EU ‘lacks brains’ – Putin, RT, Nov 8, 2024

The EU lacks leaders who act based on the national interests of their countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. He also claimed that the bloc’s current economic policies are devised by people with insufficient expertise who are guided by “vassalage” to the US. “When I talk to my colleagues and experts – I don’t want to offend anyone – but I often ask them what the EU lacks. They answer that it lacks brains,” Putin said at the Valdai International Discussion Club in the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi on Thursday. “It is not that they are stupid, but that the decisions in the economic sphere are made by politicians who have nothing to do with the economy,” the Russian leader stated. As a result, the steps taken by the bloc, such as anti-Russia sanctions, are “politicized, ill-considered, and baseless,” he added. We see that many European countries – and almost all NATO members – they take steps that work to the detriment of their own interests and only benefit US politics and economy.

Putin mentioned former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whom he praised for acting “solely” in the interests of the German people. He cited one such example as being the construction of the Nord Stream pipelines, through which Russia supplied gas to Germany until their partial destruction due to sabotage in September 2022. “Schroeder did not do that in the interests of Russia, did not do it in order to create conditions for us to obtain economic benefits, but solely in the interests of the German people, fighting to ensure that the best conditions for the supplies,” Putin stated. Schroeder “deliberately risked his political career” by making decisions “completely unpopular” among his peers, Putin added. The Russian leader lamented that “very few” politicians in Germany or the broader EU can do that today, arguing that this is why their economies are in a state of crisis.

The Russian leader also criticized EU politicians for abandoning Russian gas amid sanctions linked with the Ukraine conflict. This is “incomprehensible,” Putin said, as these same politicians “made so much noise” about their green goals, only to seek alternative supply sources and restart coal plants amid the energy crisis that resulted from their actions. Putin stressed that the bloc needs more politicians such as Schroeder, who “have their own opinion,” are “consistent” in their policies, and act in the interests of the people. “People see what’s really happening. If the gap between the ruling elites who are guided by other’s interests and the bulk of the population increases, nationally oriented political forces will grow… Everything will eventually lead to a weakening of this vassalage [to the US],” he stated.

US President-elect Donald Trump will pull his country out of the Ukraine conflict, leaving EU leaders in an “uncomfortable and difficult position,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. “The situation on the front line is obvious. It’s a military defeat. The Americans will get out of this war,” he told Kossuth Radio on Friday. “Europe alone cannot finance this war.” Some EU leaders want to keep pouring money into a lost cause but the silence is growing among those with such an opinion, Orban said, while others are calling for a policy reassessment. Meanwhile, the few nations that have been advocating de-escalation and talks, including Hungary itself, as well as Slovakia and the Vatican, have been vindicated, he added. Orban’s prediction of a change in US foreign policy follows Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election earlier this week.

Ukraine’s deep manpower shortage has overshadowed the steady flow of Western arms deliveries. Against the backdrop of Russia’s steady advance, Kiev regime military personnel have been surrendering and deserting in droves, while over a million men of military age are estimated to be on the run across Ukraine. Almost a fifth of Ukraine’s soldiers have gone AWOL from their positions, The Economist cited a source in the general staff as saying. An overwhelming collapse in morale on the front line amid Russia’s steady advance is driving mass desertion, a senior Ukrainian military commander has claimed. Despite more Western weapons in the pipeline for Ukraine, these is a “breakdown of trust between society, the army and the political leadership” in Kiev, according to the outlet.

It added that Ukraine has been struggling to replace vast battlefield losses with conscription, “barely hitting two-thirds of its target.” Rampant draft dodging and desertion forced the Volodymyr Zelensky regime to adopt a new draconian mobilization law this year, while also lowering the recruitment age from 27 to 25. Ukrainians are increasingly resisting being sent into the meat grinder of a proxy conflict. Earlier, in October, Ukrainian media reported that since the beginning of 2022, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has registered some 60,000 criminal cases of unauthorized abandonment of a unit and about 30,000 cases of desertion.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has demanded that the $300 billion of Russian sovereign assets currently immobilized by sanctions in Western financial institutions be given to Kiev. He raised the issue of Western aid, particularly the possibility that US President-elect Donald Trump could cut aid for Kiev, at a press conference following the European Political Community summit in Budapest on Thursday. Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, the US and its allies froze an estimated $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank. The bulk of the funds, around €197 billion ($213 billion), are being held at Euroclear. The Brussels-based clearinghouse has estimated that the impounded Russian assets generated €5.15 billion ($5.55 billion) in interest in the first three quarters of this fiscal year.

“Everyone says: What will you do if Trump does not support you financially? Where will you get weapons? Let me answer you. Can we take the $300 billion that rightfully belongs to us?” Zelensky said. This would allow Ukraine to buy armaments for itself, he claimed. “Is it possible for us to decide for ourselves what kind of weapons we need? Can we decide for ourselves what to do with this money?” he added. The US and its European allies have so far allocated more than $218 billion in aid to Kiev since the escalation of the conflict, according to stats from Germany’s Kiel Institute. However, in recent months, the payments have been getting smaller and the larger aid allocations have instead been loans.

In October, G7 states finalized a massive $50 billion loan for Ukraine to be backed by profits accrued on the frozen Russian assets currently immobilized in the West. Despite US pressure to confiscate the assets in their entirety, the IMF has so far opposed this course of action, raising concerns that it could undermine trust in the Western financial system.

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the plenary session of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club on Thursday. While criticizing Western leaders for failing to serve the interests of their people, Vladimir Putin also sent a positive signal for the future, Geoffrey Roberts, emeritus professor of history at University College Cork, Ireland, told Sputnik. “Very clearly, he [Putin] is signaling continued resistance to Western hegemony, Western dominance. He also makes his point, time and again, that European political leaders aren’t serving their country’s best interests […] by the policy that they’re pursuing in terms of global politics,” he noted.

However, at the same time, the Russian president “made it clear that Russia is not going to run after the West to restore relations, but the door is open if that’s the choice that the West wants to make,” the leading British scholar on Soviet diplomatic and military history underscored. It’s not clear whether US President-elect Donald Trump will pursue friendly relations with Russia, but the chances are much higher now, Roberts speculated. “[Vladimir Putin] said that if Trump wants to improve relations, he is open to it,” Roberts said after attending Putin’s speech and a Q& session at the Valdai Club. “It would be a while before we know what’s going to happen. I think a big factor will be who he [Trump] appoints to key positions in foreign policy and national security… I also think Trump will be very reluctant to increase the American commitment to NATO in any way and to see further expansion of NATO […] in Europe or elsewhere.

But as I say, that’s a matter for speculation,” the emeritus professor noted. According to the academic, Putin was “very relaxed, very confident” throughout his appearance at the event, and “performed brilliantly in terms of being on top of his brief, having all these facts and figures at his fingertip, being very articulate, being very clear, answering questions directly.” “He’s responding on the spot to comments, statements, questions that the people at the meeting, the members of the Valdai Club, are making. I can’t think of any other political leader in the world who could perform in that kind of way,” Roberts remarked.

Nov 8, 2024

 • Trumpquake, Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture Foundation, Nov 7, 2024

My inbox is infested with loads of weepy reports from U.S. Think Tankland wondering, in disbelief, why Kamala could possibly lose. It’s quite straightforward – apart from her sheer incompetence cum utter mediocrity literally cackling out loud.

The legacy of the administration she was part of is ghastly – all the way from Crash Test Dummy to Little Butcher Blinkie.

Instead of bothering to care about the abysmal state of affairs, at every level, concerning that mythical entity, “the American people”, they chose to invest everything on a neocon-manufactured proxy war to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia – stealing Russian assets, unleashing a tsunami of sanctions, shipping an array of wunderwaffen. The weaponization of Ukraine led to countless Ukrainian dead and the inevitable, fast-approaching cosmic humiliation of NATO in the black soil of Novorossiya.

They invested everything to support a genocide in Gaza conducted with a huge arsenal of American weapons: a lebensraum-coded ethnic cleansing cum extermination op directed by a bunch of Talmudic psychos – and marketed under the “rules-based international order” spewed out by Butcher Blinkie in every bilateral or multilateral gathering.

It’s no wonder that West Asia and the wider Global South soon got the message of what may happen to anyone daring to go against the Hegemon’s “interests”. Thus the counterpunch: the strengthening of BRICS and BRICS+, celebrated for all the world to see two weeks ago in Kazan.

The key reason for the collapse of Germany’s ruling coalition was the refusal of Finance Minister Christian Lindner to support a budgetary plan that would increase aid to Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said. On Wednesday, Scholz fired Lindner, the leader of the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), which is one of three parties comprising Germany’s so-called ‘Traffic Light’ coalition government alongside the Social Democrats and the Greens. The rift between Scholz and Lindner reportedly came to a head after a meeting in which the coalition partners failed to find common ground on how to plug a multibillion-euro hole in next year’s budget and revive the struggling economy. At a press conference the same day, Scholz said that, by dismissing Lindner – who walked out along with other FDP ministers, he had sought to “turn away damage from our country.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Donald Trump on his electoral victory and confirmed that he is ready to talk with the US president-elect. Putin hailed Trump’s “courageous” response to the attempt to assassinate him in July. Speaking at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Thursday, Putin said that he wished to “offer my congratulations on [Trump’s] election as president of the United States.” Putin noted that Trump has expressed a desire to end the Ukraine conflict, and that such statements “deserve attention, at the very least.” The Russian president then paid tribute to Trump’s actions during an attempt on his life in Pennsylvania this summer, when then-candidate Trump rose to his feet and raised his fist after a bullet grazed his ear. “I was impressed. He’s a courageous person,” Putin said.

Talking about a cessation of hostilities along the existing line of contact is unlikely to be taken seriously in Moscow. Such a scenario would be nothing more than a pause, after which the conflict would flare up with renewed vigour and probably greater intensity. The nature of the future Ukrainian regime, its military and military-economic potential, and Kiev’s military-political status are of paramount importance to Russia. In addition, new territorial realities have to be taken into account.

It will be difficult to expect the new Trump administration to agree to substantive dialogue on these issues, let alone to take Moscow’s core interests into account. If it is willing, the dialogue will begin, but even then agreement is far from guaranteed. A separate issue is what can be regarded as satisfactory guarantees in conditions where both sides do not trust each other at all. The two Minsk Agreements (in 2014 and 2015) have been violated, and the third attempt – initialed in Istanbul in 2022 – was thwarted, so a fourth is unlikely.

The only guarantee Russia can rely on is a guarantee to itself. The good news for now is that Trump says he wants to cut military aid to Ukraine. Despite the likely partial offsetting of this with extra Western European support for Kiev, if it happens, it will bring peace closer.

There is ample evidence that Ukraine’s armed forces are close to complete collapse. After nearly three years of intense fighting against Russia, the Kiev regime no longer appears to have enough strength to sustain its war efforts in the manner it has done previously. Despite the almost endless supply of Western money, weapons, and mercenaries on the battlefield, a number of material and psychological conditions are making it impossible for Ukraine to continue its operational and strategic capabilities. Since 2022, one of the main internal issues of the Kiev regime has been how to keep ordinary soldiers active on the battlefield, despite their family, ethnic and cultural ties with Russia – as well as their disbelief in any possibility of real victory on the battlefield.

...It is possible to say that Russia has already won the current conflict for a very simple reason: Ukrainians do not want to fight anymore. For the regime’s soldiers, the war is a burden. All they want is to get away from the front. Kiev makes this situation even worse by making it clear that fighting in the most difficult missions of the conflict is a “punishment” – something to be avoided. Meanwhile, most of the Russian military personnel in the operation are volunteers who deliberately want to defend the country against the Western enemy. Morally and psychologically, Ukraine is already defeated. The experience in Kursk makes it clear that for Moscow, victory is only a matter of time.

Nov 7, 2024

Featured • Trump And Ukraine, Moon of Alabama, Nov 7, 2024

To continue to arm Ukraine while keeping a ceasefire is an obvious delaying tactic - nothing that will solve the conflict. Russia will only agree to something that concludes the war for good. The assumption that Russia would condone European NATO forces on the ground in Ukraine is also delusional.

Other ideas are just a variant of the above...

The only real way to stop the war is for the U.S. to drop all support for Ukraine. The Europeans would bicker about that but, if only for budget reasons, would likely follow through. It would then be up to Ukraine, having lost all support, to make nice with Moscow.

Trump will likely select (neo-conservative) hawks to run his defense and foreign policies. They will take all possible measures, even against Trump's declared will, to keep the war going. For them it is down to the last Ukrainian, then down to the last European - if only to show that the U.S. will never give up.

To cover for this Trump and his acolytes may well offer an immediate ceasefire. But that will not work.

...The war will go on. Russia will have to, as Gordon Hahn predicts, cross the Dnieper, retake Odessa and threaten Kiev. Zelenski is unlikely to politically survive such a situation. Other forces would come to the fore:

The pivot of decision-making will then shift to Kiev and the question of whether Zelenskiy or any Ukrainian leader is able to start peace talks at all, no less ones that presuppose loss of territory as part of any settlement with Moscow, without prompting a domestic political crisis. The resulting coup poker game could involve a Kiev-based coup led by intelligence and security forces, the HRU and/or SBU, or emerge from the periphery at the front with ultranationalists and neofascists such as the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (DUK), Azov, and others, well-armed as part of Ukraine‘s armed forces, turning their guns around and marching on Kiev in order to seize power.

...

A U.S.-backed coup might pre-empt, precede or facilitate such a turn of events. Washington and Brussels might gamble that easing or allowing the radicals‘ rise to power is he only way to rally what remains of the Ukrainian nation so the effort to hand Moscow a 'strategic defeat‘ can be realized and further NATO expansion can be secured.

But a fascist coup, supported by the U.S. or not, will not be able to change the situation on the ground. Russia would still have the upper hand and win the war.

Only a direct intervention by NATO, could be able to change that trajectory. That however would likely expand the war into a global contest that not even Trump's hawks will want to pursue.

How will western media report the fall of this city? If The Economist and BBC reports are anything to go by, with some zeal one would imagine. It’s as though big media, in particular British, is anxious to stay on the right side of history when things start to fall down and emerge from the dust as wise old men with that “I told you so” sparkle in their eyes. It’s also about collective guilt. Western Media has blood on its hands as the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers sent to the “meat grinder” is partly attributed to the support U.S. and UK media gave Zelensky.

What we are witnessing now from Zelensky is a panic mode which is accelerating at the same pace. His so-called “victory plan” hasn’t been taken seriously by any western leaders and he looks stupid now, alienated. His recent outburst about Biden leaking to the press about the ludicrous idea of using U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles might have been a defining moment which history writers obsess over then they write his eulogy.

For now, the panic isn’t really even about the battlefield, although it must be hard for Zelensky to read the dispatches each day of the losses in Kursk which could be considered Ukraine’s own Battle of the Bulge where German troops fought hard at the end of WWII against larger, bigger numbers of allied soldiers in the Ardennes and ultimately lost. In many ways Kursk was a trap which Zelensky set for himself, as the failure to capture the nuclear power plant pales into insignificance compared to the losses of men. Kursk is the ultimate meat grinder for Ukraine soldiers. No one comes back alive.

A top priority for the next European Commission will be making Europe self-reliant and ready for war, as the US is likely to focus on China in the coming decades, said Andrius Kubilius, the nominee for the EU’s new top defense post.

The White House intends to expedite up to $9 billion in new military aid in a last-ditch effort to bolster Ukraine against Russia, before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, according to sources within the outgoing administration. The plan is driven by concerns that Trump, who has criticized President Joe Biden’s generous support for Kiev, may halt or significantly reduce US taxpayer-funded aid, as reported by sources speaking to Reuters and Politico on Wednesday. “The administration plans to push forward… to put Ukraine in the strongest position possible,” a senior official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Politico described the plan as “the only option” to maintain the flow of weapons to Ukraine, although its sources acknowledged “immense” challenges. US officials worry that even if Biden approves new aid, it could take the Pentagon months to actually deliver munitions and equipment to Ukraine, and the next commander-in-chief could halt shipments at any time.

It remains unclear whether the US military would be willing to draw more deeply from its stockpiles – risking its own readiness – to expedite the deliveries. Since February 2022, the US Congress has approved more than $174 billion to support Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. The latest tranche of $61 billion was delayed for several months amid a standoff between Republicans and the White House. Of that package, only $4.3 billion remains, along with another $2 billion allocated for new contracts with the US arms industry. With $2.8 billion in previously announced shipments, the White House has just over $9 billion available for emergency supplies to Kiev. Trump’s victory will not change Washington’s antagonistic stance towards Moscow, but will make it more difficult for Kiev to access American taxpayers’ money, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday.

Nov 6, 2024

Featured • Westward Ho, Hum — The General Staff's Map and President Putin's Map are Different, Dances with Wolves, Nov 5, 2024

Big Serge is an American approach, Russian military sources believe, and it underestimates the neo-Nazi, race war doctrine which is driving both Ukrainian and US strategy in the present war. “It’s much the same strategy as the Germans developed and bent the entire will of the country toward — a fascist, racist, imperialist, colonial project. We know it by the names of Generalplan Ost, New Order, Drang nach Osten, and Lebensraum. It’s a strategy that has been absorbed, coopted, and adopted by the US-led West. The theory of victory is that via economic sabotage, Fifth Columns, terrorism, invasion, mass murder, destruction of infrastructure and social cohesion, and anti-Russian, anti-Orthodox racism, Russia will be destroyed. As the years have gone by and the war has unfolded, it has become obvious that there is little to no purpose for the Ukraine as anything but a base of operations for the wider western neo-Nazi project.”

Can the American neo-Nazi project be stopped by a DMZ established by the Russian offensive?

According to Putin announcing the Special Military Operation on February 24, 2022, “I would like to additionally emphasise the following. Focused on their own goals, the leading NATO countries are supporting the far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine, those who will never forgive the people of Crimea and Sevastopol for freely making a choice to reunite with Russia… Comrade officers, Your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not fight the Nazi occupiers and did not defend our common Motherland to allow today’s neo-Nazis to seize power in Ukraine… The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine.”

Four months ago, in his restatement of his end-of-war terms, Putin repeated that demilitarization and denazification remain parallel operational objectives. He claimed the terms of the Istanbul agreement he instructed Vladimir Medinsky to sign in March 2022 “meant that a law would be adopted in Ukraine banning Nazi ideology and any of its manifestations. All of that was written there.”

Putin added that his terms for Istanbul-II are “I repeat our firm stance: Ukraine should adopt a neutral, non-aligned status, be nuclear-free, and undergo demilitarisation and denazification.”

Outside the Kremlin there is no military source who believes that denazification of the Ukraine can be implemented and enforced by “a law banning Nazi ideology and any of its manifestations”. Leaving Kiev and Lvov outside the DMZ, the sources believe, would amount to abandoning denazification of the Ukraine in Russian strategy.

Redrawing the DMZ map in the lead image, withdrawing Russian red territory eastwards, creates a zone for the negotiation to come of the denazification objective. The future for Sumy, Kharkov, Poltava, Dniepropetyrovsk, Nikolaev, and Odessa will depend on this.

A Ukrainian lawmaker has called for the conscription of women into the country’s struggling mobilization campaign. MP Mariana Bezuglaya has insisited that it is high time to start targeting women to meet quotas, as Kiev’s military resources dwindle amid ongoing territorial loss on the frontline of the conflict with Russia. Ukraine currently allows for drafting men over the age of 25 and accepts female volunteers. Bezuglaya, however, has repeatedly advocated for expanding conscription to both sexes in the name of equity. “We currently have illegal discrimination against men,” Bezuglaya wrote on her Telegram channel on Monday. “Moreover, if women get mobilized, fewer men will get mobilized – this is one of the reasons for men to support the mobilization of their fellow [female] citizens.”

Nov 5, 2024

Featured • Ukraine needs 500,000 new troops – lawmaker, RT, Nov 4, 2024

Ukraine needs at least 500,000 new recruits to replace combat losses and outfit new units, lawmaker Roman Kostenko has said in an interview. Kiev’s current plans would fall 300,000 men short. Kostenko is the secretary of the Verkhovna Rada’s Defense and Intelligence committee and a former officer in the Ukrainian military. His comments came in an interview with the TV channel Priamyi (Direct) over the weekend. Taking into account the situation, the estimate floated at the end of last year by former military chief Valery Zaluzhny seems more relevant than Kiev’s current figures, Kostenko said. “Zaluzhny did not take those numbers randomly. I rather agree with him here that after all, such a number is more relevant than what we’ve gathered, than what we were told before, that we don’t need that many,” Kostenko said. Zaluzhny had called for a mobilization of 500,000 men in December 2023.

Vladimir Zelensky initially agreed with that assessment, but backtracked due to a public backlash. Zaluzhny was relieved in February – reportedly due to disagreements about the draft – and named Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK. While Zelensky did not specify how many troops would have to be drafted, the authorities in Kiev spoke of 160,000 by the end of the year, following changes to the mobilization rules this spring. According to Kostenko, the goal was actually 200,000 troops but mobilization rates dropped in September and again last month. This “cannot be allowed under any circumstances,” he said, as mobilization rates need to keep up the pace with battlefield attrition. According to Ukrainian media, Kiev’s armed forces currently number 1.05 million. Additional troops are needed to replace combat losses as well as allow frontline units to be rotated out for fresh brigades.

Ukrainian lawmakers have revealed that over 100,000 troops have deserted since the start of the conflict. Mobilization officers have resorted to hunting men down in the streets and markets, often hauling them away by force as onlookers record the incident. Moscow is currently waging “one of the most powerful” offensives since 2022, according to Zaluzhny’s replacement, General Aleksandr Syrsky. Ukrainian units are in “constant demand for the replenishment of resources,” Syrsky has said. Russian forces have made major advances in Donbass over the past several months, taking Ugledar and Selidovo and approaching Kurakhovo while maintaining pressure all along the line. The Russian Defense Ministry has estimated Ukraine’s total losses – killed and wounded – at over 500,000, or around half of its [current] total manpower [i.e. about 1/3 of the total deployed to date].

The Economist magazine reports this week that “Russia is slicing through Ukrainian defenses” and Ukraine is subsequently “struggling to survive.” Across the Western media, the public is being prepared for defeat and painful concessions in future negotiations. Journalists are changing the narrative as reality can no longer be ignored. Moscow's coming success has been obvious since at least the summer of 2023, yet this was ignored to keep the proxy war going.

...Back in 2022, the political-media elites weaponized empathy to get public support for war and disdain for diplomacy. The Western public was convinced to support the proxy war against Russia by endless messaging about the suffering of Ukrainians and the injustice of their loss of sovereignty. Those who disagreed with NATO’s mantra that ‘weapons are the way to peace’ and instead suggested negotiations were quickly dismissed as puppets of the Kremlin who did not care about Ukrainians.

Support for continued fighting in a war that cannot be won has been the only acceptable expression of empathy. For the postmodernists seeking to socially construct their own reality, great power rivalry is largely a battle of narratives. The weaponization of empathy enabled the military narrative to become impervious to criticism. War was virtuous and diplomacy treasonous as Ukraine was allegedly fighting Russia’s “unprovoked” war with the objective to subjugate the entire country. A strong moral framing convinced people to deceive and self-censor in support of this noble cause.

...The Ukrainian proxy has been exhausted, which ends the proxy war unless NATO is prepared to go to war against Russia. As NATO is preparing to cut its losses, a new narrative is required. Soon it will be permitted to call for negotiations as a display of empathy for Ukrainians.

A narrative pushed by the Western media about a small team of Ukrainian divers being behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022 is hard to believe, Dr Sven Thomas, a renowned German diving specialist, has told Bild over the weekend. Damage sustained by the Russian undersea pipelines suggests that much more powerful explosive charges and a much larger vessel were used to render them out of commission, he said, adding that a small yacht the media keep reporting about would never suffice. American and German media have repeatedly claimed that the blasts were linked to a small Ukrainian crew that rented a leisure yacht called Andromeda at a German port and set off armed only with diving equipment, satellite navigation, and open-source maps. The operation was reportedly given a green light by Ukraine’s then-commander in chief, Valery Zaluzhny.

Nov 4, 2024

Featured • Jeffrey D. Sachs: The BRICS Summit Should Mark the End of Neocon Delusions, Scheerpost, Nov 3, 2024

The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia should mark the end of the Neocon delusions encapsulated in the subtitle of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Global Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. Since the 1990s, the goal of American foreign policy has been “primacy,” aka global hegemony. The U.S. methods of choice have been wars, regime change operations, and unilateral coercive measures (economic sanctions). Kazan brought together 35 countries with more than half the world population that reject the U.S. bullying and that are not cowed by U.S. claims of hegemony.

In the Kazan Declaration, the countries underscored “the emergence of new centres of power, policy decision-making and economic growth, which can pave the way for a more equitable, just, democratic and balanced multipolar world order.” They emphasized “the need to adapt the current architecture of international relations to better reflect the contemporary realities,” while declaring their “commitment to multilateralism and upholding the international law, including the Purposes and Principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations (UN) as its indispensable cornerstone.” They took particular aim at the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, holding that “Such measures undermine the UN Charter, the multilateral trading system, the sustainable development and environmental agreements.”

Time has run out on the neocon delusions, and the U.S. wars of choice.

The majority of official surveys monitoring American and European support for Ukraine are many months old now. The last time we saw a flurry of polling on the issue was this summer and the media has been rather quiet on the issue since. Why? Because public support for the proxy war is in steep decline. The last numbers show that 52% of Americans no longer want additional funding for Ukraine. With Donald Trump increasingly likely to return to the White House in 2025 the Ukrainians are already preparing for steep cuts to military aid (the US provides the vast majority of arms to Ukraine). This leaves the EU to pick up the slack. However, Europe simply doesn’t have the capacity to provide enough military aid to make a difference in the war and is currently discussing schemes to transfer frozen Russian assets to the effort while simultaneously scaling back their own funding. Central EU nations like Germany are already cutting their contributions in half in the coming year.

The decline in aid follows two important factors: Public support for the war in America and Europe is waning. And, Ukraine is clearly losing the conflict with their defensive lines in the east collapsing. Ukraine has received well over $200 billion in the past two years from NATO nations, which eclipses Ukraine’s annual GDP of around $160 billion. In other words, the war cannot continue without NATO. The disconnect between US and European governments vs the desires of the general public could not be more obvious. Even the Washington Post admits: “As they signaled enduring support for Ukraine last week, European leaders worried about how long they can sustain it…” “European leaders promise to support Ukraine as long as it takes, but they are increasingly threatened by public fatigue, a weakening of the political center and the prospect of Trump’s return…”

The more agreements with Russia and other parties the Ukrainian government violates, the less territory will remain under Kiev’s control, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned. During his speech at the 16th Assembly of the Russian World in Moscow on Saturday, Lavrov reiterated the country’s readiness to search for a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Kiev. According to Moscow, an integral part of the political settlement should be “protecting the rights and freedoms, as well as the legal interests of the Russian people and Russian speakers… alongside ensuring Ukraine’s non-aligned, neutral, and non-nuclear status, and eliminating any and all threats to Russia’s security that may come from within its borders,” he said. “Acknowledging the actual state of affairs on the ground is of paramount importance,” the minister stressed. Lavrov urged Kiev against delaying the launch of substantive negotiations any further.(emphasis added)

The Russian Defense Ministry offered to hand over 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war this year, but Kiev took only 279 of them, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “This year, the Russian Defense Ministry handed over to the Coordination Headquarters for the Handling of Prisoners of War a proposal to give back 935 Ukrainian prisoners of war to the Ukrainian side as part of exchanges,” the diplomat said in an online news conference. “How many of this number of people do you think the Kiev regime took back? I will emphasize they are its own citizens. Only 279.” “These are practically 700 people who could have returned to their families in Ukraine,” Zakharova went on to say.

“They were simply shrugged off by the Kiev regime, and yet its representatives continue to travel to Canada and around the world and supposedly call on, and negotiate with the international community for mediation efforts and, as [former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry] Kuleba said, for protection of Ukrainian nationals in Russia.” The spokeswoman called such actions of the Kiev regime “political tourism on the blood of its own citizens, its own servicemen.”

Nov 3, 2024

Featured • NY Times Announces Ukraine Narrative Change, Moon of Alabama, Nov 2, 2024
Will they say the Los Alamos Study Group and other reality-based people were right all along? Naw.

We are through the looking glass. Reality is not seen until it hits the collective us in the face.

Featured • NY TImes Concedes Ukraine is in Trouble, Larry C. Johnson, SONAR21, Nov 2, 2024
I don't think Larry's figure for "close to one million" Ukrainian KIA is right, based on what Simplicius has done, but it might be close to right for KIA plus heavily wounded. Johnson makes the excellent point about training the largely hypothetical new thousands of recruits. It takes time, which Ukraine does not have, and it takes a safe place to train, which Ukraine also does not have except in NATO countries. And it takes motivation and morale, which Ukraine is losing rapidly, as reality intrudes. The reality of winter will be worse. Ukraine should make peace right now. It should have made peace in January 2022, and in all the yesterdays since then. But for Ukraine, every today is better than every tomorrow for peace negotiations. There needs then to be a political reassessment in which the Nazis are kicked to the curb and Ukraine, hopefully, becomes a neutral country. If the U.S. persists in its cruel folly past the remaining exit signs, Ukraine could end up a rump basket-case of a state. This is not in anybody's interest.

Featured • SITREP 11/2/24: Another Big Tone Change as West Now Fears Ukraine's Doom, Simplicius, Nov 2, 2024

Nov 1, 2024

Featured • The Forest and the Trees: Ukraine's Strategic Dissipation, Russo-Ukrainian War: Autumn 2024, Big Serge, Oct 31, 2024
For an appetizer see the excerpt Larry Johnson has published.

 • US Provides Proof that North Korean Troops are on the Ground in Ukraine, Larry C. Johnson, SONAR21, Oct 31, 2024

October 2024

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December 2022

November 2022

 • Stop the War in Ukraine While We Can, Greg Mello, LASG Vlog, Jun 24, 2024
 • What we’re up to, and reflections on some opportunities and dangers at hand, Greg Mello, VFP Webinar, Jun 20, 2024
 • Can U.S. seize the moment for peace?, Greg Mello, Santa Fe New Mexican, Jun 16, 2024
 • Bulletin 346: Momentous events, and two op-eds, Jun 16, 2024
 • Press backgrounder: U.S. Considers Expanding Its Nuclear Arsenal, Jun 10, 2024
 • Bulletin 345: Ukraine strikes Russian early-warning radar against nuclear attack, May 25, 2024
 • "Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons," LASG presentation, Peter Kuznick, Steven Starr, & Greg Mello discuss the dangerous phenomenon of "Russophobia" in the West in the context of the potentially widening war in Ukraine, with its attendant nuclear dangers, video, Apr 16, 2024
 •Bulletin 342: Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons," panel discussion in Santa Fe Tuesday April 16, 6 pm / Pit production: myths and contradictions, Apr 10, 2024
 • LASG friends ltr: "Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons" -- panel discussion Tuesday April 16, 6 pm, St. John's United Methodist Church, Santa Fe, Apr 8, 2024
 • Bulletin 341: Pit seminar materials available; Russophobia seminar postponed; big jump in FY24 warhead spending as arms race takes hold; Ukraine losing war sparking panic in West, Mar 4, 2024
 • Bulletin 340: "Year in Pits;" Zoom update & discussion on pits 2/27; rich opportunities in the land of nuclear (dis)enchantment; end the Ukraine carnage and genocide in Gaza, Feb 22, 2024
 • The Real Purpose In Making The Bomb Was To Subdue The Soviets. Now Its Happening Again, On A Vast Scale. Why? July 22 At Fuller Lodge, Los Alamos Reporter, Jul 19, 2023
 • LASG friends ltr: Ukraine over the tipping point; more on July 22 event in Los Alamos; comment on generic "nuclear disarmament," Jul 12, 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
 • LASG friends ltr (06/15/2023) Pit production zoom today; halt military "aid" to Ukraine, which just kills more Ukrainians, accept peace
 • 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