Kiev and the US are also keeping a close watch on the recent Russian military drills in neighboring Belarus. “Russia is preparing for maximum escalation,” defense minister Danilov had also told UK media this week. “It is gathering everything possible, doing drills and training.”
The Ukrainian government is sounding the alarm ahead of the upcoming one-year Feb.24 anniversary of the Russian invasion, saying that Kremlin forces are amassing more troops on the border in preparation for a major new offensive. The warnings come amid widespread reports that Russian forces are gearing up for an inevitable Spring offensive.
In a Wednesday interview with a French media outlet Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov claimed that Putin has ordered a whopping 500,000 troops to ready the new assault in the coming weeks.
“Officially, they announced 300,000, but when we see the troops at the borders, according to our assessments it is much more,” he said.
And separately, Yuriy Sak, a senior defense ministry official, told NBC News on Thursday that “We should understand that the threat of a new and another offensive will remain until we defeat Russia.”
Ukraine expects the attacks to happen from the east and south: “As their main forces are concentrated in the east, we do expect them to begin an offensive there, perhaps around Bakhmut,” Sak said.
And President Zelensky in his latest evening video address to the nation said, “The situation has become tougher” in the area, and further that “The enemy is trying to achieve at least something now to show that Russia has some chances on the anniversary of the invasion.”
Kiev and the US are also keeping a close watch on the recent Russian military drills in neighboring Belarus. “Russia is preparing for maximum escalation,” defense minister Danilov had also told UK media this week. “It is gathering everything possible, doing drills and training.”
If the assessments are accurate, the Kremlin likely wishes to keep its positive momentum strong amid an intense fight for Bakhmut, especially before the arrival of Western-supplied main battle tanks. Russia has warned it is prepared to escalate in response. Russian troops, including Wagner mercenaries, are on the brink of having the city encircled.
1)On the outskirts Bakhmut, Ukrainian and Russian Armies are fighting practically from adjacent houses
On the outskirts of Bakhmut, clashes take place practically at point-blank range — judging by the video, pic.twitter.com/2G5NhehWiN
“Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organization that is leading the assault in Ukraine’s east, said Wednesday that his forces had seized the village of Sacco and Vanzetti, north of Bakhmut,” writes The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. “Rybar, a Telegram channel linked to the Kremlin, said Thursday that Wagner was claiming territory on the contested east side of the city, expanding control around a sparkling-wine factory and a meat-processing plant.”
Total control of Bakhmut could make pacification of the whole of Donetsk much easier – though at the moment both the Russian and Ukrainian sides are suffering heavy losses.
The U.S. and NATO are pouring into Ukraine huge amounts of heavy artillery munitions supplied to the Kiev armed forces. The U.S.-according to official figures-has so far sent more than one million rounds of ammunition for 155 mm howitzers to Ukraine, plus tens of thousands of missiles. About 300,000 rounds of ammunition come from U.S. military depots in Israel. The arms shipment is managed by an international network, in which Camp Darby- the largest U.S. arsenal outside the motherland, connected to the port of Livorno and Pisa military airport – plays a central role. Britain, France, Poland and Finland are supplying Kiev with tanks, and Poland is purchasing Abrams tanks from the U.S. Some of which may be destined for Ukraine.
The Federation of American Scientists confirms in January the news given by Grandangolo in December 2022 based on a U.S. Air Force document: the C-17A Globemaster aircraft has been authorized to carry the U.S. B61-12 nuclear bomb to Italy and other European countries. Since Biden Administration officials had announced that the B61-12 shipment would be brought forward to December, we believe that the new US nuclear bombs are already arriving in Europe to be deployed against Russia.
The U.S. and NATO are pouring into Ukraine huge amounts of heavy artillery munitions supplied to the Kiev armed forces. The U.S.-according to official figures-has so far sent more than one million rounds of ammunition for 155 mm howitzers to Ukraine, plus tens of thousands of missiles. About 300,000 rounds of ammunition come from U.S. military depots in Israel. The arms shipment is managed by an international network, in which Camp Darby- the largest U.S. arsenal outside the motherland, connected to the port of Livorno and Pisa military airport – plays a central role. Britain, France, Poland and Finland are supplying Kiev with tanks, and Poland is purchasing Abrams tanks from the U.S. Some of which may be destined for Ukraine.
At the same time, the U.S. and NATO are enhancing the deployment of their forces in Europe, increasingly close to Russia. In Romania, NATO deployed AWACS aircraft, equipped with the most sophisticated electronic equipment, kept constantly in flight near Russian airspace. Also in Romania, the Pentagon deployed the 101st Airborne Division, which is being deployed to Europe for the first time since World War II.
NATO and the EU establish “a task force on resilience and critical infrastructure.” “NATO,” declares the Council of the European Union, “remains the foundation of our collective defense. We recognize the value of a stronger European Defense that contributes to transatlantic security and is complementary and interoperable with NATO.”
*
Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
This article was originally published on byoblu.
Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
The original source of this article is Global Research
Snipers from the US and Britain have been sent to Bolshoy Potemkin Island near Kherson to kill civilians in order to pass them off as victims of Russian troops, an employee of the Russian law enforcement agencies told RIA Novosti
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has warned that any attempt to “destroy Russia” by “madmen” trying to impose their values will lead to “the end of the world.”
The comments were made by Patriarch Kirill after a religious service marking the Orthodox Christian holiday of Epiphany.
According to Patriarch Kirill, “madmen” are stupid enough to believe that Russia, which “has powerful weapons and is populated by extremely strong people,” can be defeated despite the fact that it has “never given in to an enemy and had always emerged victorious.”
The church leader also decried how such “madmen” were trying to “impose on them certain values that cannot even be called values, so that they would be like everyone else and obey those who have the power to control most of the world.”
“We pray to the Lord so that he enlightens those madmen and helps them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world,” said Patriarch Kirill.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev made similar remarks when he asserted that Russia had “never lost a major conflict on which their fate depended” and that the result of defeat in a conventional war would be the triggering of nuclear war.
Meanwhile, in a potentially massive new escalation, the New York Times reported that the United States is considering working with Ukraine to attack Crimea, emboldened by the belief that “fears that the Kremlin would retaliate using a tactical nuclear weapon have dimmed.”
“Biden’s neocon handlers are essentially taunting Russia to use nukes against Ukraine,” comments Chris Menahan.
In another Orwellian speech, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told Davos globalists that military escalation is the only way to bring about the end of the war, remarking, “Weapons are the way to peace.”
Prime Minister of Finland tells Davos that her "only message" is that the Ukraine war must be supported for 15 years or longer if needed. This kind of "perpetual war" rhetoric used to be associated with John McCain-style war fever, now it's associated with the slayyyyyy Girl Boss pic.twitter.com/92w3A2n3Lh
Russia could not stand idly by when Kiev started eliminating people just for associating themselves with Russian culture, language and traditions, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday as he explained the reasoning behind Moscow’s ongoing military operation in Ukraine.
Russia could not stand idly by when Kiev started eliminating people just for associating themselves with Russian culture, language and traditions, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday as he explained the reasoning behind Moscow’s ongoing military operation in Ukraine.
Speaking at an event dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the breakthrough of the blockade of Leningrad, Putin noted that the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were “historical territories” of Russia and that he ultimately made the decision to launch the military operation in order to end the eight-year-long war in Donbass and to protect its people.
“We endured for a long time, tried to reach an agreement for a long time. But, as it turns out now, we were simply led by the nose, deceived,” the president added, apparently referring to the admissions by former German chancellor Angela Merkel and former Ukraine president Pyotr Poroshenko that the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015, designed to bring peace to Donbass, were a ruse by Kiev to buy time in order to build up its forces.
“It’s not the first time this has happened,” Putin admitted, stating Russia had done its best to resolve the situation by peaceful means. “It is now clear that this was, by definition, impossible. The enemy was preparing to transfer the conflict into an acute, hot phase. We had no choice but to do what we are doing now,” Putin explained.
Earlier on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Russia will consider its objectives in Ukraine fulfilled when no military infrastructure that poses a direct threat to Moscow remains. He also stated that, in order to bring the conflict to an end, Kiev must stop harassing and discriminating against Russian speakers.
Russia’s top diplomat says the West is searching for ways to anger China on a host of issues, including Taiwan and Tibet.
Russia’s relations with the West “will never be the same”, he said, as he accused the West of failing to observe signed agreements with Moscow.“Never again there will be a situation when you lie, sign documents and then refuse to fulfil them,” he said.
Lavrov accused the West of failing to observe signed agreements with Russia [Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP]
Published On 18 Jan 2023
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has hailed joint military drills between Moscow and Beijing as a move that strengthens the pair’s new strategic partnership.
Addressing reporters in Moscow on Wednesday, Lavrov also accused the West of searching for ways to anger China on a host of issues, such as the status of Tibet and Taiwan.
Russia’s relations with the West “will never be the same”, he said, as he accused the West of failing to observe signed agreements with Moscow.
“Never again there will be a situation when you lie, sign documents and then refuse to fulfil them,” he said.
Last month, the Chinese and Russian navies held joint drills in the East China Sea.
According to China’s Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army, the exercises were designed to demonstrate “the determination and capability of the two sides to jointly respond to maritime security threats”.
Meanwhile, Russia and China are also said to be “sharing a toolkit” of approaches and strategies to undermine NATO, according to Julianne Smith, US ambassador to NATO.
“Those two are increasingly sharing a toolkit that should concern the NATO alliance, Smith told the Financial Times in an article published in December.
“There’s just no question that the [People’s Republic of China] and Russia are both working to divide … the transatlantic partners. And we are now very aware, we all have a deeper appreciation of those efforts and are intent on addressing them,” Smith said in an interview.
NATO in June listed China among its strategic challenges for the first time, saying Beijing’s ambitions and “coercive policies” undermined the Western military bloc’s “interests, security and values”.
Lavrov compares West’s approach to Hitler’s ‘final solution’
Elsewhere in his speech on Wednesday, Lavrov said the US had assembled a coalition of European countries to solve “the Russian question” using Ukraine as a proxy, in the same way Adolf Hitler had sought a “final solution” to eradicate Europe’s Jews.
“Just as Hitler wanted a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question, now, if you read Western politicians … they clearly say Russia must suffer a strategic defeat,” he said.
Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Moscow, said Lavrov’s news conference was an attempt to contextualize the war into the “Russian-Western confrontation”.
In a “national consultation”, the Hungarian government asked Hungarians about the sanctions against Russia. Some 97 percent of the participants voted against the sanctions. The government regards the result as “indicative”.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is one of the harshest critics of sanctions against Russia. He saw this confirmed by the most recent survey in Hungary.
The results of the survey are “pointing the way”, said government spokeswoman Alexandra Szentkirályi on Facebook. It should also be heard in Brussels. The embassy is clearly in favor of a reassessment of the sanctions.
The Hungarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán repeatedly holds “national consultations” in which votes can be mailed or sent online. However, the surveys have no legally binding consequences.
Questions about sanctions with regard to energy sources, raw materials, tourism, inflation
This time, Hungarians were asked if they agree with EU sanctions against Russia on energy, raw materials and nuclear fuel rods. The referendum also dealt with the consequences of the sanctions policy for tourism and the rise in food prices due to the sanctions.
Orbán’s opponents have long considered the questions suggestive, manipulative and misleading. They claim that in practice, only answers in favor of the government were allowed. Eight million people are entitled to vote in Hungary and 1,4 million citizens took part in the vote.
Critics also pointed out that Hungary had actually agreed to all EU sanctions packages against Russia so far.
Last year, in October, the government launched a campaign against the EU’s policy: “Sanctions from Brussels are destroying us!” they warned in reference to multiple rounds of measures targeting Russia.
Orbán justified the appointment of the consultation at the end of September 2022 with sharp criticism of the sanctions: “The sanctions were not decided in a democratic manner, but Brussels bureaucrats and European elites decided on them.”
Hungary alone not strong enough to take on Brussels
In an interview with Radio Kossuth, Orbán explained: “Hungary’s strength is not enough for that, and so mine is by definition. One thing I can do is to try to stop the damage, to say that this is going to be a problem, where we feel that the Hungarian national interest is being fundamentally harmed, we veto there, we stand up for Hungary there, we don’t allow it, but we don’t know how to change, to set the sanctions policy on a different track.”
He said this would simply require a political decision to be made in Brussels. The courage to counter Brussels also exists, he added. “Here we are, for example, or me personally, only this is of no importance, because in order for this to change, for this brave opinion to have consequences, it would have to be a German or a French person who are strong enough to be able to change the position of the entire union.”
Orbán underscored that if the sanctions were to be lifted, “the price of energy would drop in no time and the general price level, i.e. inflation, would immediately be halved with it – so the rate of inflation would be reduced by at least half, but maybe even more”.
He said that unfortunately, the sanctions policy would continue in Brussels: “We will introduce sanctions, which will turn out not to work. Behind this, there is another culture shock that affects us Hungarians. It’s about the Germans. I grew up always being told at home that the German is right! The German is precise, the engineer, he calculates, he doesn’t rush, he knows what he’s doing.
“Now I’m looking at what they’re doing, the Brussels committee has a German president, these sanctions are being imposed, and they’re not fully calculated from a professional point of view. So, our belief in the crisis management ability of the Germans, stemming from German engineering precision, has decreased significantly in the past period.”
The EU-NATO declaration on security is promoting American, not European interests, Russian Foreign Ministry has said
In a statement, Zakharova said that the document, signed a day earlier, “confirms that the European Union is completely subjugated to the tasks of the North Atlantic bloc, which serves as a tool to coercively enforce US interests.”
The declaration on cooperation signed by the European Union and NATO is further proof that the EU is under the thumb of the US-led military bloc, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.
In a statement, Zakharova said that the document, signed a day earlier, “confirms that the European Union is completely subjugated to the tasks of the North Atlantic bloc, which serves as a tool to coercively enforce US interests.”
She went on to say that “under the guise of ‘strengthening the transatlantic bond’” the declaration promotes the provisions of NATO’s strategic concept, which was adopted in June 2022.
According to the diplomat, the declaration views transatlantic security “through the lens of opposing our country, ramping up arms and military hardware supplies to the Kiev regime, increasing military mobility in the European ‘theater of war,’ and further expansion of NATO.”
The document’s provisions basically formalize “the secondary nature” of the EU defense policies to those of NATO while “nullifying the EU’s claims to autonomy in this area,” she stated.
Zakharova also described the document as “another eulogy to the philosophy of Western superiority.”“It bluntly states that NATO and the EU will use all political, economic and military means ‘in the interests of our one billion citizens’,” she claimed.
Against this backdrop, Washington’s motives are obvious, the spokeswoman said. The US wants to drag the European Union into the “global rivalry” and, should it succeed, “the Europeans would face the unenviable fate of being an American vassal.” This would mean that the EU would be “losing positions in global politics and economics, with each step becoming increasingly dependent on Washington,” she added.
Zakharova wondered whether ordinary European citizens really want to see such an outcome, while “paying for this protracted confrontation out of their own pockets.”
The EU-NATO joint declaration was signed on Tuesday by NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, President of the European Council Charles Michel, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. They vowed to elevate their partnership “to the next level,” noting that the West is confronted “with the gravest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades” amid the Ukraine conflict.
None of the gloomy forecasts the West made about Russia’s fate in 2022 have come to pass, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the government on Wednesday as he commented on the West’s failure to disrupt the national economy.
“Nothing that our adversaries predicted has happened to us,” Putin said as he thanked the government for its effective work throughout 2022, which helped Russia withstand international pressure amid unprecedented sanctions imposed by the US and its allies. “In no small way, that was the result of the government’s work,” he added.
The president then said that there’s still much that needs to be done to secure Russia’s “absolutely … sovereign independent development despite all the external pressure and threats.” He highlighted the fact that more efforts should be aimed at supplying the Russian forces involved in the conflict in Ukraine. Russia should also expand the technological capacities of its economy and encourage the creation of new industries and workplaces, he said, while strengthening the financial sector, the agriculture industry and some other economic fields.
Following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, the US and its allies in Europe and beyond imposed unprecedented sanctions against Moscow, targeting entire sectors of its economy, including finances and banking as well as aviation and space industries. In December, the EU, along with the G7 countries and Australia, introduced a price cap on Russian seaborne oil, set at $60 per barrel.
Last spring, many Western officials and media outlets predicted that the Russian economy would collapse under the pressure of sanctions and military expenditures, only to admit that Moscow managed to defy all of those predictions. In May, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic admitted that the Western sanctions were not working, as The Economist reported that the Russian economy proved to be “surprisingly resilient” amid high oil and gas revenues.
In August, Bloomberg and the Washington Post reported that the sanctions failed to bring about the economic collapse that Western leaders had hoped for. In December, Putin said that Russia was outperforming many of the G20 nations despite sanctions. Earlier the same month, the Russian Finance Ministry said that oil and gas budget revenues exceeded the full-year target in the first 11 months, bringing an additional $9 billion to Russia’s coffers.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov: “We are carrying out NATO’s mission today. They aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with weapons.” pic.twitter.com/uyJN4JgeaE
The US and NATO are already taking part in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, although indirectly, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Tuesday. He was commenting on a statement made earlier by the secretary of Russia’s national security council, Nikolay Patrushev, who called the ongoing hostilities a “confrontation of NATO… with Russia.”
“Both NATO and the US are definitely taking part in this conflict, although indirectly, by proxy,” Peskov said, adding that, although both Washington and Brussels maintain they have no intention of getting involved in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, “de facto they have already become an indirect party” to it.
The US and its allies, including the NATO nations, “pump Ukraine full of arms, [share] technologies, and intelligence data… Their involvement in this conflict is obvious,” the spokesman for Russian president Vladimir Putin said.
Moscow does not believe that any of its actions could further provoke the US and NATO into increasing their military aid to Kiev since it is already happening, Peskov said. “We see that increases in [military] supplies come on a daily basis,” the Kremlin spokesman said, adding that increasingly more powerful weapons are getting delivered in larger quantities as Western nations intensify their training of Ukrainian troops.
The Kremlin spokesman also said that Patrushev was absolutely right in his assessment, which simply “acknowledged the facts on the ground.” “This is nothing but the indirect involvement of those nations in the conflict,” Peskov maintained, adding that Moscow “thoroughly records” all such developments.
Earlier on Tuesday, the National Security Council secretary said that the ongoing conflict is a proxy confrontation between the US, NATO and Russia since Brussels and Washington “fear a direct standoff.” Patrushev also accused the West of sacrificing other people’s lives for their “enrichment and ambitions.”
Washington and its allies in Europe have repeatedly stated they would like to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia and has denied being party to the ongoing conflict. Yet, they have been supplying Kiev’s forces with a wide variety of arms, including self-propelled howitzers and multiple rocket launchers.
Russia has repeatedly warned that continued Western arms shipments to Kiev would only prolong the conflict and extend human suffering, as well as pose a risk of a direct military confrontation between Russia and the West.
The CIA abandoned Afghanistan in a humiliating retreat – even ditching the heroin ratline – just to relocate to Ukraine and continue playing the same old broken records. The CIA is behind the ongoing sabotage of Russian infrastructure – in tandem with MI6 and others. Sooner or later there will be blowback.
The hard work starts now. Welcome to the New Great Game on crack…
2023 starts with collective NATO in Absolutely Freak Out Mode as Russian Defense Minister Shoigu announces that Russian Navy frigate Admiral Gorshkov is now on tour – complete with a set of Mr. Zircon’s hypersonic business cards.
The business tour will encompass the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, and of course include the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire’s former Mare Nostrum. Mr. Zircon on the prowl has absolutely nothing to do with the war in Ukraine: it’s a sign of what happens next when it comes to frying much bigger fishes than a bunch of Kiev psychos.
The end of 2022 did seal the frying of the Big Ukraine Negotiation Fish. It has now been served on a hot plate – and fully digested. Moscow has made it painfully clear there’s no reason whatsoever to trust the “non-agreement capable” declining superpower.
So even taxi drivers in Dacca are now betting on when the much-vaunted “winter offensive” starts, and how far will it go. General Armageddon’s path ahead is clear: all-out demilitarization and de-electrification on steroids, complete with grinding up masses of Ukrainians at the lowest possible cost to the Russian Armed Forces in Donbass until Kiev psychos beg for mercy. Or not.
Another big fried fish on a hot plate at the end of 2022 was the 2014 Minsk Agreement. The cook was no other than former chancellor Merkel (“an attempt to buy time for Ukraine”). Implied is the not exactly smokin’ gun: the strategy of the Straussian/neo-con and neoliberal-con combo in charge of U.S. foreign policy, from the beginning, was to unleash a Forever War, by proxy, against Russia.
Merkel may have been up to something telling the Russians, in their face, that she lied like crypto-Soprano Mike Pompeo, then she lied again and again, for years. That’s not embarrassing for Moscow, but for Berlin: yet another graphic demonstration of total vassalage to the Empire.
The response by the contemporary embodiment of Mercury, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Maria Zakharova, was equally intriguing: Merkel’s confession could be used as a specific reason – and evidence – for a tribunal judging Western politicians responsible for provoking the Russia-Ukraine proxy war.
No one will obviously confirm it on the record. But all this could be part of an evolving, secret Russia-Germany deal in the making, leading to Germany restoring at least some of its sovereignty.
Time to fry NATO fish
Meanwhile, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, visibly relishing his totally unplugged incarnation, expanded on the Fried Negotiation Fish saga. “Last warning to all nations”, as he framed it: “there can be no business with the Anglo-Saxon world [because] it is a thief, a swindler, a card-sharp that could do anything… From now on we will do without them until a new generation of sensible politicians comes to power… There is nobody in the West we could deal with about anything for any reason.”
Medvedev, significantly, recited more or less the same script, in person, to Xi Jinping in Beijing, days before the zoom to end all zooms – between Xi and Putin – that worked as a sort of informal closure of 2022, with the Russia-China strategic partnership perfectly in synch.
On the war front, General Armageddon’s new – offensive – groove is bound to lead in the next few months to an undisputable fact on the ground: a partition between a dysfunctional black hole or rump Ukraine on the west, and Novorossiya in the east.
Even the IMF is now reluctant to throw extra funds into the black hole. Kiev’s 2023 budget has an – unrealistic – $36 billion deficit. Half of the budget is military-related. The real deficit in 2022 was running at about $5 billion a month – and will inevitably balloon.
Tymofiy Mylovanov, a professor at the Kiev School of Economics, came up with a howler: the IMF is worried about Ukraine’s “debt sustainability”. He added, “if even the IMF is worried, imagine what private investors are thinking”. There will be no “investment” in rump Ukraine. Multinational vultures will grab land for nothing and whatever puny productive assets may remain.
Arguably the biggest fish to be fried in 2023 is the myth of NATO. Every serious military analyst, few Americans included, knows that the Russian Army and the military-industrial complex represent a superior system than what existed at the end of the U.S.SR, and far superior to that of the U.S. and the rest of NATO today.
The Mackinder-style final blow to a possible alliance between Germany (EU), Russia and China – which is what is really behind the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine – is not proceeding according to the Straussian wet dream.
Saddam Hussein, the former imperial vassal, was regime-changed because he wanted to bypass the petrodollar. Now we have the inevitable rise of the petroyuan – “in three to five years”, as Xi Jinping announced in Riyadh: you just can’t prevent it with Shock’n Awe on Beijing.
In 2008, Russia embarked on a massive rebuilding of missile forces and a 14-year plan to modernize land-based armed forces. Mr. Zircon presenting his hypersonic business card across the Mare Nostrum is just a small part of the Big Picture.
The myth of U.S. power
The CIA abandoned Afghanistan in a humiliating retreat – even ditching the heroin ratline – just to relocate to Ukraine and continue playing the same old broken records. The CIA is behind the ongoing sabotage of Russian infrastructure – in tandem with MI6 and others. Sooner or later there will be blowback.
Few people – including CIA operatives – may know that New York City, for instance, may be destroyed with a single move: blowing up the George Washington bridge. The city can’t be supplied with food and most of its requirements without the bridge. The New York City electrical grid can be destroyed by knocking out the central controls; putting it back together could take a year.
Even trespassed by infinite layers of fog of war, the current situation in Ukraine is still a skirmish. The real war has not even started yet. It might – soon.
Apart from Ukraine and Poland there is no NATO force worth mentioning. Germany has a risible two-day supply of ammunition. Turkey will not send a single soldier to fight Russians in Ukraine.
Out of 80,000 U.S. troops stationed in Europe, only 10% are weaponized. Recently 20,000 were added, not a big deal. If the Americans activated their troops in Europe – something rather ridiculous in itself – they would not have any place to land supplies or reinforcements. All airports and seaports would be destroyed by Russian hypersonic missiles in a matter of minutes – in continental Europe as well as the UK.
In addition, all fuel centers such as Rotterdam for oil and natural gas would be destroyed, as well as all military installations, including top American bases in Europe: Grafenwoehr, Hohenfels, Ramstein, Baumholder, Vilseck, Spangdahlem, and Wiesbaden in Germany (for the Army and Air Force); Aviano Air Base in Italy; Lajes Air Base in Portugal’s Azores islands; Naval Station Rota in Spain; Incirlik Air Base in Turkey; and Royal Air Force stations Lakenheath and Mildenhall in the UK.
All fighter jets and bombers would be destroyed – after they land or while landed: there would be no place to land except on the autobahn, where they would be sitting ducks.
Patriot missiles are worthless – as the whole Global South saw in Saudi Arabia when they tried to knock out Houthi missiles coming from Yemen. Israel’s Iron Dome can’t even knock out all primitive missiles coming from Gaza.
U.S. military power is the supreme myth of the fish-to-be-fried variety. Essentially, they hide behind proxies – as the Ukraine Armed Forces. U.S. forces are worthless except in turkey shoots as in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, against a disabled opponent in the middle of the desert with no air cover. And never forget how NATO was completely humiliated by the Taliban.
The final breaking point
2022 ended an era: the final breaking point of the “rules-based international order” established after the fall of the U.S.S.R.
The Empire entered Desperation Row, throwing everything and the kitchen sink – proxy war on Ukraine, AUKUS, Taiwan hysteria – to dismantle the set-up they created way back in 1991.
Globalization’s rollback is being implemented by the Empire itself. That ranges from stealing the EU energy market from Russia so the hapless vassals buy ultra-expensive U.S. energy to smashing the entire semiconductor supply chain, forcibly rebuilding it around itself to “isolate” China.
The NATO vs. Russia war in Ukraine is just a cog in the wheel of the New Great Game. For the Global South, what really matters is how Eurasia – and beyond – are coordinating their integration process, from BRI to the BRICS+ expansion, from the SCO to the INSTC, from Opec+ to the Greater Eurasia Partnership.
We’re back to what the world looked like in 1914, or before 1939, only in a limited sense. There’s a plethora of nations struggling to expand their influence, but all of them are betting on multipolarity, or “peaceful modernization”, as Xi Jinping coined it, and not Forever Wars: China, Russia, India, Iran, Indonesia and others.
So bye-bye 1991-2022. The hard work starts now. Welcome to the New Great Game on crack.
PUTIN (2022): "This historical period of boundless Western domination in world affairs is coming to an end. The unipolar world is being relegated into the past… We're in for probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and most important decade since the end of World War II." pic.twitter.com/NyNL5QCIxg
U.S. Army National Guard Soldiers assigned to 3rd Battalion, 161st Infantry Regiment stand in formation during a handover, take over ceremony at Bemowo Piskie Training Area, Poland, Feb. 11, 2022. The ceremony demonstrated NATO’s continued commitment to the collective defense and security of our allies on NATO’s eastern flank. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Adrian Patoka)
As tensions between Washington and Moscow continue to rise, U.S. forces are being instructed to get ready for an all-out war with Russia.
For the first time in 80 years, the 101st Airborne Division of the United States has deployed to Romania.
Trends Journal reports: The U.S. Army said in a statement in June that the division arrived at the Mihail Kogălniceanu Airbase to “reinforce NATO’s eastern flank and engage in multinational exercises with partners across the European continent in order to reassure allies and deter further Russian aggression.”
“Being here, so close to that fight (in Ukraine), is exactly where the 101st Airborne Division is destined to be,” said Maj. Gen. JP McGee, 101st commander, during the livestreamed ceremony, Stars & Stripes reported at the time.
U.S. infantry arrived at a military base in Estonia last month to train allied troops and secure Europe’s eastern flank amid the Ukraine War. The troops are stationed at the Taara base in Võru and will train alongside Estonia forces. The base is about 20 miles from the Russian border.
The troops in Romania have been training Ukrainian forces on advanced weapons systems that are being shipped into Kyiv, The New York Times reported.
“You get a chance to train and operate on the very ground that you might have to defend,” McGee told the paper.
The Times report stressed that the 101st Airborne deployment was about deterrence. If the US were preparing to enter the war directly, it would likely send significantly more troops. While in Romania, the soldiers are also participating in coastal defense drills, and Romanian troops are practicing firing HIMARS rocket launch systems into the Black Sea.
The Pentagon has said it is sending U.S. troops into Ukraine, under the guise that they are going there not to fight, but instead just to track the billions of dollars of weapons the West sent into the country.
NBC News, citing three senior U.S. officials, reported last month that there is discussion in the White House about sending additional troops into the country to help the U.S. track weapons. The report said there are already U.S. troops in the country, again, under the guise that all they are doing is monitoring weapons.
The New York Times reported in June that Ukraine is filled with CIA officers and special forces from the West. The report said the CIA personnel have been working out of Kyiv.
We reported in October that there are currently more U.S. special forces and CIA agents in Ukraine today than there were at the beginning of the war.
The Intercept, citing “several current and former intelligence officials,” reported that President Joe Biden has decided to have these forces conduct clandestine operations inside the country, which is counter to what he had said at the beginning of the war that U.S. troops would not be positioned on the ground in Ukraine because their presence would mean WWIII.
TRENDPOST: Gerald Celente has said for months that contrary to reports that the U.S. is in a “proxy” war with Russia, Washington is currently at war with the Kremlin. He said it will only become “official” after the first nuclear flash or a disastrous false flag event.
Weeks before the first Russian tank rolled into Ukraine, Biden brushed off the idea that U.S. troops would get involved in the conflict and went as far as to say they would not even assist in evacuations. He said flatly that an American presence could spark a world war.
The longer the war lasts, the higher the probability is that it will produce a nuclear exchange.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his traditional New Year’s Eve address on Saturday, speaking to the nation about the challenges the country has faced over the past year and the achievements it has made. The address venue differed drastically from the traditional Kremlin courtyard stand-up shots of the president, with Putin this year recording the annual message at the Southern Military District HQ. During his visit, he also met with top military brass and gave state awards to distinguished soldiers.
The unusually long address primarily revolved around the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, the large-scale conflict which broke out late in February. The dramatic events have shown that Russia, “our multi-ethnic country has demonstrated its courage and dignity, as it always has during times of trouble,” he said, praising the country’s military and common citizens alike.
“Russian soldiers, militia and volunteers are fighting for our homeland, for truth and justice, to ensure peace and security for Russia. All of them are heroes to us. Their burden is the heaviest today. With all of my heart, I wish a Happy New Year to all participants of the special military operation,” the president said.
While the outgoing year has been “full of worries and anxiety” and many “tough, but necessary decisions” have been made, the country has made “critical steps towards achieving Russia’s full sovereignty and a vital consolidation of our society,” the president said.
“This was a year of pivotal and fateful events that set the foundation of our common future and our true independence. This is what we are fighting for today. We are protecting our people in our historic lands, new constituent territories of the Russian Federation,” the president stated, referring to the four formerly-Ukrainian regions, incorporated into Russia after September referendums.
Not only Russia but the whole world experienced a “significant change” over the past year, Putin said, adding that the efforts to harm Russia made by the collective West, which has been backing Ukraine in the ongoing conflict, have largely failed. The ongoing conflict has been “inspiring for other nations as they aspire to forge an equitable and multipolar world,” the president noted.
“Russia has been living under sanctions since the events in Crimea in 2014. Yet this year, an all-out sanctions war has been declared against us. The masterminds behind it expected our industrial, financial and transportation sectors to collapse. This didn’t happen,” Putin stressed.
NewsGuard gave Consortium News a red mark for “publishing false content” on Ukraine, including that there was a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. Here is CN‘s detailed proof.
December 29, 2022
By Joe Lauria Special to Consortium News NewsGuard, the media rating agency, alleges that Consortium News has published “false content” by reporting that there was a U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014 and that ne0-Nazis have significant influence in the country.
NewsGuard took issue with a:
“February 2022 article ‘Ukraine: Guides to Reflection,’ [which] asserted, ‘Hence, the inflation of Russian behavior in Ukraine (where Washington organized a coup against a democratically elected government because we disliked its political complexion) … .’
It then wrote:
“The U.S. supported the Maidan revolution that ousted then-Ukraine President Viktor Yanikovych (sic) in 2014 — including a December 2013 visit by John McCain to Kyiv in support of protesters — but there is no evidence that the U.S. ‘organized’ a ‘coup.’ Instead, it has the markings of a popular uprising, precipitated by widely covered protests against Yanukovych’s decision to suspend preparations for the signing of an association and free-trade agreement with the European Union.”
Viktor Yanukovych was democratically elected as president of Ukraine in 2010 in an election certified by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a fact not mentioned in NewsGuard’s writings on the change of government in Ukraine. Even though Yanukovych agreed to an EU political settlement and early elections, violence forced him to flee from the capital on Feb. 21, 2014. Reporting that the neo-Nazi Right Sector was at the forefront of the violent overthrow, The New York Times (NewsGuard green check) wrote earlier that day:
“Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector, a coalition of hard-line nationalist groups, reacted defiantly to news of the settlement, drawing more cheers from the crowd.
‘The agreements that were reached do not correspond to our aspirations,’ he said. ‘Right Sector will not lay down arms. Right Sector will not lift the blockade of a single administrative building until our main demand is met — the resignation of Yanukovych.’ He added that he and his supporters were ‘ready to take responsibility for the further development of the revolution.’ The crowd shouted: ‘Good! Good!’
A study on the violence used to overthrow the government, by Prof. Serhiy Kudelia, a political scientist at Baylor University, says the overthrow succeeded because of “the embeddedness of violent groups” in a non-violent protest. The violence began on Dec. 1, 2013 when these violent groups attacked police with “iron chains, flares, stones and petrol bombs” and tried to ram a bulldozer through police lines. The police viciously fought back that day.
As the International Business Times (IBT) (green check) wrote about these groups at the time:
“According to a member of anti-fascist Union Ukraine, a group that monitors and fights fascism in Ukraine, ‘There are lots of nationalists here [EuroMaidan] including Nazis. They came from all over Ukraine, and they make up about 30% of protesters.
Different groups [of anarchists] came together for a meeting on the Maidan. While they were meeting, a group of Nazis came in a larger group, they had axes and baseball bats and sticks, helmets, they said it was their territory. They called the anarchists things like Jews, blacks, communists. There weren’t even any communists, that was just an insult. The anarchists weren’t expecting this and they left. People with other political views can’t stay in certain places, they aren’t tolerated,’ a member of the group continued.”
The violence by far-right groups was evidently condoned by Sen. John McCain who expressed his support for the uprising by addressing the Maidan crowd later that month. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and then U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt visited the square after the violence had broken out.
NewsGuard’s account of the events of Feb. 21, 2014 says that even though Yanukovych agreed to the early elections, “angry protestors demanded Yanukovych’s immediate resignation,” and he fled on that day after “hundreds of police guarding government buildings abandoned their posts.” NewsGuard then says “protestors took control of several government buildings the next day.”
Government Buildings Seized
Protestors occupied Kiev’s City Hall, replete with Confederate flag. (YouTube)
But protestors had already seized government buildings as early as December 2013. On Jan. 24 protestors broke into the Agriculture Ministry building in Kiev and occupied it. On the same day, barricades were set up near the presidential headquarters. Government buildings in the west of the country had also been occupied. The Guardian (green check) reported on Jan. 24:
“There were dramatic developments in the west of the country on Thursday as hundreds of people forced their way into the office of the regional governor in the city of Lviv, and forced him to sign a resignation letter. Oleh Salo, a Yanukovych appointee in a city where support for the president is in the low single digits, later said he signed the letter under duress and was rescinding his resignation.
Thousands also stormed regional administration headquarters in Rivne on Thursday, breaking down doors and demanding the release of people detained in the unrest there, Unian news agency reported. In the town of Cherkasy, 125 miles south of Kiev, about 1,000 protesters took over the first two floors of the main administration building and lit fires outside the building.
Similar action took place in Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Khmelnytsky in western and central Ukraine, as well as parts of the north-east, the Party of the Regions said.”
Protestors had begun occupying Kiev City Hall in December, with a portrait of Ukraine’s World War II fascist leader Stepan Bandera hanging from the rafters. On the night of Feb. 21, the leader of the Neo-fascist Right Sector, Andriy Parubiy, announced that the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), the Presidential Administration, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Internal Affairs had all come under the control of the protestors.
Therefore NewsGuard has published “false content” by reporting that government buildings were occupied the day after Yanukovych fled the capital. It should print a correction.
On the day after Yanukovych fled, the Rada voted without the presence of Yanukovych’s party — the largest in the country — to impeach him after the fact of his violent overthrow. NewsGuard omitted the key fact that the impeachment vote was tainted by the absence of Yanukovych’s party and that the impeachment became largely irrelevant after violence forced him to flee the capital.
Democratically-elected leaders are removed by electoral defeat, impeachment or votes of no confidence, not by violence. NewsGuard writes that “hundreds of police guarding government buildings abandoned their posts” on the day Yanukovych was forced out but doesn’t say why. As Jacobin (NewsGuard green check) magazine reports:
“Whatever one thinks of the Maidan protests, the increasing violence of those involved was key to their ultimate victory. In response to a brutal police crackdown, protesters began fighting with chains, sticks, stones, petrol bombs, even a bulldozer — and, eventually, firearms, all culminating in what was effectively an armed battle in February, which left thirteen police officers and nearly fifty protesters dead. The police ‘could no longer defend themselves’ from protesters’ attacks,’ writes political scientist Sergiy Kudelia, causing them to retreat, and precipitating Yanukovych’s exit.”
NewsGuard calls the events a “revolution,” yet revolutions in history have typically been against monarchs or dictators, not against democratically-elected leaders. For instance, the 1776 American Revolution, the 1789 French Revolution, the 1917 Russian Revolution, the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and countless others were against monarchs. Coups have been against both elected and non-elected leaders. Revolutions change political systems, usually from monarchies to republics. Ukraine’s political system was not changed, only its leader.
As a reader, Adrian E.. commented below on this article:
“When a movement that is supported by about half the population and opposed by about half the population violently overthrows a democratically elected government, this may be given different names (e.g. coup), but it is certainly not a “popular revolution”.
The Maydan movement was never supported by more than about half the Ukrainian population. It was supported by a vast majority in Western Ukraine, by very few people in the East and South of the country, with people more evenly split in the center/North. This clearly was not a case of a government that had lost public support to such a degree that there was a general consensus that it should resign. It was the case of one political camp representing about half the country that had lost the last elections imposing its will with brutal deadly violence.”
By any measure, Yanukovych’s ouster was an unconstitutional change in government. His “impeachment” without his party present for the vote came after government buildings had been seized and after violence drove him from the capital.
Circumstantial Evidence
McCain addressing crowd in Kiev, Dec. 15, 2013. (U.S. Senate/Office of Chris Murphy/Wikimedia Commons)
In its version of these events, NewsGuard only refers to circumstantial evidence of the coup, interpreting it as U.S. “support” for a “revolution” against a democratically-elected president.
NewsGuard fails to point out that McCain, Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-CT) as well as Nuland appeared on stage in the Maidan with Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the Neo-fascist Svoboda Party, formerly known as the Social National Party.
NewsGuard does not consider how such events would be seen in the United States if a senior Russian foreign ministry official, two leading Russian lawmakers and Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. appeared on stage with a far-right American leader to address a crowd on the Washington Mall seeking to oust an elected U.S. president. If that president were overthrown violently, would Americans think it was a Russian-backed coup?
NewsGuard discusses Nuland’s 2013 speech in which she revealed that since 1991 the U.S. had spent $5 billion to help bring about Ukraine’s “aspirations.” What it fails to point out is that U.S. aspirations were to turn Ukraine towards the West and away from Russia. And the U.S. had work to do.
NewsGuard does not mention that part of the $5 billion the U.S. spent was to help organize protests. There was genuine popular dissatisfaction with Yanukovych whom the NED nurtured and trained. Jacobin reported of the 2014 events:
“US officials, unhappy with the scuttled EU deal, saw a similar chance in the Maidan protests. Just two months before they broke out, the NED’s then president, pointing to Yanukovych’s European outreach, wrote that ‘the opportunities are considerable, and there are important ways Washington could help.’
In practice, this meant funding groups like New Citizen, which the Financial Timesreported ‘played a big role in getting the protest up and running,’ led by a pro-EU opposition figure. Journalist Mark Ames discovered the organization had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from US democracy promotion initiatives.”
Writing in Consortium News six days after Yanukovych’s ouster, Parry reported that over the previous year, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which funds NGOs in countries the U.S. targets for regime change, had bankrolled 65 projects in Ukraine totalling more than $20 million. Parry called it “a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired.”
The NED, on Feb. 25, the day after the Russian invasion, deleted all projects in Ukraine it funded, which are archived here. The NED meddled in Ukrainian politics in 2004 in the so-called Orange Revolution. The Washington Post (green check) wrote in 1991 that what the C.I.A. once did in secret — destabilizing and overthrowing regimes — the NED was now doing openly.
C.I.A. or NED-led coups are never made up out of whole cloth. The U.S. works with genuine opposition movements within a country, sometimes popular uprisings, to finance, train and direct them. The U.S. has a long history of overthrowing foreign governments, the most infamous examples being Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973.
In September 2013, before the Maidan uprising began, long-time NED head Carl Gerhsman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” in a Washington Post op-ed piece, and warned that “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
In 2016 he said the NED has been involved in Ukraine since the 1980s and he praised the “overthrow of Yanukovych.”
Nuland-Pyatt Tape Omitted
Most significantly, NewsGuard’s attempt to refute U.S. involvement in the coup omits the 2014 intercepted and leaked telephone call between Nuland and Pyatt, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, in which the two discuss who will make up the new government weeks before Yanukovych was overthrown.
On the leaked tape, Nuland and Pyatt talk about “midwifing” a new government; Vice President Joe Biden’s role, and setting up meetings with Ukrainian politicians to make it happen. Nuland says the prime minister should be Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and indeed he became prime minister after the coup.
At the time, the BBC (green check) wrote of the leak: “The US says that it is working with all sides in the crisis to reach a peaceful solution, noting that ‘ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future’. However, this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals.”
The U.S. State Department never denied the authenticity of the video, and even issued an apology to the European Union after Nuland is heard on the tape saying, “Fuck the EU.” Mainstream media at the time focused almost exclusively on that off-color remark as a distraction from the greater significance of U.S. interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs.
Why did Nuland say, “Fuck the EU”? At the time she said it, France, Germany and Poland were working for the EU on a political settlement with Russia to the Maidan crisis that would leave Yanukovych in power.
Indeed the E.U. brokered a deal with Yanukovych, who agreed to early elections by December 2014, a restoration of the 2004 Constitution and an amnesty for all protestors, clearing the way for no one to be held responsible for the violent ouster. Yanukovych announced the agreement, with E.U. officials at his side in Kiev, on Feb. 21, 2014. Later that day he was violently driven from power.
Leaving the historic role of the NED and the essential Nuland-Pyatt conversation out of its reporting is an omission of evidence by NewsGuard, typical of corporate media. Omitting crucial elements of a story changes its meaning and in this case undermines NewsGuard’s account of the events of 2014.
This is an excellent example of why Parry started Consortium News: to report on crucial information that corporate media sometimes purposely and deceptively leave out to change the meaning of a story. NewsGuard should correct its story about the coup, not Consortium News. NewsGuard invites readers to request corrections by emailing them at corrections@newsguardtech.com.
Likely Reasons for the Coup
U.S. enabled Yeltsin’s 1996 reelection.
Wall Street and Washington swept in after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 under a pliable Boris Yeltsin (who received direct U.S. help to win re-election in 1996) to asset-strip the formerly state-owned industries, enrich themselves and a new class of oligarchs and impoverish the former Soviet people.
The ascension of Vladimir Putin to power on New Year’s Eve 1999 gradually began to curb U.S. influence in post-Soviet Russia, especially after Putin’s 2007 Munich Security Conference speech, in which he blasted U.S. unilateral aggression, especially in Iraq.
Eventually, Putin restored sovereignty over much of the Russian economy, turning Washington and Wall Street against him. (As President Joe Biden has now made clear on more than one occasion, the U.S. aim is to overthrow him.)
In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote:
“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state.”
Thus U.S. “primacy,” or world dominance, which still drives Washington, is not possible without control of Eurasia, as Brzezinski argued, and that’s not possible without control of Ukraine by pushing Russia out (U.S. takeover of Ukraine in the 2014 coup) and dominating Moscow as it did when this was written in the 1990s.
Deep Western involvement in Ukrainian politics and economy never ended from those early post-Soviet days. When Yanukovych acted legally (the Rada authorized it) to reject the European Union association agreement in favor of a Russian economic package on better terms, it threatened to curtail Western economic involvement. Yanukovych became a marked man.
Yanukovych had already made Russian an official language, he had rejected NATO membership and reversed his pro-Western predecessor’s move to glorify Nazi collaborators. Yanukovych’s predecessor, President Viktor Yuschenko, had made Ukraine’s World War II-era fascist leader Stepan Bandera a “Hero of Ukraine.”
There was genuine popular dissatisfaction among mostly Western Ukrainians with Yanukovych, which intensified and became violent after he rejected the EU deal. Within months he was overthrown.
After the Coup
The U.S.-installed government in Kiev outlawed political parties, including the Communist Party, and stripped Russian as an official language. Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions was banned in several oblasts and eventually collapsed. An American citizen became finance minister and Vice President Joe Biden became Barack Obama’s virtual viceroy in Ukraine.
Videos have emerged of Biden giving instructions to the nominal president at the time, Petro Poroshenko. By his own admission, Biden forced the resignation of Viktor Shokin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general.
Shokin testified under oath that he was about to investigate Burisma Holdings, the company on which the vice president’s son was given a lucrative board membership just months after the U.S.-backed coup.
Biden, other U.S. officials, and the media at the time lied that Shokin was removed because he was corrupt. State Dept. memos released this year and published by Just the News (green-check) actually praise Shokin for his anti-corruption work. The question of whether the leader of a foreign nation has the right to remove another country’s prosecutor was buried.
Eight days after nearly 50 anti-coup protestors in Odessa were burned to death on May 2, 2014, by far-right counter-protestors dominated by Right Sector, the coup-resisting provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbass region declared independence from Ukraine. Russia began assisting them and, after a visit to Kiev by then C.I.A. Director John Brennan, Poroshenko launched a war against the separatists that lasted eight years, killing thousands of civilians, until Russia intervened in the civil conflict in February.
After the coup, NATO began arming, training and conducting exercises with the Ukrainian military, turning it into a de facto NATO member. These were not just the interests of part of Ukraine that were being served, but those of powerful foreign actors. It was akin to a 19th-century-style colonial takeover of a country.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year-old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has alleged that up to “hundreds” of American servicemen are deployed to Ukraine. Lavrov claimed that US soldiers, military advisers, and intelligence officers have long been direct participants in the conflict.
Sitting down with Russia’s Channel One for an interview on Wednesday, Lavrov spoke at length about Washington’s deep involvement in the hostilities in Ukraine, which has steadily grown despite repeated assurances from American leaders that US personnel would have no role in the fighting.
“Dozens, maybe even hundreds of American troops are in Ukraine, they were there even before the coup,” the FM said, referring to the 2014 ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich by nationalist groups and pro-Western activists. “CIA officers occupied at least one floor in the Security Service of Ukraine.”
Lavrov also claimed that the US military attaché based in Kiev has provided significant advice to the Ukrainian authorities, saying, “Military specialists are obviously engaged not only in making visits to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, but, of course, in one way or another they provide direct advisory, and maybe even more than advisory, services.”
He noted that a separate team of US specialists, created after American lawmakers demanded a more robust mechanism for tracking billions in lethal aid, has travelled to Ukraine to monitor the flow of Western arms to the country.
Given that “Ukraine is receiving more and more and better Western weapons,” the FM said Russian forces are now formulating plans to disrupt the arms shipments, adding that “Railway lines, bridges and tunnels” are being considered as targets to “make these deliveries more difficult or, ideally, stop them altogether.”
Lavrov went on to argue that Western states declared “war” on Russia nearly a decade ago, soon after the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, which was followed by US and NATO military support for the post-coup government.
“The collective West, which is headed by a nuclear power – the United States – is at war with us,” he said. “This war was declared on us quite a long time ago, after the coup d’état in Ukraine that was orchestrated by the United States and, in fact, backed by the European Union.”
So far this year, Washington has authorized more than $20 billion in direct military aid to Ukraine, not counting the separate ‘Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative’ and billions more in economic and humanitarian assistance. US officials have indicated that these policies will continue, pledging to supply Kiev with as much aid as is needed for “as long as it takes.”
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 
