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Ukraine

Turkey Rains On NATO’s Parade

June 14, 2022 Scott Ritter, Consortium News. , , ,
On May 18, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a Norwegian named Jen Stoltenberg, stood on a stage, flanked by the ambassadors to NATO of Finland and Sweden, Klaus Korhonen and Axel Wernhoff, respectively. It was one of those made-for-television moments that politicians dream of — a time of high drama, where the ostensible forces of good are faced off against the relentless assault of evil, which necessitates the intervention of like-minded friends and allies to help tip the scales of geopolitical justice toward those who embrace liberty over tyranny. “This is a good day,” Jen Stoltenberg announced, “at a critical moment for our security.” Left unsaid was the harsh reality that hundreds of miles to the east the military forces of Russia and Ukraine were locked in deadly combat on Ukrainian soil.

Ukraine Bits: No Ammo, More Casualties, And Passing The Buck

June 14, 2022 Moon of Alabama. , , ,
Two days ago I noted that the blame game for the loss of the war has begun. Zelensky will be the one to whom the buck will be passed to. President Biden has now joined in this: President Joe Biden, speaking to donors at a Democratic fundraiser here, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. intelligence gathered information that Russia was preparing to invade. The remarks came as Biden was talking about his work to rally and solidify support for Ukraine as the war continues into its fourth month. “Nothing like this has happened since World War II. I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain he” — meaning Russian President Vladimir Putin — “was going to go in, off the border.” “There was no doubt,” Biden said. “And Zelenskyy didn’t want to hear it.” Although Zelenskyy has inspired people with his leadership during the war, his preparation for the invasion — or lack thereof — has remained a controversial issue.

Washington Starts Blame Game Over Defeat In Ukraine

June 12, 2022 Moon of Alabama. , , , ,
I do not believe for one moment that U.S. intelligence services do not know what is going on in Ukraine and in Kiev. They know that the Ukraine has lost the war and will have to sue for peace as soon as possible. They also have told the White House that this is a case and that the whole idea of setting up the Ukraine to tickle the Russian bear was idiotic from the get go. The question now is who will take the blame for the outcome. Who can the buck be passed to? There is always the option for politicians,  as Andrei assumes is the case, to blame the intelligence and the various agencies which provide it. This was done when the war on Iraq, based on false claims weapons of mass destruction, started to go bad for the U.S.

US Effort To Hurt Russia Undermines Itself And The World

June 10, 2022 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The United States continues to shoot itself in the foot in its futile effort to damage the Russian economy. It is also asking other nations to do likewise and live with inflation, food scarcity, and rising energy prices. European countries have gone along with the sanctions which cut off their natural gas supplies from Russia when there is no logical alternative source for them. However, the rest of the world has refused to join in U.S. and EU condemnations or accept that they must live with privations caused by the reckless actions of other nations. Of course, the ongoing state of delusion just continues the fantasy foreign policy decision making in Washington. The Countering Malign Russian Influences in Africa Act, HR 7311 , is just one example.

Biden’s Foreign Policy Is One Big Mess

June 9, 2022 Moon of Alabama. , , , ,
Over the last months I have written little about other U.S. foreign policy issues than the war in Ukraine. A short review shows that there is little that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken or his president could count as a success. Last month Biden traveled to Asia where he had meetings with the QUAD (Australia, Japan, India and the U.S.) as well as with South Asian leaders. The QUAD meeting was a failure as India showed no sign of joining the other three in their condemnation of Russia. Instead of sanctioning  Russia it is buying more oil from Russia which offers decent rebates. Such disunity does not look good for a U.S. designed anti-China coalition. Most noted though was that Biden came to Asia with empty hands.

A New Generation Of US-Trained Extremists Is Fighting Russia

June 6, 2022 T J Coles, The Grayzone. , , , ,
From 1978 (not ’79 as many believe), the administration of Jimmy Carter decided to “draw the Russians into the Afghan trap,” in the words of the President’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. US intelligence called on its British counterparts to activate networks of Afghan fighters. New generations of extremists joined the fight. Aid, arms, and training poured into Afghanistan. Support increased following the Soviet invasion in December 1979. Throughout the 1980s, tens of thousands of jihadis from dozens of Muslim-majority countries were flown into the US, Britain, and Pakistan to receive training from the CIA, Green Berets, US Marines, and British SAS and MI6. The foreign extremists later rebranded themselves “al-Qaeda” and launched a series of spectacularly bloody attacks on strategically significant targets that provided justification for a global “war on terror” that continues to serve as ideological cover for contemporary US hegemony.

Ukraine Beyond Day 100

June 5, 2022 Moon of Alabama. , ,
Colonel Markus Reisner of the Austrian Army presents the current state (video) of the war. Two of the facts he mentions were new to me. The Ukrainian army has moved seven brigades of its Territorial Defense Forces from the west into the area east of the Dnieper. If these were fully maned each will have had some 3,000 soldiers. That are a lot of troops but they are pure infantry without heavy weapons and with extremely little training. Col. Reisner also showed a collection of 15 videos in which members of such and other units describe hopeless situations, declare a retreat or call out their commanders for neglect. Morale is so bad because those troops do not fare well. Yves Smith, with a wonderful Daily Mail style headline: The War Situation Has Developed Not Necessarily to Ukraine’s or the West’s Advantage But They Plan to Negotiate When They’ve Turned Things Around a Bit.

War Crimes, From Nuremberg To Ukraine

June 4, 2022 Ellen Taylor, Counter Punch. , , , ,
I was in Nuremberg during the war crimes trials which followed WWII. My father, Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, was Chief Prosecutor during the second, American phase. The French, Russian and British staffs had gone home to continue trials at home, but the US stayed longer, and scheduled about 400 additional defendants. They were divided into twelve categories: judges, doctors, industrialists, etc. There were 142 convictions and ten death sentences. I remember the high spirits of the occupying troops and tribunal staff, The joy of triumph and victory. I danced with them in the ballroom of the Grand Hotel, where the officials and court lawyers spent their evenings. I scared myself by looking into seemingly-bottomless bomb craters, played in the war-shattered wreckage of our commandeered townhouse, and listened to stories told by the servants, who were tearfully glad to be fed and sheltered during the hunger-stricken post-war years.

Ukraine: Casualty Numbers, Territorial Defense Forces

June 4, 2022 Moon of Alabama. , , ,
Over the last month I had come to the conclusion that the Ukraine is losing about 500 men per day due to intense Russian artillery fire. That number may have been too low. I had mentioned high Ukrainian casualty rates due to Russian artillery fire on April 25: The nearly 1,000 artillery missions in the last 24 hours and on the days before speak of intense preparations for upcoming attacks by Russian mechanized forces. Over all artillery will do the most damage to the Ukrainian troops. In World War II and other modern mechanized wars some 65% of all casualties were caused by artillery strikes. The recent rate on the Ukrainian side will likely be higher. I revisited that on May 5: The Russian military forces are grinding down Ukrainian ground forces by extensive use of heavy artillery.

Scott Ritter And Ray McGovern On Ukraine, Russia, And China

June 1, 2022 Ray McGovern. , ,
Scott and I focused initially on President Biden’s just-completed Excellent Adventure in the Far East and the U.S. effort to woo countries away from China or, at least, pre-empt closer bilateral ties. I again posed the question (see my brief talk Thursday, embedded in https://raymcgovern.com/2022/05/27/why-is-win-win-a-no-no/ ), Why must China’s “win-win” approach be dismissed out of hand — especially when it was so mutually beneficial 50 years ago in reducing tension and keeping the peace? Recent developments, including talks with Chinese officials, have fortified Scott’s view that China remains extremely reluctant to go to war over Taiwan. Nevertheless, China will do so “in a heartbeat” if Taiwan declares independence and develops a more substantial military relationship with the U.S.

DHS ‘Concerned’ Over Nazis Returning To US After Fighting In Ukraine

June 1, 2022 Alexander Rubinstein, The Grayzone. , , , ,
As the United States undergoes a national mourning process over a spate of mass shootings, American white nationalists with documented histories of violence are attaining combat experience with advanced US-made weapons in a foreign proxy war. That’s according to the Department of Homeland Security, which has been gathering intelligence on Americans who have joined the ranks of the more than 20,000 foreign volunteers in Ukraine. The FBI has indicted several American white nationalists associated with the Rise Above Movement after they trained with the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and its civilian wing, the National Corps, in Kiev. But that was almost four years ago. Today, federal law enforcement has no idea how many US neo-Nazis are participating in the war in Ukraine, or what they are doing there.

Rape Allegations Against Russian Troops In Ukraine Were Fake

June 1, 2022 Moon of Alabama. , , , ,
There is a first and still very low noise signal that the Zelenski regime in Kiev is coming apart. Six weeks ago there were suddenly many claims that Russian soldiers in Ukraine had raped people. Time headlined: Ukrainians Who Have Been Raped by Russian Troops Are Refusing to Stay Silent Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Lyudmyla Denisova said that 25 teenage girls were kept in a basement in Bucha and gang-raped; nine of them are now pregnant. Elderly women spoke on camera about being raped by Russian soldiers. The bodies of children were found naked with their hands tied behind their backs, their genitals mutilated. Those victims included both girls and boys, and Ukrainian men and boys have been sexually assaulted in other incidents. A group of Ukrainian women POWs had their heads shaved in Russian captivity, where they were also stripped naked and forced to squat.

The Fight Over Land And Genetically Engineered Agriculture

June 1, 2022 Mitchel Cohen, Covert Action Magazine. , , ,
Ten months before Russian troops poured into Ukraine, that country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill into law authorizing the private sale of farmland, reversing a moratorium that had been in place since 2001. An earlier administration in Ukraine had instituted the moratorium in order to halt further privatization of The Commons and small farms, which were being bought up by oligarchs and concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. As documented in a series of critical reports over ten years by the Oakland Institute based in California*,* the moratorium on land sales in Ukraine aimed to prevent the acquisition and consolidation of farmland in the hands of the domestic oligarch class and foreign corporations. The marketization of farmland is part of a series of policy “reforms” that the International Monetary Fund stipulated as a precondition enabling Ukraine to receive $8 billion in loans from the IMF.

Phase Three In Ukraine

May 31, 2022 Scott Ritter, Consortium News. , , ,
Russia’s “Special Military Operation”, which began on Feb. 24, is entering its fourth month. Despite stiffer than expected Ukrainian resistance (bolstered by billions of dollars of western military assistance and accurate, real-time battlefield intelligence by the U.S. and other NATO members) Russia is winning the war on the ground, and in a big way. After more than ninety days of incessant Ukrainian propaganda, echoed mindlessly by a complicit western mainstream media that extolls the battlefield successes of the Ukrainian armed forces and the alleged incompetence of the Russian military, the Russians are on the cusp of achieving the stated goal of its operation, namely the liberation of the newly independent Donbass Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk, which Russia recognized two days before its invasion.

Sanctions – Wrecking Ball In A Global Economy

May 30, 2022 Sara Flounders , Workers World. , , , , , ,
U.S. government strategists are using sanctions as a wrecking ball to demolish the globalized economy. It is a desperate struggle to preserve their global hegemony and a unipolar world. The policy of consciously demolishing supply chains of essential products amounts to a reckless war on defenseless civilian populations. Sanctions disrupt trade worldwide and send shockwaves far beyond the countries directly targeted. This is well understood by financial planners. “Food shortages — it’s going to be real,” President Joe Biden said in Brussels March 25 at a NATO press conference, an ominous warning reported around the world. “The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”
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